ERIC LU AND EARL LEE: A LOVELY COLLABORATION OF YOUNG ARTISTS IN SCHUMANN AND BEETHOVEN
Eric Lu (piano); Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Earl Lee (conductor): Music of Di Castri, Schumann and Beethoven, Chan Centre, February 24, 2024.
There are few young pianists that have taken the world by storm as much as has 2018 Leeds Piano Competition winner Eric Lu. Now 26, he has already produced two widely praised recordings of Schubert and Beethoven/Schumann for Warner, and has received consistent ‘superlatives’ in the highest critical circles. The pianist’s command and wonderful clarity of articulation were certainly on display in this performance of the Schumann concerto, where his collaborator was the energetic young Korean/Canadian conductor Earl Lee, currently Music Director of the Ann Arbour Symphony and assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This performance was bigger and more robust than usual, with the orchestral forces driving hard in the outer movements, but it achieved unusual integration. Lu never faltered in moving the work forward with elegance, strength and precision, even if less room was left for poetic repose. Lee’s performance of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral Symphony’ had something of the same energy and strength of line, and emerged as pleasant and entertaining but not particularly deep.
The opening movement of the Schumann concerto was very Florestan-like indeed, bold and held on a tight rein, with the orchestra moving forward in the spirit of Schumann’s ‘Rhenish’ Symphony or Beethoven. Lu showed lovely command in his entries, but it was the clean transparency and strength of his playing that stood out more than its lyrical shaping. This was a powerful and direct performance, not a rhapsodic one, and not one that sought to probe all the movement’s contrasted corners of expression. Volume levels were also on the loud side, making the dreamier, more contemplative passages – such as the famous duet between clarinet and piano – more difficult to realize. The highlight was the long cadenza which, in Lu’s hands, came off as a stunning virtuoso tour-de-force taken to almost Lisztian proportions.
The Intermezzo gave greater scope for repose, and Lu displayed an admirable sense of line and feeling. There was always a purity and sculpted elegance in his playing and, interestingly, a certain grandness later on. Some coordination problems between piano, winds and orchestra unfortunately occurred in the magical transition to the finale, but once we got there, a searing experience was in store, driven by the speed and the intensity of the orchestral response. This was again a powerful virtuoso interpretation, always rhythmically conscious, with Lu remarkably agile and, indeed, sufficiently grand in his pianism that it got me thinking of Brahms or even Rachmaninoff at times. There were some new moments of illumination here, and the movement did not come off as inflated and showy since the pianist’s playing was so concentrated and communicative throughout: he saw the piece whole.
This performance impressed by virtue of its integration and consistency, and Lu’s sterling pianism. Still, it is clear that a lot of the integration was achieved by scaling down the work’s more delicate moments of charm, caprice and poetry – a key part of the composer’s conception of the work as a ‘fantasy’. So that was the downside. The other story is about Eric Lu’s virtuoso command and power, which was quite stunning and essential to making this interpretation work. Yet the pianism witnessed here was quite different in character from the coaxing, soft-spoken lyricism of, say, his Schubert. His encore, Chopin’s popular 15th Prelude, was beautifully-etched and had a lovely concentration of feeling, and seemed to lie stylistically about half way between the two, revealing Lu as a pianist of truly enviable range and penetration.
Earl Lee’s reading of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ had some of the same energy and firmness of line as the concerto, and the conductor made a particular effort to secure needed character from the woodwinds. The opening movement set off at a very quick pace, giving the movement the true feeling of an innocent, open air countryside frolic. This was pleasing enough, but the result was perhaps a little too breezy. It tended to gloss over the sense of new discovery in the journey, the slight hesitations/doubts en route, while the speed made the many gradual crescendi in the movement difficult to bring off convincingly. The ‘Scene by the Brook’ was also fairly quick, but secured a firm pulse throughout. It mined woodwind character particularly well, and that is critical in this movement. I enjoyed this, and the only concern was that, as the movement progressed, the poignancy of the initial expression tended to turn into to a less interesting ‘serenade’ of sorts – again perhaps slightly too glossy.
The ‘Peasant’s Merrymaking’ was given the most cinematic treatment I have heard– the peasants really foot-stomping their way to unbridled delight, with the horns whooping their way to delirium. Perhaps a little over-the-top, but let young conductors have some fun! The principal danger in inflating these early passages is that it can make the subsequent thunderstorm anti-climactic, but here the intensity was kept up pretty well through the storm too. The conductor obviously loves the finale, but perhaps a little too much, since the opening violin theme was too effusive and did not avoid sentimentality, and the movement was not free of rough-and-ready moments from trying to make it too big. But a good experience overall. I admired the young conductor’s spirit and conviction throughout: more depth and reserve will come later.
It was delightful to see these two young artists come together for this concert, and they have worked together before. I also find the development in Eric Lu’s vision and talent astonishing since I first saw him in 2017. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Zosha di Castri’s very short work Pentimento (2022) that started the concert off. It had a myriad of strong and decisive percussion and brass effects combining to create interesting rhythmic, almost dance-like, postures, but I ultimately felt the piece remained underdeveloped.
© Geoffrey Newman 2024