This is a very impressive CD of 20th/21st
century piano music. Before talking about music, let’s just
get one thing out of the way - the title of the CD. The meaning of
the French word fulgurances may not be immediately obvious
to English speakers as its English cognates are hardly well known
except perhaps to medical practitioners. Translations include ‘lightning’,
or ‘something that strikes with lightning speed’. Either
of these is spot-on for the character of the music, especially the
Études of Unsuk Chin.
As far as I can tell, this is only the second time the Études
have been recorded, their première being on a very interesting
Obradek
CD of 2011 also containing Gubaidulina’s Musical Toys
and Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata, where the performer was
the Malaysian pianist Mei Yi Foo, now resident in London. On the present
CD, the Korean pianist Yejin Gil receives a strong endorsement from
the composer, her compatriot, whose diverse influences include Indonesian
gamelan, Korean street theatre and her teacher, György Ligeti.
Chin says: “First and foremost, my études are meant to
be music, and my purpose was not the purpose of a pedagogue. However,
at the same time in my études there are obviously things pianists
can learn from them, such as training independency of fingers and
mind through the challenges of polyrhythm and intricate polyphony,
for instance.”
While clearly phenomenally difficult, the Études come across
as very substantial music, engaging the ear and the mind equally and
repaying many listenings. Many influences, among them Debussy, Ligeti,
Bartók, Nancarrow and the gamelan can be detected but the music
emerges with outstanding individual character. These studies are some
of the finest of their genre since Ligeti’s. As Mei Yi Foo did
before her, Yejin Gil has mastered the complexities and plays with
sparkling clarity in spite of the immense technical challenges.
I don’t know whether Pierre Boulez allows his music to be fun
but that is exactly how I find his Incises (revised version
of 2001). It’s an entertaining work in which Yejin Gil makes
the most of the playful use of rapid scales and repeated notes and
the dark interpolations in the bass. Even with its advanced harmonies,
it’s an easy piece to get used to.
The four studies in Ligeti’s third book seem rather pared-down
compared with their predecessors, and none the worse for that. Except
for the first, ‘White on White’ which appeared early enough
to be included on Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s benchmark recording
of the first two books, they have been very little recorded (by Aimard
on his ‘African Rhythms’ (Sony) and Jenny Lin on her nominatively
deterministic CD ‘The Eleventh Finger’ (Koch)). ‘A
Bout de Souffle’, with its references to Jean-Luc Godard’s
film, is especially fascinating and they are all well played by Yejin
Gil.
The strength and clarity of Yejin Gil’s playing are again in
evidence in Messiaen’s Quatre Études de rythme,
whether dealing with the complicated permutations of pitches, durations,
attacks and dynamics, or the percussive patterns which make these
pieces less theoretical and more actually pianistic. It is there again
for the percussive quality and ecstatic repetitions of Messiaen’s
sixth of hisVingt Regards Sur L’Enfant Jésus.
This is an outstanding recital of high-points of the late modern and
contemporary piano repertoires. There is also the additional hope
that it will bring more listeners to the music of Unsuk Chin.
Roger Blackburn
Track listing
Unsuk CHIN (b.1961)
Six Études pour piano (1995):
No. I In C [3:19]
No. II Sequenzen [3:06]
No. III Scherzo ad libitum [3:22]
No. IV Scalen [2:45]
No. V Toccata [2:47]
No. VI Grains [3:40]
Pierre BOULEZ (b. 1925)
Incises (2001) [11:01]
György LIGETI (1923-2006)
Études pour piano - troisième livre (1995-2001):
No. 15 White on White [4:31]
No. 16 Pour Irina [4:26]
No. 17 A bout de souffle [2:22]
No. 18 Canon [1:39]
Olivier MESSIAEN (1908-1992)
Quatre Études de rythme (1950):
Île de feu I [2:09]
Mode de valeurs et d’intensités [3:06]
Neumes rythmiques [6:29]
Île de feu II [4:47]
Vingt Regards Sur L’Enfant Jésus (1944):
No. 6 Par Lui tout a été fait [11 :40]
