KEY POINTS:
The 2008 Auckland International Piano Festival was a new, streamlined affair, with five recitals spread out over 10 evenings, complemented by the usual daytime masterclasses.
The event was to have been launched by the celebrated Yingdi Sun but, when the Chinese pianist cancelled, Denny Liu substituted at less
than 24 hours' notice.
A valiant gesture from an immensely talented musician, but the 17-year-old has much to learn in the arts of pacing and presentation.
Each half of Liu's programme was presented without a break and, although there were moments of illumination in both Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy and Chopin's B flat minor Sonata, emotional depth came a firm second to facile virtuosity.
One hoped for an encore that was Andante or slower and piano or softer. Grunfeld's Soiree de Vienne was neither and roughly delivered.
Tamas Vesmas closed the event with three elegantly tailored Haydn Sonatas together with Brahms and Chopin which coaxed warm resonance from his instrument, even if memory lapses took their inevitable toll. There were few empty seats for Vesmas, the festival's far-sighted director and a musician held in fond regard by the community. Rueibin Chen drew a full house with an audience so enthusiastic that applause broke out after his smash-and-grab first movement of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata.
The most alarming feature of Chen's playing was a rubato so extravagant that the very structure of his Liszt and Chopin pieces seemed to melt before one's ears.
Not so with John Chen, two nights previously, whose Chopin Nocturne got the balance spot-on. Earlier, however, Chen's immaculately played Mozart Sonata could have had more nuance and Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin worked best in the spiky Rigaudon and Toccata with its cooler-than-cool Fugue. Chen played Dutilleux with the expected authority and masterfully held together Brahms' Handel Variations, only losing a little impetus in the final Fugue.
Had there been a prize for sheer entertainment, then Marcella Crudeli would have walked off with it. Here was a woman giving us the music of her Italian countrymen, while NZ composers were shamefully absent from anyone's programmes.
Crudeli travelled down her own Via Musica from Galuppi to a handful of moderns. Cimarosa Sonatas fluttered gracefully while a powerhouse Ghedini Toccata threatened the well-being of the piano strings. Crudeli played by heart and, more importantly, from the heart, providing a model for future festivals to heed.