Saturday evening, at the culmination of the OSM Classical Spree, Bruce Liu will give his first concert with an orchestra in Quebec since his victory last October at the Chopin Competition. Wherever he performs, Bruce Liu is celebrated as a pianistic appearance much more than a competition winner. And this is the case with the winners of the last major international competitions as almost never in history, with Alexandre Kantorow at the Tchaikovsky, Jonathan Fournel at the Queen Elisabeth and, in June, Yunchan Lim at the Cliburn. Portraits of these artists through four great witnesses.
“Is this the greatest 3e Concertoof Rachmaninoff of all time? The question that quickly emerged on the Internet is obviously stupid, since no one can claim to have heard all the executions, but its emphatic formulation is commensurate with the shock produced by Yunchan Lim, an 18-year-old Korean in the final. of the Van Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth last June.
” I have never seen that “
General and artistic director of the Competition since 2013, Quebecer Jacques Marquis is still in shock: “I haven’t come back from this “Rach3” yet. Then it went into a spin. You have seen the figures, we have exceeded six million views on YouTube. Two days after the final, Carnegie Hall called, New York Phil called, Wigmore Hall called… I’ve never seen that. »
For the organization of Cliburn, which manages the post-competition, an unprecedented work of supervision is taking shape. “We make sure not to give him too many concerts so that he has time to practice and evolve. Besides, he’s still at school in Seoul! »
Ironically, if the competition had taken place in 2021, as originally planned, Yunchan Lim could not have qualified; he would have been too young to participate! Jacques Marquis is impressed by his laureate well beyond virtuosity. “He doesn’t ‘overuse’ this huge technique; he does not push the fortissimos and always listens to his sonority. The structure for an 18 year old is incredible, his phrasing and sound balance too. His first concern is the quality of his sound. »
Jacques Marquis recently saw his laureate again in concert in Aspen. “He offered the Ballads of Brahms, then moved on to variations from Mendelssohn, but in between, he didn’t want any applause. So he just raised his hands, and the audience stayed with him to walk into Mendelssohn. This maturity is incredible; he’s like a 55-year-old man in an 18-year-old body with 18-year-old means. »
In Aspen, Jacques Marquis failed to get Yunchan Lim out of musical discussions. “When he plays After a reading of Dante of Liszt, he read of Dante; when we talk about the Russian repertoire, he read Dostoyevsky. And he’s 18! Basically, “he’s super coherent, he’s a music lover who doesn’t do anything else”.
Liszt and Brahms
The “old soul of a musician in a young body” is also the description of Alexandre Kantorow by Renaud Loranger, artistic director of the Festival de Lanaudière, who has just welcomed the winner of the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition for his first concert in Canada. . Of these four young musketeers of the piano, Alexandre Kantorow is the most established, since his victory, very followed thanks to medici.tv, took place before the COVID.
Several qualities overlap those of Lim: “He is of absolute technical sovereignty, but light years away from gratuitous virtuosity. Beyond instrumental sovereignty, it adds expressiveness and defends repertoires that are not necessarily the most spectacular”. “His program at the Festival de Lanaudière with the 1D Sonata by Schumann, Scriabin and Liszt represented it well,” says Renaud Loranger.
This is timely, because Liszt’s music is a bit abandoned these days. “Yes, there is a niche. Kantorow has a very Lisztian aura”, the artistic director of Lanaudière tells us “without falling into somewhat empty marketing lines”. He thinks Kantorow, who “looks a bit bewildered, but is very serious,” will be smart enough to avoid being pigeonholed. “I think he sees himself as much in Schubert as in Liszt”, says the man who dreams of entrusting him with the two Concertos of Liszt at the same concert.
the 2e Concerto of Brahms does not have the same impact in competition as the 3eby Rachmaninoff. But Jonathan Fournel’s final in Brussels nonetheless dazzled the jury, observers, critics and professional pianists. The young Frenchman has since confirmed in the 3e Sonata by Brahms, a record released by Alpha.
“I saw him at La Roque d’Anthéron in recital, then in chamber music, Fournel knows how to adapt the power of his sound and his timbre each time; he is very impressive”, says Alain Lompech, former head of the “Arts and Entertainment” section of the daily The worldreview for the monthly Classica. “He’s a very great technician, who makes the piano ring with fullness and projection without any harshness, with a lush sound. It is very impressive. “According to Alain Lompech, Fournel owes, in addition to all his professors at the Conservatory, this quality to “a person who has followed him since he was eight years old: Gisèle Magnan”. This pianist is also the founder of an association, Les Concerts de poche, which radiates throughout France and organizes concerts with renowned artists in “cultural deserts”. “Fournel learned this extremely accomplished technique from her”, judge Alain Lompech who certainly thinks that “Germanic music will be at the heart of his repertoire”: “He is not someone I see on a repertoire Saint-Saëns/Liszt, but rather Beethoven/Brahms. Kantorow’s antithesis, then? “Yes, except that Kantorow also plays Brahms admirably well! »
Alain Lompech suggests that we also keep our ears open to Mao Fujita, 2e Prize of the Tchaikovsky Competition: “Many pianists admire him, Sony Classical has hired him and will publish a complete Sonatas of Mozart. In any case, his balance sheet matches ours: “We are living in an era equivalent to the 1900-1910 generation, with Arrau, Horowitz, Serkin, Perlemuter, Cherkassky, and the 1940s (Argerich, Pollini, Freire, Uchida). »
Synthesis
How does Bruce Liu stand out? We asked this to his teacher Dang Thai Son, the one who allowed him to “leave adolescence” and “find the best” in himself, as the pianist confided to us after his competition. “Kantorow and Fournel are products of Western culture and education. Yunchan Lim is from the Korean school. Bruce is the fusion of two cultures”, summarizes Dang Thai Son. “Bruce was born in Paris. Life gave him a Western education, and his family, an Eastern education. He took the best of both sides. The West encourages individualism, personality; Asian culture gives him flexibility, suppleness, but without ego, without narcissism. He has the joy of making music, but not with a “look at me” side. It’s a very successful marriage. »
To this substrate are grafted “an exceptional talent, an extraordinary intelligence and a maturity that comes from his personal history”. “He emigrated to Canada with his father, who gave everything for him,” Dang Thai Son tells us. Early maturity led Bruce Liu to take initiatives at a very young age.
The teacher’s lessons were special. “We talked about life, about things and others, like friends. Time did not exist; it could last two or three hours. Dang Thai Son sees himself, musically, as a “bodyguard”: “I signal when we go beyond the limits”. And since Bruce “adores the masters of the past”, they spent hours listening to music.
This culture made it possible to refine the style. “Chopin, you can play him like Horowitz or like Cortot, with all the range of rubato, of elegance. For the Chopin Competition, the pair added “freedom” to Bruce’s playing. “We don’t take too much pedal. In contemporary aesthetics, articulate beaded playing is often lost, replaced by overpowering piano or pedal abuse. There, we had purity through touch and sound. »
Since the Chopin Competition, Dang Thai Son has imposed a watchword on his disciple: be there when needed, but let him fly with his own wings.