A month after his victory at the Chopin Competition, performances by Montreal pianist Bruce (Xiaoyu) edited by Deutsche Gramophon have been available for listening on demand and for download since Friday. Promised for the same date, the “Chopin Recital” in physical CD will wait another week in Europe and until January 22 in Canada. Does the editor’s choice reflect the personality of the pianist? Yes, and beautifully.
The first suspense was whether the Variations opus 2 on “Là ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni by Mozart were going to feature well on the record from the Warsaw proofs. The pianist trained in Montreal by Richard Raymond and Dang Thai Son had concluded his semi-final on this rather neglected work of Chopin, making, with good reason, capsize the audience with an interpretation of anthology. DG did not miss the opportunity to complete his own record in this way.
Should he cover the concerto from the finale or exhibit Bruce Liu only solo? The second option has prevailed with good reason. It was still a question of choosing the good works and arranging them with taste. There are obviously producers of confidence and profession, because Bruce could not have hoped for a record illustrating his talent and his support with more accuracy.
Andante spianato and grande Polonaise brillante, Mazurkas op. 33 nbone 1 to 4, Studies op. 10 n ° 4 and op. 25 n ° 4, Nocturne op. 27 n ° 1, Valse op. 42 and Scherzo n ° 4 perfectly represent the qualities of the pianist and, above all, the extent of his talent.
Unanimity
The duty consulted the scores of the Warsaw jury. They reveal that Bruce Liu’s success is of rare magnitude. In each of the three qualifying rounds, he obtained the best cumulative score. What is more, he was the only pianist to obtain the unanimity of the 16 members of the jury, during the second and third rounds, on the question of accession to the next event. Bruce Liu therefore dominated this edition of the Chopin Competition head and shoulders from start to finish.
The record helps us to form an idea based on its position in relation to the pianists we know or have known. The intrinsic talent of the Montrealer is dazzling. So the 4e Scherzo does not turn pale in the face of two recent recordings of very high flight: Beatrice Rana (Warner) and Seong-Jin Cho (DG). However, here we compare a public recording without a net, with the stress of a competition, to studio recordings refined to the measure!
The key to musician Bruce Liu can be found in our interview published on October 30: “It’s not that I’m happy all the time, but I’m a pretty upbeat guy who gets content easily. So, in my approach to Chopin, we end up forgetting the sadness, we dance and we party: it comes with my naturalness. “The joy of playing, the” game in the game “, is therefore an essential spring that hits the mark in theOpus 2, but through which it is also necessary to gauge the Great shiny polish, the’Study op. 10 n ° 4 and the Waltz op. 42. the Nocturne op. 27 n ° 1, finally, shows with finesse and tact the pure air that Bruce Liu will bring in terms of musical naturalness in the face of the ambient musical circumlocution.
Musical cruelties
Here we are infinitely lucky, because the characters of Charles Richard-Hamelin (2e Awards in 2015) and Bruce Liu are complementary: the first more introspective, the second extroverted. But are the paths of Bruce Liu’s career sunny?
We wish the best to the pianist whose 1er Concerto de Chopin played in the final will soon reach two million views on YouTube. But the most immense success fell on him when he was not ready in terms of communication and career management. In pain of entourage, he could perceive, alas, the cruelty and the meanness, sometimes irrational, sometimes very interested, of the musical world.
Reading the social networks, the small Parisian piano coterie already seems to be waiting for him at the turn with his arrogance. The biography showing that he was born in Paris, the fact of having trained in Montreal risks to earn him the onslaught of blinkered snobbery. Small local interests like this are sure to emerge here and there. London will observe with which agent he will sign, DG will wonder if it is necessary to manage two Canadian pianists stamped “Chopin” (Jan Lisiecki, Bruce Liu) and many Russians are certainly dreaming of a glorious competition. Tchaikovsky triumphantly won by Eva Gevorgyan, unsuccessful candidate in Warsaw.
More than ever, Bruce Liu will need his primary qualities: modesty and optimism. He transmits them here in a disc, one of the great publications of 2021, marked by hope and rebirth. With that in mind, it’s sort of a “post-COVID” debut CD.