Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Eric Lu in Leipzig (rebroadcast)

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Eric Lu in Leipzig (rebroadcast) · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  you This is Jed Distler, and welcome to The Piano
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  Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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  And I want to thank you for subscribing to this
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  podcast via my Substack page for The Piano Maven.
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  We've had a good number of paid subscribers coming
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  on board, and I really thank you from the bottom
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  of my heart. And I thank free subscribers as
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  well, although if you do take out a paid subscription,
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  You get all kinds of goodies such as our Piano
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  Maven Zoom Hangout meetings where we will be
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  listening to recordings and talking about all
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  kinds of piano issues, performances, concerts,
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  trends, competitions, you name it. Please consider
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  subscribing to the Piano Maven to keep this podcast
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  in production. And you can see a link to how
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  to subscribe in the episode description. Moving
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  on. Normally on this podcast, I discuss commercial
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  recordings. And some of you have written... asking
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  about live piano performances that turn up on
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  YouTube or else, performances that are uploaded
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  in news groups that are devoted to live broadcasts
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  for the most part. So I thought that this would
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  be a good idea to pursue every now and then,
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  even though one reason that I really do want
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  to focus on commercial releases is that so we
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  can support the record companies who are... putting
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  a lot of money into new releases and reissues.
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  And we put a lot of money into that as well as
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  consumers. Yet at the same time, when certain
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  recordings that we might want to hear happen
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  to be out of print or they are extremely difficult
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  to source, then that's where websites such as
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  archive .org come in very handy. I am a big fan
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  of archive .org. It contains one of the largest
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  depositories of recordings available for streaming
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  or to download for free. And I often go there
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  in search of unusual, obscure, or out -of -print
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  items to play on my weekly radio show, Between
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  the Keys. For instance, there are... boatloads
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  of out -of -print piano recordings that only
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  came out on LP that people have uploaded onto
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  archive .org. Now, the quality of the transfers
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  are very variable, so you have to be really aware.
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  Like, sometimes you'll get the scratchiest worn
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  -out copies of certain LPs uploaded. That also
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  goes for the gazillions of old 78s that people
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  upload to archive .org. But recently on this
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  site, I've been stumbling upon some live concerts
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  with pianists, which I guess have been sourced
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  from audience recordings or maybe from broadcasts.
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  Again, the sound quality is variable, so it's
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  really hard to know what the source material
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  is. But when it comes to this website, you just
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  have to be patient and you just keep on digging
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  and listening and figuring things out. There's
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  one concert that I recently hit upon while exploring
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  archive .org that I want to talk about on this
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  episode. It features the pianist Eric Liu. He
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  first came to my attention in 2015 when he won
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  fourth prize as one of the finalists in the Warsaw
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  Chopin competition. And three years later in
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  2018, The 20 -year -old pianist won first prize
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  in the 2018 International Leeds Competition,
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  and then he signed with Warner Classics. In fact,
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  I was hired to write the booklet notes for his
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  Warner Classics solo debut CD. which contained
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  the 24 Chopin Preludes, Op. 28, and I think,
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  yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely contained works
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  of Brahms and Schumann. I don't have that disc
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  right in front of me, but I do remember writing
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  the notes for it. I did write the notes for it,
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  but I didn't get the audio at the time when I
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  was writing the notes. Anyway, Eric Liu has gone
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  on to a very respectable and very busy career,
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  I can't say that I have been following his activities
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  with any consistency, but I've always enjoyed
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  his playing, and I admire the strong personality
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  that always comes through the playing. So, when
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  I was recently browsing through archive .org,
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  I found that someone had posted MP3 files containing
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  recital. that Eric Liu gave in Leipzig, Germany
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  on July 2nd, 2022. It sounds like a decent audience
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  recording to my ears, although maybe it could
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  have been broadcast, but you still get a sense
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  from listening to this of how Eric Liu projects
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  his big singing sonority in a concert venue.
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  The recital. starts with a beautifully played
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  and well -characterized interpretation of Schumann's
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  Waldzenen, Op. 82, The Forest Scenes. I love
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  this cycle. And Eric Liu really sets the right
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  atmosphere in these pieces, maybe not to such
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  magical effect as in the old Sviatoslav Richter
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  studio recording from the 50s, or, more recently,
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  that marvelous live... recording that was on
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  Sony Classics with Arkady Volodos. That's a fantastic
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  waltz in it. But Eric Liu gives a lovely performance
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  all the same. I really enjoyed it. And then he
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  plays the Brahms theme and variations in D minor
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  that the composer arranged from his original
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  string sextet scoring. This is great, great Brahms
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  playing from the bottom up, and you hear full
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  and shapely bass lines that support the soaring
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  right -hand melody lines that Eric Liu spins
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  out throughout. The performance sounds... full
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  -bodied instead of thick to my ears. And I also
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  think that Eric Liu makes the most assiduous
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  and seamless transitions. And this really imparts
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  an unassailable unity to the interpretation.
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  Very, very impressive. However, Eric Liu becomes
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  much more subjective over the course of Chopin's
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  Piano Sonata No. 2, the Funeral March Sonata.
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  In the first movement, he alternately stretches
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  out phrases, but he also indulges in sudden dynamic
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  surges and accelerations that normally you would
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  think would fragment the structure and kind of
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  render the movement all over the place. But somehow
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  this freewheeling approach seems more organic
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  in Eric Liu's hands, at least in this performance.
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  Maybe less so. in the scherzo, where I think
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  some of the retards and some of the emphatic
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  broadenings at phrase ends kind of belabor the
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  obvious. But the freedom with which Eric Liu
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  plays that trio section, you know, Forgive my
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  singing. What I was going to say was that the
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  freedom with... which he plays this trio section,
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  is justified by a really strong left hand. And
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  you will notice how the left hand cantabules
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  have such a richness about them. It's almost
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  as if a cello had taken over from the piano.
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  The funeral march movement, though, is definitely
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  on the slow side. I think it's too slow for my
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  taste. But it's a big and epic conception. And
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  if Eric Liu doesn't generate the same kind of
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  excruciating tension that I find absolutely gripping
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  when a pianist like Alexander Gagiev, for example,
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  plays this piece, I admire Eric Liu's resolutely
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  steady pacing. At least he holds your interest.
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  And then he effortlessly, perhaps even offhandedly,
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  sails through the finale's fast unison lines.
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  And then as an encore. He gives the slow movement
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  from Mozart's Sonata Cursual 330. It's a sonata
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  in C major. This slow movement is in F major.
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  This is beautifully modulated pianism. It's often
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  rounded off at phrase ends, and it's very pretty,
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  but I kind of miss the really multi -leveled
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  operatic. kind of sensibility that you hear from
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  other pianists. I'm thinking even with Vladimir
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  Horowitz and his Moscow performance. So on balance,
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  this recital with Eric Liu is most enjoyable.
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  I've posted the archive .org link to either stream
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  or download this concert. Although if you download
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  it, you're going to have to tag the files yourself,
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  which is a little bit of a pain in the butt.
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  Anyway, at least you can get the music. So do
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  check out Eric Liu Live in Leipzig on July 2nd,
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  2022, which you can find on archive .org. This
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  is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to The
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  Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings. Thanks for listening, and I look
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  forward to being with you for the next episode.
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  Thank you.