Another Uneven Shenson Spotlight Piano Recital

Pianist Tony Siqi Yun (from his event page on the San Francisco Symphony Web site)

The third recitalist for this year’s Shenson Spotlight Series presented by the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall was another pianist, Tony Siqi Yun. As was the case last month, the results were uneven; but, as least as far as I am concerned, there was at least one bright spot. It has been almost two years since I have had an opportunity to listen to the music of Ferruccio Busoni in performance; and, as fate would have it, that last occasion took place in Davies. That was when pianist Igor Levit, Artist-in-Residence for the 2022–23 SFS season, played Busoni’s Opus 39 piano concerto. (This was the first time SFS presented the work.) The high point of last night’s recital came with the performance of “Berceuse” (lullaby), the last of Busoni’s set of seven solo piano pieces collected under the title Elegies.

Every Busoni composition involves a delicate balance between introverted expressiveness and extroverted technical fireworks. That balance made Levit’s account of Opus 39 “click;” and things “clicked” again in Yun’s performance of “Berceuse.” To a great extent, that same balance could be found in the opening selection of the program. Johannes Brahms Opus 18b is a set of variations on a theme transcribed for solo piano from its original version as a movement in the Opus 18 (first) string sextet in B-flat major. (As some readers might guess, that transcription was dedicated to Clara Schumann.) This was my first encounter with this arrangement, and I wish more pianists would give it the attention it deserves.

On the other hand, I fear that I am beginning to tire of up-and-coming pianists deciding to lay their emotional expressiveness bare with yet another performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 57 (“Appassionata”) sonata in F minor. All that Yun seemed to convey in his performance was that he could be both heavy-handed and frantic at the same time. This may have done justice to any of those “scowling Beethoven” portraits, but it was far from a satisfying account of the music itself. Things were a bit better over the course of the full journey through Robert Schumann’s Opus 13, given the title “Symphonic Études.” The good news was that the overplayed outbursts were fewer in number, but the overall listening experience felt like a slog long before the music’s halfway mark.

Fortunately, Yun chose an encore that would quiet things down after his Sturm und Drang approach to Schumann. He turned to Johannes Brahms’ Opus 118 collection of six solo piano pieces, composed in 1893. He chose the second of these, an intermezzo in the key of A major. This is the one of the six that tends to receive the most attention. (I had to analyze it in one of my undergraduate classes.) As had been the case with his Busoni selection, Yun found just the right expressive approach to this music, allowing me to depart from an evening of mixed results with an optimistic disposition.