Brutality Still Dominates Jan Lisiecki’s Chopin

2019 photograph of pianist Jan Lisiecki (photography by Sideralis, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

Last night in Herbst Theatre San Francisco Performances (SFP) launched its 2021–2022 Piano Series with the return of Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki. Lisiecki made his San Francisco debut almost eight years ago under the auspices of the former SFP Young Master Series in December of 2013. Ironically, one of his major offerings at that recital was revisited in last night’s program, entitled Poems of the Night. That was Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 10 collection of twelve études. However, while in 2013 Chopin’s études served to complement the first four of the eight preludes that Olivier Messiaen composed in 1928, this time they were interleaved with eleven Chopin nocturnes selected from five of the six published collections, Opus 9, Opus 15, Opus 27, Opus 32, Opus 48, and Opus 62, as well as two of the posthumously published nocturnes in the keys of C minor and C-sharp minor, respectively.

In 2013, when I was writing for Examiner.com, I observed that Lisiecki’s approach to performance “tended to focus, almost entirely, on technical display, often hammered out with an intensity that bordered on brutality.” This was particularly evident in his account of the Opus 10 études. Sadly, almost eight years later, his rhetorical technique has not changed; it has, instead, spilled over into his approach to Chopin’s nocturnes. As a result the entire evening barreled from one selection to the next with a level of intensity dialed all the way up to eleven. Mind you, cultivating dexterity, particularly at a rapid tempo, may have been one of Chopin’s objectives in composing Opus 10; but it is hard to imagine that he had overlooked the need for expressive rhetoric in the execution of these twelve short pieces. Similarly, rhetoric is paramount across the full scope of his nocturnes, yet Lisiecki performed his selections as if all that mattered was making sure that even the lengthiest of embellishments would fit into his rhythmic infrastructure.

Ironically, about two and one-half years after his debut, Lisiecki returned to San Francisco, this time as soloist in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 482 piano concerto in E-flat major. This was his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, playing under the baton of James Conlon. On that occasion I suggested that “Lisiecki had learned that there was more to playing the piano than technical display;” but I also observed that Conlon may have had a hand in the pianist’s rhetorical shift. After last night I would say that Conlon definitely held the upper hand and that brutality still rules over Lisiecki the solo recitalist.