George Li: Spectacle Without Substance

Last night’s Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF) program in Herbst Theatre was supposed to be a solo piano recital by Ukrainian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk. Unfortunately, COVID-19 prevented his coming to San Francisco to perform. He was replaced by another pianist, George Li, giving his first CMSF recital.

However, Li is no stranger to San Francisco. In September of 2017 he was the featured soloist in the annual All San Francisco Concert presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), after which he performed a solo recital for the general audience of the SFS Great Performers Series. In addition to covering that concert, I have written about two of Li’s albums on Warner Classics, his debut album Live at the Mariinsky, released in October of 2017, and his first concerto album, a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 23 (first) in B-flat minor with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, released about two years later.

Sadly, both the recital and the recordings seemed to be about little more than jumping through technical hoops. Mind you, that involved dealing with a prodigious number of demands; and Li’s focused execution left the impression that rising to all of those demands was a walk in the park. However, the idea that performance should rest on a foundation of rhetorical expressiveness never seemed to signify. If the notes were all there and they were all showered on the audience in their proper ordering, why should that audience ask for anything more?

To be fair, last night’s audience seemed perfectly happy with there being little more than an onslaught of technical skills. Those skills were certainly required for the music he had prepared. The first half of the program was focused on Robert Schumann’s Opus 17 fantasy in C major, with the Opus 18 arabesque serving to “warm up” the audience. In the second half Schumann’s fantasy was complemented by the epic proportions of Franz Liszt’s single-movement piano sonata. This was introduced, so to speak, by a selection from Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 28 set of preludes (which may have differed by the ones listed in the program). The Liszt sonata was followed by more Liszt for the first encore, “La campanella,” the third of Liszt’s arrangements entitled Grandes études de Paganini. The second encore then turned to the one instance of serenity in the evening, Giovanni Sgambati’s transcription of the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice.

I suppose my reaction aligns with that familiar old saw:

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

Personally, I prefer performers that appreciate the need for rhetorical expressiveness beyond just jumping through technical hoops. Some five years on, my feelings about Li do not seem to have changed very much.