Last night marked not only the San Francisco debut of pianist Bruce Liu for the final program in this year’s Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF) season but also the conclusion of founder Daniel Levenstein’s tenure as CMSF Director. As a result, the music had to give way for part of the evening to give this terminal occasion its proper due. Sadly, the recognition of Levenstein’s impact on classical music scene in San Francisco (at later both Palo Alto and Walnut Creek) registered a far greater impact than Liu’s contribution to the evening.
That contribution cast a wide net. At one extreme there was a selection of six pieces from the Suite in D major from Jean-Philipe Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin collection, while the most recent work was Nikolai Kapustin’s Opus 41 set of variations. Between these extremes was what amounted to a “walk” through the centuries: the eighteenth (Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken XVI/32 sonata, which happens to be the only one of his keyboard sonatas in B minor), nineteenth (Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 35 sonata, the second in B-flat minor with its funeral march movement), and twentieth (Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 83 sonata in B-flat major, the seventh). The encores were framed by Johann Sebastian Bach with a prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier and a gavotte from one of the keyboard suites, with Chopin’s “Minute” waltz (Opus 64, Number 1 in D-flat major) in the middle.
Liu brought precision to all of these offerings. However, his approaches to expressiveness came across as somewhat arbitrary. There were many occasions in which his approach to rapid tempo was so mechanical that there was little sense of phrasing. He also tended to show a preference for strong dynamics, which allowed few opportunities for subtlety. Mind you, it is clear that everything that Liu played was based on a solid foundation of meticulously mastered technique; but technique alone does not engage the attentive listener.
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