Ryan Zhu plays New York
BY DAVID KOWITZ
This year’s first prize winner of the Hastings International Piano Competition, Ryan Zhu, played at recital at a private home in New York for an audience of 40 or so, to promote the competition to an American audience. Fresh from his Wigmore Hall debut, Ryan was on sparkling form, and wowed the audience with a signature mix of virtuosity and thoughtful interpretation. He exudes, quietly, both supreme confidence and humility, as if to tell us that he knows he still has much to learn, but is entirely undaunted and excited for the challenge.
Ryan speaks intelligently and in accessible terms about each piece before playing. The first work was selections from Bach’s The Art of Fugue, which he described as perhaps Bach’s magnum opus. This he played very expressively and without rigidity. Schumann’s Kinderszenen followed, after an illuminating discussion of Schumann’s life, where he drew attention to the contrast between this work and Schumann’s other masterpiece of childhood reminiscence, Album for the Young. All the lyricism and tender melodies of the work were brought out beautifully, and the emotion in the room was palpable. Next came Scriabin’s Waltz in A Flat major, after Ryan counselled the audience to open their minds to all the layered richness of the harmonies. As a waltz, the work is a dance for the mind, and Ryan certainly had the audience dancing in their individual psychic worlds as the piece grew endlessly in intensity until the more mellifluous conclusion. The recital finished with Prokofiev’s 7th Sonata in B Flat major, written in 1942, not long after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. Ryan offered the interpretation that the work ends on a note of optimism, in defiant chord sequences which connote the resilience of humanity in the face of great struggle. In this piece his virtuosity came to the fore, in all three movements, from the unsettling cacophony of chords of the opening through to the more tender melodies of the first movement, to the beautiful and familiar melody of the Andante, played tenderly without excessive sentimentality, to the frenetic and demonic intensity of the third movement, the “Precipitato,” which Ryan interprets as the undying human determination to survive.
Afterward Ryan mingled with the guests and chatted amiably with the guests. The afternoon was a great reminder of what a special experience and privilege it is to experience music in an intimate setting.
