Current Reviews

        by Jonathan Rogers

Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No. 1-3

Martha Argerich, piano
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor



Samuel Barber
Orchestral Works and Concertos
Leonard Slatkin, Charles Munch



Rimsky-Korsakov
Evgeny Svetlanov


Beethoven
Symphony No.9
Piano Transcription by Franz Liszt
Konstantin Scherbakov, Piano



Kronos Caravan

OK so let me be disingenuous. This CD is of an 11-year old pianist and I think the adults responsible for bringing young Albert Wong into the recording studio should have known better. Sure he’s a remarkably talented pianist – a child prodigy indeed – but this pianism should be kept out of the professional arena until he’s mature enough to understand what being a successful adult concert pianist is all about. There’s apparently no stopping him, however, or the people encouraging him. This Clementi disk is the follow-up to his debut CD – Book 2 of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, recorded when he was 10. He’s played at Carnegie Hall, during Earl Wild’s 85th birthday concert, and regularly appears on TV shows and in concerts in the US, particularly in his home state of Texas.

I’m being mean, right? I want to deny young Albert the fruits of what he describes in the sleeve notes as “among the happiest moments in my life…my chance to play for the whole world.” How could I? Well I’m not going to suggest it’s a done deal that he’ll go the way of past winners of Pop Idol competitions in the US and Europe – one minute bowing before adoring crowds, the next descending into a bitter depression of anonymity – but I am going to point to the tendency child prodigies have to crash and burn as adults after colliding full-face with the commercial arena as children.

Admittedly Wong has more talent than all the contenders ever to have appeared on Pop Idol combined. But then so did the young Greek pianist Dimitris Sgouros who recorded a firebrand Rach 3 at the age of 14 in 1984. At that age he had 35 concerti in his repertoire and is said to have read Brahms Second concerto through once and performed it perfectly. Sadly after all the fuss and the packed concert halls the mature Sgouros had no international career. It wasn’t as if he had a nervous breakdown or had come to loathe playing: it’s just that when he grew up his playing – or Sgouros himself - didn’t seem that special to people any more. The agents who rushed to the sure-fire cash machine of the child prodigy slammed the door in the adult pianist’s face. And Sgouros can still play exceedingly well – it’s just that he lacks that little bit extra needed to make it on the international circuit. The Rachmaninov recording is now a somewhat poignant piece of nostalgia, not much more: a competent reading that was always inherently pedestrian underneath the novelty.

Albert Wong says:”I don’t want to be just another concert pianist, I want to be in the top one per cent of great concert pianists.” But if the experiences of this top one per cent are anything to go by, he should stop concertizing and recording right now. Many of these greats were not “child prodigies”. Horowitz wasn’t, and in particular Richter springs to mind, given that he was well into his forties before his international career took off. Arrau had a gilded career as a prodigy, but ended up in psychoanalysis following a breakdown just after entering the category of “adult” pianist, when audiences started to react to his recitals with indifference. And in the Glenn Gould household the phrase “child prodigy” was spoken as a dark curse when the great Canadian pianist was growing up. His talent was nurtured by his parents quietly.

But back to the Clementi: is it any good? Well, yes, sort of, but there’s far too much of it. I just don’t think Clementi warrants a CD devoted to five of his piano sonatas, least not when the recording is being used as a vehicle to showcase the talents of a supposedly stellar new talent. He’s a composer “ripe for reappraisal,” but then he always has been, right back when his sonatinas regularly appeared on the grade five Associated Board syllabus to universal yawns, mine included, more years ago than I care to remember.

On the other hand, his life would make a fantastic movie, and I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t already optioned the story. Clementi was bought at the age of fourteen from his own father by young English aristocrat Peter Beckford in Rome, and shipped to a rural estate in Dorset, England, largely to play the harpsichord for the amusement of Beckford’s well-heeled friends. After this seven-year “apprenticeship” ended, Clementi headed to London, made his name as a performer – competing regularly with Haydn for the public’s affections – and composer, and set up a thriving sheet music and piano-making business. But by the time he’d reached his late middle-age, his music had already become unfashionable, as Beethoven and Romanticism became all the rage. He retired to a farm, died aged eighty and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Clementi’s late piano sonatas are supposed to bear similarities to the early Beethoven piano sonatas, to the extent that the first movement of the D major Opus 40 number 2, featured on this disk, is often regarded as pure plagiarism, published as it was one year after Beethoven’s Opus 28 also in D major and sharing its first movement theme almost identically.

Wong relishes the ponderous Beethovian minor key drama of this movement and similarly of the first movement of the B minor Opus 40 number 3 that follows it, although there is something hollow about the playing. And hopefully for the right reason: I wouldn’t want any eleven year old to be able to fully convey the emotions associated with the minor key. The allegros of the earlier, more tightly structured sonatas, work better, although Wong’s articulation is often surprisingly uneven and the incomplete tone reflects his physical immaturity. I felt throughout that somehow he was impersonating how he believes a great pianist plays rather than reacting directly to the music as himself. He seems never to let himself go and the phrasing feels over-cautious.

I wonder whether it’s Clementi’s fault that I’m underwhelmed by this CD or whether I mentally prepared myself for too much from Wong. The latter, I suspect. There’s accuracy, but not an abundance of prodigious musicality in his playing, to the extent that one listens and is inclined just to say: “Very good indeed.” On the other hand the programming choice was less than inspired; I’m pretty sure Wong’s repertoire is wide enough to have allowed some more variety onto the disk – Scarlatti perhaps, or Handel or even Haydn.

There are probably hundreds of eleven-year old children able to play these sonatas as well as Albert Wong, dotted around the world in specialist schools and conservatoires. It’s just that we’re not able to buy their CDs. I’m pleased about this. I have nothing against children performing in public or even recording their work. It’s just that I don’t want to pay a businessman to hear these performances. Nor do I want to see a child promoted on the same terms as an adult performer, however talented that child is. The risk to the future mental health of the adult is too great, not to say the risk to his or her talent. All I can hope is that this recording is more than just a novelty, but I suspect that’s all it is.
 

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