Wai Cheng at the Beijing Musical hall

The Beijing music hall looks like a dowdy modern bank.  In fact, there is
a bank in the ground floor.  The inside is well, if starkly appointed.

The next time you are in Beijing and have 60RMB to spend on a concert, a
recital is a better bet than most.  There are 8RMB to the dollar, I'll let
you do the math.

Dr. Wai Chang is a third tier career pianist, whose resume is filled
with references to Bergen and the Hermon Academy.  The quotes on the
back of the brochure look suspiciously like they came from her graduate
school transcript at Yale.  In person she belies this by having a graceful
carriage, and a very pretty face.  The blurbs and banality of the program
underlined the point that the artist is a person, and our particular way
of reducing artists, down to what other people happened to have said about
them, is a kind of distrust - one cannot talk about the artist, only the
confirmations by others.  Following the crowd is only a good selling tactic
if one is good at generating crowds.

When visiting a foreign land, impressions are a jumble, overlayed upon the
general outlook of the taveller.  The traveller happy to be where he is,
will take each problem in stride, where the unhappy traveller will find
each joy deadened, or not go in search of any joy at all.  This has a great
deal to do with how well the traveller's digestion handles the native
cuisine.

and then the traveller sits down to write, and the experience is no
longer the memory of the experience, but the memory of the experience as
remembered when the traveller began to write.  Suddenly one is no longer in
Beijing, nor remembering being in Beijing, but remember having remembered
Beijing while writing about it.

Quickly a whole city is reduced to moments.  The taste of "Peking Duck"
or a hot pot stands out for fragrent aroma.  Or particular annoyances
assume greater size - such as having to shave ones under arms and use
skin lotion because deodorant was not easily available.  Ones interactions
become reduced to the few which matter - such as haggling over a coin with
a vendor.

The same is true of a performance attended, while there it is a thing
alive, while remembered it is a forest through which the memory wanders.
On the page it is a map, flat and with artificial colours.  The slips of
hte fingers, the luminous moments stand out, but the connecting tissue,
which is what made it a thing alive, become harder to explain.  Be truthful
and one is likely to be accused of all sorts of sins against writing.  Be
quiet, modest and without fault in the eyes of the school marms of English,
and be limpid as a mine.

There are three layers of musicianship.  The first is mechanism -
part physical gift for long, fluid legato, coordinated for correct aim.
In short what etudes teach.  The second is technique, the ability to
shape mechanism into coherent musical statements.  The two should not be
confused.  Glenn Gould's technique was often spotty, he often could not
conceive of Mozart's pieces as the whole work, even though his mechanism
was always polished.  At the top of the pyramid stands artistry.  Artistry
is the ability to make coherent sets of choices.  There is nothing wrong
with Brendel's technique, nor Hamelin's, nor Polloni's - but each of these
men make artistic choices which produce very mixed results.  Artistry often
remains after mechanism decays from age, and even after the level of
hearing to hold proper technique in place has left.

The short summary on Dr. Cheng is simple - pure polished mechanism,
marred occasionally by lapses of technique, in service of rather average
artistry.  It is unfortunate, because she is immensely gifted in the first
department.  And, when attacking works suited to her temperment - mecurial
and yet graceful - she was capable of sure handling of artistic as well as
mechanical and technical difficulties.  Artistic choices also include the
choices of what we play.

The Mozart Sonata in D (576) was dominated by the purity of her legato,
the evenness of her pedalling to produce a sweet singing sound, and
the simplicity of her approach which led to an uncluttered, clear, and
genuinely beauty.  What showed most clearly was a tremendously relaxed
shoulder, elbow and wrist combination essential for a singing tone, deft
touch, quick execution.  And confidence.

The confidence was important - but more importantly, that it was not
uniform was to become important.  The next pieces were composed by a living
apparachtnik of music.  Of them nothing needs to be said except that they
were a stupid choice, leading to polite applause in the front of the house,
and grousing from almost all concerned during the interval.  The only
insight they offered were that they placed the pianist firmly in the Curtis
camp, Rorem et al, of music.

Which is unfortunate, because what followed was a murky reading of Ravel's
Valses nobles et sentimentales.  The charm of the 5th and the turns of the
last came outthe best.  The pianist hunched over and passage work became
mushy, rather than the firm al dente that greeted us from the Mozart.

There was an interval.

There was another outbreak of stupidity after the interval, though
not quite as stupid as the first, since the composer, an older chinese
professor, had some ideas, which, to her credit, the performer found.  But
there was relief when it ended.  Several people quizzically looked at me
for confirmation of their internal opinions.

The last work was the 24 Chopin Preludes.  These are not necessarily
required to be played all in a row - Chopin played them individually and
separately - as did Liszt; but as a piece is the almost universal practice.
Looking over the detailed notes, it becomes clear that Cheng grew in
confidence as the set progressed.  Of the12 going out - only three stood
out, the D, A and C# Minor - of the returning 12 all but three were at
least clear and expertly executed.

She was able to handle the slower chords of 20 with grace.  and achieved a
real cantabile in the Bb major that followed.  from there her performance
was almost spotless.  Again to revert to details, the decrescendoes of the
G Minor in the right hand stood out, as did the true delicacy of the F
Major.  But Wei was running out of notes, having taken most of the piece to
find the range, there was little left.  The bravura of her scales in the
last - D Minor - Prelude was the last detail, without a break, pure, smooth
and the product of a great deal of practice.  Importantly she realised the
need to produce a bell like tone on the middle note of the left hand
figures through the first bars of the work, and then switch to a more even
tone in the remainder.

What stood out over all was the sheer light speed of her scales and arps,
the deftness of her passage work - when she did not slouch over - and the
evenness of her tone - so long as she understood the progression clearly
enough.

The problems were more clearly at the level of artistic decision.  Cheng
is a fast pianist, and like any speed merchant, she asserts this over and
over again.  But to play a beauty too quickly requires special handling.
The best road to go is to give a longing to the motion, a realisation
that one is brushing past, like a loved one passed by on a train.  The
realisation, and its being torn from the listener - are essential.  To
do this requires a sharp etching of that moment where the beauty is truly
lost forever, when the moment is passed.  Over and over again, Chopin wrote
turns as characteristic to his style as Mozart's characteristic use of
6ths.  Over and over agian, Cheng did not bring them out, but flushed over
them, fingers rushing to get to the next bravura scale.  Too many noodles,
not enough meat.

This denied the listener the pleasure of realising he has just heard
something beautiful, but he did not quite understand how beautiful it was
when he heard it.  We often realise what was said a moment after we have
heard it, or what was played.  It is essential that the sound flower in
the memory, so that we can listen after hearing, and realise the loss
simultaneously.

- - -

A critic should always hope for a good performance to write an
unblemishedly postive review.  Unfortunately, performance does not meet
this hope.  Dr. Cheng is well trained in her fingers and arms, it is her
body and her mind which betray her, and primarily her heart.  She failed in
passges no more difficult than others that she hit with complete mastery,
she thoughtlessly pushed aside core notes, while elevated ornaments.  She
commits the cardinal sin of tensing to produce expression, of hunching over
the keyboard at the wrong moments, destroying the very characteristics of
her play which are the most ravishing and promising.

Perhaps maturity will help this, none of these problems are insurmountable,
but they do require a degree of self criticism and examination rare in
artists of this particular moment.  The encore was a bit of virtuosity
well played, which made one wish for more of another pianist's works on
the program - Liszt - to which Dr. Cheng's temperment is better suited
to than Ravel.

Stirling Newberry <[log in to unmask]>