Pianist Ning An is a masterful virtuoso who is undaunted by technical challenges. However, his recital last night at the McAfee Center in Saratoga under the auspices of Steinway Society the Bay Area, revealed a surprising disregard for matters of style and refinement as he rushed his way through some of the masterpieces (and one non-masterpiece) of the piano repertoire. There were a few lovely moments in quieter sections of the pieces he played, but all too often, as soon as the tempo picked up, he was off to the races again to show us how fast and loud he can play. Invariably the music itself suffered.
His recital opened with Beethoven’s Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 31, No. 3. An’s best playing in this Sonata was in the third movement Menuetto (marked Moderato e grazioso), in which he showed a lovely restraint, a beautiful cantabile and elegant shaping of phrases. The final movement (marked Presto con fuoco, but actually played Prestissimo con fuoco), despite its reckless tempo, almost succeeded in convincing us it was the way Beethoven intended it to be played, but not quite. The first two movements of the sonata were puzzling. Both movements were played way too fast to achieve the elegance intended by Beethoven, and An’s spiky little accents, crescendos and diminuendos that did not derive organically from the music itself gave a mannered feel overall.
The Rachmaninoff Corelli Variations that followed were a different matter. In this work An managed some of his best playing of the evening with formidable accuracy and powerful climaxes. The slower variations were beautifully sculpted with a magical refinement. However, a few of the more violent and percussive variations were so over the top they sounded like a Balakirev arrangement.
After intermission An stepped out on stage to speak to the audience and let us know that the program had a few changes. Instead of opening with the three Mazurkas, he began with two Nocturnes from Op. 9. The first of these in B-flat minor revealed some lovely quiet playing in the middle, but the outer sections were mannered, fussy and overplayed. The second Nocturne, the famous E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2, again resorted to pretty much the same degree of mannerism and exaggeration.
Next we heard the “non-masterpiece” of the evening: Chopin’s rarely played Rondo in E-flat major, Op. 16. If you have never heard this piece before, thank your lucky stars and pray that you will never hear it again. To think that this shallow, superficial showpiece was preceded in composition by the two magnificent Nocturnes of Op. 15 and followed by the four fine Mazurkas of Op. 17, it is difficult to understand why Chopin would even have permitted it to be published – most probably he just needed money. We were hoping that An would find in this piece some beauty or charm, hitherto unrevealed, to share with us. He did not. It was a different story with the group of three Chopin Mazurkas from Op. 30, for in these An managed to find some charm and communicate it with us, especially the last of the group.
As promised on the printed program, the recital was to end with the Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, and so it did. Once again there were some truly lovely playing in the more restrained sections, plus lots of heroic playing in the faster sections, most of it a little too fast and a little too loud. Where he really lost us was in the climax of the development section and in the final coda, where he zoomed off “prestissimo furioso” like someone on Meth and almost went off the rails while speeding along so fast we were losing all the important details in a blur of over-pedaled passages.
He gave us two encores: the Chopin Waltz in E minor, Op. Posth in which the coda was an out-of-control smear of over-pedaled and blurred passages, and the so-called “Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. Posth. Although his performance of this beautiful last encore was truly elegant and refined, it is interesting that Mr. An, a doctoral candidate at a distinguished institution, learned this piece from a corrupt text that contained a d-sharp instead of an f-sharp in the left hand first beat of measure 8 (the dominant C-sharp 7th harmony in measure 7 demands a resolution to f-sharp minor in measure 8), a well documented error corrected in all subsequent Urtext editions.
The bottom line here is that when pianists sit down to play a recital, their playing immediately tells you whether their attitude is, “I am a virtuoso and will amaze you with my fabulous technique,” or “I love these pieces and want to share them with you.” Right now, Ning An is the former. We hope he will grow into the latter, because he is a super gifted musician. We can only hope that his glib and dazzling pianistic facility will not interfere with his musical growth.
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