The final Steinway Society recital of its 2017-18 season took place at the California Theatre in San Jose on Monday, May 28, featuring Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, winner of the First Prize at the 2015 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw. Cho performed works by Schumann, Beethoven, Debussy, and Chopin, a program that became notable not so much for expressive fireworks, but for an artistic sense of restraint and demure poise that had us listening to every note intensely. Even the impassioned Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58 (1844) of Chopin displayed more poetry and compressed ardor than  bravura and flamboyant gestures. Perhaps only in his second encore, Chopin’s famed “Revolutionary” Etude, did Cho reveal his gifts for the outwardly demonstrative mode the large, blatantly jingoistic, audience had clamored for from the moment Cho stepped on stage. Read full story →

Last night at Hidden Valley pianist Jura Margulis treated us to an evening of bold and expressive keyboard virtuosity. That he has a vast arsenal of virtuoso skills is never in doubt, and he is not shy about showing them off. Thus, in the six Scarlatti Sonatas opening the program Margulis was not trying to give us examples of scholarly and historically informed performance, but rather examples of his own very personal and romantically styled approach to Scarlatti. Some of the faster passages flew by at warp speed while the slower passages tended to be burdened with expressive emoting. Each of the six chosen sonatas is a minor masterpiece, and, like any masterpiece, is capable of a wide variety of stylistic executions, since the original works are greater in conception than can ever be realized in actual performance. So, true to himself, Mr. Margulis gave us an old-fashioned view of romanticized Scarlatti, and for him this approach worked. Read full story →