Jenny Q Chai: Songs of Love
Divine Art

Violetta Fialko: Ciccolini Prizewinner Recital
Divine Art

Both of these solo piano recordings from Divine Art are commendable for sterling performances but even more imaginative programming. On Songs of Love, Jenny Q Chai couples works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Robert Schumann with one by Charles Ives; on her commercial recording debut, Violetta Fialko performs material by Alexander Scriabin, Anatoly Lyadov, Nikolai Medtner, and Sergei Prokofiev, with selections from the latter's Romeo and Juliet a major drawing-card.

Based in both Shanghai and California and currently a piano faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, Chai shows herself to be a solid interpreter of works from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries on her fifty-one-minute recital. While her renderings of the Bach and Ives compositions are wholly engaged, Chai's connection to Schumann's is perhaps the strongest, not so much for musical reasons but a personal one: she was introduced to his music by her first teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music, Seymour Lipkin, with whom she studied from twelve to nineteen. A dedicated Beethoven interpreter, he took her on as a student, despite having no openings in his schedule, and guided by him, she learned Schumann's Kreisleriana when she was eighteen and performed it at her graduation recital. He also encouraged her to explore the music of contemporary composers, among them Elliot Carter and Henry Cowell.

Given that, as Chai herself opines, “Everything comes from Bach,” it's apt that the album should begin with the “Aria” from Goldberg Variations. Her controlled, thoughtfully paced, and delicate treatment amplifies the poetic tenderness of the material, not to mention its timeless beauty and ruminative character. Chai then tackles “The Alcotts” from Ives's “Concord” Sonata, a selection consistent with her choice of album dedicatee, Lipkin: as Ives's piece opens with a quote of the beginning of Beethoven's fifth symphony, “The Alcotts” pays further tribute to Chai's former teacher. In its hushed, almost hymnal opening part, the 1921-published setting perpetuates the delicacy of the Bach setting; at the two-minute mark, however, the writing begins to reflect Ives's idiosyncratic sensibility when hammering chords and flirtations with dissonance are followed by a lyrical episode that's equally blues-tinged and salon music-flavoured. Unpredictable to the end, the material proves arresting for weaving many disparate strands into a nine-minute expression.

At album's end, Schumann's 1838 fantasy cycle Kreisleriana, Op.16 takes its name from musician and conductor Johannes Kreisler, a character created by German author E. T. A. Hoffmann. Structured in eight parts, the work follows the towering “Äusserst bewegt” movement with “Sehr innig und nicht zu rach,” whose swooning motif sings for ten enrapturing minutes. The movement's hardly a one-dimensional exercise in repetition, however, as the theme's subjected to multiple treatments, here voiced contemplatively and there swiftly. The work's Romantic side rises to the surface for the rambunctious “Sehr aufgeregt,” playful “Sehr lebhaft,” and two “Sehr langsam” movements, one lyrical and the other stately. Chai's technical facility is called upon by the challenging roller-coaster “Sehr rasch” before the work ends with the majestic “Schnell und spielend.” For those intent on doing so, there's more than enough evidence to argue for the presence of Schumann's “Florestan” and “Eusebius” personas in the work. Regardless, Lipkin would no doubt approve of what his one-time student has created in all three of the composers' cases and be honoured by having been memorialized so fondly.

As its title indicates, Violetta Fialko's commercial recording debut directly resulted from her winning the 2021 Ciccolini Prize for Pianists, a new international competition that attracted entrants from many countries. Among the prizes the Ukrainian virtuoso received for winning the competition was a recording with Divine Art, hence the recital album. Born in 1997, Fialko has won multiple awards and since 2018 has worked as an accompanist at the Lysenko Kyiv Specialized Music Scholl and as a teacher of piano performance and music theory at the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary and at the Music Art Academy. Her circumstances, however, have changed since the war in Ukraine erupted and she was evacuated from her home town to a safe house. While her seventy-minute release focuses on Russian Romantic classics, Prokofiev was, in fact, born in Ukraine. Nothing in the album content explicitly addresses war, though its very existence might be seen as a symbol of support for Fialko's country and for peace and freedom in general.

The collection commences with the fourteen miniatures of Biryul'ki (1876), one of two Lyadov pieces performed and the composer's first work for piano. If a spirit of child-like playfulness colours the material, it's intentional: in playing biryul'ki, one plays with small toys that are hooked back one by one without one touching the rest. All fourteen settings are executed with authority by the pianist, who never lets their considerable technical challenges dampen their carefree spirit. Complementing Biryul'ki is Lyadov's also-compact Prelude in B minor, Op. 11-No. 1 (1886), a lyrical setting based on an old folk song, “Why the love is so cruel in this too cruel world,” having to do with a girl suffering abandonment by her beloved. In contrast to the breezy tone of Biryul'ki, the prelude effectively captures Lyadov's capacity for heartfelt solemnity.

At thirteen minutes, Medtner's Piano Sonata ‘Reminscenza,' Op. 38 No. 1 towers over the rest. Part of the composer's “Forgotten Motives” series (1918-20), ‘Reminscenza' is understandably marked by melancholy and wistfulness; it also shows Fialko playing with an emotional maturity befitting someone looking back upon an entire lifetime of memories as opposed to a person whose adult years have just begun. Her realization of the work dazzles, though the same could as easily be said about her handling of the other pieces too.

As mentioned, the album's highlighted by ten Romeo and Juliet pieces, which give the pianist a wealth of melodic material with which to work. Amazingly, when Prokofiev played the score in a “pre-premiere” concert after finishing it in 1935, the reception was less than enthusiastic and the work was rejected thereafter by both the Kirov and Bolshoi ballet companies. However, when he presented some fragments from it a few years later at a concert in Paris, the response was far more positive, which led to a successful staging of the ballet in Brno in 1938 and one in Prokofiev's homeland two years later. Composed of sparkling dance numbers and evocative character portraits, the work captivates from the moment “Folk Dance” appears until “Romeo and Juliet before Parting” caps it thirty-three minutes later. Bringing his brilliant melodic command to the project, the composer vividly conjures the images of an awakening village, guests arriving at a stately ball, the innocent joy of a young Juliet, and the yearning the warring families' lovers experience as their story nears its tragic conclusion.

August 2022