Concert Review: Miori Sugiyama Plays Chopin at Bargemusic, Brooklyn NY 2/6/10

A fresh, vigorous, potently counterintuitive interpretation of iconic Chopin works for solo piano. Miori Sugiyama’s formidable technique is matched by an equally fine-tuned emotional intelligence- she gets this music – and a hair-trigger detector for devices that might cross the line into cliche. Those she wanted nothing to do with. No disrespect to Chopin, but Romantic piano music can be just as stylized as any other genre and there are places where it’s hardly difficult to figure out what he wrote to pay the bills, and what came straight from the heart. Sugiyama wasted no time in going for authenticity of emotion. From a contemporary perspective, it wouldn’t be completely accurate to describe how she tackled the program as radical – no electronics or rock band were involved – but sixty years ago it would have been. When a familiar trope loomed, she’d get a running start and go sailing over it, sidestep it with a jump or a quick turn or simply trample it in a stampede to get to the good stuff. It was as effective a performance as it was personal and individual.

The Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23 benefited vastly from a strikingly rubato approach: Sugiyama didn’t let the courtly waltziness of much of it fake her out a bit, uncovering every raw, resonant tonality she could find. A pair of nocturnes (F Sharp Minor, Op. 15, No. 2 and C Sharp, Op. 27, No. 2) gave her less of an opportunity to mine for that kind of treasure: in her hands, they glimmered comfortably but not complacently. By contrast, the Scherzo No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 20 was a breathtaking showcase for a lightning sostenuto attack, rushing rapids punctuated by pregnant pauses, if ever so brief before the torrents returned. Ironically, the one piece that might have benefited from a straight-up reading instead of an attempt to find its inner menschkeit was the Scherzo No. 2 in B Flat Minor, Op. 31, a staple of classical radio for decades whose martial theme stops just short of bombast (with that one, the temptation is to ham it up Victor Borge style). Sugiyama wound up the program with an inspired, fluid precision that defied another kind of serious rocking as river waves got the barge swaying, definitely not in time with the music. The Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise in E Flat, Op. 22, more of a real nocturne than anything else on the bill, was given the chance to build gracefully. Sugiyama then blasted through a minuet passage, got it out of the way and brought the intensity to redline with molten-metal glissandos leading inexorably to a fiery conclusion.

Miori Sugiyama is also playing the big upcoming Chopin marathon at the World Financial Center, March 1-5: watch this space.