The Catskill Chronicle

Review by Barry Plaxen, photos by Ted Waddell

SHANDELEE, NY (August 30, 2012) – The crop of pianists who performed on August 16 and 18, 2012 in the Sunset Concert Pavilion at the 2012 Shandelee Music Festival are five exquisite flowers who are blooming and blossoming and being nurtured.

Introduced as ranging in age “from 13 to post-Graduate,” the 2012 “International Artists of Shandeleee” are left to right in photo: Brianna Tang, Yu-Chen Yeh, Margaret Loukachkina, Shan-Hsun Chang and Claudia Hu.

They could have been introduced on August 16 by Baby June (a/k/a actress, June Havoc) of the musical “Gypsy” who might have sung her theme “Let Me Entertain You,” as the evening’s program contained highly entertaining works that included a movement from a Beethoven sonata and short pieces by Khatchaturian, Chopin, Albeniz, Rameau, and Liszt. The only complete sonata played was by Mozart, his K.330 in C, a very “unassuming and innocent” (from program notes) popular piece, familiar to many in the audience.

New to me were a “Toccata” by Khatchaturian (Brianna Tang), another perfect melding of classical and Spanish music by Albeniz (Claudia Hu) and two fun and un-Rameau-ish pieces that sounded ahead of their Baroque time, more Scarlatti than French (Shao-Hsun Chang).

Each piece was given a resplendent account, all five performing with skilled technique and with their individual and inspired phrasing. My favorites were Liszt’s adaptation of Schumann’s song “Widmung” (Yu-Chen Yeh), also a popular piece, very romantic, expressive and moving – and a “Stars and Stripes Sousa-esque” bravura performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodie No. 2 (Margarita Loukachkina) which ended the evening. It made me want to stand up and salute!

The August 18 afternoon performance might have been introduced by Jermaine Jackson singing or Arnold Schwarzenegger stating “Let’s Get Serious.”

A very unlikely, profound and dramatic Haydn piece, “Variations in f” (Claudia Hu), contemplative Moszkowski and Rachmaninoff (Brianna Tang) works, and what you could term as austere, sober, pensive and earnest works by Chopin, Liszt (Margarita Loukachkina) and Debussy (Yu-Chan Yeh), were thoughtfully executed by all.

The August 18 program did end with a very serious, full sonata, Prokofiev’s No. 8 in B-flat (Shao-Hsun Chang). Serious in that it does not contain any of the composer’s oft-used humor or lightness. The tragedies of his life seem to be expressed all through the piece. It is one of his “War Sonatas,” written during WWII, and that also permeates.

For the all-Rachmaninoff encores, Brianna Tang & Yu-Chan Yeh performed music from his “Six Pieces for Four Hands”, a dark and serious Scherzo work, and Margarita Loukachkina, Claudia Hu & Shao-Hsun Chang performed from his “Two Pieces for Six Hands”. First a Romance – a mixture of “serious” emotion and “entertaining” melody, and then ending the concert and the Festival with a very “entertaining” Waltz, back to the lightness of August 16.

Full circle, one might say.

Natives of the USA, China and Russia, the five are professional concert pianists and educators who came to Shandelee, some on scholarship, to hone their performances skills by studying with world-renown coach Alexander Shtarkman, and performing for eager and highly appreciate audiences.

They came, they heard, they conquered.