Vadym Kholodenko mesmerises and thrills in Singapore recital

Interesting factoid: no non-Asian pianist has been awarded gold at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition since Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko’s triumph in 2013. In artistic climates that regularly prize consensus and conformity, Kholodenko strikes out as an original, being neither a stereotypical prizewinner nor common or garden Russian-schooled virtuoso. He is an artist of broad and catholic tastes with the requisite technique to match this vision, reflected by unusual recital programming choices.

Whoever imagined opening a recital with music by Elizabethan composer William Byrd (1540-1623)? Pianos did not exist in the day, with keyboardists plying their art on virginals, the delicate forerunner of the harpsichord. On a modern grand piano, works like Byrd’s First Pavan and Galliard are no longer limited by restricting registers, instead finding new voices of ringing resonance. In John Come Kiss Me Now, its 16 variations gradually built up from simple ornamentations to thrilling runs on both hands, sonorous effects not encountered during the Renaissance.

Travelling forward 400 years in time, sepia tones diverged into the spectral colours of recently-departed Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s six-minute Ballade, written in 2005 for Emanuel Ax. Whether the work is tonal or atonal became immaterial, instead its myriad shades were laid out rainbow-like over a steady unerring pulse in a post-Scriabin fantasy soundscape. An upward sweep and a glissando down the keyboard completed its bracing journey.

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 16 in G major is not as celebrated as its nicknamed partners from the same Op.31 set, the Tempest and the Hunt. It ought to be better known, with Kholodenko’s account tapping into a wellspring of humour. The opening movement’s deliberate desynchronisation of chords by both hands gave the effect of repeated hiccoughing, which he ploughed into with tongue firmly in cheek. In the central Adagio grazioso, an aria was sung over a simple left-hand triplet accompaniment, with each hand getting more florid and seemingly improvisatory by the minute. The Rondo relived the previous sonata’s (Op.28, the Pastoral) rustic drones, almost going overboard with its freewheeling runs before a knowing reprise of the first movement’s offbeat chords. Maybe this should be called the Hiccup Sonata.

The recital’s second half was devoted wholly to Franz Liszt. Kholodenko the consummate Lisztian was revealed at the Cliburn, programming eleven of the Transcendental Etudes in his semifinal recital some nine years before Yunchan Lim’s much feted feat. Kholodenko was there first. In Three Concert Etudes (S.144), technical sleight-of-hand took a backseat to poetic sensibilities, as Il lamento began to sound like an operatic aria, while the right hand runs in La leggierezza were as smooth as silk. Un sospiro, was simply breathtaking.

How often does one hear the three companions to the first Valse oubliée? Befitting Liszt’s late music from the 1880s, the music gets increasingly skittish, chromatic and ambiguous in tonality. Kholodenko was the perfect guide into this sinister salon, regarding surface charm and cloaked malice as equals, before arriving at the final “forgotten” waltz’s unresolved cadence. Without waiting for applause, he segued into the earlier and more innocent Valse-Impromptu, which was all glitter and gaiety. The recital proper closed with the terrifying Scherzo und Marsch, with Liszt in true Mephistophelean form, and Kholodenko reliving Horowitz’s inexorable electrifying voltage.

Returning to the ballroom his first encore was Poulenc’s L’embarquement pour Cythère (Valse-Musette) in Kholodenko’s very busy and dizzying insouciant transcription. Schumann’s long-breathed Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks) from Kinderszenen made for the perfect coda.