Taking on the Russian Titans: a music review by Fraser Beath McEwing

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Twenty-six-year-old Albanian-born pianist Marie-Ange Nguci might well have bounded onto the Recital Hall stage wearing boxing gear last night because there was no way she could avoid stepping into the ring with four heavy-weight Russian composers all threatening to knock her out.

But by the time she had played her program and added Ravel’s Ondine (from Gaspard) as an encore I knew that I had just heard some of the finest piano playing in all my years attending live concerts.

While Nguci’s power and accuracy were undisputed, it was her phrasing that won my heart. And part of that was the risk she took in playing some notes so softly that one milligram less pressure and they would not have sounded at all. Horowitz could do it, and now Nguci has added her name to that rarefied list.

Marie-Ange Nguci

For her Australian debut recital, Nguci chose Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme by Chopin, Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.5, Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No.6 and the Finale from Kapsutin’s Eight Concert Etudes. They all called for mighty technical prowess; Nguci certainly had that – but much more. Going on her performance, she is already ascending towards the women’s piano firmament where you’ll find the likes Martha Agerich, Yuja Wang, Khatia Buniatishvili and Tiffany Poon although, when it comes to exceptional piano playing, gender has little to do with it.

By way of background, Nguci has a dazzling track record of having played with leading orchestras around the world. She also has amassed a string of competition wins – although piano playing occupies only part of her fertile mind. In 2016, at the age of 18, she became the youngest candidate to be admitted to study for a Doctorate of Musical Arts on the DMA/PhD programme at the City University of New York. She also plays organ and cello, and spent a year studying conducting at Vienna’s Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. She speaks seven languages. Yet her live interviews reveal an unpretentious young woman who doesn’t take herself too seriously.

Although Nguci’s Sydney recital might have indicated a preference for fisticuffs with the Russian titans, her musical tastes are said to encompass everything from baroque to contemporary. And those who will be at the SSO concerts this week will hear her in French mode as soloist in the Saint-Saens second piano concerto.

Fraser Beath McEwing

Even though Rachmaninov is a current crowd favourite, we don’t often hear his Variations on a Theme of Chopin performed. The theme, in this case, is the brief prelude in C minor that amateurs like me to trot out if asked to play some Chopin. In the variation hands of Rachmaninov, there isn’t much Chopin on offer after the first verbatim statement of the prelude. Instead, we become enveloped in pure Rachmaninov’s complex richness, sadness and sometimes rhythmic challenges. The set of 23 variations provided Nguci with a palate that established her ability to create both vivid and subtle sound colours, with legato threads holding the musical fabric together.

Scriabin wrote his Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53, in 1907. Although it is relatively brief at around 12 minutes, its single movement manages to challenge pianists both technically and

interpretively. From the first jagged swoop up the keyboard and the meandering single notes that follow, Nguci owned it – as she did the following Prokofiev Sonata No.6 – a substantial work spanning four movements over nearly 30 minutes. The Prokofiev forms a group of three, known as the war sonatas, and is one of the major statements made by Prokofiev for solo piano.

Marie-Ange Nguci’s scheduled recital concluded with a ‘can’t-fit-another-note-in’ Finale from Kapsutin’s eight concert etudes. Kapsutin was a prolific composer that listeners seem to enjoy more as they come to appreciate his dramatic fusion of jazz and classical piano music. As for pianists, only those with masterful techniques dare take it on. But the effect can be electric – as it was for Nguci as she finished her concert in a three-minute shower of sparks.