Chopin, who moved from Poland to Paris, was bound to be slotted somewhere into Edinburgh’s east-west theme, though he had to wait until the end of the Festival for a programme to himself, delivered by today’s “other” young Chinese virtuoso, Yundi Li, now known simply as Yundi.
Though he wears his charisma differently from Lang Lang -- for a start he wore it in the form of full evening dress on Saturday morning -- it does not necessarily bring him any closer to the Chopin recently described by Stephen Hough as a matter of “shades, hints, suggestions, half-lights”.
Hough is a Chopin pianist who delivers these qualities, whereas Yundi, in his opening nocturne, showed he could play loud or soft. The first thematic trickle was bright-toned but icily detached. A fierce light, across which a veil was sometimes thrown, shone on every piece.
This was Chopin in capital letters, and only in a set of mazurkas -- the true test of every Chopin pianist -- did things briefly calm down.
But alas an inadequately presented programme-note -- along with Yundi’s tendency at times to slide one piece into the next -- fooled the large audience into thinking the first movement of the Funeral March sonata was the last of the mazurkas. They applauded accordingly.
Yet as a former winner of the Warsaw Chopin Competition, he was no ordinary keyboard thumper. The sonata was fast and febrile, the funeral march a keenly etched interlude. The final A flat Polonaise was torrential but, by that point in a much-travelled recital, seemed much too glib.
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