J.J. Jun Li Bui performed works by Chopin, Vine and Ravel in Concert 7 of the Chinese Performing Arts recital series on last Wednesday. A Canadian pianist, he achieved international acclaim at the age of 17 at the prestigious 2021 International Fryderyk Chopin Piano competition, where as the youngest participant he received 6th prize. He released a CD in 2023 produced under the esteemed Fryderyk Chopin Institute’s Blue Series. He is a globetrotting pianist who has collaborated with various orchestras around the world.
Biu is a consummate performer, evident even before he played a single note, by his preparation, the relaxation of the hands, the touching of the piano without making a sound, all of it building anticipation. He devoted the first half entirely to Chopin, beginning with the Nocturne in F Major, Opus 15 No. 1. Bui immediately shaped the phrase with swelling notes, followed by a sensitive rubato which ebbs away, and eventually the music paused. Even for people familiar with this Nocturne, his sudden entrance into the stormy middle of the Nocturne produced a colossal and stunning effect ― and goosebumps.
The Opus 7 Mazurkas are early works, and Bui sensitively delineated each one of the set of four’s distinct characters. No. 1 is lighthearted and playful, teasing and coquettish, No. 2 is sad and melancholy, with an angry outburst, No.3 has a dramatic opening and is self-assured with a strong melodic line that is eventually played in the LH; No. 4 is fast and virtuosic and reminiscent of a folk dance.
With the Rondo à la mazur in F Major, Op. 5, Bui entered virtuosic territory. Chopin wrote this piece at the age of 16 when he was studying at the Warsaw Conservatory. It is meant to show off the pianist’s skill, and Chopin’s unique compositional style is already on full display here. The à la mazur means à la mazurka, but the nine-minute-long Rondo is a substantial work much wider in scope. Robert Schumann first heard the Rondo in 1836, and he called it “lovely, enthusiastic and full of grace. He who does not yet know Chopin had best begin the acquaintance with this piece.”
Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, famous for its funeral march, and one of the greatest sonatas ever written, climaxed the first half. Chopin composed it in 1839 in Nohant, though he wrote the funeral march perhaps in 1837. The sonata is a kaleidoscope of fierce emotions, perhaps no other piano composition encompasses the tragedy and joy of the human condition more masterfully. Robert Schumann claimed the piece was too formless to even be called a sonata, but rather simply Chopin’s attempt to bind together four of his “most reckless children.”
It has been said that great art comes from great pain, so one ponders about the origins of Chopin’s suffering. The usual speculation is of the Polish uprising and defeat in 1830 and 1831. But by 1837 this was probably more of a dull ache than a sharp pain. In 1835 Chopin fell in love with the 16-year-old Maria Wodzińska, whom he had known as a child in Poland. Besides being beautiful, she took the homesick Chopin back to his Polish roots, and was an accomplished pianist to boot. He proposed to her the following year, and while she was thrilled, her parents were not, due to his status as a composer, his poor health and his tumultuous social life in Paris. They proposed a year-long wait period, and in 1837, hearing reports of his partying lifestyle in Paris, Maria declined his proposal. He put away her love letters and labeled them “my sorrows.” Chopin’s health saw a precipitous decline in the flu epidemic of 1837, from which he never fully recovered. Perhaps he envisioned his own demise when he composed the funeral march later that year, and Maria as the lovely melancholic melody contained therein.
Ivo Pogorelich played this sonata at the 1980 Chopin Competition, tears streaming down his face at the end, and was eliminated very early, against audience opinion, and a decision that Martha Argerich refused to accept. Refusing to yield, she was forced to leave the country with her mother and daughter and army guard. It became an international incident: because the Warsaw pact was still on, and people were disgusted with dictators and politics; they saw Revolution in Pogorelich, who played Chopin like no one before him, not elegant and polite, but savage and full of rage. Pogorelich gave all of the pianists who came after him permission to play Chopin with much greater freedom.
Biu carried that mantle, taking the many emotions of the sonata to their maximum and sweeping the audience along, a great feat in a piece so full of technical challenges.
Australian Composer Carl Vine composed his Sonata No. 1 in 1990, commissioned by the Sidney Dance Company and modeled it on Elliot Carter’s music. At 17 minutes, it is a complex sonata, its unusual flowing harmonies and tonalities show great extremes of dynamics and ideas. It has a Jazz pianist’s improvisational feel, but reflecting its origins as a dance, the music is very strict as to any changes of tempo, which demand exact adherence rather than a rubato approach. It is one of a handful of late 20th– century pieces that has entered the repertoire.
Biu finished the recital with a Ravel set. Ravel wrote the Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a dead princess) in 1899 while studying at the Conservatoire de Paris under Fauré. A pavane is a processional dance. Biu captured the sensitive sadness and innocence. Jeux d’eau (Water Games), written two years later, while Ravel was still under the guidance of Fauré, is considered by many as the first example of impressionism in piano music. Biu’s notes tumbled and flowed like water cascades off the keyboard, in swirls and glissandos of transparency that brought forth the beauty of sun-lit water fountains.
La Valse, poème chorégraphique pour orchestre, a tone poem originally written for a ballet under commission from Serge Diaghilev, who subsequently decided it was not suitable for dance. Ravel’s keyboard trnscription challenges pianists with many awkward leaps and polyrhythms, not to mention the countermelodies that flow back and forth between the two hands. Ravel wrote the piece in 1919 and 1920, shortly after returning from the French army in 1918, for which he volunteered at age 40 in 1914. Much has been written about La Valse as a musical destruction of the waltz mirroring the destruction of the second empire in Vienna in the wake of World War I. Ravel denied any connection, saying La Valse was written in homage of Strauss and Vienna, with the ballet to be set at the imperial court circa 1855. Yet one has the sense of frantic impulse to enjoy life despite the undercurrents of catastrophic adversity, to keep dancing as the ship is going down to a fun-house mirror distortion of the waltz. Biu surmounted every challenge with great skill.
Taking a bow to a standing ovation and a loud chorus of bravos, Biu encored with the quiet, posthumous Chopin Waltz in E-flat Major Sostenuto.
Sibylle Barrasso is a long-time piano student of Robert Poli. She has played in piano competitions in Pickman Hall and Chicago, is on the board of directors of the Boston Piano Amateurs Association and has played for audiences in the Boston Symphony Cafe since 2010.