International pianist Sofya Gulyak recently electrified Manila audience anew in a solo recital at the CCP Little Theater. This was only weeks after her sterling collaboration as featured soloist of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra in its final concert for the season.
In an impressive all-Russian program, Gulyak displayed her winning form as the first woman ever to garner the top prize in the Leeds Piano Competition in 2009.
The program was a showcase of intense virtuosity that summoned power and technical brilliance only a well-honed, steely pair of hands could execute.
Undoubtedly, the Russian technique in piano playing was bared to the hilt, expressed in full-bodied singing tones of brilliant symphonic proportion.
Gulyak literally played close to the key. She sat quite on the edge of the chair in high position which ensured her complete control of her nimble fingers as they ran across the keyboard. There was no histrionics, only plain sensitive playing, as she brought out vibrant tones.
All her fingers capably produced the desired sound she wanted. They were all robustly honed, allowing her thus to be in complete technical command.
Absorbing playing
Watching her sink her fingers on the keyboard with an astounding cool stance, devoid of unnecessary mannerisms, except to punctuate, was such a visual treat. Absorbing listening went on undistracted.
The first set of pieces from Rachmaninoff and Scriabin brought out a general mood of pensiveness and mysticism. At once, the pianist engaged full attention of the audience in the opening three miniature pieces from Rachmaninoff’s Fantasy Pieces (Marceaux de Fantaisie).
She etched a meditative Elegie; a comely Prelude and a beguilingly expressive “Polichenelle.” The latter’s lyrical middle section was singularly absorbing as she let her tone sing, providing stark contrast to the two lively sections.
In Etude Tableaux, Op.39., No.5, she fired an extremely virtuosic study. She executed those wide leaps that had become a benchmark of Rachmaninoff’s piano compositions with astounding brilliance.
And as if virtuosity was needed more, she generously had showing more in Variations on a Theme by Corelli, which she played with a broad sweep. The liveliness of the first part was matched by the brilliance of the last part, which closed with an impressive coda. And in between, she etched a stunningly haunting section.
Scriabin’s Two Poems, Op. 32, provided a contrast in sonority. In the first work, the pianist etched a frenetic though lyrical passage which was starkly contrasted with dynamic chord passages in the second.
A tour de force was seen in Shostakovich’s Prelude and Fugue, No. 15, a work composed in the early ’50s. Gulyak essayed an abrupt theme akin to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” and soon burst into a fugue that was rich in chromatic configurations. She emerged triumphant at the end, with more energy reserved for the concluding section of her program.
War sonatas
Gulyak’s playing elicited rousing applause punctuated by shouts of bravos.
Prokofiev’s Sonata No.6 in A Major was her piece de resistance that concluded the recital. Prokofiev himself labeled the piece, together with the next two pieces, “war sonatas, as they were written during the beginning years of the war in Europe.
A work of somewhat epic proportion spread in four movements, the piece is massive and demands utmost virtuosity.
Gulyak struck the biting dissonances that piled up in the first movement, the screaming passages in the upper register, the percussive chords and the like that all suggest sarcasm and bitterness about the war. And why not, indeed, considering that some 20 million Russians had perished in the said war?
Next, she played the march-like allegretto of the second movement, which eloquently parodied the soldiers marching sardonically in staccato. Nostalgia pervaded the waltz of the third movement, only to be broken by the fast concluding fourth movement capped with a thunderous coda, which she played comfortably paced thus avoiding being a stunt.
Gulyak played the piece with gusto, and with a burning, spontaneous dispatch. The audience applauded lustily, demanded an encore, which she readily gave: two pieces at that, a movement from a Scarlatti sonata and a transcription of a Bach piece.
Gulyak has won the glowing admiration of Manila’s music lovers, who would always welcome a return engagement in the future.