Classical: Ayako Uehara: Wigmore Hall, London + + + + -
The Leeds Piano Competition may still be squeamish about giving its first prize to a woman - how else can you explain
last year's bizarre result? - but its Russian counterpart has overcome that particular prejudice. In 2002, the
Japanese pianist Ayako Uehara won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. She now has a recording contract with EMI and
her first solo disc, of Tchaikovsky, has just been released. Tchaikovsky also made up the first half of her Wigmore
programme, her debut recital in London.
It's sometimes hard, not just at Leeds, to understand why a particular musician has caught the judges'
ears, but not in this case. Born in 1980, Uehara is clearly a performer who commands attention because of her bright,
forward tone - sometimes a bit too bright at the top of the keyboard, though that might have been a quirk of the
instrument - technical command and direct, uncomplicated musical approach.
The Tchaikovsky Grand Sonata, composed about the same time as Eugene Onegin and the Fourth Symphony, isn't heard
very often, partly because it is fiendish to play (in a chunky, fistfuls-of-notes sort of way) and partly because its
melodic ideas need careful tending and precise characterisation. A Richter or a Gilels could bring it off, but though
Uehara isn't in that class, she still played it very well, propelled by powerfully nimble fingers, with only
occasional moments of overpedalling.
Expressively, perhaps, her playing remains bland at times, the rubato sounding learned rather than instinctively
felt. Four Scriabin etudes, however, were perfectly transparent and supple, their technical challenges unostentatiously
met, and an assortment of Liszt pieces showed Uehara can paint on a broad canvas too - the beefy climax to the second
Ballade, and the swagger in the first Mephisto Waltz contrasting with fine-spun lyricism of Consolation No 3 and the
questioning unease of the first Valse Oubliee. All hugely promising then, if not quite the finished article.
Andrew Clements
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RUSSIA IN FACTS
