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Concert Review This is part of a review of Aimi's performance on 24 August 2009 with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century conducted by Frans Bruggen as part of the Fifth International Music Festival "Chopin and his Europe" (Chopin i jego Europa). She played Mozart Piano Concerto no. 20 KV 466 and the Chopin Concerto no. 2 — both on an 1840s piano, though there is some disagreement whether this was a Pleyel or an Erard. She also played three encores. The translation is my combination of versions kindly provided by Tom Wierzbicki and Alex Groth. The original Polish text is here (external link, then almost 2/3 way down the page under the heading "Cudowne dzieci", which literally means "Wonderful children".) | ||
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Child Prodigies by Piotr Matwiejczuk
[The first paragraph, consisting of some general observations on child prodigies as imitators of adult virtuosi with little insight into what they are playing, has been omitted as what is said is not greatly relevant in Aimi's case]
I have a big problem with describing and even with assessing “a child prodigy”. (What criteria should be applied? With what/whom to compare? Should one write about the present or the future?) In most cases the admiration stops when these children grow up. Wrongly guided, excessively exploited, they burn out at the beginning of a possible career. They are required to spend too much time practising keyboard technique and too little on stimulating spiritual development. After all, how can one expect a proper development of a pianistic career if at the age of 14 Chopin’s F-minor concerto together with the Mozart’s D-minor concerto (plus a scherzo, a nocturne and an étude) are all played during one evening? I don’t know how fate will treat the Japanese pianist Aimi Kobayashi, born in 1995. I wish her the best of luck because she is an unusually gifted girl. Not only in terms of keyboard technique but also because she is such a good child prodigy. When she played the opening phrase of the Mozart concerto, I had a strange feeling that I was listening to Alfred Brendel. Her entire Mozart and Chopin consisted of such fragments in the style of great masters. What is interesting (and indeed very characteristic of children) is that Miss Kobayashi was able to focus on a small segment of a composition — the one that she was actually playing — without remembering what had just been played and with no attention to what was coming next. I have to admit that in this unconsciousness she played quite charmingly as well as musically. Her style of playing is based on the best post-romantic “academic” models. The result was entertaining and at the same time interesting. We heard Chopin, and especially Mozart, played on a period instrument (Erard) but in a 20th century manner in all its details (sound, phrasing, articulation, etc.). Perhaps because of her slight build, little Aimi was unable to produce a sound louder than mezzoforte. Luckily, the Orchestra of the 18th Century under Frans Bruggen accompanied her in a subtle way and with great taste. If it were not for a few notes they lost (probably the fault of the conductor), I would say that this was the best orchestra at the Festival. Certainly it produced the most beautifully executed and warm sound of the entire Festival. In my estimation there are some 600 seats in the Gigantic Stage of the Great Theatre and National Opera, and all seats were taken. By contrast, only 250 listeners came to hear the recital of Andreas Staier in the Polish Radio Concert Studio. Initially I was puzzled by this choice of the Warsaw public, but on a little reflection everything became clear. After all, Staier does not have dimpled cheeks, and he stopped babbling a long time ago.
25 August 2009
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A response Hmm! There's no question that the topic of musical child prodigies is a vexed one, and readers might find Jessica Duchen's article Much too much, much too young interesting. Ms Duchen is a noted British music blogger and commentator, and her article appeared in the Independent newspaper recently (18 Mar 2009) after a 13-year-old singer didn't quite win the Britain's Got Talent competition but went on to sign a reportedly £2.3 million (approx $3.7 million) contract with Universal. Duchen goes on to consider the wider question of classical musical prodigies, which happens to be a subject she researched for her novels Alicia's Gift and Hungarian Dances. The conclusion is unavoidable: it's a high-risk area for children that's littered with burnouts, failures and tragedies. Another popular source with some information on a certain type of hypermusicality (Williams syndrome) is Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia — Tales of Music and the Brain, though it's highly unlikely that this condition applies in Aimi's case. The reaction I hear consistently from people who either play piano or who have followed classical music for decades (and this response comes up frequently in behind-the-scenes discussions arising from these pages) is that Aimi is quite exceptional among today's crop of supremely able young pianists in her innate musicality. This is a quality that is instantly communicated and which moves them profoundly. Eschenbach, a pianist himself, commented on it when he said after hearing her: ". . she is deeply musical . . She has something special, musically speaking. . . It comes from very deep inside." Asked whether this was something she had learned from a teacher, he replied: "No, no. It is inside. It comes from very deep inside . . . the way she forms things is hers . . [she] plays in a certain very natural way that is not taught." (From my transcript) Another perhaps slightly less relevant point, attested frequently by Mrs Ninomiya, her teacher, is that Aimi loves performing but hates practising — she simply does not spend hours a day to reach the levels of accomplishment we see on YouTube or in concert. To be sure there is much hard work and long hours to be put in before a concert — Ninomiya sees to that and has described how exhausting this can be — but at other times Aimi much prefers to be an ordinary girl who messes around doing the things that interest other girls of her age. In fact a little French bird has whispered in my ear that when the pressure has been off for some months Aimi can play quite badly, almost like an amateur. How nice to hear! What more evidence could one want that she is not a hothouse prodigy and is not forced to do anything. Which in a roundabout way brings me to the point that in his review Piotr Matwiejczuk would have found it difficult to cast Aimi in the mold of an adult-mimicking prodigy had he seen her performances on YouTube, where her understanding of and feeling for what she is playing are so often and so astonishingly displayed. And he might have hesitated before writing that, like other child prodigies, she proceeded "unconsciously" (if charmingly and musically!) from phrase to phrase, "without remembering what had just been played and with no attention to what was coming next". This is interesting, has been suggested by at least one commenter on YouTube, and I myself wondered whether it might be so at one stage. But my doubts about Aimi's capacity to see a piece as a whole, to have a feeling for structure and development, were dispelled by her performances of Mozart's sonata no. 12 KV 332 (see entries for 2005 on this page), when she was just 10, and especially by the soon to be released Waldstein sonata (EMI, November 2009). In the latter it would have been impossible for her to execute the last two movements so masterfully and with such exquisitely judged timing of the gradual increase in sonority if she had no concept of the overall structure. (It's all the more remarkable as this is precisely where I feel her public performance at the AADGT event just days before didn't quite come up to the mark. My impression of that performance was that she built up too early in the third movement and strained her capabilities.) I'm sure that others who are familiar with her work could come up with half a dozen instances that demonstrate her grasp of a whole piece, a work as a whole. So why this somewhat mixed review? Having watched recordings of her concert performances of the last year (Krakow 2008, and Tokyo 2009, plus her first movement of the Mozart no. 20 on YouTube) my own feeling, for what it's worth, is that Aimi is a conscientious "ensemble" player and that in playing with an orchestra or another instrumentalist she subsumes her own considerable individuality as a soloist to the interests of the orchestral performance as a whole — or equally likely, that she is simply a very modest person (which she is) and is reluctant to draw attention to herself. At times, dare I say it, this can give the impression that these performances with orchestra, although wonderfully fluent and elegant, have been a little routine and lacking in inspiration. Again I hazard a guess, not having been present at the recent Warsaw concerts, that this may have contributed to Matwiejczuk's less than glowing assessment. Perhaps Aimi should aim to become less diffident in the presence of an orchestra and assert her own individuality more. We know from earlier Russian concerts that she can do it, but for the moment she seems to be going through a phase in which she is cautiously feeling her way as a young adult pianist. Possibly sound natural instincts are telling her that she can no longer draw on an audience's strong emotional response to the appeal of a child at the keyboard, and possibly Mrs Ninomiya is encouraging this development, as of course she should. Another factor that likely contributed was the ancient piano she was asked to perform on — with no opportunity to accustom herself to its quirks, action and unfamiliar (lack of) sonority other than a rehearsal the day before. All three independent reports I have had of both events bemoan the imposition of this instrument on her. And, I should add, praise the young girl for how easily she overcame its disadvantages to turn in very creditable performances of not just one, but two piano concertos in the same evening. Finally, and purely coincidentally, on the day I write this an obituary of Alicia de Larrocha appears in the Daily Telegraph. Some may find this interesting as a good example of how a young prodigy's training and career can be sensitively handled so that they do not burn out, or hit the rocks in some other way. Indications are that Aimi's teacher has such an approach very much in mind. There are other parallels too — Aimi shares with de Larrocha her diminutiveness, small hands, unassumingness, and the delight with which her playing was received when finally, in her mid-thirties(!), she began a full-time career. And believe it or not, her (de Larrocha's) first appearance with orchestra was playing Mozart's Coronation concerto at the age of 11. Also curious, though not perhaps coincidental, that Jessica Duchen's novel about a piano prodigy is titled Alicia's Gift. This Alicia makes out by the way, (despite) having won the Leeds piano competition at the ripe old age of 18. Comments are invited — especially if you were at one of Aimi's Warsaw concerts. Email me on raham [at] btinternet [dot] com and I will add them to this page. I reserve the right to edit or even to reject comments of course, but I will tell you why if I do. Romilly Hambling, October 1, 2009 | ||
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Communing with the composer From Hal Stein, Sacramento, California, October 2, 2009 I, too, was flabbergasted at the Polish review of Aimi's Warsaw concert. The reviewer seemed to be more interested in presenting his views about child prodigies and how Aimi fits his preconceived notions, than about analyzing her performance. Actually, before reading your latest posting of the Polish review, I was in the process of preparing something based on Christoph Eschenbach's comments that you posted. I was pleased to see him confirm what many of us sense in watching Aimi's videos — that her musical interpretations come from deep within her. I risk here sharing something with you that you and others could well interpret as a belief in mysticism on my part, something I have always rejected as a philosophy. Call it what you will, but I remember the first time I viewed the video of Aimi performing the Chopin nocturne at a competition in Japan when she was around 7. As she was performing, I was thinking, "This is uncanny. That child is having an out-of-body experience here — or more accurately, it is like the spirit of Chopin has entered her body and is guiding her in this performance". Then at the end, as she folds her arms against her chest, to my amazement there is dead silence in the concert hall. Only when she comes out of her reverie does the audience start clapping. I had never before witnessed such a reaction from an entire audience. Were they sensing the same thing I was sensing — even though they were sitting far away from the piano? I sense the same thing happening when she is playing pieces by Mozart and Beethoven. It's as if the composer's spirit has entered her body and is informing her playing. She becomes transformed into a gifted artist who is communing with the composer. It's also reflected in her body movements and facial expressions. Then when she turns to the audience at the end and smiles, she becomes a young girl again. Judging by some of the comments under her videos, others seem to be saying the same thing in different ways. It is why people speak about wanting to see her play, not just hear her play. She communicates through sight as well as sound. I know of few musical artists about whom one can say that. So that's my two cents worth; for sure not very objective, but that's how I see it.
I'm fairly sure that Hal is referring to this performance of the Nocturne no. 20 in C sharp minor, played when she was 8 or 9, and where we see the audience reaction to Aimi's extraordinary immersion in the piece. The performance when she was 7 is here. Both are quite remarkable, and enough to dispel any notion that Aimi is has no understanding of what she is playing several times over! As it happens, this piece was also her last encore at the Warsaw concert. (RH)
For more reactions to this concert and Aimi's performance, see Concertgoers' reports.
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