This Week in Classical Music: June 10, 2024. On Place of Music in Culture, again.Edvard Grieg and Richard Strauss were born this week, the Norwegian on June 15th of 1843, and the German – on June 11th of 1864, but this is not what we want to write about this week. The pianist Bruce Liu played a recital in Chicago on Sunday a week ago. Mr. Liu is 27, he was born in Paris and raised in Montreal. Three years ago, he won the Chopin Piano Competition and since then his career has taken off. We heard good things about him, and his YouTube videos sounded interesting; we considered going to the concert but then circumstances intervened and we missed it. A couple of days later, interested in learning how Mr. Liu had played, we went online looking for a review. It turned out that not a single Chicago media outlet sent a reviewer to the concert: not the Chicago Tribune, not the Sun-Times, not even Larry Johnson’s Chicago Classical Review. We don’t know if Mr. Lui played well; what we do know is that the audience was very happy with him: he played six encores, all of them listed in the CSO updated program.Of course, the number of encores depends not only on the public’s enthusiasm but also on the performer – some prefer not to play any, as, for example, Sviatoslav Richter or Claudio Arrau later in their careers, others, likeEvgeny Kissin, enjoy playing them. Still, six encores at Orchestra Hall is a substantial number, which very likely reflects the audience’s appreciation, whether of the pianist's technique or musicianship, that we don’t know (that the technique is there is certain: listen to this half-minute Etude by Alkan).
And here’s another thing: while looking for a review, we came across one from the Stanford Daily. Musicians often perform on campuses, and it seems that student newspapers are better at covering classical music than the mainstream media (we saw several more of those). The review was enthusiastic if not very professional, but that was a minor problem. What caught our eye was a disclaimer that preceded the review itself. It said, “This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.” Just think about it for a second: the readers, mostly students, were warned (or, in modern parlance, trigger-warned) that the article they’re about to read may include such scary things as “opinion and critique.” It is like the warning TV news programs give their thin-skinned viewer when covering wars, that some unpleasant things may be seen, probably because they don’t trust their audience to know what a war is. These warnings about thoughts, opinions and critiques are a direct consequence of the cultural metamorphosis on our campuses that also produced “safe spaces” and the notion of microaggression, and which, in the last years, spread out to society at large. It will take at least a generation to get rid of this inanity.
If anything, the program Bruce Liu played in Chicago was very imaginative: a sonata by Haydn, Chopin’s sonata no. 2, a piece by Kapustin, several pieces by Rameau, with Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata no 7 concluding the announced part of the program (the encores were by Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Liszt). Here’s one piece he played during the concert: Rameau’s Gavotte with six doubles from Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin. We think it’s very well-played, nuanced and in good taste.
On Place of Music in Culture, 2024
This Week in Classical Music: June 10, 2024. On Place of Music in Culture, again. Edvard Grieg and Richard Strauss were born this week, the Norwegian on June 15th of 1843, and the
German – on June 11th of 1864, but this is not what we want to write about this week. The pianist Bruce Liu played a recital in Chicago on Sunday a week ago. Mr. Liu is 27, he was born in Paris and raised in Montreal. Three years ago, he won the Chopin Piano Competition and since then his career has taken off. We heard good things about him, and his YouTube videos sounded interesting; we considered going to the concert but then circumstances intervened and we missed it. A couple of days later, interested in learning how Mr. Liu had played, we went online looking for a review. It turned out that not a single Chicago media outlet sent a reviewer to the concert: not the Chicago Tribune, not the Sun-Times, not even Larry Johnson’s Chicago Classical Review. We don’t know if Mr. Lui played well; what we do know is that the audience was very happy with him: he played six encores, all of them listed in the CSO updated program. 
Of course, the number of encores depends not only on the public’s enthusiasm but also on the performer – some prefer not to play any, as, for example, Sviatoslav Richter or Claudio Arrau later in their careers, others, likeEvgeny Kissin, enjoy playing them. Still, six encores at Orchestra Hall is a substantial number, which very likely reflects the audience’s appreciation, whether of the pianist's technique or musicianship, that we don’t know (that the technique is there is certain: listen to this half-minute Etude by Alkan).
And here’s another thing: while looking for a review, we came across one from the Stanford Daily. Musicians often perform on campuses, and it seems that student newspapers are better at covering classical music than the mainstream media (we saw several more of those). The review was enthusiastic if not very professional, but that was a minor problem. What caught our eye was a disclaimer that preceded the review itself. It said, “This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.” Just think about it for a second: the readers, mostly students, were warned (or, in modern parlance, trigger-warned) that the article they’re about to read may include such scary things as “opinion and critique.” It is like the warning TV news programs give their thin-skinned viewer when covering wars, that some unpleasant things may be seen, probably because they don’t trust their audience to know what a war is. These warnings about thoughts, opinions and critiques are a direct consequence of the cultural metamorphosis on our campuses that also produced “safe spaces” and the notion of microaggression, and which, in the last years, spread out to society at large. It will take at least a generation to get rid of this inanity.
If anything, the program Bruce Liu played in Chicago was very imaginative: a sonata by Haydn, Chopin’s sonata no. 2, a piece by Kapustin, several pieces by Rameau, with Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata no 7 concluding the announced part of the program (the encores were by Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Liszt). Here’s one piece he played during the concert: Rameau’s Gavotte with six doubles from Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin. We think it’s very well-played, nuanced and in good taste.