FORT WORTH — We all, critics included, have our blind spots. But every music critic must sometimes review music that isn’t personally congenial.
That’s how it was for this reviewer with Wednesday night’s recital by pianist Aristo Sham, gold medalist of the 2025 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Pleasure was further alloyed by harsh, clangorous acoustics of the Renzo Piano Pavilion’s auditorium at the Kimbell Art Museum; it’s not a gratifying place to hear piano music. I wish the young Hong Kong pianist had played in Texas Christian University’s acoustically glorious Van Cliburn Concert Hall.
But we always go hoping to hear music afresh, especially from a particularly insightful performer. The best of Sham’s playing in the competition, notably his lively, personable account of the Mendelssohn G minor Concerto and his noble Brahms B-flat major, prompted hopes for Wednesday’s sold-out recital. (A Thursday repeat was also sold out.)
Boyishly personable, Sham in brief comments explained the program’s linking baroque and romantic musical manners. He opened with the original piano version of Grieg’s Holberg Suite, justly beloved in the composer’s subsequent orchestration. Its five movements are loosely modeled on dance-based baroque keyboard suites.
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I couldn’t help thinking how much better this music sounds in orchestral guise. And Sham sometimes made it more muscular, less dancelike, than it wanted to be.
That he’s a well-bred musician, with technique to do anything he wants, was never in doubt. If you fancy torrents of notes and booming chords, you may well have thrilled to Ferruccio Busoni’s Variations on Chopin’s Prelude in C minor (the earlier composer’s Op. 28, No. 20). It’s a virtuoso showpiece, with poetic moments as well — an alternative to big variation sets by Brahms and Rachmaninoff — and Sham played it to the hilt. But am I in a rush to hear it again? Well …
Busoni, a virtuoso pianist and composer who lived from 1866 to 1924, also laid his heavy hand on the D minor Chaconne from Bach’s unaccompanied Violin Partita No. 2. This may be Busoni’s best-known arrangement, and again Sham delivered the imposing goods with conviction.
There was yet more Busoni: the composer’s arrangement of six of Brahms’ Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ. Having played the Brahms originals a number of times in my years as an organist, I was wary.
Even as they sometimes look over their shoulders at baroque precursors, these compact preludes — collected as Brahms’ last opus — come from the same world as his exquisite late piano pieces. And the piano allows bringing out inner voices that can’t be emphasized on the organ.
By Brahmsian standards, the prelude on the hymn we know as “O sacred head, sore wounded” got too aggressive, as did the chorale phrases of the final “O world I must leave you.” But Sham phrased sensitively throughout.
Enthusiastic ovations from the audience prompted two encores: Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring” and one of the Mendelssohn Songs Without Words.
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