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Hiroko Sasaki, piano
Weill Recital Hall at
Carnegie Hall
April 28, 2010
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One of this
writer’s fondest memories was the distinguished debut of a young
Japanese-born pianist, Hiroko Sasaki, on May 8, 2003 (my review
of that Weill Hall concert appeared in volume 10, No. 3 of this
journal). Ms. Sasaki has continued to confirm my initial
impression that she was “a true artist at work.” She sounded as
splendid as ever at one of her return appearances under the
auspices of the Abby Whiteside Foundation’s series on April 20th
in the same venue. Indeed, the pianist’s program of both books
of Debussy’s Preludes consolidated that same
concert of seven years ago that had included works of Haydn,
Chopin and the first volume of the Debussy (even the encore,
Le Petit Berger, that I had called a perfect ending the
first time, was repeated).
Ms. Sasaki,
who left her native Japan at age 13 to join the Yehudi Menuhin
School, and subsequently earned her degree at The Curtis
Institute (at 16), made her orchestral debut with the
Philharmonia Orchestra and has concertized extensively in the US
and Canada as recitalist and chamber musician. She is still
residing in New York City and is on the faculty of the Bard
College Conservatory of Music. |
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As I vividly
recall, Ms. Sasaki’s distinctive interpretative persona
successfully fuses Classical understatement with Romantic
freedom. Her elegance has exquisite proportion but always (as I
previously wrote) “sprint, gravitas and repose.” Danseuses de
Delphes, which can often sound square and blocky, had a tart
mobility which the pianist skillfully achieved by playing the
answering response phrases a trifle faster and more impetuously
than the forgoing ones. Her tempos, most of them on the brisk
side, brought to the fore countless other felicities (I
especially liked her ongoing, Gieseking-like treatment of THE
eponymous interruption in Le Serenade Interrompue; and
the way she managed the buildup in La Cathedrale engloutie
(in accordance with Debussy’s own piano roll performance. As I
remember, the two final Book I Preludes, La danse de Puck
and Minstrels, were as fleet and invigorating as ever.
Book II,
written a few years after Book I (1909-1910), has many
similarities, but there are subtle differences, too. Ms. Sasaki,
as one would have expected from such a discriminating musician,
seized upon many opportunities. I loved her magnificently robust
account of La Puerta de vino, and of course the Hommage a
S. Pickwick, Esq. PPMPC had full, requisite Dickensian
pomposity. Les Fees danced exquisitely, and Ondine
was perceptively more dangerous. The culminating Feux
d’artifice, with its final echo of the Marseillaise
sizzled brilliantly.
All in all, a
wonderful concert from beginning to end.
-Harris Goldsmith
for New York
Concert Review; New York, NY
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