Distinguished pianist Hans
Boepple has returned for yet another season with California Summer Music at
the Stevenson School. Last night in Rosen Hall Boepple presided over a
master class featuring three young pianists between the ages of 14 and 19,
who already play with considerable passion and authority.
The first young pianist to
play was Zoe Lu, 14, a 9th grader attending Mission San
Jose High School in Fremont, who has been playing piano for ten years under
the guidance of Olya Katsman. Zoe performed for us the Praeludium from
Bach’s English Suite No. 2 in A Minor. When she had finished, she received
from her peers in the audience a rousing round of applause, whistles and
cheers. Holding her score in his hand, Boepple stepped to the piano, all
smiles and compliments. He praised her finger work, commenting that it was
virtually a note-perfect performance. Addressing the audience, Boepple
reminded us that this work is a transcription, since it was written for the
harpsichord, an instrument that has virtually no capability of dynamic
expression. Also, he pointed out that the original score has only the notes
indicating pitches and rhythms, but no instructions about tempo, dynamics,
expressive nuances or touch.
Boepple asked Zoe how she
approached this work in regard to shaping the phrases. He questioned her
accent on the first note of the piece, asked her to count out loud while
performing the opening phrase, and led her to the discovery of where the
important beats were in the phrase. Instantly, the opening phrase assumed a
different character that seemed more natural and logical. He asked her
whether she understood the term ritornello. She didn’t, so he
explained very kindly the concept of a theme that keeps returning, certainly
a dominant element in this Praeludium. Next they worked on identifying
moments of harmonic tension and how they affected the performance. Another
idea he presented to her was that when approaching a new section that was to
be suddenly much softer, it was not a good idea to broadcast this to the
audience with a diminuendo and retard — this served only to weaken the impact
of the contrasting section.
The next pianist to perform
was Shirley Hu, 17, a junior at Henry M. Gunn High School in Mountain
View, and a piano pupil of Daniel Cheng for the past 10 years. Shirley
performed the first movement of Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata, a fiery and
brilliant performance that earned a storm of applause from her peers.
Boepple said nice things about the energy and drive of her performance, and
launched into his first question, “What is the first theme of this piece?”
After some hesitation she correctly named the motive derived from the slow
opening A major arpeggio. After guiding her to identify precisely where in
this slow arpeggiation the theme actually begin, she responded instantly and
sorted out which notes were more important than the others. When the 16th
notes began later on the first page, Boepple focused her attention to the
harmonic implication of dominant resolving to tonic in the left hand which
caused her to change her accent form the first note of the passage to the
first note of the following measure. Boepple also worked with her on the
second theme to clarify how much or how little pedal should be used. Once
again, her response to new ideas was instantaneous. Concerning pedaling,
they worked together to find ways to pedal or half pedal the recitatives. In
the closing theme occurring at the end of the exposition and the
recapitulation, Boepple pointed out a canon with beautiful imitation that
most pianists are unaware of.
The last pianist of the
evening was Hyun Soo Kim, 19, originally from South Korea, now a
student majoring in piano performance at the University of Delaware, where
he studies with Professor Marie-Christine Delbeau. He blew us away with his
stormy performance of Debussy’s L’Isle joyeuse, and once more the audience
gave him lots of applause and cheers. Boepple complimented him on his
extremely energetic performance and his wonderful technical control. He
reminded Hyun Soo that some of his performance ideas contradicted
instructions by the composer in the score. One of the first questions
Boepple had for Hyun Soo was about the sfz indications. He asked what would
be the difference of a sfz in a quiet passage as compared to a brilliant
forte passage. Hyun Soo immediately tried moderating his explosive sfz
accents, and it was an improvement.
Boepple commented to the
audience that the right hand is the “melody maker” and we all have
difficulties getting the left hand, which is inherently clumsy compared to
the right hand, to play melodies in an interesting manner. Boepple suggested
that we have to be careful not to play absolutely as loud as we possibly
can, because if we are not careful it seems to the audience that they are
being shouted at. Hyun Soo was immediately responsive to all Boepple’s
suggestions.
Boepple was limited to a
half hour for each student, but it was obvious in each case that he was just
getting warmed up and could have gone on for ever. It was also obvious to
the audience that Boepple is as kindly as he is studious and was committed
to the Socratic method of posing questions, one after another to make sure
the student understood as much as possible what they were doing. It was an
“up” experience for us all.
End
