Music Review: Haochen Zhang – ‘Beethoven and Liszt’

A concert pianist is almost obligated to engage with certain canonical composers, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt among them. Haochen Zhang has performed and recorded Liszt’s Transcendental Études and all five Beethoven piano concertos. Now the pianist has gone a step further, delivering on a new album two pieces that actually deserve the overused term “iconic”: Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata (officially the Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier) and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.

Beethoven’s Fraught Experimentalism

Pianists always have choices. But in the “Hammerklavier” the options can be starker than most. The interpreter might stress Beethoven’s collage-like experimentalism. Or the pianist will lean into the lyricism that can be found in parts of each movement. Others find a middle way. Some performances stress the formal structure, where it can be found; others seem surprised when, for example, a theme returns.

Zhang’s clarity is impeccable in the first movement. That’s essential since he favors quick tempos. He does stretch them expressively, but without the Romantic effulgence that’s findable in many passages. All in all the performance inclines toward the experimental side.

Zhang’s fast tempo in the Scherzo seems to miss some of the feeling that I have divined in other performances I’ve heard. By contrast, he gives the long slow movement a welcome sense of motion that’s sometimes lost in overly spacious interpretations. The performance here even showed me harmonic matter that I hadn’t taken note of previously. To my ear it has an excellent balance between breath-holding and flow. The bell-like octave passages in the central section and the chordal scales later on are exquisite.

Clarity suffers a bit in the the fastest passages of the devilishly difficult fourth movement. In Beethoven’s time, people considered this sonata literally unplayable. Many of today’s young pianists have such technical mastery that they’re capable of not only playing anything a Beethoven could conceive, but playing it faster than the listening ear can follow. Zhang, who possesses these tools, gives a performance that can tend this way.

(I would like to note here that if the above is a criticism, it’s one I can level at countless performances of countless pieces of piano music. Please, pianists – slow it down just a notch so we can appreciate what the composer has written on the page!)

Liszt’s Confidence

I have witnessed performances and heard recordings of the B minor Sonata where it felt like the piece was a chore for the performer, something to get through, or something to conquer, rather than something to live and enjoy. Haochen’s recording doesn’t show this kind of strain. It even feels playful.

Like the Hammerklavier, Liszt’s sonata gives a pianist opportunities to show off blazing technique. But interestingly, Zhang’s particular skills allow him to find greater depths of feeling in the piece than I’m used to hearing.

Maybe it’s because the B minor Sonata feels like it was written intentionally as a showpiece by a composer conscious of being at the top of his game (not to mention having a rather good life compared to his miserable, audibly challenged predecessor). Perhaps this confident quality in the music helps align Zhang’s technical fireworks with the spirit of the piece?

Whatever the case, he makes the Sonata resonate with me, and it doesn’t always.

Excitement bubbles through the opening section. Zhang gives the quieter passages a singing quality, the dark ones a menacing growl. As the main themes recur in different contexts, the hidden logic of the many harmonic surprises feels almost intelligible.

Gothic chills drive the middle section. Quiet descending scales emerge delicately. Zhang has full command of the emotional palette he needs to make these sections work. When the explosive drama returns, in shivery variations, we’re prepared. And in this rendition the soft coda provides more a touching conclusion than a relief.

All in all Zhang does a brave job of unlocking some of the secrets of Liszt’s grandiloquent sonic fresco. Bravo.

Haochen Zhang: Beethoven and Liszt is available now. And see our interview with the pianist where he talks about this music and more.