Passion and poetry aplenty from Moye Chen

WHEN pianist Piers Lane heard Moye Chen’s audition tape for the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition he felt the hairs prickling on the back of his neck.

Chinese pianist Moye Chen has released his debut album Four Worlds on Deutsche Grammophon. Picture: Universal Music

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WHEN pianist Piers Lane heard Moye Chen’s audition tape for the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition he felt the hairs prickling on the back of his neck.

Praise doesn’t come much higher than that, and two years later the 33-year-old Beijing-born virtuoso was back in Sydney to promote his debut album Four Worlds on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

The works were all written by three naturalised American virtuoso pianist-composers — the Russian Sergei Rachmaninov, Australian-born Percy Grainger and Ukrainian Vladimir Horowitz.

It’s a varied program of what might be considered salon pieces mixed in with the more weighty fare of Rachmaninov’s second sonata, which was written in 1913 and revised in 1931. Throughout the program Moye demonstrates why his brand of expressive and dynamic pianism has made such an impression on audiences. Here we feel poetry alongside the passion.

Moye Chen's debut album is out now on Deutsche Grammophon.

On the lighter side there are quirky arrangements of folk and show tunes by Grainger and some equally off-kilter pieces by Horowitz, whose original compositions are less well known than his virtuosic arrangements of material from such diverse sources as Bizet’s Carmen and John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever.

The Valse and Danse Excentrique on the disc show the Ukrainian piano virtuoso to have a good way with character pieces. This second work is mirrored by a Grainger work, In Dahomey (Cakewalk Smasher), modelled no doubt on Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk. Moye injects a fine sense of comic timing to these pieces.

It’s an eclectic but entertaining bunch of tracks which, despite some oddities like Grainger’s take on Danny Boy (Londonderry Air) and Gershwin’s Love Walked In, work surprisingly well. These are dovetailed with some of Rachmaninov’s shorter Morceaux pieces.

But it is Moye’s treatment of the sonata — which became a signature work for Horowitz to perform throughout his long concert career — that most impresses. His sense of structure is spot-on and he displays a technique and ear for nuance that makes him seemingly capable of taking on ever more challenging works.

This is an album which leaves one with the feeling that here is a remarkable talent and the prospect of hearing him perform some of the more substantial works in the repertoire is an exciting one.

You can buy Four Worlds at Fish Fine Music for $24.99.