St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series
An NZSM Piano Extravaganza, presented by four of Victoria University School of Music’s advanced piano students –
MICHELLE CORVERA
MOZART – Piano Sonata in G Major KV 283 – Mvts II (Andante) and III (Presto)
SALINA FISHER – Moths in the Light (2007)
HAILEY ZHOU
MOZART – Piano Sonata No 17 in B-flat Major KV 570 – Mvt III (Allegretto)
SCHUBERT – Impromptu D 935 Op.142 – Mvt.IV (Allegro scherzando)
JUNWEI CHEN
BEETHOVEN – 6 Variations on “Nel cor piu non mi sento” – Wo0 70
LISZT – Paraphrase de concert sur “Rigoletto” (Giuseppe Verdi)
TAL SHIRI
MOZART – Piano Sonata No, 9 in D Major KV 311 – Mvt.I (Allegro con spirito)
RAVEL – Miroirs No. III – “Une Barque sur L’Ocean”
BRAHMS – Piano Sonata No.1 in C Major Op.1 – Mvt.IV (Allegro con fuoco – Presto non troppo ed agitato)
St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 30th September, 2026
Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen
A stimulating and heart-warming experience – four of the Victoria University School of Music’s most talented and proficient young piano students performing for us in turn, each demonstrating the various aspects of their musicianship in terms of technique, personality, ownership of the work and communication with the audience. What I particularly enjoyed regarding each of these musicians was their individuality – in each case a singularity of response was evident to the different aspects of performance which served each performer in different ways and indicated their strengths, with occasional indications regarding aspects that might benefit from some attention.
We were given no information regarding each performers’ background, and none concerning their status as regards the courses they were pursuing – whether they were mid-stream, close to finishing, or even post-graduate wasn’t made clear, which actually enabled our receptivities to respond directly and unmitigatingly to what we heard. The students did have the opportunity to talk briefly to us before each presentation, but the microphone facility at St.Andrew’s, almost never in my experience producing a clearly-focused result save for a very few cases (they did manage to introduce themselves), wasn’t up to the task in this instance, leaving us having to rely on what each of the pianists did with their actual music-making rather than with their words – which is how it should be, anyway!
In general I though the repertoire chosen was enterprising and (in a couple of cases) even daunting! – however, I recall long ago hearing a brilliant young pianist give a recital in which he dispatched a Schumann work of the utmost difficulty with ease in the more virtuosic passages while having less to say about the work’s poetry and thoughtfulness. In complaining about this to an older and wiser friend, I was told to enjoy the performance as that by a “young artist”, expressing something “unique and precious” for the moment, whatever the insights of succeeding years might bring. It was advice that has stayed with me in my listening to the playing of young musicians to this day…..
The concert was begun by Michelle Corvero with Mozart – the Andante movement from Piano Sonata No. 5 in G major – I thought her phrasing at the outset brought out the liquid flow of the music so beloved by the composer, and observed enough ear-catching dynamic variation to show an awareness of the line’s use of different voices. Now and then there was a slight lumpiness in the phrasing as if the music was made slightly unsure of its characterisation – but the player’s overall mode of “discourse” during the music’s exchanges was nicely observed. She plunged into the Finale’s Presto, bringing out the music’s “Sturm und Drang”aspects with elan, keeping the music’s energies to the fore, and undeterred by the occasional spurious detailing, while working hard at the almost Haydnesque plethora of energies in the music. Mozart’s music is, of course, that which gives the performer nowhere to hide, but the impulsive energies of the playing carried the day. We heard her at her best in the second item, Salina Fisher’s Moths in the Light, bringing into the light an almost surreal piece which contrasted different kinds of delicacies, from the opening’s shimmering figurations, through the darker suggestiveness of the middle section, and then realising the evanescent texturings of the concluding bars – an enchanting evocation in both conception and performance.
Hailey Zhou was the next pianist, one whose remarks regarding the music she was about to play I couldn’t hear at all, but whose playing interested me as soon as she touched the piano. She also began her segment of the programme with Mozart (good to hear student pianists tackling this seemingly straightforward but deceptively difficult repertoire!) – the final Allegretto movement of Piano Sonata No.17 in B-flat K.570. This movement, one of Mozart’s most exploratory, even wayward in places, opened simply and affably, before asserting its more quixotic character with occasional minor-key nudgings and a second-subject group featuring droll chromatic descents that make one wonder where the composer is taking us – all of which was played with a winning combination of great spirit and near-nonchalant ease. Her presentation’s companion piece was one of Schubert’s Impromptus, Op.142 No.4 in F Minor, D.935, also a somewhat characterfully quirky piece, one whose singularities were given a touch of impetuosity in the playing that I instantly responded to. She negotiated the mood-change in the swirling middle section with beautifully-articulated phrasings, barring an occasional touch of “ahead-of-the-notes’ impatience here and there, but the quixotic lead-back figurations that returned us to the main theme were given with real elan – an absorbing performance!
Next was Junwei Chen, whose opening item varied the presentation with some Beethoven, albeit in a somewhat post-Mozartean mood with his Six Variations on “Nel cor piu non mi sento” WoO 70 , the text of a duet from Giovanni Paisiello’s opera La Molinara (The Miller-Woman). The pianist’s seamless-flow legato still managed to exude plenty of character, with his voicings between the hands – a lovely minor-key episode brought a deftly-etched sense of real personality to the music-making, helped by the filigree detail (and I really enjoyed the variation with the decorative left hand!) – it was all playing of considerable charm! His other piece chosen couldn’t have been more different in some aspects, save for a comparable strength of personality. This was Liszt’s famous Rigoletto Paraphrase (after Verdi’s opera), playing which unhesitatingly brought out the music’s multifaceted qualities of characterisation, theatrical atmosphere and technical display, giving each of these a requisite energy, refinement and colour. Both the individual character portraits and the more concerted interactive sequences were beautifully gradated. As was remarked by my aforementioned friend long ago when considering the playing of a brilliant young pianist we both encountered, this was similar piano-playing that joyfully expressed youthful exuberance in keeping with the present, and which will return deeper qualities in times to come – that said, I still registered the refinement of the more reflective section of the music just before the delivery of the tumultuous cadenza-like finish to the work – most impressive!
In some ways the playing of Tal Shiri, the last of the concert’s four pianists, had a similar kind of impact, perhaps even more so than did the Liszt/Verdi piece – the performer’s choice of Brahms’s tumultuous finale to his First Piano Sonata – was obviously chosen to show off the pianist’s athleticism as much as his more musical responses. Having said this we were still gobsmacked by the playing, though I would have preferred to have hear the first movement of the Brahms rather than the last. And this was in the wake of two other pieces, the first being Mozart’s opening movement, Allegro con spirito, of the Piano Sonata in D Major K.311, followed (with far too short a pause in between for me) by Ravel’s astonishing Une Barque sur L’Ocean from his Miroirs – this was quite a programme with those two pieces alone! Perhaps the Mozart movement’s “Allegro con spirito” marking accentuated the sense of “a musician in a hurry”, here, accomplished though the playing was. More seriously, the Ravel piece was disconcertingly upon us before we knew where we were! Having said that, the playing was compelling in its vivid detailing – a storm-tossed oceanic voyage making for a very exciting, in places, hair-raising a voyage. The pianist’s descriptive patterning was sharply-etched throughout, though the variety of touch differentiated between structural (clearly-wrought) and colouristic (fascinatingly varied) – when it came to the ostinato-like patternings gradually leading up to the storm, the effect was satisfyingly visceral and inexorable.
IN all, a remarkable display, reminding me all the more of the exuberances of youth and its special and unique qualities!