Chinese-born pianist Zhenni Li graduated from the Juilliard School and jumped out from the pack with several major competition victories. This is her debut album, released on the Steinway & Sons label in 2018, and it demonstrates further promise. Steinway has attempted to re-create recital ideas from the golden age of pianism, and at first glance Mélancholie might seem to fit the pattern with its lightly lyrical theme. But all is not quite as it seems. The program does begin with pieces that might seem to belong to a genteel recital of the 1910s or 1920s, Arthur Vincent Lourié's Préludes fragiles, Op. 1. Louríe was not American or French but Russian (born Naum Izrailevich Luria), and these five movements seem innocently late Romantic at first. Then, when you listen to them more closely, they violate the pattern in all kinds of ways. Sample the second piece, Calme, pas vite, which puts various forms of rhythmic pressure on its simple left-hand figure. They're attractive pieces, not often played, and even better is the way Li gets them to grow into pieces that decidedly would not seem to belong to a recital entitled Mélancholie: the Schumann Piano Sonata No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 11, and Bartók's Two Elegies, Op. 8b. From the Schumann in this context Li extracts an interpretation that puts unusual emphasis on the finale as the whole work seems to gather energy. The Bartók pieces too, one might not classify as melancholy even if they are Elégies. They feature sinuous chromatic lines of the kind Bartók would exploit later in the middle of his career, and they generally feel abstract rather than melancholy. But Li recontextualizes them effectively. It's an impressive program, both accessible and highly original. As for the sound engineering, New York's Steinway Hall is proving itself to be one of the Western Hemisphere's premier venues acoustically.
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