Abundant buzz has preceded French pianist Lise de la Salle, who made her debut Friday evening at the Aspen Music Festival with guest conductor James Conlon and the Aspen Chamber Symphony.
Hearing the 21-year-old European sensation tackle Sergei Prokofiev’s compact Piano Concerto No. 1 in D flat major, Op. 10, it quickly became clear that the build-up was not just hype.
Like most talented young pianists these days, she has technique to burn, handling with flair the tricky rhythms, lightning runs and every other challenge the work threw at her.
But more impressive was everything else about her playing, such as the wonderful exuberance she brought to every phrase and the lovely, nuanced tone she drew from the piano — a quality much in keeping with the French keyboard tradition.
Most striking of all was De la Salle’s innate, seemingly boundless musicality — a rare and precious gift that no amount of training or practice can instill. In short, this young soloist is the real deal.
Notably, both the concerto and the program’s opening work, Benjamin Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10, carry the “Op. 10” designation, a cataloging number that indicates that each came early in the composer’s output.
In fact, both works foreshadow almost everything that would come later in their careers. This is especially true of “Variations,” which was written in 1937, when Britten was around 24. It shows the many faces of this wide-ranging composer and illustrates how he paid heed to the past while always pushing musical boundaries. Although the piece lasts just a half-hour, he packed an enormous amount into its 11 movements, which vary from the gentle, flowing romance to the ghostly chant to the weirdly subverted waltz.
Both stylistically and technically, it is an enormously challenging piece and a risky one to ask this predominantly student orchestra to take on. But, as usual, these young musicians rose to the occasion, delivering a professional-level performance
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Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
