Review: Honens Festival goes beyond technical excellence to showcase personality and interpretation

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Every year in non-competition years, the Honens International Piano Competition presents its September festival. Customary to these events is a solo concert by the previous winner of the competition, plus other events that explore the range of things that Honens pianists can do — all to demonstrate the idea of “the complete artist,” the watchword of the competition.

Over the course of any given competition, the emphasis is, naturally, on the ability of the contestants to play, and play to the highest possible standard. But many Honens’ winners and laureates can do much more than just play a Beethoven piano sonata. The display of these different talents lies at the centre of the present festival. The present Honens director, Jon Kimura Parker, is himself a pianist of the highest credentials and is joining the festival as both a pianist and harpsichordist.

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This year’s festival, entitled Echoes and Transformations, is the brainchild of Winston Choi, also a winner of the competition some 20 or so years ago. He also appears as a performer and a composer. In its way, this festival is an experiment in how to retain the support of traditional lovers of piano music but also to bring in a new audience, one with new listening habits and preferences.

The first concert, for example, might have been called classical doomscrolling. Appealing to those for whom listening to music is enjoyable through precision and logic, the first half was devoted entirely to contrapuntal music — to fugue. Quite naturally, the program began with Bach, and with the most severe part of Bach: The Art of Fugue. But by the end of the half, one had touched down on music by Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke, Glenn Gould, and even by Winston Choi himself. No piece was extended in length, just little tastes of musical honey, with honey in the performances, too.

The second half did much the same thing, except this time the framing idea was musical impressionism — not just by Debussy and Ravel, but by Schumann, Toru Takemitsu, Canada’s Alexina Louie and Brian Current and even old virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowsky. Again, this was a collection of vignettes, beautifully performed by Choi, Carter Johnson, and Parker.

The highlight, however, was the new piece, composed and performed by Choi, entitled Concurrents: The Water Remembers. Choi picked a few chords that occur in a number of impressionist water pieces and wove echoes of them into an imaginative remembrance of things past. This was music for those who love the flowing feeling of water music, but also for the cognoscenti, for whom the many allusions to Debussy and Ravel were a delight. Echoes and transformations, as the title of the festival says.

This idea of the past and its transformation also informed Elisabeth Pion’s solo recital the following night.