The piano recital I attended was performed by Mike Cheng-Yu Lee on November 17th at 8:30p.m. at Ford-Crawford Hall. Ironically, this piano recital was not actually performed on a piano—or at least it was not performed on a piano as they are built today. Lee was actually performing on an Anton Walter piano which is a type of forte piano modeled after Wolfgang Mozart’s own. This piano was the one which he performed his Viennese piano concertos on. The pieces that Mike Cheng-Yu Lee performed were various piano sonatas written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). The specific pieces were as follows: Sonata in D Major, K.311; Sonata in C Minor, K.457; and Sonata in B-flat Major, K.333. Each of these pieces had 3 smaller sections which comprised
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The three sections were titled Allegro (“lively”), Andante cantabile (“flowing and songlike”), and Allegretto grazioso (“moderately fast and graceful”). Lee began playing this piece with a much more lighthearted approach compared to the second piece but it did not start off as intense as the opening composition. The melody was played by both hands most of the piece and there were not many chords of multiple notes but more light quick single notes played in quick succession climbing up or down the range of the piano. This first section of the last composition was probably my least favorite, not because it wasn’t played well or with enough emotion, but because I felt as though it did not flow well with the other two compositions in the order they were played. This piece was similar to the first piece in the fact it was more upbeat and cheerful and I was looking forward to something with more depth, something that would more or less complete the circle—going from the superficial happy beginning to the darker more emotional middle. Lee did a very good job of making sure we could hear the melody and he even used his body movements (specifically his head and eye movements) to suggest which notes were the most important ones. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Mike Cheng-Yu Lee’s performance and I thought that the fact that it was performed on a piano modeled after the one Mozart actually used really added to the music, it felt as though I was going back in time and getting to listen to Mozart play it
The three sections were titled Allegro (“lively”), Andante cantabile (“flowing and songlike”), and Allegretto grazioso (“moderately fast and graceful”). Lee began playing this piece with a much more lighthearted approach compared to the second piece but it did not start off as intense as the opening composition. The melody was played by both hands most of the piece and there were not many chords of multiple notes but more light quick single notes played in quick succession climbing up or down the range of the piano. This first section of the last composition was probably my least favorite, not because it wasn’t played well or with enough emotion, but because I felt as though it did not flow well with the other two compositions in the order they were played. This piece was similar to the first piece in the fact it was more upbeat and cheerful and I was looking forward to something with more depth, something that would more or less complete the circle—going from the superficial happy beginning to the darker more emotional middle. Lee did a very good job of making sure we could hear the melody and he even used his body movements (specifically his head and eye movements) to suggest which notes were the most important ones. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Mike Cheng-Yu Lee’s performance and I thought that the fact that it was performed on a piano modeled after the one Mozart actually used really added to the music, it felt as though I was going back in time and getting to listen to Mozart play it