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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
August 10, 2025
"The other day I heard Chopin improvise at George Sand's house. It is marvellous to hear Chopin compose in this way: his inspiration is so immediate and complete that he plays without hesitation as if it could not be otherwise. But when it comes to writing it down, and recapturing the original thought in all its details, he spends days of nervous strain and almost terrible despair."
So wrote Karl Filtsch in a letter dated March 8, 1842.
Filtsch was a child prodigy and considered by many to be Chopin's most talented pupil, receiving praise from, inter alia, Liszt, Meyerbeer, Moscheles and Anton Rubinstein. When he wrote those words, he was two months short of his twelfth birthday and was, tragically, to die just two weeks before his fifteenth.
Lest we feel that the words of an eleven-year-old, no matter how talented, carry little weight, we should consider Chopin's own reported verdict on hearing Filtsch play: "My God! What a child! Nobody has ever understood me as this child has...It is not imitation, it is the same sentiment, an instinct that makes him play without thinking as if it could not have been any other way. He plays almost all my compositions without having heard me".
We shall, of course, never know what Chopin might have thought of Kevin Chen's playing of his music, but I believe he would have approved. With a handful of (very) minor exceptions, Chen did indeed play "as if it could not have been any other way".
His recital opened with a selection of the Op.28 Préludes: the delicate, almost enigmatic number seven was simply gorgeous, number eight turbulent, number nine weighty, number ten had some wonderful filigree right hand figurations, number eleven offered genuine solace before the fiery number twelve.
There followed one of Chopin's most popular individual compositions, the A flat Polonaise, Op.53, frequently known as the "Heroic", after a letter from George Sand, in which she declared that "Désormais cette polonaise devrait être un symbole, un symbole héroïque!" ("From now this polonaise should be a symbol, a heroic symbol!")
After a strong opening, Chen played the main theme almost gently, but the intensity built dramatically. The rapidfire left hand octaves in the central section were simply dazzling, while the lead back to the main theme was almost dreamlike. This was not quite like any other performance I've heard, and yet had a genuine sense of the inevitable.
The first half concluded with the complete Op.10 set of Études. The first displayed a wonderfully fluid right hand, the third ("Tristesse") was both nostalgic and consolatory, the fourth barnstorming, the fifth (the "Black Keys" study in which Godowsky found enough to use it as the basis for no fewer than seven of his Studies after Chopin) was taken very fast indeed, if not quite as fast as the legendary Simon Barere. Chen summoned more delectable tone colours to close the ninth and the famous "Revolutionary" twelfth étude was torrential, yet not lacking in subtlety — no mean trick.
After the interval we heard the four Op.41 mazurkas, arguably the most echt of all Chopin and the form to which he returned most often, composing perhaps as many as seventy, although only fifty eight have been published and several appear to have been lost.
Here, as throughout the afternoon, Chen's most natural-sounding rubato (seen by many as the key to great Chopin playing) was well to the fore. I especially admired the dancing third and the dreamy exuberance of the fourth.
The F minor Ballade, Op.52 arguably offered a succession of lovely moments, rather than a coherent sense of narrative, but we can lay at least part of the blame at the feet of the composer, not known for his command of large-scale structures. (I am aware that there is today a revisionist movement claiming that this is a misapprehension: I remain to be convinced.)
Which leads us to the last work on the programme, the Piano Sonata No.3 in B minor, Op.58.
For me this was the least satisfying item on the programme and this is entirely because of my observation above. Chen clearly has no problems with the music and played it superbly, whether the fiery opening, the first movement's delectable second subject, the scintillating scherzo, the exquisite tone colours of the largo or the thundering final coda.
In sum, a tremendous account of music I wish I could be as sympathetic with as I am with Chopin's smaller-scale works.
For an encore we had another dazzling étude: Op.25 No.6. I had hoped for one of the waltzes, thus covering the one remaining Major Chopin Food Group, but that is hardly a complaint.
Kevin Chen is clearly a pianist to be reckoned with and this recital was made all the more extraordinary by the fact that, thanks to Air Canada's cancellation of his originally scheduled flight ("Air Canada: We're not happy until you're not happy") he had not actually arrived at Victoria International until a little over an hour before its scheduled start and performed on a piano which he had not even so much as touched before he walked onto the stage.
I do hope, though, that he can eventually curb one slight tendency, which put me in mind of a story about Josef Hofmann, for Harold Schonberg the greatest pianist of the twentieth century. Towards the end of his life Hofmann had something of a drink problem, to the extent that the second halves of his recitals were rather unreliable affairs. One of his more prominent students was once asked why he played one of the études so fast.
"Because he can't play it any faster" came the reply.
There were a couple of occasions when Chen's playing was so quick as to remind me of this story. And these were probably the only times that I felt that the music could, indeed, have been "otherwise".
When he overcomes this youthful impetuosity, I am convinced that he will become one of the truly great Chopin players.
An outstanding afternoon's music making.
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