*****A gifted young pianist makes a superb debut in Schumann

SCHUMANN Kinderszenen. Fantasy in C. SIBELIUS 10 Pieces, op. 24 (excerpts). Impromptu, op. 5/5  David Munk-Nielsen (pn)  OUR RECORDINGS 8.226938 (65:30)

For an aspiring pianist to arrive on the scene playing two masterpieces by Schumann breaks the mold of the calling-card debut program, which typically grows from a kind of “I can play anything” bravado. The young Danish pianist David Munk-Nielsen could have leaned in that direction. Born in Copenhagen in 1998, he made a startling precocious appearance on Danish TV playing a Chopin waltz at age six, and his virtuosity is attested to by recitals that include Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Ligeti. By comparison, Kinderszenen practically speaks in an undertone, and the Fantasy in C challenges the most mature interpreters. If Munk-Nielsen can send a strong signal here, he will attract some elite, advanced attention.
Happily, I think the results prove that he deserves major attention. Famously Tom Hanks says in A League of Their Own that there is no crying in baseball, and there is no trying in Schumann. To convey the impression of immediate inspiration and spontaneous expression in his piano music, a pianist must be naturally attuned. No amount of competition-winner striving substitutes for that. Munk-Nielsen has his share of competition awards and has pursued extended study at the conservatory in Aarhus, the Sibelius Academy, and the Royal Danish Academy after an interval spent in Berlin. But as a foundation for all this education, he has a gift for Schumann’s idiom that cannot be taught.
Kinderszenen is an imaginative retrospection of childhood, while the Fantasy in C is an imaginative monument to Beethoven, which places the two works in strong opposition. What matters, as with all of Schumann, is his ability to transform a rhapsodic impulse into something more lasting, structural, and coherent. His two exact contemporaries, Chopin and Liszt, carved out less ambitious territory. Chopin mastered form by restricting it to miniatures for the most part and using tradition only when it suited him. Liszt relied on rhapsody as a virtue in its own right elaborated with virtuosic abandon.
In the lyrical episodes that constitute Kinderszenen, each movement unfolds as Schumann’s spirit moved him. A singular virtue of Munk-Nielsen’s reading is that he doesn’t take childhood as an excuse for unabated naivete. There is strength and élan in many episodes, and his overall impulse is urgent. He never makes the suite sound monochromatic or one-dimensional, his eye constantly fixed on variety. The unaffected singing line he creates in “Träumerei” refreshes the thrice-familiar melody. Every movement rests upon a confident presence that doesn’t need to be overstated to have its musical effect.
“Fantasy” was a term Schumann used liberally but Beethoven only once, for the Choral Fantasy. This implies a contrary difference between their temperaments. Yet the first movement of the Fantasy builds a unifying bridge. It stands apart because it requires long-range vision to keep it from sounding formless in addition to assured phrasing on a Beethovenian scale. Munk-Nielsen shows great assurance in attacking the project, launching the movement heroically but with close attention to Schumann’s lyrical counterforce that pulls the music towards song. Musical instinct always counts, but never more so than in the Fantasy, where the pianist bears the responsibility for building the structure moment by moment.
Munk-Nielsen is remarkably convincing at this, and the sweep of his first movement is irresistible. He places himself on a rarefied level of interpreters, and some famous names would be envious. The two other movements only reinforce the completeness of his command. A special sense of exuberant joy runs through his playing in the second movement where others rely on rhetoric and force. The extroverted nature of the music still allows him to deliver supple phrasing. The dream-like mood of the third movement can lead to vagueness, but Munk-Nielsen’s firm control of the moving line reminded me of the Adagio cantabile of the “Pathétique” Sonata, one last nod to Beethoven.
In between the two major works we get four short piano pieces by Sibelius, three taken from his 10 Pieces, op. 24 (an Impromptu, Nocturne, and Romance) along with the Impromptu No. 5 from Six Impromptus, op. 5. Sibelius wrote a considerable amount of solo piano music throughout his life, all of it more or less ignored outside Finland. This is a major oversight to judge by Munk-Neilsen’s selections, all immediately appealing and stylistically poised between Grieg and Rachmaninoff; the breathlessly exciting Impromptu from op. 5 awakens a taste to hear the entire set.
This superb debut inspires hope that Munk-Nielsen achieves wider appreciation and recognition. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he emerges as the most gifted Nordic pianist of his generation. Huntley Dent