At last my home town of New York City was represented on Friday morning’s Preliminary Recital when 23-year-old Clayton Stephenson took charge of Haydn’s D major Sonata HobXVI No 37. His perky and ebullient outer movements framed a slow movement that abounded in warmth and gravitas. I only wish he’d been able to include the repeats! Stephenson’s crisp, highly articulated and discreetly pedaled treatment of the faster sections in Hough’s piece contrasted to his generously lyrical phrasing elsewhere throughout his absolutely fabulous rendition. I’ve never heard Guido Agosti’s transcription of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite sound so fresh, incisive and characterfully alive, with luminous soft-chord playing, breathtaking transitions and none of the lumbering thickness one often hears. Even those interminable tremolos and glissandos soared to high heaven. Stephenson eased his way into the introductory bars of the Godowsky/Strauss Symphonic Metamorphosis on Die Fledermaus, and continued to chart the transcription’s complex course by untangling and clarifying the contrapuntal strands like a master choreographer or puppeteer. Stephenson is not just a remarkable virtuoso, but a poet, a dramatist and a master story-teller.
Perhaps I would have accepted Yangrui Ca
