PPI Season 2024/2025 Recap

There’s a wonderful word in Dutch that really belongs in the English language (if we could adopt coleslaw and cookie, why not?) – the straightforward, unembellished verb nagenieten. Comprised of two parts, na (after) and genieten (enjoying), it perfectly describes the particular joy of deriving pleasure from something from the perspective of hindsight – much like wearing the leather sandals you bought on vacation on your ordinary walk to the park, or suddenly catching the whiff of your high-school sweetheart’s cologne on a teenager in the grocery store. It’s nostalgic, and fuzzy, and warm. Far more viscerally than highbrow “reminiscing” or narcissistic “reflecting”, nagenieten basks in the warm glow of soaking in delight after the fact. The wonderful one-time encounters that get woven into our beings are well worth recalling, and, in the process of replaying them, we often gain as much joy from remembering as from experiencing the event in the first place. Which is why, dear friends, before setting out on the journey of our 2025/2026 season, we at Portland Piano International want to after-enjoy the amazing season we just emerged from with all of you. 

Back in September, we welcomed Ukranian pianist Tetiana Shafran, who endured an arduous, roundabout journey from Kiev just to spend a few nights with us in the US. The descriptive tagline we matched to her program – “An overwhelmingly positive response” – turned out to be prophetic words: During the intermission of her Sunday concert at Lincoln Hall, she got a text to inform her that her neighborhood in Kiev had just been bombed. Did she waver? Did she bow out? Not even close. With overwhelming grace and poise, a cascade of blonde hair, a shy smile and an amazingly controlled sound, she reminded us that struggle is simply part of life, and that creating beauty from despair has long been a tool for survival. With a program showing off not just incredible physical strength and virtuosity (Scriabin’s “Prelude and Nocturne for the left hand”; Liszt’s “La Campanella”), but also moments of almost unbearable poignancy (Lysenko’s “Elegy” ), Tetiana set us up for a season of Big Feelings – in the best possible way. Listen to her wonderfully vibrant recording of Tschaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Suite on iTunes or Spotify.

When Duo Amal (comprised of individually acclaimed pianists Yaron Kohlberg and Bishara Haroni) arrived in the third week of October, “expanded sonorities; expanded emotions” seemed an equally prophetic descriptive choice: The glorious fall days were expanding into an almost-Indian summer; if the emotions weren’t intensifying around Halloween costumes and pumpkin carving, they certainly were heating up in the wake of vice-presedential debates. Along come two unassuming, salt-of-the-earth-looking fellows with highly entertaining banter and highly impressive pianistic skill to prove that, while less is more, more is so much more! One pianist – magic. Two pianists – magic squared. Equally at home sharing one keyboard (an intentional pretzel of interweaving arms in Schubert’s Fantasy) or connecting across two concert grands nestled together (stage management deftly minding that the stools be rapidly switched to keep things just so!), Duo Amal didn’t just give us rambunctious giddiness (Milhaud’s “Scaramouche”) and soaring passion (Khachaturian “Spartacus”), but also divine moments of synchronycity where past meets present, present meets future. In listening to Shoshtakovich’s Concertino and Rachmaninoff’s Suite no. 1 Op.5 in the second half (catch the first movement on YouTube, or the third movement on their website), Duo Amal certainly convinced me that, true to their name, where there is music, there is hope!

And hope we needed, because the November night of Clayton Stephenson’s Reser appearance … just happened to be election night. Although everyone at the PPI office was in a panicked frenzy about ticket sales, our performer’s ascribed “charisma, metamorphosis and nostalgia” turned out to be so transformative that many members of our loyal crowd decided, after Sunday’s almost sold-out performance, to ditch CNN and head out to Beaverton instead. His playing was electrifying in the being-pushed-further-and-further-back-into-your-seat way; never have I heard Bach/Busoni’s Chaconne in D minor portrayed with such conviction and intention. When Bill and I, sitting in the audience at Lincoln Hall, caught each other’s eyes on one of the many piercing plagal cadences that make this piece so brilliant and so Bach, the backround noise of political drama and pointless scrambling evaporated. We were watching someone truly extraordinary weave metaphorical gold. Clayton further proved himself a veritable pianistic chameleon, not just coolly comfortable in the Baroque and Classical period, but frolicking us into a jazzy transcription of Gershwin’s Summertime,  and the show-stopping pyrotechnics of modernist Lowell Liebermann’s Gargoyles. Add to that the utterly otherworldly election night encore – Bach’s Sheep may safely graze à la Myra Hess – and Clayton Stephenson hands-down bowled us over with his huge, humble grin, his incredible stage presence and his youthful talent that is surely only to expand and intensify in years to come. 

January typically feels like a new pair of shoes, and a new pair of shoes was what I was shopping for on that Thursday morning before concert weekend, when the phone rang and Bill informed me, with the bewilderment of someone reporting a death in the family, that Dénes Várjon, our bringer of “elegance, architecture, rapture” was too sick with the flu to travel from Budapest to Portland. It was Thursday. We had a recital to perform on Sunday. Ideas for possible replacements were a dime a dozen – but practically feasible on such short notice? After 24 hours of calling countless agents on five continents, Bill was probably ready to hire anyone “who was breathing and had a passport” (I quote) … but the music gods sent us Rodolfo Leone. With no disrespect to Mr. Várjon (who is a great friend of ours and who will hopefully play for PPI at his earliest next availabilty): What a blessing in disguise this potential disaster turned out to be! Instantly commanding attention with the opening chord of Schubert’s Impromptu Op. 90 no.1 and establishing even more authoritative presence with Beethoven’s heroic Waldstein sonata (scroll to 13:23 in the YouTube link to hear this specific piece), no one for a second thought “replacement pianist” by the time intermission arrived. Instead, we were all astounded and agape, wordlessly begging the question: Why hasn’t PPI hired this soft-spoken genius before!? With a second half devoted entirely to sometimes under-explored aspects of Chopin (Scherzo no. 2, bold and dramatic; Sonata no. 2, dry-eyed and poignant), Rudolfo Leone proved himself not only a stellar pianist, but also a thoughtful programmist – taking us all on an emotional journey that felt as gratifying as reaching a mountaintop on foot, or glimpsing the ocean for the first time after a long journey: simply sublime. 

“Insistence, delight, a promenade”, read the tag-line for Ilya Yakushev, longtime friend of PPI returning to our stage in March. And what better way to describe our first spring concert of the year – the sun still out after Sunday’s performance, a joyful spring in everyone’s step after an injection of sheer brilliance? Mr. Yakushev played to a packed house (rumor has it that an overly-enthusiastic groupie managed to practically sit on the stage at some point during the second half?) – and proved once and for all that even an overplayed stalwart (let’s face it: Pictures at an Exhibtion gets played an awful lot …) can sound wonderfully fresh when given the right treatment. In pairing his performance with a slideshow of some of the original artworks that inspired Mussorgsky’s work, our friend Ilya (and he really did feel like a friend, engaging with the audience with casual, convivial ease) made us see Mussorsky anew – and I honestly felt goosebumps of appreciation and empathy for the disheveled man with the piercing blue eyes in the portrait of the composer that lingered above the stage after the last notes died away. I would be remiss in not mentioning his first half – Mozart, Beethoven, Prokofiev – all played with polished artistry and heartfelt conviction … but what truly made this performance so memorable was the not one, not two, not three, but four fabulous encores. Clearly, Mr. Yakushev enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed his!

Which brings us to the grande finale and crowning jewel of our season – Angela Hewitt on April 20th, ringing us out with her signature “charm, balance, proportion, ferocity”. Again, dealing us some behind-the-scenes panic (a cancelled flight from Regina, Saskatchewan, a severe cold and bout of laryngitis dangerously imperiling a commitment to All Classical’s Thursdays@Three), this one-night-only performance set the stakes sky high, but with the elegance of the trained dancer that she is, Angela grand jeté’d her way straight out of the doldrums and into our hearts. Granting us the rare opportunity to interview her before the performance (many, if not most, performers insist on solitude in the hours leading up to curtain time), it became instantly clear why she’s been such a force on the musical circuit for such a long time: she is absolutely, staggeringly brilliant, absolutely, staggeringly self-aware and also absolutely, staggeringly kind. A great conversationalist. Able to laugh at herself. Able to admit perceived shortcomings, but turn them into strengths (jokingly mentioning that Brahms wouldn’t have minded that she, with her only-just-10-note-stretch, sometimes omits a bass note or two. “But being a great pianist isn’t only about being loud, you know!”) Her program was utterly traditional (Bach, Haydn, Händel, Brahms, Bach) – and yet, utterly spellbinding. When she played the last chords of Brahms’ “Variations on a theme of Händel”, all 550 members of the audience rose to their feet in complete rapture. And when the final note from her (single) encore – the Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, ebbed away, that same 550 entranced individuals were as quiet as if they were in the presence of God. Which, I think, they were.