Tuesday, December 9, 2025
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Friday, November 28, 2025
Review: Jan Lisiecki at Spivey Hall — Architecture, Poise, and Imagination
Review: Jan Lisiecki at Spivey Hall — Architecture,
Poise, and Imagination
Spivey Hall, on the campus of Clayton State University in
Morrow, GA, continues to attract some of the world’s leading pianists. This
weekend it presented the remarkable Canadian artist Jan Lisiecki in an
ambitious program of forty-one preludes spanning Messiaen to Górecki and
culminating in the complete Chopin Op. 28.
Full Disclosure
I rarely review concerts by artists I’ve interviewed.
Conversations of real depth create a kind of relationship, especially when the
artist shares personal history and early influences—material that inevitably
shapes how one listens. But in this case, the assignment came first. I accepted
the review weeks before the interview, and when the chance to speak with
Lisiecki arose, it was impossible to turn down. Encounters with artists of this
caliber—and generosity—are not opportunities one declines. To see the
interview, go here: https://youtu.be/_5qq01wpaoQ?si=Ql-PIHQLxk25hXb4;
to read an edited version, go here: https://www.earrelevant.net/2025/11/jan-lisiecki-on-discipline-performance-psychology-and-programming-for-his-spivey-hall-recital/
In conversation he was exceptionally intelligent,
self-aware, and analytically precise. At twenty-nine, he shows a clarity about
his artistic decisions, future directions, and the consequences of each step
that is rare at any age.
Critical Context: What Others Have Said
His current all-prelude recital tour has sparked unusually
varied reactions in major music centers.
In London, reviews ranged widely. The Guardian
admired the sweep and boldness of his playing while questioning the breadth of
his softest dynamics. Others found the recital electrifying, especially the
psychological intensity of the Górecki Preludes and the narrative cohesion of
the Chopin cycle. One reviewer called the evening “stupendous,” emphasizing the
emotional and architectural rigor he brought to the form.
In New York, writing about his Carnegie Hall recital,
critics focused on the ambition of the program—moving through centuries of
musical thought before centering everything on Chopin’s Op. 28. They praised
his clarity of structure, direct phrasing, and the way he gives brief forms
genuine narrative weight.
Even recording critics, responding to his recent Preludes
album, noted the poised lyricism of his Chopin and the arresting intensity of
his Górecki.
With these perspectives in mind, I approached his Spivey
Hall performance with genuine curiosity: how would these intentional,
analytically grounded ideas translate in performance?
The Recital
Lisiecki elected to play the entire program without breaks.
This unusual decision kept his concentration—and ours—undisturbed by applause,
allowing the evening to unfold as a single expressive arc. Tall, slender, and
physically economical, he does not rely on theatrical gesture; his authority
comes from refinement and discipline, not display.
Although Lisiecki’s tour is often described as an
“all-prelude” journey, the first half of the Spivey Hall program was more
intricate—and more surprising—than that shorthand suggests. Rather than
beginning with Bach, as many of his other stops have done, he opened with Chopin:
the familiar Prelude in D-flat Major, Op. 28 No. 15 (“Raindrop”), followed by
another Chopin prelude of entirely different character. Starting the evening
with two emotionally concentrated works immediately set a psychological frame before
the program widened into Messiaen, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Górecki, and
Szymanowski.
The ordering created a fascinating contour: a
Chopin-centered starting point that cast its light backward and sideways
through several centuries of musical language. Instead of progressing
chronologically or grouping pieces by style, Lisiecki arranged the first half
like a rotating prism—Romantic clarity refracted through Messiaen’s luminous
colors, Bach’s crystalline architecture set against Górecki’s stripped-down
volatility, and Szymanowski’s harmonic iridescence providing a dissolving close
before intermission. The effect was not a collection of brief pieces but a
single arc in which each composer’s voice illuminated, unsettled, or reframed
the others.
Before moving deeper into the program, it is helpful to
recall the worlds of two composers central to the evening:
- Karol
Szymanowski (1882–1937) blended late-Romantic color with
impressionistic harmony and Polish folk spirit, producing music that
oscillates between sensuality and modernist edge.
- Henryk
Górecki (1933–2010) emerged from the post-war avant-garde before
turning toward a stark, deeply spiritual simplicity—emotionally direct but
never simplistic.
Chopin → Messiaen → Bach → Rachmaninoff → Górecki →
Szymanowski
Messiaen’s two preludes glowed with delicacy and
transparency. Lisiecki shaped them with remarkable softness, revealing colors
that emerged rather than declared themselves. His Bach—the C-minor Prelude from
WTC I—was clean, luminous, and rhythmically supple, avoiding both rigidity and
sentimentality.
Rachmaninoff’s Op. 23/3 and Op. 23/5 brought the first surge
of weight. Lisiecki tightened tempos, expanded the dynamic range, and delivered
their drama with architectural purpose rather than rhetorical heat. His rapid
runs were so even they nearly shed the percussive identity of the piano.
Szymanowski’s brief preludes shimmered with iridescent
clarity. Where these pieces can blur into chromatic haze, he brought out inner
lines with surprising precision.
The Górecki Preludes: The Emotional Fulcrum
The Górecki Preludes formed the dramatic axis of the
first half. This music, which can collapse into blunt insistence, became in
Lisiecki’s hands a study in controlled volatility. Patterns tightened, surged,
fractured, and dissolved with a sense of emotional rupture that felt purposeful
rather than theatrical. Dynamics grew organically, not as sentimental gestures
but as the natural consequence of internal harmonic tension.
These performances were intense but never angry, stark but
never cold. They made the rest of the first half feel like a long inhalation
and exhalation around a central point of psychological gravity.
Chopin’s Preludes, Op. 28
The second half was devoted entirely to Chopin’s twenty-four
preludes—a mosaic of miniature emotional worlds that can easily fragment
without a strong architectural vision. Lisiecki supplied that vision. His
pacing—one prelude exhaling into the next, or breaking sharply when needed—gave
the cycle narrative inevitability.
Highlights included:
- The
fragile lyricism of No. 4 in E minor
- The
unforced candor of No. 7 in A major
- A
unified, unsentimental reading of the “Raindrop” (No. 15)
- The
crystalline brilliance of No. 16 in B-flat minor
- The
solemn weight of No. 20 in C minor
Some London critics questioned the breadth of his
pianissimo. That critique did not hold here. His softest playing was centered,
supported, and expressive—never tentative. His fortes were structural
destinations, not percussive punctuation.
Conclusion
What impressed me most was the intellectual through-line.
Lisiecki’s thinking—so precise and self-aware in conversation—was fully audible
in performance. Every transition felt intentional, every shift of color
belonged to a larger story, and every climax was earned. In a recital composed
entirely of short forms, he demonstrated that brevity is not a limitation but a
concentrated form of narrative power. This was not merely a recital of
preludes; it was an exploration of the prelude as a way of thinking—about
compression, transformation, volatility, and calm. At twenty-nine, Jan Lisiecki
plays with the insight of a far older musician and the energy of someone still
searching.
And it must be said: this was a peak musical experience,
heightened by the extraordinary acoustics of Spivey Hall. Designed with an
almost uncanny balance of clarity and warmth, the hall proved to be an ideal
partner for Lisiecki’s full dynamic spectrum—from the thunderous surges of
Rachmaninoff and the volatile edges of Górecki to the whispered refinements of
Messiaen and the inward poetry of Chopin. Nothing was blurred or overstated;
every color and articulation spoke with immediacy. In a space where resonance
never masks nuance, Lisiecki’s artistry emerged in its fullest light,
confirming both the excellence of the artist and the hall that framed him.
His performance was met with thunderous applause and
multiple curtain calls—an expression not of polite admiration, but of genuine
excitement for a recital that felt both deeply considered and intensely alive.