Classical Review: Virtuosic piano recital by Ilya Shmukler at UMSL

The 2024-2025 STL classical music season began a bit early Saturday night, August 24th, at UMSL’s Touhill Performing Arts Center (TouPAC), with a recital by the young Russian-born pianist Ilya Shmukler, a past visitor to STL in 2022 for the Artist Presentation Society auditions, and now a student of Stanislav Ioudenitch at Park University in Parksville, MO. Curiously, UMSL’s announcements of this concert mentioned the composers’ names, but not the specific works. The program was thus a mystery to be revealed on the night. The four composer names, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Franz Liszt (1811-1886), and Robert Schumann (1810-1856), certainly promised something “old school”.

A screen above the stage showed each selection’s title as the evening proceeded, with no printed program. The opener was J. S. Bach’s Toccata in D Major, BWV 912 (BWV = “Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis”, or ‘Bach works catalog’, FYI), composed originally for harpsichord. Mr. Shmukler judiciously used the pedal and kept a crisp touch to his interpretation. Second was Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 664 (op. posth. 120), a 20-minute work with a gentle start, but that raises the volume and tempo a bit more in the finale. Mr. Shmukler likewise presented the Schubert well, with an appropriate light touch where needed. (Another FYI: the “D” is for Otto Deutsch, the Austrian musicologist who catalogued Schubert’s compositions.)

The third selection, by Liszt, was where the fireworks factor seriously kicked in. This was the movement ‘Funérailles’ (‘Funeral’) from the 10-piece collection “Harmonies poétiques et religieuses” (“Poetic and Religious Harmonies”). This movement starts and ends quietly, but swells in its midst to tremendous fortissimi where one worries for the piano. The music’s historical background helps to explain those fortissimi, namely the aftermath of the unsuccessful Hungarian revolution of 1848-1849 against the Austrian Empire, and particularly the October 1849 executions of Lajos Batthyány, the first prime minister of Hungary, and the Hungarian generals known as the “13 Martyrs of Arad”. Mr. Shmukler aptly used his technique to play not only very quietly, but very loudly when needed, as well as the intermediate gradations.

Intermission followed thereafter, as the Lee Theater lights came up unannounced. This was quite appropriate, as after the Liszt, both artist and audience needed to pause. The second half showcased a single work, the “Études symphoniques” (‘Symphonic Studies’, mash-up-translated on the screen as ‘Symphonic Études’) of Robert Schumann. This nearly half-hour work is effectively a theme and variations that also shows the twin poles of Schumann’s creative personality, his self-described “best friends” Florestan (extrovert) and Eusebius (introvert). Mr. Shmukler’s stage manner and body language seemed to loosen a fair bit here. There were a very few fractional note slips, but nothing of import, as Mr. Shmukler captured the various moods of the work nicely, finishing on the Florestan-side with the ‘Allegro brillante’ finale.

The very happy audience brought him back for several curtain calls, hoping for an encore. They got it, which brought perhaps the evening’s one slight miscalculation, in my own very subjective judgment and very likely a minority opinion of one. That opinion is that if a recital’s last work ends up-tempo and/or up-volume, an encore should do the opposite, to calm things down. Instead, Mr. Shmukler dialed it up to 11 with his encore, the eighth of Liszt’s “Transcendental Études”, ‘Wilde Jagd’ (‘Wild Hunt’), another flashy and über-virtuosic showpiece, which he performed with great dispatch and evident adrenaline reserves.

UMSL’s music department graciously offered this concert gratis to the community, and the crowd numbered ~150. The TouPAC’s Lee Theater has a somewhat dry acoustic, and drapes that ‘framed’ the stage also affected the piano’s sound, but generally to good effect. In this year’s Concours Géza Anda piano competition, Mr. Shmukler won 1st prize. This satisfying program ably showed why.