Yurina Tetsu Plays Beethoven

[Todd]

Even at cycle #13x, I can be modestly quasi-surprised at cycle presentation.  Yurina Tetsu's cycle, recorded between 2019 and 2022, using both Steinways and Boesendorfers, comes packed in two five-disc multi-DVD packs, though the optical discs contained therein are mere redbook circles.  Only one or two other CD sets in my collection have come packaged in DVD cases.  For some reason, the limited English language info proudly states that the recordings were made using DSD tech, but when converting to CD, any theoretical benefits – which means no actual benefits – would be lost.  Notes are voluminous, but in Japanese only, some score excerpts aside, so I've no idea of their written content.  Too, the set includes themed collections of discs using the following descriptors: Passion; Longing; Seeking Construction (?); Sorrow; Spirit; Beyond the Song; Whereto (Opp 31 & 110, so, again, ?); and Fantasy. 

As to Ms Tetsu, detailed English language biographical information is limited, but amateur google-fu indicates that she earned her Doctor in Music from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2021.  She lectures at the Toho Gakuen Graduate School, and lists five Japanese piano awards to her credit.  In addition, she performed for the Empress of Japan in 2015, for people who see such anachronistic titles as significant.  In short, the Empress nonsense aside, she's got proper credentials, for people concerned with such matters. 

The cycle is presented in jumbled order, and I am far too lazy to jump around, so I listened in presented order.  The first disc, the Passion disc, includes four sonatas, starting with Op 57.  So, like, um, recorded sound quality is off on this one.  First, one must crank the volume to get a decent sense of scale.  Second, high frequencies are rolled off.  It's not that the upper registers sound dark so much as it sound like something happened with the microphones, or at the mixing desk, or perhaps room treatment was used to remove high frequency energy.  Perhaps the fact that a Steinway B was used can account for the tonal difference, though I've heard people like Joseph Moog and Benjamin Grosvenor play on a B in person and have no such problems.  Or just maybe, the tiny Mitsake Sayaka Salon where the live recording was made just sucks and post-production knob twiddling couldn't save it. That's a pity because Ms Tetsu displays some chops, with fire, drive, and so forth in amply entertaining amounts throughout the Allegro assai.  A couple times, she builds up to a nice forte and then just lets the bottom drop out in terms of volume.  While not a superheavyweight, she also brings enough heat.  The Andante con moto sounds gentler, with distinctive variations, and then the final movement is energy and movement and excitement.  At the end, Ms Tetsu receives comparatively robust applause from the tiny assembled audience.  Op 26 follows, and after necessarily adjusting for the medium sized piano crammed in a tiny space, one enjoys the nicely varied opening theme and variations and a swift, energetic Scherzo.  The Funeral March lacks heft and scale due to piano and recording, but it sound punchy and feisty, and the concluding Allegro has real pep.  Op 2/1 follows, and though it sounds scaled-down throughout, it sounds tense and punchy start to finish, with a strikingly quick and taut third movement.  Op 54 closes things out, and Tetsu goes for a lovely first theme in the opening movement and a super-punchy, super-quick, almost jittery second theme.  The second movement makes the second theme seem slow, and just sort of rushes forward like a quick stream through a feeble thicket of branches.  Nice.  So, sound quality aside, a nice enough opener. 

Longing starts with disc two, and kicks off with Op 101, played on a Boesendorfer D275 and recorded under studio conditions in a concert hall.  As such, there is more space, more resonance, more scale.  As to the sonata, well the first movement is resolutely untranscendental, direct, so clean with so little sustain, that it's bracing directness more than kind of works.  Tetsu throws in some mini-repeated, increasing volume chords hinting at Op 110, and then moves on to a striking, spicy march, taking advantage of the piano's weight nicely.  In the third movement, Tetsu marries tenseness and at least quasitranscendentalness, while the last movement takes on a sort of constrained flight of fancy feel, keeping everything proper, yet feeling light and carefree, and the fugal writing is delivered with nice clarity.  Op 28 follows, and Ms Tetsu proves herself to be no shrinking violet.  Yes, she does play with no little attractiveness in some passages, but given the instrument and her taut playing, the opening movement does not fall on the lilting end of the spectrum, though it is far from the hardest hitting.  Tetsu slows up in the Adagio, adding a sense of drama, perhaps even mystery, to the outer sections, while the middle section contains perhaps some hints of (polite) mischief.  The Scherzo sounds a bit clompy, in a good way, in the outer sections, and zippy in the trio.  The Rondo bops along for the most part, though Tetsu growls some in the middle section climax and rips through the coda, though most tastefully.  The disc closes out with the second sonata, and Tetsu keeps it light, bright, and perky throughout the Allegro vivace.  The Largo never lets up on the tension, though it never sounds rushed, the Scherzo has spunk, and the Rondo mixes punchy weight and lovely, truly smooth grazioso playing. 

The third disc opens with the last longing work, Op 90, and here Tetsu deploys the piano expertly, delivering some weighty forte chords anchored by beefy lower registers as well as some tart but smooth upper register playing.  The feel is one of rarified desolation punctuated by polite bursts of anger.  Seriously, them upper registers sting in a few places.  The second movement flows quite nicely, with some storminess where needed, hinting that perhaps Ms Tetsu might be able to deliver some nice Schubert.

The next artistic grouping, Seeking Construction, retains the Boesendorfer but switches to a community center as the venue.  The first sonata in this group is the Waldstein.  The more resonant venue creates a larger sense of scale, which, alas means that the opening the Allegro con brio ain't no pianissimo, but rather something more like mp.  The pace feels somewhat slow, almost lumbering, though it's not quite there.  Tetsu displays admirable and subtle flexibility, but when the volume here ramps up, the sound becomes more blurred, partly from room, partly from pedal.  The Introduzione sounds kind of plain, kind of bland, but then the opening of the Rondo has hints of lyrical magic and Tetsu gradually builds up to some gliding forte playing pulsating with energy.  She plays mostly a high energy take right through to the end.  Op 22 rounds out the disc, and Tetsu goes with gusto to open, though the resonant sound, while allowing for nice dynamics, kind of muffles things.  Then, unlike all that has come before this point, Tetsu slows way, way down in the Adagio.  It's not the slowest out there, and the contrast is more notable given her general briskness.  How expressive it is may vary by listener, but there's a serenity to the playing, and meditative quality that works nicely.   The outer sections of the Menuetto are swift and so light, while the trio has a bit of growly fire to it, making for a nice contrast to the slow movement.  The Rondo is likewise quick and light, with some of the right hand playing taking on a bright and shimmering sound, with the middle section having some real drive. 

Disc four keeps with the grouping and moves on to Op 2/3.  The Allegro con brio meets the designation fully, though the bottom heavy, resonant sound threatens to make it sound too thick.  The threat never fully realizes, and Tetsu cruises along until the Adagio, where she plays slow and ridiculously steady.  It's almost metronomic, though a hypnotic effect is established, and when she punches out the tolling forte lower register notes, keeping the same pace throughout, the effect is magnified.  The Scherzo has ample punch and zip, with even more zip tossed in the middle section, and the Allegro assai closer glides along with a sense of ease and often lightness.  Op 10/2 closes out the thematic grouping, and kicks off with a conventional, if slightly beefy Allegro, which has as its most distinct interpretive device some purposely blurred passages.  Interpretive interventionism arrives in the very slow, drawn out Menuetto, which veers close to the static in places, but then it ends with a repeatful (yay!) Presto possessed of energy and drive and pep and fun.  Op 81/a closes out the disc, but it starts off the Sorrow grouping.  It is also played on a Steinway D, and recorded in LLC Hall, it sounds more or less like most other contemporary piano recordings.  The opening movement has all the notes in the right places, with the correct emphases, and so forth, but it lacks in feeling, something improved on some but not enough in the second movement.  The final movement has plenty of energy and drive, but it sounds a bit expressively constrained.  Not bad, but not great, either.

The final disc of the first volume finishes off the Sorrow grouping and launches with Op 13.  The oversized lower registers to open make me wonder if some post-production tomfoolery was used, and if so, that's just fine.  It makes for a dramatic opening, which is then contrasted with the somewhat soft, though still taut Allegro.  Whether it is vigorous enough, only the listener can judge, and I adjudge it to be in this context.  Thus, it is so.  The Adagio definitely delivers on the cantabile designation, and parts are slow, but other parts are, if not speedy, then at least not really slow.  The Rondo flows nicely, but it could use a tad more oomph.  How Op 10/1 falls into the Sorrow category I know not, especially given the extra-zippy, kinda fiery opening ascending arpeggios that launch the Allegro.  None of the rest of the movement displays anything other than taut energy or lovely melodic playing.  The Adagio alternates gentle, slow playing and feistier fast playing into an appealing musical blob, and the Prestissimo has enough energy to satisfy.  But again, sorrow?  The volume ends with Op 7, which is something of a head-scratcher for this category.  The opening Allegro ain't no Allegro, it's a twitchy, dynamically compressed Prestissimo, with Testu jumping around in a manner that makes one wonder if she took too much good allergy medicine.  To be clear, this is not a critique, just an observation that this is about verve and drive and little else.  The Largo starts off suitably slow, but beneath the surface one senses that Tetsu's just itching to up the tempo ante, which she does.  The alternating slow and much faster than normal sections add some drama.  The Scherzo is mostly just light energy with some bite in the trio, while the Rondo cruises along, light, lyrical, and compact-ish of scale. 

The second volume starts off with a single disc entitled Spirit, which includes Opp 106 and 49, in that order.  It's a Steinway D joint.  Tetsu's 106 is of the long, slow variety, starting with a 12'22" Allegro, and it includes a 20'+ Adagio.  It's nearly fifty minutes in length.  There are some slow readings out there that work well, but they are either monumentally scaled or display oodles o' late LvB transcendentalism to make the time fly by, or something like it.  Tetsu's take doesn't really offer either.  The Allegro can be said to be quasi-orchestral, but her playing evokes a small chamber orchestra rather than the great Berliner band.  Clarity is decent, dynamics are decent, etc, but that's as far as it goes.  The Scherzo continues in the same manner, and the Adagio more or less just sounds slow, with little in the way of feeling or desolation or anything other than hitting the notes.  The finale comes to life in comparative terms.  While still lengthy at 13'47", Tetsu plays with some verve in places, and the slow neo-baroque passage is quite fine.  Overall, it's just not a contender.  The two Op 49 sonatas, on the other hand, are both light, early, almost Mozartian delights as played here.  Nice.

Disc seven finishes off the Spirit grouping with 10/3, and here Tetsu sounds kinda beefy down low, but otherwise delivers a mostly straightforward reading, with only a few passages of notable tempo alterations.  Tetsu then goes the slow, somber route in the Largo.  It sounds more cooly austere than intensely expressive, but it works nicely, especially with a nicely tense climax.  The Menuetto sounds lovely, with some purposeful halting playing, and an energetic trio, while the Rondo bops along nicely.  The Beyond the Song group then begins, using a Boesendorfer, and it kicks off with the Op 14 ditties.  #1 ain't no dainty little thing, as Tetsu plays with no little zippiness in the Allegro, while the piano adds some spice.  The Allegretto is tuneful and light, but Tetsu returns to the quick and punchy to close in the Rondo.  It kinda sounds like adrenalized Haydn.  That's no bad thing.  Op 14/2 more or less follows a similar path, though the tempi are slightly less pressed.  Op 109 closes out the disc, and Tetsu starts off quite gently and beautifully, gradually builds up steam and weight until the playing is fast and tense.  While not the last word in transcendent playing, the playing definitely adopts a late LvB style and not a medium period one.  The Prestissimo has a bit of bite and growl due to the piano, and Tetsu keeps things tight.  The opening theme and first variation of the final movement display something bordering on transcendent playing, while the second and third variation speed things up, before returning to a slow but slightly swifter than normal fourth variation that sounds less transcendent and more songful.  (Hey, that hints at the title of the grouping.)  Things ratchet up in intensity in the fifth and sixth variations, and then ease back to a suitably becalmed sound and sense in the coda.  All told, it's a nice version, though Casey Kasem would never have recognized it as a top forty hit. 

Disc eight kicks off with Op 78, and the dark, rich, slow and sustained opening chord hints at something meaty.  The slow 'n' serious style sticks for a bit, then Tetsu seamlessly switches to more fiery, zippy almost early period playing for the Allegro.  In the loudest playing she holds nothing back, thundering out big ol' juicy chords.  The Allegro vivace is fast and exuberant, with some nice tolling bass notes underpinning some almost jittery playing.  Op 31/1 follows, which kicks off the Whereto group, and here Tetsu starts off in very standard fashion.  Nicely brisk tempi, nice dynamic contrasts, and some grumbly low registers due to piano lead to a nice movement.  Nice.  The Adagio opens slowly, a bit languidly, but quite beautifully, and unfolds gradually until Tetsu ramps up considerably in the second section to play with nearly jittery, quite tense playing.  She then reverts back to the opening style for most of the rest of the movement, and it works nicely indeed.  The Rondo is again conventional, with perhaps a few passages played more slowly than normal, but overall, everything falls into the nice category.  Tetsu skips to 31/3 after, and here she goes for a quick, energetic, unsubtle (in a good way) Allegro, all pop and fun, with occasional left hand rumbles and sharp sforzandi.  The Scherzo offers more of the same, with notably more pep and nice outbursts, while the Menuetto is taut and tuneful in the outer sections and slow and punchy in the trio.  The Presto con fuoco is all fast, energetic, slightly blurred energy. 

Der Sturm launches disc nine, and Tetsu goes slow and quiet then fast 'n' furious in the Largo and Allegro, making for nice contrasts.  Some of the slow passages are drawn out, but otherwise, it's a straightforward take.  The Adagio sounds punchy and taut and slightly quicker than normal, with some at times bracing upper registers, and the Allegretto ratchets up the tension to close out things nicely.  Op 110 closes out the group, and here the overall contrast if one listens straight through the disc catches the ear.  Tetsu plays slightly quick overall, but the music displays some nifty cantabile playing and a blend of middle period drive and late period transcendence.  The Allegro molto, though, is all speed and potency, right until the slow, distended coda, in something of an about-face.  The final movement starts solemnly, slowly, seriously, with the first Arioso almost sounding like the 111 Arietta in style.  She builds tension up for a while before switching to an austere, borderline hard fugue.  The second arioso is a little plainer than the first one, but the repeated chords start strong and build to biting before transitioning to an inverted fugue that sound positively ethereal to open.  Tetsu cranks up the tension in short order and then pushes through the coda with forceful if slightly clouded playing.  The final grouping of Fantasy then launches with the first of the quasi una fantasia.  The first theme sounds suitably tuneful, the second more robust, the return to the first the same as the opening, but man the third theme, it boxes the listener's ears.  The Allegro molto e vivace has energy bordering on the aggressive at times, with extra-punchy lower registers.  Nice.  The Adagio slows things down, of course, but one anticipates and receives a little sumpin' sumpin' in the final movement, which is delivered.  It's all energy and forward drive right through to the end, with a little audible room noise not edited out.  Better to keep it in and get the verve.  Der Mondschein naturally follows, and Tetsu offers up a somber, steady, slow Adagio sostenuto, which has just the right mood.  A taut, bright Allegretto follows, and the Presto agitato is suitably energetic and has nice, rumbly bass.  It's not as comparatively good as the first of the opus number sonatas, but it's perfectly fine.  Op 79 follows.  The Presto alla tedesca has nice pep, a comparatively understated cuckoo motif, and a nicely characterized acciaccatura.  The Andante sounds strikingly gentle, and the Vivace starts gently, adds some pep, and then alternates styles effectively.  Op 111 ends the cycle, and Tetsu punches the music out in terse, quick fashion in the Maestoso.  Scale and ominousness may go missing, but energy and tension do not.  Tetsu plays some passages with extra zippy speed and then slows way down for a nice contrast in style and mood, though the whole thing has an early/mid period feel.  The Arietta starts off in elevated style and becomes more so in the second half.  Serenity dissipates in the comparatively taut first two variations, which border on the downright angsty.  The third variation is swift, and almost sounds jitterbuggy, so frenetic is the pacing.  Tetsu then backs off in the fourth variation, and she backs off even further in slow, austere, suspended in time "little stars" playing.  Her sustained, even slowness combines with some nifty independence of hands where one hears two separate pieces of music at once.  The chains of trills sound clean if somewhat plain, as do both of the last two variations.  It's nicely done, it just lacks depth or transcendence, or whatever description one prefers.  It's certainly not a bad take, nor is it a good one.

Yurina Tetsu's is a third tier cycle.  There's nary a total dud, almost everything is very well played, most sonatas are at least good, and one can just sit and listen and chill.  Tetsu often imparts nice levels of zip and pep, and she even throws in a real, real slow movement here and there.  The recorded sound does not allow one to assess her ability to conjure tonal nuance, but it seems fair to write that her ability is very good but not tip top tier.  There are no substantive beefs with the cycle, yet this will likely get one or maybe two more complete spins in my lifetime.