It is not often that a concert audience is left emotionally exhausted, but that is the only honest way to describe what Konstantin Shamray and Daniel Le delivered at Lucas Parklands on Saturday afternoon (Sunday 24th May). Over the course of a program spanning Ravel’s enchanted miniatures and two Rachmaninoff piano concertos, the pair took an audience of piano lovers through something closer to an emotional rollercoaster than a recital, and the standing applause that followed was as much relief as admiration.
These concerts have become a familiar fixture in the Lucas Parklands calendar, and Konstantin and Daniel return there with the ease of artists who know both the room and each other. Daniel describes the experience simply: “Every time I return to Lucas Parklands, it feels like coming home to a generous and welcoming audience.” What the evening made clear, however, is that familiarity here has produced something richer than routine. These are two pianists who have developed a genuine and musically productive understanding, and Saturday’s program was perhaps the fullest expression of that yet.
Ask Daniel how playing in an ensemble differs from solo work and he is characteristically measured in his response. “Ensemble playing, of course, adds an element of shared collaboration, but the preparation is all the same,” he says. “When we play these concerti at LP, the music is nothing short of the highest concert standard and demands the highest level of preparation.” As for whether the intimacy of Lucas Parklands changes his interpretive approach, his answer is telling: “The space is intimate in that the audience surrounds you, and you can see everyone there. But I don’t think we’re overtly thinking about that as much once we really get into the performance.” He compares the experience, simply, to playing at home.
Ravel: Storybook World
The first half opened with two movements from Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Suite), arranged for four hands. Ravel originally wrote this suite in 1908 as a piano-duet gift for children, and the work retains its fairy-tale atmosphere without ever becoming merely pretty. The first movement, “Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant” (Pavane for the Sleeping Beauty), began with a deceptively simple modal melody played at a lento pace, its lines delicate and suspended in the air of the hall. As Konstantin and Daniel began to interweave melody and harmony, the music settled into a slow, processional quality before fading back into near-silence, as though the sleeping princess had drawn the music down with her. It was a restrained and graceful beginning.
The third movement, “Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes,” offered a more animated tableau. Ravel’s story here is an odd and lovely one: a girl made ugly by an enchanted curse finds herself in a land of tiny porcelain pagodas, and eventually regains her form to marry a transformed prince. The music captured this with a pentatonic somewhat bell-like pattern that established a Far Eastern atmosphere, and Konstantin and Daniel divided the figuration and chordal chimes between their different registers to create something genuinely exotic. It was not a dance, so much as a tableau of jewelled figures, and the movement closed with four emphasis chords that felt like the lowering of a curtain over an illuminated diorama. The final quiet note preserved that porcelain, distant quality throughout. A quiet contrast to what was to come.
Rachmaninoff No. 1: Youth on Fire
The Rachmaninoff half of the evening was where the concert’s emotional scale expanded considerably. Daniel took the lead piano for the First Concerto in F-sharp minor, with Konstantin providing the orchestral role at the second instrument. The concerto is less well known than the Second, which is exactly why it rewards hearing. Daniel offered a useful corrective to those who might approach it with preconceptions. “I think a lot of people expect something quite heavy or serious when they see Rachmaninov on a program,” he reflected afterwards. “But this one has a lot of energy and a kind of brightness to it. It actually feels quite fresh and youthful in places, which can be a bit of a surprise. There’s a drive to it that keeps things moving, rather than sitting in that big emotional weight people often associate with him.” He also acknowledged the particular demands the work places on the soloist: “The youthful vibrancy of the piece, which comes across in its quite capricious nature, is the main challenge. It doesn’t exhaust so much emotionally as it does technically, with some of the most difficult passages to execute in Rachmaninov’s concerto repertoire.” On the night, his playing made that observation feel like understatement.
The first movement opened with a bold, brass-like fanfare from Daniel, followed immediately by a flourish of double octaves and chords that owed something to Grieg’s piano concerto in its confidence and energy. The main theme, short and propulsive with sequential patterns and an arch-like shape, drove the music forward, with Konstantin providing lyrical contrast in the quieter passages while Daniel took on the fast scalic and chordal writing with precision and power.
Daniel’s cadenza was the movement’s centrepiece: brilliant, freely expressive, and building to a point of such concentrated physical energy that he appeared at moments to be lifting out of his seat by the force of the playing. As the rapid descending run at the close of the movement arrived, the audience could not restrain itself. Spontaneous applause broke out before the concerto had finished, something that speaks to the persuasive authority of Daniel’s playing.
The second movement, Andante cantabile, provided a marked contrast. A quiet introduction gave way to a long, song-like melody with considerable embellishment and a slow-building intensity. At its most tender, the volume dropped to something close to a whisper, requiring careful coordination between the two pianists. Daniel closed the movement with a gentle rising passage that seemed to lift the entire room, before Konstantin grounded it softly from below. The final note was held until it could no longer be heard, a long and careful decay into silence. The audience sat entirely still. It was the most intimate moment of the evening, and it was sensitively handled by both players.
The third movement, Allegro vivace, concluded the First Concerto with drive and celebration. Konstantin launched the opening fortissimo, and the main theme, propulsive and with a slightly off-kilter energy, pushed the music through extremes of tempo and mood. The lyrical second theme provided warmth and release before the coda drove both pianists to a thunderous close, Daniel executing rapid cascade-like runs from top to bottom of the keyboard before the final triumphant chords brought the house down with a sustained and well-earned ovation.
Rachmaninoff No. 2: The Return
The Second Concerto in C minor needs little by way of introduction. It is, as Konstantin noted, one of the most famous and enduringly popular works in the repertoire, and it carries with it one of classical music’s most remarkable stories of recovery: composed after Rachmaninoff’s creative collapse following the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, and written only after months of hypnotic therapy from Dr. Nikolai Dahl, to whom the concerto is dedicated. It is, in that sense, a work about returning to oneself.
For the Second Concerto, Konstantin moved to the lead piano. He opened the first movement alone, with those famous rolling chords that toll through the hall like church bells, eight measures in F major that set the emotional register for everything that followed. The main theme, broad and Russian in character, arrived with Daniel joining in counterpoint, and the two pianists moved through the movement’s considerable drama with authority and care. The second theme, played pianissimo in stark contrast, produced one of the most tender moments of the piece: Daniel carrying the middle register while Shamray played delicate high-register shimmering runs and arpeggios above him, like the gleam of raindrops on glass. Being close to both instruments in the intimate space of Lucas Parklands, the vibration of the pianos was felt through the floor and the air itself, a physical dimension to the music that a larger concert hall rarely provides. At the close of the first movement, an audible quiet exhalation moved through the audience.
The second movement, Adagio sostenuto, is the one that gave the world the melody later adapted as “All by Myself,” and it was also the movement whose portions formed the haunting motif in David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter. It was played here with the sustained care that the music demands. Daniel opened with a soft, veiled accompaniment before Konstantin took the opening theme, expressive and wistful. When Daniel entered with the long-breathed nocturne-like melody, accompanied by Konstantin’s delicate rising arpeggios, the interplay between the two pianists had a gentleness that felt entirely mutual. Konstantin’s cadenza section was notable for its restraint: a long, soft trill played pianissimo, gradually fading as if the sound were dissolving into the room, followed by delicate upward runs in the high register that sparkled briefly before the return of the opening theme. The movement ended morendo, dying away until the piano ceased to resonate. By this point it was clear that the audience had been on a significant emotional journey, and there was still a third movement to come.
The finale, Allegro scherzando, brought both pianists back into energised partnership for the drive toward the concerto’s C major resolution. The second theme of this movement, the melody that became the basis for Frank Sinatra’s “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” was passed between the two pianos with an unhurried, swooping lyricism before the development section grew stormy and turbulent.
The coda was breathless and relentless, and when Konstantin brought down the final cascading run from the top to the bottom of the keyboard into the closing C major chords, the authority of his command of the instrument was unambiguous. The audience’s applause was loud, sustained, and thoroughly deserved.
Observation: Two Pianists, Two Approaches
Sitting close enough to face the pianos throughout the Rachmaninoff works, the contrast in physical approach between the two pianists was striking and worth noting. In the First Concerto, Daniel projected his energy outward with visible force, at points appearing almost lifted from the instrument by the weight of his playing. In the Second, Konstantin was often seated and still, eyes closed, the sound seeming to emerge from within rather than be driven into the keys: a more contained and absorbed physical presence. Both approaches carried complete conviction. The difference lay not in volume or bravura, but in touch and interpretive temperament, the way each pianist landed on a note, shaped a phrase, and projected an artistic personality that could be forceful, tender, or both at once. Their mutual respect was evident throughout, but so was the distinction.
Encore: Into the Underworld
As if the audience had not been worked sufficiently, Konstantin returned for an encore. He sat at the piano and, without preamble, launched into Chopin’s Prelude in B-flat minor, Op. 28, No. 16, nicknamed “Hades” and widely regarded as one of the most technically demanding of the entire set of preludes. It opens with six heavily accented hammer-blow chords before the right hand releases a relentless torrent of sixteenth notes that does not stop for essentially the entire duration of the piece, played at Presto con fuoco and requiring stamina, control, and a ferocity of touch that most pianists prefer to contemplate rather than perform. Shamray executed it with brilliant and slightly terrifying precision. The applause was immediate. It was noteable that the audience took a few moments to gather themselves before leaving the auditorium. Daniel had expressed a simple hope when asked afterwards: “I hope it brings the same world-class standard that LP offers its community, and I’m just glad to be part of that.” On the evidence of Saturday afternoon, that standard was more than met.
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