KATHERINE CHI ON COMING HOME AND BEETHOVEN’S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 4

KATHERINE CHI COMES HOME TO PERFORM BEETHOVEN’S FOURTH PIANO CONCERTO

Concert pianists have something in common with professional hockey players: both jobs demand excellence, emotion, and execution under pressure on a nightly basis, even those nights when you’re not quite your best self. On the other hand, there are nights, like 29 + 30 May at the Jack Singer Concert Hall, when Katherine Chi performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, that get circled in the Google Calendar months ahead, because they are nights unlike any other — a concert pianist’s playoff dates, if you will. That’s because Chi not only grew up in Calgary, but the Jack Singer was also the site of a great professional breakthrough in 2000 when she won the prestigious Honens International Piano Competition.

For Chi, still the only woman to win Honens, that performance truly was a game-changer, professionally and personally. Playing Jack Singer Concert Hall? From Boston, where she lives now, you can almost hear her summon the concert hall in her imagination. “It always brings back memories. And it’s one of the best halls in Canada,” says Chi. “When I did Honens and won it, it was a terrifying time, so hopefully I won’t feel the same way. Maybe I’ll be terrified in a different way, but it won’t be the same kind of terror!”

If the Jack Singer represents a career game-changer for Chi, then Beethoven was a game-changer of classical repertoire — and still is, which is why Chi loves to interpret his work. “He was always the sort of person to compose something to the maximum of his limits, and then, for the next piece, to see how else he could stretch the boundaries,” Chi says. “Every piece was going towards some future trajectory he maybe didn’t even understand,” she adds, “but it was always a force of nature to outdo himself every single time.” That ambition extended to his piano concertos, including No. 4., which Chi will perform in a programme that also includes Beethoven’s fourth symphony, and a new work from composer Jocelyn Morlock that’s inspired by Beethoven. “A lot of pianists think this is one of the more difficult concertos to execute — not physically, but on a kind of psychic level,” Chi says. “There’s an incredibly sublime quality to it, on top of everything else that he composed. Concerto No. 4 is epic — it’s probably one of the greatest written.”

It’s also the latest stage in Chi’s ongoing relationship with the composer’s work, which started when she was a 10-year-old who moved from Calgary to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute of Music. “When you’re 10, you basically are propelled by what you feel and how (well) you’re able to execute it,” she says. “There is this kind of spontaneity, a kind of freshness and innocence which is very appealing.” But, she adds, as you grow older and start looking at composers and pieces over time, you start to comprehend more layers of what the pieces mean and what the composers were going after.

Four decades into the relationship, Chi appreciates the audacity and boldness of Beethoven more than ever. “What we’re always trying to do is to go towards a (musical) truth,” she says. “The more you know, the more you feel, the more (resonant) your experience always becomes.”

The other thing that evolves is a performer’s relationship with the audience. For a concert pianist, the audience members are their witnesses, their nightly jury, and their collaborators, in a way, in the creation of a single performance. “It’s really nice to share the stage with the audience. It’s part of wanting to do this kind of life,” Chi says. In May, with family, friends, and musical colleagues in the house, it promises to be one of those audiences she is more excited than usual to be performing for.

Game-changing composer. Game-changing concert hall. Game-changing artist.

“For some reason, this one feels super important to me,” Chi says, “I can’t wait. Every time I come back to Canada, especially Calgary, it always feels like a reunion. It’s nice to feel like you’re coming back to your roots.”

IT’S REALLY NICE TO SHARE THE STAGE WITH THE AUDIENCE. IT’S PART OF WANTING TO DO THIS KIND OF LIFE.”

BY STEPHEN HUNT