No one has yet matched Sunico’s tour de force

In the Newsweek magazine of March 17, 1997, Yahlin Chuang wrote a piece on four foreign pianists who played Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3, his article appearing under the title “Four Who Dared the Rach 3”. I quote:

Sergei Rachmaninoff said he composed his thunderous Third Piano Concerto for elephants. Playing it is like taking him up on a dare; the Third is recognized as the most technically difficult piece in the standard concerto repertoire. Only the most macho — or foolhardy — pianists need apply.

The recordings from the following masters show off the scope of this grand, unforgiving work.

Vladimir Horowitz:  After hearing Horowitz play this Third Concerto, Rachmaninoff said he’d never play it again, and he never did. Horowitz’s best recording with the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner in 1951, sounds beyond human: powerful, precise, dazzingly quick. Electric energy suffuses the whole piece, even the moments of heartbreak. Don’t expect to breathe.

Van Cliburn: Two days after returning from his career-making victory at the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition, the 24-year old Cliburn recorded the Rach 3 with the Symphony of the Air conducted by Kiril Kondrashin. His reading is pure lyrical turmoil. He allows himself time to locate the piece’s transcendent pain — which most pianists forego in favor of flashiness.

Martha Argerich: Her 1982 recording with the RSO Berlin, conducted by Ricardo Chailly, is in the Horowitz tradition of flawless virtuosity, her inimitable sensuality alternates between tenderness and out-and-out lust.

Sergie Rachmaninoff: What can you say? For almost 20 years after he wrote the Third Concerto, the formidable six-foot-six composer was the only pianist who dared play it in public. Conducted by Eugene Ormandy with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1939, the Rach 3 is so easily tamed by its master that Rachmaninoff’s bravura almost borders on flippancy.

In the foregoing article, Chuang raves about the pianists playing the Rach 3, the most daunting of Rachmaninoff’s four concertos. Chuang should likewise rave about our own Raul Sunico who, in Sept. of 2003, played all four concertos at the CCP main theater in one night without a single score — a feat yet to be duplicated by any other pianist here or abroad!

In his revised and expanded book Art of Piano, David Duval writes about the world’s outstanding pianists from Bach’s time to the present, yet not one of the latter-day pianists has played all four concertos in a single evening, sans score, to equal Sunico’s incredible feat.

The Oxford dictionary defines “tour de force” as “a performance or achievement that has been accomplished with great skill”. In the light of Sunico’s achievement, one might improve on that definition by changing “great skill” to “incomparable skill”. Why? Because it is to be seriously doubted that any other pianist, foreign or Filipino, has played — or will attempt to play — at one sitting, brilliantly at that, and without a score, Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 1 in F Sharp Minor, No. 2 in C Minor, No. 3 in D Minor and No. 4 in G Minor.

In actual performance, after intermission, Sunico deviated from the proper sequence by ending with Rach 3, this being regarded as the peak — “unsurpassed by the composer’s previous works, its themes intensely expressive, the mastery of its structure, in general and in detail, unequalled”.

The Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra under Herminigildo Rañera assisted Sunico.

In my review of the performance, I wrote: “Summing up Sunico’s glorious triumph, it showed a celebrated international pianist who, possessing incredible talent, stamina, power, artistry and technical mastery, dared to play all four concertos of Rachmaninoff because, quite simply, he was fully aware that he could — and yes, with panache!

What was it like listening to Sunico’s unprecedented performance? Several in the audience were literally on the edge of their seats, awed and overwhelmed by the experience. The spontaneous standing ovation was accompanied by applause as thunderous as Sunico’s chords. And the titan kept returning to acknowledge the vastly deserved curtain calls.”