REVIEW: Yulianna Avdeeva’s Brilliant Piano Recital of Liszt and Chopin at The Conrad

Ken Herman
San Diego Story

November 22, 2025

After Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva won first prize and the award for best performance of a sonata in the 2010 XVI International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, her international recital career went into high gear. Although it has taken a while, Avdeeva made her debut for the La Jolla Music Society Thursday at The Conrad.

She neatly divided her formidable recital into an opening half devoted to Franz Liszt, five unrelated single works, followed by a second half of Frédéric Chopin, three Mazurkas from his Op. 59 and his Third Piano Sonata. Her performance displayed the striking technical prowess everyone expects of a competition winner, but her interpretation has been seasoned with maturity’s more probing psychological insights.

With the exception of Liszt’s tone poem “St. Francis Walking on the Waves,” S. 175, Avdeeva’s Liszt selections came from the last decade of the composer’s life, works that clearly indicate his desire to break free of the harmonic and structural conventions of the late Romantic period. In fact, his “Bagatelle without Tonality,” S. 216a, uncannily suggests Arnold Schoenberg’s revolutionary harmonic style that emerged in Vienna in the first decade of the 20th century. This “Bagatelle” is not strictly atonal in the sense that Schoenberg developed, but its constantly shifting tonal centers under its driving chromatic themes and scintillating trills seems uncannily prophetic.

The stark two-voice texture of his “The Mournful Gondola No. 2,” S. 200/2, a depiction of a Venetian funeral procession, suggests this solemn scene with an eerie minimalism that Avdeeva outlined with chilling precision. The czardas is a traditional fast Hungarian folk dance, and Liszt’s “Macabre Czardas,” S. 224, is a bravura sinister fantasy version of the dance that only virtuosos dare undertake, and Avdeeva delivered it with apt Bartókian ferocity.

From Liszt’s midlife comes the exuberant tone poem for piano “St. Francis Walking on the Waves,” based on one of the many legendary events in the life of the revered saint. The composer has the left hand rapturously depicting the billowing waves, while the chorale-like right hand represents the steady pace of Saint Francis. Avdeeva offered this compelling depiction with the majestic grandeur of a Baroque altar piece in an imposing cathedral, breathtaking in is sweep and masterful detail.

Avdeeva approached Chopin’s Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58, with the respect most pianists reserve for, say, the late sonatas of Beethoven, which is what this work deserves, of course. Beethoven did not limit his sonata style to Mozart’s style, and Chopin’s idiom is not Beethoven’s. For example, in Chopin’s “Allegro maestoso” opening movement, he does not include both of his main themes in the recapitulation of the sonata allegro form. But this “fault” does not diminish the movement’s scope and grandeur, which Avdeeva adroitly communicated. She gave the athletic “Scherzo” the feel of a noble processional, and her “Largo” also exhibited an apt solemnity in its contrasting major mode. She subdued the daunting technical demands of the “Finale: Presto non tanto” by balancing its flamboyant panache with its solid structural underpinning.

In addition to the three graceful Mazurkas from Op. 59—A Minor, A-flat major, and F-sharp Minor—Avdeeva also played Chopin’s Waltz, Op. 42, as an encore.

This recital was presented by the La Jolla Music Society at The Conrad on Thursday, November 20, 2025.