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Red-Hot and Exalted New York
Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall
10/25/2025 -
Alexander Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53
Franz Schubert: Moments musicaux, D. 780: 2. Andantino in A‑flat Major
Lowell Liebermann: Moment Musical (NY Premiere)
Franz Liszt: Années de pèlerinage (Deuxième Année : Italie), S. 161: 7. « Après une lecture du Dante (Fantasia quasi sonata) » – Piano Sonata in B Minor, S. 178
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Adagio in B Minor, K. 540
Jonathan Mamora (Pianist) 
J. Mamora (© Josafat Zemleduch)
“I am a moment illuminating eternity...I am affirmation...I am ecstasy.”
Alexander Scriabin
“My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys, and all my sorrows lay.”
Franz Liszt
Alexander Scriabin’s direction in his Fifth Sonata could partly characterize the piano personality of Jonathan Mamora himself: presto tumultuoso esaltato
In other words, Turbulent, exalted and red‑hot!
Not that this celebrated Indonesian-American turned everything into Scriabin hysteria. He could be gentle, thoughtful, biting, clear. Yet this entire recital gave the grandest picture of a bravura artist.
Mr. Mamora’s name was unfamiliar to me, but the 27‑year‑old has been a justifiable prize‑winner several times (including last night’s sponsor, The Hilton Head International Piano Competition). His choices easily reflect his fiery temperament, with that incredibly difficult Scriabin, and three pieces by Franz Liszt.
Still, when necessary, he could be gentle enough. Two Moments Musicaux (Schubert and Liebermann), and a stark Mozart Adagio which segued into the stark dark opening three notes of the Liszt Sonata.
Mr. Mamora is fearless (as every artist of his caliber must be), but his audacity never rolled over with excess rubati or finger-technical which blurred his meaning.
Still, it took more than chutzpah to actually begin with Scriabin’s electrifying–and almost unmanageable–Fifth Sonata. From the opening crash through languid (the composer’s word) measures to his repeated “mystic” chord, this was echt‑Scriabin. And Mr. Mamora had the guts to keep it incendiary.
He had at times, a feverish intensity, a fastidious command of his instrument. And what seemed like Scriabin’s vision of ecstasy and religious passion.
From this we should have gone directly to Schubert’s melody, but the first half was marred by the pianist’s urge to speak, exclaim and give biographical information twice during that first half.
Doubtless his Hilton Head South Carolina audiences of (I imagine) bog‑dwellers and indentured hirelings needed entertainment between non‑banjo music. But this artist was so powerful in New York, that the words became an unwanted disruption.
Still, the following two “musical moments” made a splendid pairing. The first part of the Schubert A‑Flat Major was more lamentable than I remember. But the following New York premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s own musical moment was a worthy twin.
Mr. Liebermann, in the audience, confessed to the Schubert influence. That was unneeded. The composer’s works have always had a lyrical, highly melodic strain, as did this.
The first Liszt selection was also the first Dante-influenced selection before the Sonata. After the pretty (not prissy) musical moments, Mamora offered an epic, dramatic “Après une lecture du Dante.” Has the pianist read The Divine Comedy? I wouldn’t be surprised. Both Hell and Heaven were highly intense. And miracle of miracle, one could hear every line, every note of the pictures in the measures.
Thankfully, Mr. Mamora eschewed speeches for the second half. But what choice did he have? The Mozart late Adagio is as deep, almost agonizing as anything he ever wrote. And the ending notes in B minor were exactly the same as the opening descents of Liszt’s B MinorSonata.
The work is played frequently in New York. And when pianists pound the hell out of it (which is often), they immediately encourage their audiences to stand up and cheer. Mr. Mamora didn’t hesitate to make this–one of the greatest emotional challenges in all piano music–actually noble. The revolutionary modulations, the chord leaps and fughetta were offered with incision, most difficult of all, clarity.
I think it’s an aesthetic error to speak about music’s “philosophical meaning” so won’t speak about digital metaphysics. Instead, Mr. Mamora, without undue pacing or shading, played a gigantic musical monument with gigantic pianism.
After such monumental wizardry, a lesser young pianist would encore with some Gershwin, some jazz, a Chopin prelude or two. Mr. Mamora played a single Liszt Consolation, like a coda to the Sonata and left the stage.
Obviously, along with his unalloyed virtuosity, Jonathan Mamora is an artist of intrinsic discernment.
Harry Rolnick
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