The program was, to my taste, excellent, comprising three Beethoven sonatas and the set of variations, op. 35. The sonatas were the popular Pathétique, Tempest and Waldstein from his early and middle periods. They were very well-performed with clear and distinct textures and a robust dynamic range. Very occasionally I detected a tiny bit of sloppiness in the very fast passages, but that was minor indeed. Excellent program, brilliantly delivered with lots of brio. The enthusiastic audience demanded some encores and he played three. Unlike Sokolov, he plays very encore-like encores. Flashy, insubstantial pieces with a lot of fingerwork and no, I didn't know any of them. I can only reliably identify guitar encores as that was my instrument as a performer.
One wonders why Sokolov played six, but Kissin only three encores? The audience seemed equally thrilled with both artists. I think that it is partly the character of the encores. Sokolov's feel like an extension of the program as they are always substantial pieces in their own right, even the shorter ones by Rameau. But with Kissin, they are very much the equivalent of a musical dessert and not to be lingered over too much. Also, his second encore was, in my view, poorly chosen: it was much too long for what it was and grew tiresome.
Seeing three great artists in the course of a week is quite an education in the current state of pianism. I wish I could stick around and hear the delightful Khatia Buniatishvili on the 21st, but I do have to get back to my other life. She will be playing a rather Lisztian program of his transcriptions of Schubert lieder, then Mazeppa and a Hungarian Rhapsody and ending with Stravinsky, Three Movements from Petrushka.
The Salzburg Festival is indeed a feast. I have focussed on orchestral and piano concerts, but there is a rich variety. Tonight, for example, the artistic director of the festival, Markus Hinterhäuser, accompanies baritone Matthias Goerne in a staged performance of Winterreise by Schubert.
It makes me feel old, ha: I remember Kissin's BMG Chopin recital CDs in the early 90s. How exciting it was to receive such wonderful music so inexpensively!
ReplyDeleteI think we are all getting older. I can remember when Stockhausen was described as an enfant terrible!
ReplyDeleteAre you going to hear the Goerne/Hinterhäusen recital? I saw that Goerne has announced his retirement... in 2024.
ReplyDeleteKissin performed the two sonatas, the nos 8 and 17, at Verbier on July 24, but I didn't hear it live and in the recorded version there aren't any encores, alas.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Marc, for your untiring researches. I would certainly have liked to have heard their Winterreise, but I didn't have a ticket and I was rather tired out from the castle excursion. There are so many fantastic musical events...
ReplyDeleteHa; the silly Medici.tv people misled me: while only the nos 8 and 17 are in the re-playable video, the entire program was identical to yours at Salzburg (although I have no idea about any encores!). There's a review at Bachtrack by Simon Thompson.
ReplyDeleteI used two different translation programs on the Derek Weber review in Salzburger Nachrichten and neither one of them made the incomprehensible parts any clearer, although it's clear that Weber is talking about Kissin maturing in his apprenticeship with Beethoven from his mastery of Chopin.
Makes sense, can't be trotting out a new program every week.
ReplyDeleteYou know the problem with these reviews--from my point of view at least? They are basically journalism loosely hung on some scaffolding of musical expertise. I'm going to define the difference between a scholarly critique and a journalistic review as follows: scholars use objectively defined technical terms correctly while journalists use subjective and evocative non-technical terms. For example, the Simon Thompson review at Bachtrack (thanks for the link). The headline reads: "Evgeny Kissin's Beethoven coheres in Verbier." Ok, that's nice, I'm glad he didn't think it was incoherent. This seems very informative: "it’s almost as though he has consciously eschewed the showy world of pianistic fireworks, because this Beethoven recital was most remarkable for its inward sense of the music’s working, revealing Kissin the mature poet and the thoughtful architect." But honestly, I have no clear idea of what he is talking about. Could you give me an example of where he is showing his "inward sense of the music's working"? He goes on to say: "Both sonatas’ slow movements had a lovely sense of cantabile with an undercurrent of threat, and both finales spiralled with an inexorable sense of momentum." Ok, nice cantabile, which means he connected and shaped the melodies well, but how do finales "spiral" let alone with an inexorable sense of momentum. To the ordinary reader this might seem illuminating and fascinating, but in reality it is just fluff and nonsense. The Weber review is probably similar which might be why it doesn't translate very clearly.
Mind you, unless I am making a special effort, I might fall into sketchy metaphors when describing a concert!