Discovering Musicians: Alexander Malofeev

I often find myself saying that all the great pianists these days are Russians and I just discovered another one, the nineteen year old Alexander Malofeev. Here he is playing the Saint-Saëns. Piano Concerto No 2 in Madrid this past November:

Also, I'm starting to think that Camille Saint-Saëns is actually rather an interesting composer. A while back I found myself listening to his Symphony No. 3, which has a heck of a finale:

Alexandra Dovgan, piano

The very day I arrived in Salzburg there was a very special concert by Alexandra Dovgan (sadly, too early for me to attend). Special for a couple of reasons: one was that Grigory Sokolov, who was playing the next night, endorsed her talents, which I have never heard him do before; and second, she was born in 2007 which makes her twelve years old. Here is the Salzburger Festspiel writeup.

And here is what Sokolov had to say:

‘This is one of those rare occasions. The twelve-year-old pianist Alexandra Dovgan can hardly be called a wonder child, for while this is a wonder, it is not child’s play. What one hears is a performance by a grown up individual and a person. It is a special pleasure for me to commend the art of her remarkable music teacher, Mira Marchenko. Yet there are things that cannot be taught and learned. Alexandra Dovgan’s talent is exceptionally harmonious. Her playing is honest and concentrated. I predict a great future for her…’

Grigory Sokolov

In December of last year she played a Mozart concerto in a regular season concert with the Moscow Philharmonic. Here, have a listen:

Fidel Leal, Piano

Friday night I attended a local piano recital, part of a series titled the Steinway Series, largely because, for much of the year, they have the use of a quite good Steinway grand. The concerts are held in what used to be a nunnery and is now an arts center. The concert was well-attended by permanent residents rather than the transient population that we find at the winter concert series, Pro Musica.

The Steinway Series is organized by a transplanted New Yorker, Frederic Dannen, who does a pretty good job. For this concert he booked a young Cuban pianist named Fidel Leal who is currently a graduate student at the Hayes School of Music in North Carolina. Here is his program:

J. S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B major (WTC Bk I)

Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 7 in B flat major

I. Cervantes: Cuatro Danzas Cubanas

Carlos Fariñas: Dos Sones Sencillos

Ernesto Lecuono: Dos Danzas Cubanas

Encore: Intermezzo by Manuel Ponce

The Bach was very well played in a brisk sort of way. The Prokofiev was excellent, but the last movement was just too fast for the rhythms to be clearly audible--mind you, everyone except Grigory Sokolov makes this mistake. The Cuban music was excellently played, of course.

It is a bit of a puzzlement to me why the musical cultures of Latin America vary so widely. Some nations, like Cuba, Brazil and Argentina are just overflowing with lovely and expressive music. Others, like Peru, Bolivia and, I'm sorry to say, Mexico, just don't seem to have the same gifts. Let me hasten to say that this is not a phenomenon restricted to Latin America. We see the same thing in Europe where the massively unmusical country of Switzerland is wedged in between two of the most musical nations of all, Italy and Austria. Sorry, Switzerland!

The Cuban music was charming, if a bit inconsequential. The only thing about the concert that didn't really work, I think, was the combining the fairly light Cuban pieces, with the more serious Bach and Prokofiev. The most striking and successful performance, certainly from the audience's enthusiastic reaction, was the Prokofiev so I would have put the Bach first, the Cuban music in the middle and the Prokofiev at the end. Incidentally, the program was played without intermission.

The Ponce is a lovely, haunting little piece, the perfect encore, especially in a concert in Mexico. Manuel Ponce, an exceptionally gifted musician who wrote a great deal of music for guitarist Andrés Segovia, was of the first generation of Mexican composers to take the traditions of the local popular music seriously.

What was particularly interesting to me in this concert was the high quality of the performance. Indeed, this is the best piano recital I have heard here in quite a while. The winter concert series, with the exception of a concert by Israeli Ran Dank, seems to get more and more mediocre players every year who pound away as they deliver one dreary and predictable program after another. Yet that is the supposed "professional" series. I would rather listen to young artists like Fidel Leal with solid musicianship.

About the only thing in the program that I found a bit tiresome were the lengthy verbal introductions to the pieces. I suppose they are necessary in these days when most audience members know almost nothing about the music beforehand. But still... A concert where no word is spoken is one that preserves the magic of the musical journey. One with constant verbal commentary does not.

Let's have a listen to that Intermezzo by Ponce. The pianist is Mauricio Nader.

The Danger of Sokolov

I feel I should, as a public service, warn you about the dangers of extended listening to Grigory Sokolov. On Friday I got the new Deutsche Grammophon release of two archival concerto recordings, one from 1995 (Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 at the Proms) and the other 2005 (Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23, K 488 at the Salzburg Festival). I believe that he has, for more than a decade, stopped doing concerto performances. Like Bob Dylan bootlegs, these performances have been floating around on the internet for a while. There are both quite stunning. Mind you, I much prefer his solo performances, but never mind. Also in the package is an hour-long documentary on Sokolov. He refuses to either sit for photo sessions or interviews so the documentary spends most of its time interviewing friends and colleagues. There is some footage from his spectacular win of the Tchaikovsky competition in 1966 when he was sixteen years old. Part of the footage is him tossing off an extremely virtuoso piece by Liszt as if it were nothing. All in all, we do get a sense of Sokolov, known as "Grisha" to everyone that knows him personally, who seems to have been a consummate artist pretty much since he was six years old. What is it with these Russians!

Now we come to the dangers: if you listen to much Sokolov I am afraid that you will find other pianists to be unfulfilling. Last night I attended the first concert in our Pro Musica series with a fine pianist who played Scriabin, Schumann and Liszt. It seemed noisy, unsubtle, muddy and the pieces seemed to have a confused and muddled structure--all of them! Now this might be true, to some extent. My feeling about Schumann is that while his songs are superb, his longer instrumental works tend to not work very well, structurally. Scriabin I have never taken to. And Liszt, while interesting, is often structurally muddled as well. But I have the feeling that I would have enjoyed the concert a lot more were Sokolov playing! Mind you, I think he would have chosen a different program. Another problem was that all three composers seemed to sound rather the same, stylistically.

But the most likely explanation is that I am badly spoiled by listening to Sokolov! Once you get used to the astounding control he has over dynamics and the amazing clarity with which he delivers every texture, other pianists tend to sound ragged and noisy in comparison.

This is a clip of one of the pieces from last night, The Piano Sonata No. 2 by Scriabin played by a different pianist, let me stress.

There doesn't seem to be a clip of Sokolov playing the 2nd Scriabin sonata, but here he is with the 3rd:

I'm not sure if these clips make my point at all, but I don't have time this morning to seek out better ones!

Pianists and Pianos

Some interesting news from Italy about the piano and pianists.

Young Italian pianist Federico Colli gave a highly praised recital in London recently that is available on YouTube. Here is his performance of the Schumann Piano Sonata No. 1:

One interesting thing you might notice is that he is playing, not the usual Steinway piano, but a Fazioli, made in Italy. I think I first heard one of these pianos played on a clip by Maurizio Pollini and I was struck by the brilliance of the sound as opposed to the darker, warmer sound of Steinway or Bösendorfer. We learn from Norman Lebrecht that five of the six finalists in the recent Arthur Rubinstein competition in Israel chose to play Fazioli pianos.

The Fazioli company is located in Sacile, near Venice in north-east Italy. They make a few more than 100 pianos a year. It is a fairly new company, only dating from 1981.

And that's all I have for you this morning. Let's end with a bit more of Colli's recital. Here he is playing the Sonata no. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 "Appassionata"by Beethoven:

Valentina Lisitsa: New Career Paths

The Washington Post has a nice story up about Valentina Lisitsa, the Ukrainian-born pianist resident in North Carolina. Here is her story in a nutshell:

The three-minute video of Rachmaninoff’s Etude Op. 39 No. 6, or “Little Red Riding Hood,” went viral, despite the piece’s relative obscurity. Following its success, Lisitsa posted videos of herself playing Liszt and Tchaikovsky. Her first-past-the-post strategy of flooding YouTube with videos of the repertoire paid off, yielding more than 60 million views and 100,000 YouTube subscribers. Fame ultimately translated into album deals — “Valentina Lisitsa Plays Liszt” is her newest — and a global touring schedule that was scheduled to bring her to the Library of Congress last Thursday, a visit that was canceled because of the government shutdown.

I have posted about Valentina Lisitsa before, here and here. What I notice about her is not so much her marketing strategy, successful though it may be, nor her appearance, despite a remarkably bizarre comment on one of my posts, but her very compelling musicianship. She talks about the hosts of conservatory pianists that come out every year. But what I hear in her playing is how very convincing a musician she is. I am afraid that all too many of those young virtuosi are mere note-spinners with great publicity shots. Valentina Lisitsa is another kind of musician entirely. Here she is playing a waltz by Chopin. Listen to how beautifully every phrase is shaped and to the fluidity of the rhythm:

Valentina Lisitsa

I have just discovered a new pianist, courtesy of Norman Lebrecht in this post. She is apparently the most-viewed pianist on YouTube, even beating out Lang Lang. Well, I can see why. Have a listen to this:

What's great about it? She has loads of technique, but it isn't that. All sorts of pianists have technique. She also has great control over dynamics, phrasing and rhythm. This last is one of the things that really makes a piece work. You have to start with incisive, crisp rhythmic control. But then you have to transcend that! As a great Baroque specialist once said, all notes are created equal, but played unequally--or something like that! What that means is that every note has a purpose and if you understand that purpose, you understand how to play each note. Just listen to the first phrase of the Rachmaninoff above. The tight, tossed-off rhythms of those accompaniment figures set up everything that follows. And listen to how she holds back the tempo at the end of the phrase. So many musicians play phrases without a clear sense of where they are going, in a kind of happy fog. No fog here! This is alert, intelligent, purposeful musicianship. With that in mind, you can bet she is going to play Beethoven well.

Yep. Listen to how the notes are dynamically handled. Not only the beautifully controlled dynamic over the whole first movement, but from each note to the next in the melody, reflecting the harmonic tension. And listen to the minuet: clear, articulated and not too fast! We are inundated with pianists that play everything slightly too fast, that blur details and that mime orgasmic expressions the whole time. Audiences have been falling for this. But once you hear the real thing, a true musician who brings the music to life without making herself the center of attention...well, once you hear that you realize what you have been missing.

Thanks Norman, I'll be following the career of Valentina Lisitsa from now on!