RECITAL

Carnegie Hall
Daniil Trifonov - Piano

Bach - Fantasy and Fugue for Organ in G Minor, BWV 542 (trans. for piano by Franz Liszt, S. 463)
Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111
Liszt - Transcendental Etudes, S. 139

A sensation before he was 20, Daniil Trifonov has proven that he is more than just a young phenomenon. This program includes works by Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt, about which the Financial Times (London) said, “It was in the Liszt … that he came into his own—a titanic performance, projected with a confidence and relish that masked the music’s ferocious technical challenges beneath a mastery of its tempestuous surges and swings of mood; and without a whiff of exaggeration."

New York Times Review

MUSIC

Two Piano Superstars: One Safe, One Daring

Daniil Trifonov and Yuja Wang Play at Carnegie Hall

DEC. 12, 2014

Even at Carnegie Hall, a coincidence like this is rare. Superstar pianists are usually spaced at decent intervals throughout the season, but this week, in a quirk of the calendar, perhaps today’s two most prominent young pianists — Daniil Trifonov, 23, and Yuja Wang, 27 — gave their annual recitals in the space of three nights.

As it turns out, they share the impetuosity of youth and frankly unfathomable abilities, but that’s about all. Mr. Trifonov is all angles at the keyboard, his neck at times horizontal over the keys, his nose inches from his hands, his wrists arched high, then bent low. Inelegance escapes Ms. Wang, despite a tigerish attack, her body shaping rhythms as keenly as her fingers seek them out. Moreover, these two are taking quite different approaches to building a career.

Take the repertoire. Ms. Wang plays it safe. In her previous recitals, she’s stuck mostly with the pyrotechnic fringes of Romanticism. There was more of that to be heard on Thursday, in a program bookended by a brazen assault on Balakirev’s “Islamey” and three daintily but indistinctly conceived Liszt transcriptions of Schubert songs (“Liebesbotschaft,” “Aufenthalt” and “Der Müller und der Bach”).

Admirably, she’s waiting to tackle pieces that she thinks require more maturity, and her rare foray into the Austro-Germanic heartland here showed why. Delicate voicings and sublime colorations could not hide fussiness of detail and structural uncertainty in Schubert’s A major Sonata (D. 959). But those same qualities, along with her innate ear for rhythm, make her Scriabin so satisfying. In a dreamy progression through six of his works, the Fantasy in B minor (Op. 28) had a giddy, oracular haziness; three preludes, a poised regret; and the Ninth Sonata — the “Black Mass” — an enigmatic brutality.

By contrast, Mr. Trifonov is going all in, with a high-stakes bid for greatness. Both pianists may have played the Liszt Sonata at their Carnegie recital debuts, but for Mr. Trifonov, it was merely a warm-up for Chopin’s 24 Preludes. Tuesday’s recital was still braver, as his program of transformations and transfigurations — filmed by medici.tv and available online — took in Liszt’s transcription of Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (S. 463), Beethoven’s Opus 111 Sonata, and finally Liszt’s “Transcendental Études” (S. 139).

All of them.

Let’s put that in perspective, shall we? “Islamey” is renowned as one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire, one so challenging that Scriabin hurt himself trying to play it. Countless pianists play a few of Liszt’s études in concert, perhaps “Harmonies du Soir” or “Feux Follets.” But the entire set is an hour of grueling double octaves, defiant leaps and punishing runs as one ferociously challenging tone poem leads into another. There is nothing like it.

So Mr. Trifonov’s flabbergasting, exhausting achievement was not merely ambitious for a prodigy. According to Carnegie’s archives, Mr. Trifonov is just the fourth pianist to have dared to play the complete dozen in the main hall. José Iturbi attempted the feat in 1930 — the critic Olin Downes called it “a deed of derring-do” — and the hypervirtuosos Jorge Bolet (1967) and Lazar Berman (1976) both managed it in their primes.

A case of talent gone mad, then? A simple show? Absolutely not; this was technical facility used for higher ends. Sure, Mr. Trifonov might have evoked a more distinct atmosphere for each of the poems, especially in “Paysage,” or even reined in the speed for a more visionary grandeur in “Eroica.” But among all of its octaves and precise, almost anatomical detailing of hooves and muscles, the nearly unplayable “Mazeppa” had a remarkable nobility and a demonic, almost tragic valor. “Ricordanza,” an isolated moment of peace, possessed a quiet radiance, its dappled rolls glowing with the faintest of dwindling light.

Yet perhaps the Beethoven best showed Mr. Trifonov’s true potential. Here was an intellectual task, the kind of thing Ms. Wang sensibly avoids. It’s an extreme work, and Mr. Trifonov gave it an extreme reading, (too) full of ideas, from the rolling thunder and fanfares of the introduction to a daringly unwise, somehow effective immoderacy of tempo relationships. Not for him the analytical revelation of structure — rather a feeling of active discovery, the sense of creating, conjuring Beethoven’s structures on the fly. Imagine what he might achieve in years to come.

After mixed start, Trifonov’s Liszt proves trancendental at Carnegie Hall

December 10, 2014 at 12:15 pm

By Eric C. Simpson

Daniil Trifonov performed a recital Tuesday night at Carnegie Hall. Photo: Dario Acosta

It should come as no surprise that Carnegie Hall was packed on Tuesday for Daniil Trifonov’s solo recital. Just twenty-three years old, the Russian pianist already commands as much star appeal as anyone on the concert scene.

Trifonov’s opening selection, Liszt’s transcription of Bach’s great Fantasia and Fuga for Organ in G minor, was anything but “historically informed.” His touch was elephantine, his rubato unrestrained. The late Christopher Hodgwood would likely have given him a good whack for this.

And that’s fine—this is Liszt-Bach, not Bach-Bach. But this piece just doesn’t work on the piano, or at least Trifonov’s interpretation did not persuade. The opening of the fantasia on organ has a beaming crispness that was lacking in this performance, and the expansive chords in the left hand were muddy. His treatment of the fuga was clear and straighter, but his hands were out of sync by just a hair, which in a complex Bach fuga is liable to drive a listener to distraction.

The pianist appeared to be more at home in Beethoven’s Op. 111 Sonata, even though the piano itself did not sound quite muscular enough to give the work its full, imposing effect. That complaint aside, the first movement was both intelligent and adventurous. In the Maestoso section Trifonov’s playing was smoky, stewing, and while his tempo was deliberate, it was never plodding or methodical. The allegro was certainly con brio, but beyond that it was almost ad libitum—at times, he was in danger of losing the music’s train of thought, but the manic, obsessive temperament in his playing kept it on track.

The Arietta, though, was off. Trifonov’s playing was simple and tender, but his tempo was slower than most, and too slow, frankly, to be cantabile, as Beethoven’s songlike indication instructs.

And then, more Liszt. To say that the second half played to Trifonov’s strengths would be an understatement. Here, at last, was the passionate virtuoso who dazzled a packed house in his first Carnegie Hall recital a year and a half ago. Beginning the Transcendental Études, his “Preludio” was swirling and suave, almost nonchalant in its showmanship, a wonderful teaser of things to come.

This was thrilling, jaw-dropping playing, and the highlights were many. He showed off stunning dexterity in “Mazeppa,” and his interpretation had a certain “cavalry dash” about it (odd, given that its subject is a young man tied to a horse as punishment, but convincing nonetheless).

There was an ethereal glow to “Feux follets,” as well as sparkling, impish wit. And the sheer power he was able to summon in some of these movements was astounding—forget the “Mannheim Rocket,” a few of Trifonov’s roaring crescendi had the thrust of a Boeing engine. But this was not all just bombastic, flashy Liszt—this was also sensitive and intelligent Liszt. The floating, blooming haze of “Ricordanza” was gorgeous to hear, almost making one believe there were a cello somewhere playing obbligato.

After teasing the audience by bowing tantalizingly close to the bench a few times, Trifonov finally acquiesced and played an encore. It was a rarity, “Alla reminiscenza” from Nikolai Medtner’s Forgotten Melodies I, gleaming and thoughtful, so soft you could hear the clicking of the keys. Nobody but nobody can make a keyboard whisper like Daniil Trifonov.

- See more at: http://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2014/12/after-mixed-start-trifonovs-liszt-proves-trancendental-at-carnegie/#sthash.BRarzcNW.dpuf