Schumann - Toccata, Op. 7
Shostakovich - Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, Op. 87, No. 4
Shostakovich - Prelude and Fugue in A Major, Op. 87, No. 7
Shostakovich - Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, Op. 87, No. 2
Shostakovich - Prelude and Fugue in D Major, Op. 87, No. 5
Shostakovich - Prelude and Fugue in D Minor, Op. 87, No. 24
Combining consummate technique with rare sensitivity, Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov has made a spectacular ascent to classical stardom. Since winning first prize at both the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition and the 2011 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition at the age of 20, Mr. Trifonov has appeared with the world's foremost orchestras and performed solo recitals in its greatest venues.
The music on this program requires poetry and passion that only a master pianist can deliver. “Daniil Trifonov’s playing has it all … he leaves you struggling for superlatives,” said The Guardian.
But there is another kind of stamina involved in a touring career, especially when you are, like Mr. Trifonov, one of the most in-demand pianists of the new generation: the stamina of physical endurance and mental focus.
I observed some of his arduous preparation for this recital on Monday afternoon, when he tried out pianos at Carnegie Hall (eventually picking a German-made Steinway) and practiced for a couple of hours. He had just arrived from California, where, on Sunday afternoon, he played the last of four performances of Rachmaninoff’s daunting Third Piano Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. On Sunday night, he took a red-eye flight to New York, arriving on Monday morning at the Battery Park City apartment he shares with his fiancée, who works in publishing.
He had Carnegie to himself for two hours in the afternoon. After going through his program — works by Schumann and Shostakovich, in addition to the Stravinsky — he sat for an interview with me a block away at Petrossian Cafe, where he ordered a salad (no dressing) and ate only half. Then he took the subway to his apartment to get in more practice before meeting
Sergei Babayan, his former teacher, at the Juilliard School for an evening coaching session.
That’s what you call a work-filled 36 hours.
But Mr. Trifonov told me he was planning to cut back his performing schedule, not just to have more leisure but also to resume his other love: composing. “I have several projects now which are on hold,” he said. Last month, he played his own piano concerto with the Kansas City Symphony. He is writing a double concerto for violin and piano, joined by strings, that he will play with the violinist
Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra. (Last season, he and Mr. Kremer gave a splendid
duo recital at Carnegie Hall.)
During his practice session at Carnegie, Mr. Trifonov sometimes stopped to rotate his shoulders and loosen up. He usually takes more care to do stretching and yoga, but this afternoon he felt, he said, “hunched from excessive sitting” on his flight. He also finds swimming beneficial. “I actually practice in the swimming pool,” he said. “The resistance helps to release the upper arms.”
It was especially fascinating to watch him practice Schumann’s suite “Kreisleriana,” a teeming 30-minute masterpiece. Mr. Trifonov would repeat a rhapsodic flight — not to nail it technically, it seemed clear, but rather to highlight inner voices or bring out a milky coloring as harmonies mingled, what he described as paying “attention to resolutions,” “the way sounds connect.”
Playing through the “Russian Dance” movement from Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka,” which begins with a giddy riot of propulsive parallel chords for both hands, Mr. Trifonov kept repeating passages, even though they sounded flawless. He explained later that he was trying to keep these steely chords crisp and light, demonstrating by playing the passage on the tabletop at the cafe.
Those chords sure sounded crisp and light during the sold-out recital. Before the Stravinsky, he gave somberly compelling accounts of five of Shostakovich’s set of 24 Preludes and Fugues, a monumental work inspired by Bach. Mr. Trifonov said it took him a whole summer to learn these mercurial, complex pieces. Most pianists would say learning, and memorizing, Shostakovich’s enormous score in a single summer seems quick work.
He began the recital with Schumann’s tender “Scenes of Childhood” suite, played with delicacy and poetic refinement. At times his sound was almost too intimate for a hall the size of Carnegie, though the subtleties of the performance come though vividly on the
medici.tv video, which was broadcast live; a recording is available on the
site for three more months.
Trifonov the young conqueror of the keyboard revealed himself with a breathless account of Schumann’s joyous Toccata, a notorious finger-twister. The brilliant and poetic components of his artistry found ideal balance in his magnificent performance of “Kreisleriana.”
After two encores by the Russian composer Nikolai Medtner, Mr. Trifonov closed the keyboard’s lid to indicate that he had played his last piece. Many fans then went to a lounge area, where Mr. Trifonov signed copies of
“Transcendental,” his stunning recent recording of Liszt’s complete
études.
It took five grueling days to record this two-disc set. For a week afterward, he told me, “I couldn’t practice at all.”
I don’t wonder.
Trifonov’s artistry provides a historic piano night at Carnegie Hall
Daniil Trifonov performed Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall.
The combination of a Russian pianist, the music of Robert Schumann, and Carnegie Hall has produced historic moments in the 20th century record of classical music performances.
Now in the 21st century, we have a new entry, Daniil Trifonov’s recital on Wednesday night, a profoundly musical and expressive experience of music by Schumann, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky.
With almost a decade’s concertizing experience already behind him at age 25, Trifonov’s career is still young enough that he is in the process of discovering the piano repertory and what he can do with it. And with the range and depth of his talent already, one can only guess at the possibilities to come.
His playing and nationality make him a peer of Horowitz and Richter but his musical manner marks him as a descendent of Wilhelm Kempff. Kempff was a poetic player—as is the younger musician—in the particular way of illuminating some intimate corner of a score. Like the best of Kempff, Trifonov’s playing has an internal glow.
This comes through via his extraordinary technique. It is rare to hear Schumann played with both passion and clarity. The former tends to swamp the latter in terms of rhythm and the articulation of middle-range voices. But this is just what Trifonov did in the Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana, with a burning Op. 7 Toccata in between.
His grace and clarity combined for a ravishing effect. Every note was bright, whether the dynamic was high or low, the attack hard or soft. Trifonov also produced exceptional, unexaggerated, legato phrasing, a smooth arc connecting from first note to last while each individual attack was as transparent as an ice cube.
Trifonov has the exceedingly rare ability to produce several different colors from what is, by design, a monochromatic instrument. He can also produce as much explosive fire and power as anyone on the contemporary classical piano scene. All these elements complement each other, none takes precedence, and each serves to channel an expression that is honest. There is not a Trifonov “interpretation” so much as a close, intimate partnership with the composer, and the myriad ideas in the music.
The lovely opening of Kinderszenen, “Von fremden Ländern und Menschen,” was a case in point. Trifonov played it with a child’s naïve warmth and lyricism, somehow discarding all the emotional and intellectual complications of adult life. More than a pianist, Trifonov was an actor. Each shifting mood in the piece sounded spontaneous and exactly right, and though Trifonov’s variations in tempo were wider than most, there was never the hint of mannerism. The penultimate “Kind im Einschlummern” ached with tenderness.
His performance of Kreisleriana was incredible. In key stretches of “Sehr lebhaft,” and the closing “Schnell und spielend,” he played the opposing left and right hand parts not only with drastically different dynamics, but completely different phrasing, simultaneous parts played with a level of interpretive independence in each hand that seemed impossible.
To say this was a revelatory way to hear Schumann is an understatement. It seemed more like hearing Schumann himself, or rather the Florestan and Eusebius sides, playing in duet, even wrestling with control of the overall musical personality.
The sense of anticipation was then piqued for the second half, which opened with five of Shostakovich’s Op. 87 Preludes and Fugues. This music has as much poetry as Schumann, but it is the poetry of form and structure—it wasn’t safe for Shostakovich to indulge in personal rhetorical gestures, so his meanings come through via counterpoint and misdirection.
The only complaint was that we only heard five of the pieces, numbers 4, 7, 2, 5, and 24. Trifonov’s honesty made much of this almost unbearably powerful. Shostakovich’s formal constructions were a way for him to contain thoughts and feelings that were socially and politically dangerous. Trifonov laid these out piece by piece, as if each note was a brick set in a musical edifice that, once built, gave a clear outline and meaning to the things that Shostakovich could not say aloud.
Trifonov’s rhythmic control was a vital part. The slow Prelude No. 4 unfolded with an absolute, though never mechanical, regularity of quarter note to quarter note. This produced the uncanny feeling of a grim task meant to produce the extraordinary music of the Fugue. The Prelude and Fugue No. 2 were unusually fast but as smooth and even as No. 4. Trifonov’s selections descended in fifths. He worked his way down through the playful D major of No. 5 to the gravitas of the concluding D minor of No. 24 with a fascinating understatement, an emphasis on the technical brilliance of Shostakovich’s fugal writing rather than on biographical narrative. The music sounded complex yet free of rhetoric.
To finish, he powered through Three Movements from Petrouchka. Trifonov showed unsurpassed physical and mental agility. Not even Yuja Wang produces such force at the keyboard. Reduced for piano, the original music becomes incredibly demanding: there are simultaneous, competing rhythms and phrases, and wild swings between expressive and thematic ideas. Trifonov used these to thrill, charm, and seduce, especially in his stunning playing of the “Dance russe” and the quiet pathos of the “Chez Pétrouchka.”
While this is a pianistic showpiece, it comes from a powerfully dramatic score, and Trifonov’s focus was always on what was inside the notes.
The same went for the two encores, excerpts from two of Medtner’s Fairy Tales. Op. 26, No. 3, was as soulful and songful as a lullaby, and the virtuosic “Campanella,” Op. 20, No. 2, had a romanticism held aloft by a swaggering left hand.
