Young Russian superstar pianist, Vitaly Pisarenko, performed last Thursday at St Andrew’s Drill Hall – the last Grahamstown Music Society concert this year.
Young Russian superstar pianist, Vitaly Pisarenko, performed last Thursday at St Andrew’s Drill Hall – the last Grahamstown Music Society concert this year.
Pisarenko began his concert with the Pathetique sonata by Beethoven. Because this music is so well known, it served as an excellent introduction to his piano technique. The first bars of the Grave showed that he paid great attention to every aspect of the composer’s notation: the rests were precisely observed; the difficult forte and piano marking on the chords was conveyed by skilful touch and application of both pedals after the hammers hit the strings. For me, these two immediate observations resulted in a delightful listening experience which carried me through the entire concert.
Pisarenko seemed to be as concerned with statement as with what was not stated. In staccato passages, the gaps between notes separated as well as joined. Sometimes harmonies were sustained by the pedal. At other times the harmony was suggested as the notes hung without support. The result was that one was required to listen past the notes to the silence from which they emerged. I found myself drawn forward to listen, and my attention was retained.
This was particularly so in Ravel’s pieces from Miroirs. This impressionistic music depends upon washes of colour and figures half expressed. Throughout, passages blurred by pedalling were contrasted with those in which the notes were like stars against the black sky. Pisarenko’s lightness of touch pointed to what lay beyond and beneath.
The Liszt transcription of Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre showed that Pisarenko can also do the virtuoso stuff – and the piece was fun – but I found that I could not listen with the kind of attention I paid to the rest of the concert. For me, the concert would have been more satisfying without this.
I found Rachmaninoff’s 9 Etudes, Tableaux Op 39 very interesting. There is an obvious massiveness to Rachmaninoff when compared to the lightness of Ravel. Yet both seem to convey mood and feeling rather than direct intention, and both demonstrate how changeable such emotions can be.
Thus Pisarenko’s technique illuminated the contrasts not only within, but also between the pieces. The Rachmaninov, with its chords and dotted rhythms, seemed to provide a link in the recital with the opening Grave. One of the etudes seemed to be harmonically structured through a series of major modulations, evoking the Russianness we are familiar with in orthodox music.
I want to study this music in greater detail and am grateful to Pisarenko for the fine introduction.
