Hot on the heels of the release of their new disc of works by Bartók, Debussy and Stravinsky for two pianos, French pianists François-Fréderic Guy and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet returned to London’s Wigmore Hall to present a programme of music featuring these composers. Three 20th century orchestral scores written within just four years of one another – Bartok’s Two Pictures, Debussy’s Jeux and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – were brought to life in a concert replete in colour, rhythmic vitality, sensuality and split-second precision.
I first heard Guy and Bavouzet perform Jeux and The Rite of Spring in 2012 in a concert which brought fire, daring and vertiginous virtuosity to a weekday lunchtime at the Wigmore. To hear the same pianists in the same repertoire three years later was revelatory, for it seems as if the music has matured, like a good wine. This second performance was slicker, yet full of even greater spontaneity and vibrancy.
On the centenary of the death of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, American pianist Garrick Ohlsson concluded his two-concert “Skryabin Focus” at London’s Wigmore Hall with a recital of works which spanned the final two decades of Scriabin’s life.
It is hard to explain exactly what makes Scriabin’s music so compelling: far easier to explain why his music is not for everyone. It is the music of excess, ecstasy, tumult and passion. It is excessive, overripe, decadent, heavily perfumed, languorous and frenzied, lacking in structure and sometimes downright bizarre. The music of extremes, it is hyper everything, and as such it defies description or categorization. Its language is complex, often atonal and frequently almost impenetrable. For some listeners, and artists too, it is this “over-the-top-ness” that is off-putting; for others, myself and my concert companion included, it is this sense of excess and rapture that is so compelling. By his own admission, Garrick Ohlsson is a true Scriabin fan, the result of hearing Sviatoslav Richter perform the Seventh Piano Sonata. Ohlsson’s studies with a Russian teacher enabled him to regard Scriabin as “mainstream repertoire” and the composer’s music remains a mainstay of his repertoire.
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?
We had an upright piano at home as my mother studied at the musical school. I was trying to play something on it at the age of four and asked my parents to bring me to musical school.
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
My teachers – Yuri Slesarev, Dmitri Alexeev, Boris Petrushansky, Oxana Yablonskaya and Aquiles Delle Vigne.
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
I try to create an interesting programme, making an unusual combination of pieces or adding some not overplayed compositions. In future I want to play more contemporary music. Unfortunately, I don’t have that much time for working on it now due to learning more “core repertoire”.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
I really enjoyed playing in Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Mozarteum in Salzburg, Triphony Concert Hall in Japan. Those halls have an amazing acoustics.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
I love every single piece I am performing and I am convinced it has to be like that.
I listen to a lot of orchestral and chamber music. Now my favourites are Schubert and Tchaikovsky Symphonies, piano trios by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Arensky, etc.
Who are your favourite musicians?
My favourite pianists are Emil Gilels, Vladimir Horowitz, Dinu Lipatti, Grigory Sokolov.
Vitaly Pisarenko gave his first public recital at the age of six. His initial musical training was in Ukraine (in Kiev with Natalia Romenskaya and in Kharkov with Garry Gelfgat). From 1999 to 2012 he studied at the Central Music School and State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with Yuri Slesarev. From 2009 to 2012 he also studied with Oxana Yablonskaya at her Piano Institute in Italy. Since 2012, Pisarenko has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the Royal College of Music. He completed his Master’s degree at the RCM (with distinction) in 2014; and is currently studying at the RCM for an Artist Diploma and is an Emma Rose Scholar supported by a Kenneth and Violet Scott Award. He is also studying at the Piano Academy in Imola, Italy with Boris Petrushansky.
In 2008 (aged 21) he won First Prize at the Eighth International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht. Since then he has performed as a soloist with leading orchestras and ensembles, and as a recital soloist, throughout the world.
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For the Wigmore neophyte, I doubt I could have selected a better concert to introduce my companion for the evening to the delights of London’s “sacred shoebox”: Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili dazzled in a highly accomplished performance of music by Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ and a selection of short virtuosic works by Liszt.
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