RACHMANINOV'S 24 PRELUDES / ANDREY GUGNIN Piano Recital / Review

RACHMANINOV’S 24 PRELUDES 

ANDREY GUGNIN Piano Recital 

Victoria Concert Hall 

Thursday (7 March 2024) 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 9 March 2023 with the title "Russian pianist Andrey Gugnin bring's Rachmaninov's lesser-known numbers to life".

There are artists who distinguish themselves as being special the moment they craft their first musical sounds. Russian pianist Andrey Gugnin, winner of international piano competitions in Sydney (2016) and Dubai (2024), is one of them. The first three notes of Sergei Rachmaninov’s infamous Prelude in C sharp minor (Op.3 No.2) were telling, and he delivered these to perfection. 

Why infamous? This was the Russian pianist-composer’s very early creation which made him world famous. He earned no royalties from the trifle, yet was obliged to perform at every recital ad nauseam simply because adoring audiences demanded to hear it. Gugnin took it with broad strokes, voicing each ensuing chord with sonorous heft, and completing the work with an idiomatic authority that felt completely natural and unforced. 

Thus began an arduous journey through 24 of Rachmaninov’s most personal and expressive miniatures. Rachmaninov never recorded the full set, and neither did Vladimir Horowitz nor Sviatoslav Richter, great pianists associated with his music. The kaleidoscopic range of the pieces, alternating major and minor keys, had Gugnin summoning the utmost of his interpretive and technical resources. 

He did so with stunning aplomb, breathing life into lesser-known numbers which do not often get heard. The D minor Prelude (Op.23 No.3), crafted like a minuet, delighted in the left hand’s sardonic laughter while maintaining an apparent poker face. The E minor Prelude (Op.32 No.4) was a foray into outright dissonance, its procession of alarum bells portending impending danger was ramped up to a crazed frenzy with frightening intensity. 

In the more familiar pieces, Gugnin was never intent of dispatching mere notes. In the nocturne-like D major Prelude (Op.23 No.4), a lily was being gilded, while the G minor Prelude (Op.23 No.5) had one guessing as to whether it was a march or a dance. There could not have been a more seamless singing line in the G major Prelude (Op.32 No.5) while the wellspring of melancholy that is the G sharp minor Prelude (Op.32 No.12) was poignantly realised. 

On the technical front, Gugnin was mostly unimpeachable. The roaring left hand arpeggios and cascading chords in B flat major (Op.23 No.2), and treacherous right hand flutterings in E flat minor (Op.23 No.9) were overcome with almost nonchalant ease. Only in the A flat major Prelude (Op.23 No.8) did he get lost in its thickets, but without flinching or stopping, he artfully improvised a way out to safety and the home key. 

Rachmaninov touches the heart by being a passion merchant, his stentorian chords often doing the trick, and Gugnin’s mastery of the B minor and final D flat major Preludes (Op.32 Nos.10 & 13) truly brought out the bittersweet side of his Slavic inscrutability and vulnerability. 

Gugnin’s three generous encores were further reasons to celebrate his pianism. Felix Blumenfeld’s Etude for the left hand and Mikhail Pletnev’s Andante Maestoso transcription from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker epitomised beauty on the keyboard while Prokofiev’s Precipitato (from Sonata No.7) romped home with thunderous panache.      

All photos by Ung Ruey Loon, 

by courtesy of Altenburg Arts.