DANIIL TRIFONOV AND HANS GRAF - RACHMANINOFF AND DEBUSSY / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

 

DANIIL TRIFONOV AND HANS GRAF - 

RACHMANINOFF AND DEBUSSY 

Singapore Symphony Orchestra 

Esplanade Concert Hall 

Friday (18 April 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 21 April 2025 with the title "A balance of lyricism and bravura by pianist Daniil Trifonov".

Preceding every concerto performance at a symphonic concert is usually an overture, but this gala concert by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra led by Hans Graf opened with ballet music instead. Igor Stravinsky’s Divertimento was four-movement suite drawn from Le baiser de la fee (The Fairy’s Kiss), his ballet based on songs and piano music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. 

This was one Russian composer paying tribute to another, its neoclassical style making for a very engaging listen. Trying to spot the sources was part of the fun, like the song Lullaby in the Storm in its opening pages and piano piece Humoresque for the droll second movement. The Pas de deux saw principal cellist Ng Pei-Sian and guest principal clarinettist Dai Le in a lovely duet. 

Next came multiple award-winning Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov making his Singapore debut in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Fourth Piano Concerto in G minor (Op.40). Long considered his “Cinderella” concerto, this was the Russian composer experimenting with an idiom which departed from that of its popular predecessors. 

Offering grittier harmonies and heavy-hitting dissonances, there were fewer memorable melodies. Trifonov gave a nuanced reading balancing delicate lyricism with barnstorming bravura. The most memorable moment came in the Largo slow movement where its main theme, often derided as resembling Three Blind Mice, gave way to an outpouring of nostalgia where an earlier piano piece (Etude-tableau in C minor, Op.33 No.3) was quoted. 

A brilliant close drew prolonged applause and Trifonov’s two encores were fully cognizant of the music that had come before. More ballet music, in the form of Silver Fairy and Adagio from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, whimsically and virtuosically transcribed by Russian pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev, was warmly welcomed. 

Claude Debussy’s Images for Orchestra closed the concert. SSO under its previous music director Shui Lan had made an excellent recording of this Impressionist masterpiece on the BIS label but experiencing it live was even better. 

Graf had the sequence of its composite movements altered, such that its final fast-slow-fast schema resembled a three-movement symphony which worked very well in concert. The ballet-like Rondes de printemps (Round Dances of Spring), usually heard last, opened with a sequence of songs and dances. The children’s song Nous n’irons plus au bois (We No Longer Go To The Woods), regularly quoted by Debussy, dominated. 

Gigues, which followed, was underscored by Pan Yun’s sumptuous oboe d’amore solo, imbuing the work with an indelible melancholy despite its rhythmic vitality. Closing with Iberia, Debussy’s most evocative portrait of Spain, the scene was one of extreme colour and flavour. 

Percussion – augmented with castanets, tambourine and tubular bells – textured its festive first and third sections, while the central Les parfums de la nuit (The Scents of the Night) was a most sultry portrayal of an evening of romance. Little wonder the long-held mischievous quip that Frenchmen wrote the best Spanish music still holds much resonance.

This concert was also reviewed in Bachtrack.com:

https://bachtrack.com/22/296/view/28626

SILVER AGE / Daniil Trifonov / Review

SILVER AGE

Daniil Trifonov, Piano

Mariinsky Orchestra

Valery Gergiev

DG 483 5331 (2 CDs)

 

The “Silver Age” was used by impresario Sergei Diaghilev referring to an epoch of musical activity in Russia that lasted from the death of Tchaikovsky to the rise and entrenchment of Soviet socialist realism. That period of creative efflorescence spanned some thirty years, from the mid-1890s through the fin de siecle and First World War to the late 1920s. Prize-winning Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov, having served Rachmaninov’s music (mostly the piano concertos) well on Deutsche Grammophon, now turns his attention to the piano works of Scriabin, Stravinsky and Prokofiev.   

 

In the notes, he describes “an increasingly fractured, social, political and intellectual environment – a cocktail of different artistic expressions, in agitated interaction.” This handsome double album has a convenient dichotomy: solo works fill up the first disc while concertos occupy the second. The formula works pretty well for continuous listening except for issues of chronology.

Great Russians:
Scriabin, Stravinsky & Prokofiev

 

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) was a Chopin devotee before turning into a self-styled mystic and messianic spiritualist. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) began as the folksy disciple of Rimsky-Korsakov, later espousing primitivism (for The Rite of Spring) and neoclassicism. Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was the enfant terrible of modernism but eventually settled down to an appeasing lyricism during the Stalin years. Trifonov, for reasons best known to him, somehow gets these dates jumbled up.

 

The first disc opens and closes with Stravinsky. However one first gets to hear his neoclassical phase with the Serenade in A (1925), a four-movement suite based on antique forms. Its polite sensibilities are however rocked by Prokofiev’s five Sarcasms Op.17 (1912-14), music from his iconoclastic phase, deliberately grotesque and provocative as one can get. Then its a thirty year leap forward to his Sonata No.8 in B flat major (1944), the most lyrical (albeit its fair share of barbed wire and gunfire) of his “War Trilogy” and the dainty Gavotte from the ballet Cinderella (1940-44). Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1910) as transcribed by Guido Agosti makes a suitably sonorous end to the recital, but should this have been the Prokofiev sonata instead? Make no mistake, Trifonov performs these varied works, despite stylistic differences and quirks, to the manner born.

 

In a logical and natural progession of things, Scriabin’s youthful Piano Concerto in F sharp major (1896), with its Chopinist musings, ought to precede Prokofiev’s brooding yet swashbuckling Piano Concerto No.2 (1913, reconstructed 1923) with Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka (1911) as sandwich filling. From a listener’s stand point, that should have been ideal, but Trifonov however reverses the sequence, opening with Prokofiev before going back in time to Scriabin. In doing so, he seems to be reclaiming the nostalgia of the pre-Bolshevik revolution era, by turning his back on decadance to witness the last hurrah of lush Romanticism.

 

It is interesting to note that both concertos have not been particularly well-served by DG over the decades. For the Scriabin, there is only the eccentric Antol Ugorski (remember him?) with Pierre Boulez from the late 90s. Trifonov is preferable here. For the Prokofiev, which has enjoyed a renaissance at the turn of the millennium, Trifonov’s rivals are two Chinese pianists: Yundi Li (with Seiji Ozawa) and Yuja Wang (with Gustavo Dudamel). Wang edges this contest simply because her reading generates the greatest excitement.

 

Make no mistake, Trifonov double-disc album is a worthy addition to any pianophile’s library. He is a commanding artist in his native repertoire, but do have a programming facility ready on your disc player to enjoy the music in a chronological and historically-informed sequence. 

CD Review (The Straits Times, January 2018)

CHOPIN EVOCATIONS

DANIIL TRIFONOV, Piano

Mahler Chamber Orchestra 

Mikhail Pletnev (Conductor)

Deutsche Grammophon 479 7518 (2 CDs) 

****1/2

Here is yet another recording pairing both of Frederic Chopin's piano concertos, but this one is quite different. Spread over two discs, multi-award winning Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov plays the concertos in reverse order, which is chronologically correct. 

The Second Piano Concerto in F minor (Op.21) was composed before the First Piano Concerto in E minor (Op.11) but published later, hence the larger opus number. He takes an expansive view of both concertos, aided and abetted by veteran pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev's orchestrations which drags out the tuttis, highlights and adds quirky and piquant woodwind voices.

Trifonov's playing is however light-footed and scintillating which prevent the performances from sounding portentous or ponderous. His Chopin-inspired additions are excellent, teaming with his teacher Sergei Babayan on two pianos in the delectable Rondo in C major (Op.73), and two wonderful sets of variations. 

Chopin's own La Ci Darem Variations after Mozart's Don Giovanni and Federico Mompou's Variations On A Theme By Chopin, based on the little A major Prelude (Op.28 No.7), get performances which will be hard to better. Throw in further encores in the form of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu, Barber's Nocturne and shorter pieces by Schumann, Grieg and Tchaikovsky, one gets a more complete picture. This is truly Chopin advocated with dedication and love.    

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, March 2017)

TRANSCENDENTAL

DANIIL TRIFONOV plays LISZT

Deutsche Grammophon 479 5529 (2 CDs) / *****

ON MY NEW PIANO

DANIEL BARENBOIM, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 479 6724 / ***

Here are two new piano recordings from the German yellow label, but the pleasures are contrasted and mixed. Young Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov is the perfect exponent for Franz Liszt's multi-layered virtuosity, none better displayed than in his four important sets of piano etudes, performed complete.

The 12 Transcendental Etudes occupy the first disc, and one scrambles for superlatives when faced with the fine filigree of Feux follets or the variegated and sonorous chords of Mazeppa, Wild Jagd and Harmonies du Soir. 

The second disc which houses the five Concert Etudes (in two separate ets) and Paganini Etudes is just as astonishing, with performances of Un Sospiro, Waldesrauchen (Forest Murmurs), Gnomenreigen (Dance of the Gnomes) and La Campanella that rival the best on record. This album is one for keeps.

Liszt also features in a new recital recording by Argentina-born conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim, playing on a revolutionary new grand piano created by Chris Maene from Belgium, that features parallel-running rather than crossing strings. The instrument has a good balance of resonance and mellowness, sounding best in three Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and Beethoven's Variations in C minor. 

However in Chopin's First Ballade, Liszt's Mephisto Waltz No.1 and Funerailles, Barenboim resorts to banging. This generates an uncharacteristic percussiveness that all but negates the subtlety and musicianship that had come earlier. What a pity, really.  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2016)

RACHMANINOV Variations

DANIIL TRIFONOV, Piano

The Philadelphia Orchestra 

Yannick Nezet-Seguin

Deutsche Grammophon 479 4970 / *****

This 80-minute-long album brings together the three great sets of variations for piano by Russian composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943). The most popular is his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini ,one of his last works, based on Paganini's Caprice No.24 for unaccompanied violin, with a prominent role offered by the medieval chant Dies Irae. Its first ever recording was made in 1934 by Rachmaninov himself, partnered by The Philadelphia Orchestra, the same orchestra on this recording.

Young prize-winning Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov proves himself to be the composer's equal on the technical front, but goes one further with the Chopin Variations (1904) and Corelli Variations (1931) for solo piano, which Rachmaninov never recorded. The former, based on Chopin's Prélude in C minor (Op.28 No.20), is longer and more discursive, and Trifonov closes with a restatement of the original piece. In the latter, he adds his own individual touches by highlighting secondary voices.

His personal contribution is the 4-movement suite Rachmaniana, a tribute to Rachmaninov's skill in writing miniatures, crafted in the stylistic manner of the master himself. An impressive show of pianism all round.  

RESPIGHI Complete Orchestral Works

Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma 

Francesco la Vecchia

Brilliant Classics 94900 (8CDs) / **** 

Despite its title, this slim-line budget box set does not contain the complete orchestral output of Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936). For example, it does not include the ballet music of La Boutique Fantasque or Belkis, Queen Of Sheba, both excellent examples of his orchestration skills, nor his orchestrations of Rachmaninov Etudes-Tableaux. 

His most important works are here. The Roman Trilogy – Festivals, Fountains and Pines – is a good place to start for the taste of his sumptuous and opulently canvases. The early hour-long Sinfonia Drammatica in three movements is overblown with Wagnerian gestures, but is made up by its mastery of form.

Respighi's forté was dressing up old music and antique forms in Romantic shades and colours, such as the three suites of Ancient Airs And Dances, The Birds (based on baroque keyboard pieces), Botticelli Triptych and Church Windows, which include elaborations on medieval chants. These are skilfully crafted as are the concertos built upon ancient modes. 

The best of these is the Concerto Gregoriano for violin (with excellent soloist Vadim Brodsky) and the Concerto In Mixolydian Mode for piano which in parts sounds like Rachmaninov and even Gershwin. There may be better performances on record of the Roman Trilogy but the Roman forces here score on authenticity. With excellent programme notes, here is a handy start to exploring this fascinating composer.