CD Reviews (The Straits Times, March 2016)

GODOWSKY Walzermasken

KONSTANTIN SCHERBAKOV, Piano

Marco Polo 8.225276 / *****

The Polish-American virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938) is best remembered for his outlandishly contrapuntal rearrangements of Chopin's Etudes and various outrageous piano transcriptions, but his original music has been much neglected. Walzermasker (Waltz Masks) is a cycle of 24 pieces in three-quarter rhythm composed in 1912, essentially waltzes in elaborate costumes and disguises.

The tradition of waltz-cycles is not new, and Godowsky does let one in on his secrets. Each piece is teasingly titled (such as Momento Capriccioso, Valse Macabre and Orientale) and there are tributes to Schumann (the ecstatic opening is reminiscent of his Carnaval), Schubert (lilting and rustic), Brahms (jaunty and vigorous), Chopin (lyrical and coy), Liszt (naturally virtuosic) before closing with Johann Strauss II (with Viennese voluptuosness).  

As if one were not done with waltzes, the album closes with Godowsky's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Johann Strauss' Artists Life, another of those seemingly unplayable paraphrases. Siberia-born super-virtuoso Konstantin Scherbakov makes light work of its digital excesses, and that is how it is supposed to sound: complex yet seemingly effortless.

FAURÉ Violin Sonata No.1

R.STRAUSS Violin Sonata

ITZHAK PERLMAN, Violin

EMANUEL AX, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 481 17741 / *****

It is hard to believe that the celebrated Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman is now 70. A long-awaited return to the recording studio yields this lovely coupling of lyrical violin sonatas from the late Romantic period. His much-beloved sweet and singing violin tone is gloriously intact, undiminished by the intervening years. This is immediately apparent in the soaring opening melody of Frenchman Gabriel Fauré's First Violin Sonata in A major (1875), which is reciprocated by partner Emanuel Ax in the intricate and immensely taxing piano part.

A wide-eyed sense of fantasy occupies its four movements, which will touch even the most jaded of listeners. This same exalted state continues into Richard Strauss' early Violin Sonata in E flat major (1887), with its succession of flowing melodies finds the most sympathetic of interpretations. Has the slow movement, entitled Improvisation, sounded this beguiling or beautiful? Perlman and Ax  are peerless in this repertoire, and this album is a welcome addition into an already crowded field of excellent recordings.

KONSTANTIN SCHERBAKOV Piano Recital / Review

KONSTANTIN SCHERBAKOV Piano Recital

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall

Wednesday (3 February 2016)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 5 February 2016 with the title "Gripping display of pianism".

The last time Siberia-born and Switzerland-based pianist Konstantin Scherbakov gave a recital in Singapore, he performed Franz Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the close of the 2008 Singapore International Piano Festival. His welcome return for an all-Beethoven recital showed no diminution of his impressive physical abilities, revealing instead a sharpening of his interpretative faculties.

The Six Bagatelles Op.126 are shavings from a master's work-table, and in these miniatures he amply displayed their variegated colours and contrasts. Alternating between wistful and vigorous, each piece was made to sound vital, distilling the same visionary thoughts to be found in his late sonatas and string quartets.

A much earlier work is Beethoven's Eroica Variations Op.35, so named because it uses as its theme the same dance from the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus which also appears in his Eroica Symphony. These variations border on over-elaboration while frequently skirting with the vulgar, but only a genius knows how to craft a relative masterpiece from the trite and banal.

It was Scherbakov's keen sense of proportion and acute understanding of its irony that made this sometimes unwieldy work come across as coherent and even humourous. His crisp articulation and immaculate fingerwork made light of its digital difficulties, and there was nary a dull moment.     

Its concluding E flat major chord also formed the resonant opening chords of the second half's tour de force, which was the Third Symphony, better known as the “Eroica Symphony”. In Liszt's ridiculously demanding and almost unplayable transcription, Scherbakov's transcendental technique was to find a formidable equal.

His secret was to regard this as a piano work on its own right, and not attempt to simulate the orchestra's sound and textures. There was no compulsion to go headlong for volume, but instead to ride on its rhythmic pulse and drive. When the development and inevitable climaxes came, they did so with a palpably frightening intensity.

The second movement's Funeral March was no less gripping, its sombre subject finding a rare nobility in its procession from human tragedy to luminous beauty. The dynamics then shifted dramatically to the Scherzo's mercurial scintillations, where Scherbakov's lightness of touch and ultimate control of its projectile thrusts held sway.

The well-planned programme came full circle with the finale's joyous dance from Prometheus, this time with a separate set of variations and fugal discourse. Again its wit and humour winningly shone but through a different prism. For its 50-minute duration, Scherbakov did not once make one long for the orchestra.

There have been excellent recordings of this symphony by Cyprien Katsaris, Idil Biret and Scherbakov himself, but nothing quite tops this live perfomance, which was accorded a chorus of bravos. There was no encore, but after this superhuman display of pianism, none was needed.

Two Naumovists reunite:
Konstantin Scherbakov with Boris Kraljevic.
Both were students of Lev Naumov's famed piano
studio at the Moscow Conservatory during the 1980s,
and both served as his assistant at different times.