Sokolov’s new album sheds spark of light on Russian piano genius

THE great Russian pianist shows his full versatility with an interesting pairing of works on Deutsche Grammophon’s latest release.

Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov has a new recording out on Deutsche Grammophon. Picture: Maxim Muratov/Interpress

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THE great Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov shows his full versatility with an interesting pairing of works on Deutsche Grammophon’s new release.

He gives a pellucid reading of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 alongside a majestic performance of Rachmaninov’s take-no-prisoners third concerto.

As always the recordings are live. Sokolov refuses to go into a recording studio. Neither does he ever give interviews. But this superbly recorded and engineered disc by the DG team is additionally fascinating because it includes a DVD, with the title A Conversation That Never Was, interspersed with hitherto unpublished poems by Sokolov’s late wife Inna Shtutin and excerpts from two Chopin etudes.

MEMORISED

It includes interviews with acquaintances, his teacher and his students. From it we learn that the maestro is happy to stay behind after his recitals and chat with the audience, even helping them to get home if he’s in Moscow as he knows all the train and bus timetables and routes.

He has also apparently memorised the serial numbers of every Steinway grand he has performed on and has been known to take a piano apart and reassemble it before deciding whether he will use it. He oversees his recitals down to the last detail: the houselights should be kept dimmed so as not to interfere with the ambient temperature of the concert hall.

The performances on this new album are wonderful — you won’t hear a more moving reading of the slow movement from the Mozart, recorded live in Salzburg in 2005 with Trevor Pinnock conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Sokolov takes it so slowly you think at first that this is going to drag, but it’s a little miracle and throws into sharp contrast the sparkling outer movements.

He is in complete command of the structure as the massive first movement builds inexorably to its climax

The Rachmaninov, recorded in London with the BBC Philharmonic under Yan Pascal Tortelier, is a triumph of poetry wedded to muscularity. This is music that has lived under Sokolov’s fingers since his student days and it shows.

He is in complete command of the structure as the massive first movement builds inexorably to its climax, subsiding to a gorgeously lyrical moment before the opening theme is repeated.

Even a couple of slightly fluffed notes in the second movement and the thunderous finale don’t matter — they only serve to remind you that what you are hearing is in the moment and that he is human after all.

This is a simply wonderful package and Inna’s honest and personal poems are a bonus, shedding a little shaft of light on her enigmatic husband whom friends describe as a being from another world.

Sokolov Mozart Rachmaninov Concertos is available from Fish Fine Music for $24.99.