The Salzburg Festival programme offers 172 performances and concerts over 44 days. On three of the seven evenings, Olympians can be seen: winners of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition, hailed as the Olympics of music. Alexandre Kantorow, the 2019 winner, was recently seen at the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris: sitting in pouring rain in front of a grand piano on a bridge over the Seine, he played Maurice Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau”. Smiling happily, he looked like “the laughing river god tickled by the water”. This is Henri de Régnier’s prologue to Ravel’s difficult miniature.
It may be, as Mauricio Kagel once said, “that not all musicians believe in God, but all believe in Bach.” Evidence of this belief includes transcriptions of the Chaconne from Partita No. 2 for violin. Schumann enriched it with a piano part, and Ferruccio Busoni wrote a piano version for two hands. Johannes Brahms gave the left hand alone the task of expressing “a world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings.”
A theme in the bass voice is varied 32 times. The challenge is that the melody and the accompaniment must be played simultaneously and a flow must be created over an eternity of more than ten minutes. The execution of the endless arpeggios made Brahms feel “like a violinist”. After the magical, hypnotic monologue, the audience thanked Kantorov with the most beautiful applause: a minute of spellbound silence.
Alexandre Kantorow at his piano recital in the Great Festival Hall in Salzburg on August 14, 2024Marco Borrelli
Kantorow had given his Salzburg solo debut a kind of guideline with a short piece by Brahms: the heroic and passionate Rhapsody op. 79 No. 1 was followed by works of a rambling rhapsodic character – all of them with high, almost excessive technical difficulties. It was no exaggeration to say that most pianists would “rush back to their practice room” after their first glance at the score, as the program booklet states. Liszt’s “Études d’exécution transcendente” are the Magna Carta of pianistic virtuosity in their third version from 1851. “Chasse neige”, perceived by Busoni as a musical image of snow gradually covering the landscape, is a study of gently scurrying tremolos that seem to be building up to a storm.
Control in the tumult
In the constant thematic transformations of “Vallée d’Obermann” from the “Années de pèlerinage” the world-weariness of a lonely romantic can be experienced – in a sublimely introspective and, in the middle section, a dramatically heightened portrayal, played with the greatest control even in the tumultuous climaxes. But how wonderful: there was always calm in the storm, always control in the fastest movement, always full and rich sound even in the vehement attack.
After studying at the Budapest Academy, the 23-year-old Béla Bartók wanted to surpass the infamous Rhapsodies of Franz Liszt with his Opus 1 – the Rhapsody – using all the means of virtuosity available. In twenty minutes, Kantorov followed the slow, pathetic introduction, rich in triplet figures, tremolos and figurations, with a breathtaking storm.
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The highlight of the concert was the performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s first piano sonata. The fact that it is rarely played here is partly due to the reputational damage caused by musical dogmatists, and partly to extreme demands that made the composer fear that it could not be played. He greatly shortened the original version, which was initially 45 minutes long. It is a classical three-movement sonata in which two quick movements frame a “lento”, held like a flowing improvisation with manifold thematic transformations. The composer explained that it was inspired by three archetypes of literature: Faust, Gretchen and Mephisto. Echoes of the Dies irae from the Latin requiem mass simultaneously represent the pianistic heights and hell of the art of the inspiring and enthusiastically celebrated concert.
The most important award for young pianists reveals how highly the shy, modest Frenchman, who forgoes all effects, is valued. Over a long period of time, young pianists are observed by six experts in the world of music: firstly, their performances and recordings, and secondly, their behavior, which includes the avoidance of “social acceleration,” which sociologist Hartmut Rosa sees as a danger. The prize is worth 300,000 dollars – 50,000 in cash, 250,000 for the development of projects and thus also of their artistic careers.
