The International Music Festival of the Canary Islands (FIMC) receives the visit of the pianist Daniil Trifonov, considered the “poet of the keyboard”, according to the Ministry of Culture of the Government of the Canary Islands. Combining consummate technique with uncommon sensitivity and depth, his performances are a perpetual source of awe for those who flock to enjoy his talents in auditoriums around the world, he adds. “He has it all and more… the cuteness and also the demonic element. I’ve never heard anything like it”, marveled the great pianist Martha Argerich.
Winner of a Grammy and other prestigious awards, the 31-year-old young world piano star will perform on Friday the 20th at the Teatro Circo de Marte in La Palma and on Saturday the 21st at the Teatro Pérez Galdós in Gran Canaria, in two concerts with whom the FIMC rounds off the gallery of great piano players who have passed through its programming: Marta Argerich, Maria Joao Pires, Mitsuko Uchida, Arcadi Volodos, Javier Perianes, Lang Lang and Sokolov.
He is not a simple piano virtuoso, a dizzying typing machine; Trifonov delves into the music he plays in search of meaning or message. His interpretative maturity is amazing and, unlike technique, you don’t learn that at the conservatory or by listening to the great masters of the past. Trifonov has the soul of a musician and it shows in the way he plays.
As ‘The Times of London’ points out, he is “undoubtedly the most astonishing pianist of our time”. During the 2010-11 season, this brilliant performer won medals in three of the most prestigious competitions in the world of music, winning Third Prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, First Prize at the Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, and both the First Prize as the Grand Prix -additional honor awarded to the best overall competitor in any category- at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition. In 2013 he received the prestigious Franco Abbiati Award for Best Instrumental Soloist from Italian music critics and in 2016 he was named Gramophone Artist of the Year.
To his considerable list of honors was added in 2018 the Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Soloist for ‘Transcendental’, a collection by Liszt that marked his third title as an exclusive artist of Deutsche Grammophon.
Trifonov will arrive in the Archipelago after opening the year with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and continuing to drum with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Before setting foot on island land, he will perform the same program that will be enjoyed at the Pérez Galdós and Leal theaters at the Laiezshalle in Hamburg.
About the repertoire
The repertoire begins with Tchaikovsky and his Album for Youth, op. 38, designed to encourage children who want to start on the piano. These pieces are easy to play, pleasing to the ear and sonorous titles, and also evoke popular dances and songs.
The Schumann, Fantasy in C major, op. 17, one of the most beautiful of the composer, who told his wife Clara about the first half: “It is the most passionate thing I have ever written” and, certainly, it is music of an exceptionally expressive outburst. In the second the march air dominates and in the finale the lyrical tones prevail.
Fantasy in C minor KV 475which Mozart signed when he was preparing his opera The Marriage of Figarois a beautiful Fantasy that can be understood as a summary of the usual movements of the sonata.
Gaspard de la Nuit: Three Poems for Piano after Aloysius Bertranda masterpiece by Maurice Ravel, is one of the capital piano pieces of the 20th century and requires enormous technical and physical demands from the performer.
By last, Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53by Scriabin, who represents the projection and survival of the tradition of the virtuoso pianist-composer, in the manner of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt.
The latest tickets for these concerts are available at www.festivaldecanarias.com and on the platforms of both theatres, with prices starting at 10 euros and with special rates for music students and the unemployed.
