Trifonov

In my haste to get this up I totally forgot to mention that commenter Frank wrote this and I did some very minor stuff like making the links work and embedding the videos.

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A wonderful thing happened this past May in Tel Aviv, Israel. In a tiny country beseiged by enemies and former allies, standing defiantly at the edge of Western Civilization, its citizens took time to celebrate the best of our culture. In fact, the glue that holds Israel together is probably as much our shared culture as it is the Jewish religion. The event was the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition, and the wonderful happening was a single miraculous performance by a young Russian pianist named – Daniil!

Daniil Trifonov is a 20 year old from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia now studying at the Cleveland Institute on full scholarship. He started playing piano at the age of 5, and until this May had been relatively unknown, although winning 3rd place last year at the Chopin Competition in Poland. But his performance of a set of Chopin Etudes in Tel Aviv was so brilliant it instantly won him the Rubinstein, and catapulted him on to the master prize, first place a month later in Moscow at the Tchaikovsky Competition.

Daniil’s entire 30 minute leap to fame is linked below. It is a great Youtube video with excellent sound and no interruptions, best viewed full screen with volume up. I have never heard anything like it. The 12 Etudes Opus 25 of Chopin are some of the most difficult piano pieces ever written. But what is amazing is Trifonov’s interpretation. He plays them as if they are an opera, but orchestrated for piano, turning it into the ultimate concert instrument. The Etudes themselves are 12 seperate pieces held together with beautiful bel canto melodies and lush accompaniment. From No. 1, The Sheppard Boy, to the heart wrenching Stephen Foster melody of No. 5 (at 8:37), and the Tenor/Soprano Duet of No. 7 (at 12:57) which is tragedy right out of Bellini’s Norma, to the most difficult of all No. 12 (at 28:50) which is a homage to J.S. Bach and is Chopin’s version of a Baroque fugue, these are the best of Frederic Chopin, the greatest piano composer of all.

Before listening, you should be aware of who and what a concert pianist is. He is raised in a bubble with his whole existence revolving around practice and recital. He is nurtured like a special race horse and sheltered. He is not like the rest of us. He is still a boy at 20 and markedly naive. As he stands backstage waiting to play, he realizes his whole future rests on not making a single mistake and the blood leaves his hands and rushes to his torso. He breaks out in a drenching sweat. He must play for 30 minutes from memory and it must be the performance of a lifetime. And then he walks out on stage into the glaring floodlights, past the impish lighted poster of Arthur Rubinstein, and the judgmental audience, and sits down at the Steinway 9 foot grand. He tries to compose himself. Rubinstein’s son is in the audience. He takes a handkerchief from his back pocket and wipes the water off his face. His hands are slightly trembling and cold as ice. He musters all his concentration and energy and enters a transfixed state with a slump and eyes staring inward. He starts to play and is suddenly Chopin the great composer. It is now 1837 and he is in a drawing room in Paris in an age of glittering chandeliers and heros.
He smiles as he brings it all to life.

What you see and hear below is not affectation. It is genius.

Here is a clip from reviewer Michael Moran in Poland:

Trifonov is transformed by music, possessed by it completely the moment he sits at the instrument. Is it too fanciful to say he actually appears to become a medium for the music? He communicates the ultimate in musical integrity and intimacy with his audience – a gift or conviction that escapes so many pianists.

In modern interpretations and pianism there seems to be a movement to eclipse or at least diminish the ‘feminine’ aspect of the soul from Chopin. This is absurd and impoverishing and comes from our current preoccupation with the physical and crudely ‘powerful’ in life, the clichéd view of ‘masculinity’, the ‘macho’ male. Chopin was one of those rare individuals who managed to balance his masculine and feminine natures – a quality ever present in his music and something Trifonov seems to be profoundly aware of.
(see August 29, 2011 second review)

Here are links to other Trifonov recitals and reviews:

Encore in Moscow. A must watch!

Israel Philharmonic.

Trifonov Interview

Since the dazzling comming out earlier this year, Daniil has also played the London Philharmonic, with lights out during a power failure and the orchestra conductor holding a flashlight over the keyboard for him! And later, Carnegie Hall. He makes me believe, if only while listening to him, that men have souls.