Some wonder resonates in the tram after Yefim Bronfmans Recital in the main hall of the Concertgebouw. Was this really the ‘bear among the pianists’ who was behind the keys tonight? Was this the musician who, known for his muscle display, will pass for Mr. Fortissimo and writer Philip Roth de Typering ‘The musical Brontosaurus’ elicited? On Sunday evening, the 66-year-old master pianist seemed to have left his bear claws in the hotel room.
Tchaikovsky he plays after the break: the little performed Grande Sonate. A masterpiece according to one, a dragon of a piece according to the other, because of the labyrinthian course and the A-pianistics, textures-based on orchestral. It is a piece of extreme extremes, with four -double pianissimos and triple fortes. Bronfman, however, is surprisingly gentle tonight: he plays fluently and stable, with subtle accents and without large volumes. Tchaikovki’s instructions for one dolce He does not let sound say twice, so he carefully tackles the tender passages. On the other hand, he skips crescendos and Fortissimo moments more than once.
“Playing with all the strength you have in you,” Tchaikovski also writes occasionally, but nowhere Bronfman sells the wing once a big blow, or is he launching octaves that splash apart just before the balcony. There are certainly powerful moments, but always clear, dosed, completed. Yet he manages to listen breathlessly. No note is lost in waving sound clouds. He anchores the resolute Mars-like theme in a sonorous foundation of bassnuts, rolls rolls with astonishing lightness from his fingers and every middle and understood voice is sophisticated in the light. Tchaikovki’s half hour is over in an instant.
Supple
This is how the opener of the evening is: Mozarts Sonata in FKV 332. It apparently starts easily, but soon always misleads you. Patterns that you already finish in your head are flying in a different direction. Bronfman wipes Mozart’s nuts as fluff from the keys. He plants commas and points with a beautiful air arch in the keyboard, like a badmintonner who drops the shuttle smoothly behind the net. In Schumanns Arabeske in C It goes from soft, softer, softest: every time it comes back as a filigree, you will striking the ears even more.
An almost mesmerizing peace pulls over the music: rarely does the large room keep itself so quiet, all evening by the way. In the atmospheric paintings of Debussy’s second series Images Bronfman dots the ‘Church bells from afar’ with a flexible brush in the showing global. The enigmatic chords that aim to reveal an Asian temple in the moonlight is perfectly balanced through the silence.
Balance is without a doubt the magic word of this recital. It is impressive with how much precision Bronfman the notes accumulate to chords and with how much attention he brings relief to the different sound layers, also that of the left hand. Pianists sometimes forget it, but you really do the piano with two hands. That was not forgotten tonight.