Soloists and their Recitals
Familiar faces and newcomers dedicate themselves to their favourite pieces – and those that might turn into favourites.
Are these their favourites? Just those they have played often? Or do artists enjoy trying out something new? In view of the great variety inherent in the solo recitals at the Salzburg Festival this summer, such questions arise – and of course the answer is different in every case. Igor Levit will play Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D-minor alongside Johannes Brahms’ Six Piano Pieces Op. 118. Levit, honoured as “Artist of the Year” in 2020 by the Gramophone Classical Music Award and “Recording Artist of the Year” in 2021 by Musical America, also interprets Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 – in the piano arrangement by Franz Liszt.
Piano Luminaries. András Schiff has chosen the motto “Sonata quasi una Fantasia – Fantasia quasi una Sonata” for his recital. He will play pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Robert Schumann. Works by Johann Sebastian Bach are also on the playbill devised by Grigory Sokolov for his Salzburg Festival recital, which will also include Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann. Pierre-Laurent Aimard pays homage to Arnold Schoenberg, born 150 years ago. Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces Op. 11 will be heard, alongside the Six Little Piano Pieces, the Piano Pieces Op. 33a and b, Five Piano Pieces Op. 23 and the Suite for Piano Op. 25. These will be flanked by Alexander Scriabin’s Sonata No. 9 “Black Mass”, Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, Robert Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe and, as a crowning finale, Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. Yevgeny Kissin has also chosen a programme of impressive breadth, tackling Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata for Piano No. 27 in E-minor, Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in F-sharp-minor and his Fantasy in F-minor, as well as Johannes Brahms’ Four Ballads Op. 10 and Sergey Prokofiev’s Sonata for Piano No. 2 in D-minor.
Like his colleagues performing this year, Arcadi Volodos has always given solo recitals an important role in his artistic life: he will play Franz Schubert’s Sonata for Piano in A-minor, Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze and Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody in A-minor – the latter in his own arrangement for piano.
Award-Winning Newcomer. The experienced pianists appearing in Salzburg this year are joined by a newcomer – who has garnered a lot of attention: Alexandre Kantorow. Born in 1997, he won the First Prize and Gold Medal at the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2019, when he was 22. That same year, he received the French critics’ prize “Révélation Musicale de l’année”. In 2020, two Victoires de la Musique Classique followed, one for the “Recording of the Year” and one for “Instrumental Soloist of the Year”. For his recital at the Salzburg Festival, he has chosen Johannes Brahms’ Rhapsody in B-minor, Franz Liszt’s Chasse neige and Vallée d’Obermann, Béla Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1 and Sergey Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Piano No. 1 in D-minor. Furthermore, he will play Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne from the Partita No. 2, arranged by Brahms.
The last of the solo piano recitals will be given by Daniil Trifonov, who dedicates himself to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Suite in A-minor from Novelles Suites de pièces de clavecin as well as Mozart’s Sonata for Piano in F-major. At the end of his concert, the musician, who was named “Artist of the Year” by the magazine Musical America in 2019 and received his first Grammy Award in 2018, will play Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Variations sérieuses and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata.
Beyond the piano recital horizon, there are two special solo recitals: one is presented by the soprano Anna Prohaska and the violin virtuoso Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who perform the Kafka Fragments for soprano and violin by György Kurtág. The other, by Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lambert Orkis at the piano, features works by Mozart and Schubert. Mutter and her long-standing recital partner, who have been performing together since 1988, will also play a sonata by Ottorino Respighi and Clara Schumann’s Three Romances.
Theresa Steininger
Translation: Alexa Nieschlag
First published on 11.05.2024 in Die Presse Kultur Spezial: Salzburg Festival