Reviews
Staggering performance of a killer concerto
Young Russian pianist Anna Vinnitskaya triumphs in the face of a fearsome technical challenge
Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto is one of the works (the opera, The Fiery Angel is another) where the composer seems determined to leave the key performer comatose with exhaustion. The first movement’s death-dealing cadenza, the breathless scherzo that follows, and the constant, sudden changes of mood and tone of voice throughout make demands calculated to drive any soloist to his limit.
None of this fazes the young Russian pianist Anna Vinnitskaya, who gives the killer concerto a staggering performance here. The technical demands of the work are fearsome, but just as hard to realise are the shifts of character that Prokofiev calls for in the score. Listen to how responsive she is to the composer’s dramatic style at the very beginning of the concerto, where a lyrical statement of the main theme by the piano, played by Vinnitskaya in a way that suggests a personal reverie, luxuriates on a cloud-like, iridescent orchestral accompaniment by the strings and winds. Within three minutes the tempo has quickened, the piano has completely shaken off its languor, and the introspective theme heard at the outset is being shrilled out by high woodwinds to very different emotional effect.
Vinnitskaya’s ability to shape and contour these changes of scale and atmosphere, backed by her chops as a super-virtuoso, come into full play in the latter part of the movement, where snappy piano writing subsides into a restrained restatement of the opening theme, one that gradually gathers emotional steam, reaching effusiveness as it expands into the huge cadenza. By 9:00 it has been driven into tempestuous musical surroundings where arpeggios race up and down the keyboard and, half a minute later, great chords and hyperactive passagework bring the movement to a spectacular climax that has blown up in a very short time and that should be too grand for a movement that lasts only eight and a half minutes. It works, though, and is awe-inspiringly exciting when played with the perfect balance of control and abandon Vinnitskaya brings to it.
The short second-movement scherzo that follows brings a complete change air. It is one of those hard-driven toccatas that Prokofiev loved, and in Vinnitskaya’s hands it maintains a balance of manic joy and edginess as it spins along in its adrenaline-fuelled rush. The recording engineers are also virtuosos here, balancing the piano and the orchestra perfectly so that the winds and solo trumpet add accents of colour to individual notes in the runaway piano line without overwhelming them.
There are moments throughout the concerto where the pianist reveals her deep sympathy with its quirky style. After the stamping heaviness of the opening passage of the Intermezzo, she steers the music skilfully into more delicate emotional territory, then (at around 5:00) opens it out with snappy execution of left-hand figures that have a springy zip reminiscent of the scherzo of the composer’s Sixth Piano Sonata. And listen to how Vinnitskaya and conductor Varga allow the weightiness of the opening music of the Finale to scale down to a soulful duet between soloist and cello.
The G stands for Gershwin in Ravel’s G-major Concerto, and Vinnitskaya lets herself go with the jazzy touches in the score without going over the top. Listen to her beautifully languid way with the bluesy theme that begins after 1:00 of the opening movement, and to her pinpoint staccato attack in the music after 2:45. The heartbreaker piano solo that opens the second movement, as affecting in its simplicity and emotional depth as the one that begins the central movement of Mozart’s K. 488 Piano Concerto, unwinds gorgeously, and the finale is dispatched with perfect precision and great speed, all of Ravel’s fluorescent touches, from the clarinet shriek at the beginning until the concluding drum thwack, making their full effect.
Ravel asks a lot from orchestral soloists in this concerto, and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester under conductor Varga give him everything that he could have wanted. The trumpeter who launches the first movement’s high-voltage theme, the harpist who (with the disc’s superb engineering) gives such glitter to the harp solo beginning at 4:38 in the first movement, and the rollicking clarinet in the finale are all stars.
I’ve always regretted that Gary Graffman did not record Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with Georg Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra during the 1960s, when he made his peerless recordings of the First and Third concertos. But I don’t thing that even they could have surpassed with Vinnitskaya and Varga give us here. For me it goes to the top of the list, despite the excellence of earlier versions by Beloghova (with Ancerl and the Czech Philharmonic, my previous favourite), Ashkenazy, and Kempf The Ravel doesn’t eclipse Michelangeli’s version, or Collard’s, or Zimerman’s, but it is in their class. Don’t miss this.
Prokofiev/Ravel
She is a wholly exceptional artist, the possessor of a fabulous technique, and her musical understanding is a very rare quality…Her playing of the Ravel Concerto is breathtaking…I am sure that this is just what Ravel wanted – it really crackles with electricity, her passagework as light and as brilliant as quicksilver…These concertos are very different works, but this young pianist has the measure of them both – in spades.
Recording of the month
This is a seriously impressive recording. The Prokofiev Second Concerto isn’t the sort of piece you can make sound easy, but Anna Vin-nitskaya’s control at the keyboard is astonishing, and her playing is near enough faultless. Not many pianists would dare programme the work for their orchestral début recording, but it is clearly the right choice for her. And there is subtlety here too: her dynamics range for the barely perceptible to the thundering, and both the gradual dynamics changes and the sudden shifts are handled with expert preci-sion. Precision and control are words that come to mind with the Ravel too. Like the Prokofiev, it is given a clean no-nonsense reading, and like the Prokofiev it is a work that responds very well to it. She approaches the jazz inflections as one might in Gershwin, with warmth but without any sort of stylistic exaggeration. Much of the passagework in the Ravel is presented with a muscular tone and plenty of rhythm. The piece responds just as well to more wispy and introverted approaches, but played like this it forms the perfect coupling for the Pro-kofiev. And whatever your views on the relative merits of the two composers, the Prokofiev is definitely the main feature of this disc, to the extent that you often feel his presence somewhere in the background of the Ravel. Much of the rhythmic drive in Vinnitskaya’s playing comes from the left hand. She never lets the melody lead her, not even in the slow movement of the Ravel, instead keeping a rigorous balance between the two hands. If anything, this makes the virtuosity in the Proko-fiev even more impressive, the focused stability of the left hand acting as the perfect complement to the more dazzling passagework of the right. Naïve are clearly aware of what a huge star they have on their hands, so they’ve been sure to team her up with a top-class conductor, orchestra and sound team. The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin have an excellent recent track-record on disc, and this one is no exception. The orchestra has a busy time of it too, especially in the Ravel, and their performance is up to the same high standard as the soloist. The unity of the string sound is as good as you could want, and the crispness of the various woodwind solos in both concertos perfectly matches the precision of Vinnitskaya’s touch. The engineering too is superlative. Even the sound engineers are stretched in this repertoire. Both composers write well for the orches-tra, but they both throw in experimental textures that could easily disrupt the delicate balance between soloist and ensemble. Surpri-singly, both the piano and the orchestra are crystal clear throughout. While the engineers should take much of the credit for this, it is also worth considering what Vinnitskaya’s technique offers in this respect. For much of the Prokofiev, it sounds like she is playing full whack, but the fact that so many of the details of the orchestration remain audible suggest that she is achieving this muscular tone at a range of lower dynamics. How does she do it? It’s a complete mystery to me, but I can’t wait to hear some more.
Prokofiev, Ravel: Piano Concertos
Naturally when one thinks of the words piano concerto and Russian, Rachmaninov comes to mind, but this album proves that Prokofiev is equally adept at composing a masterwork for the piano, the Piano Concerto No. 2, which is made up of four movements. Though the recording quality is a bit too soft at the beginning when the piano enters, the tone is very crisp and bright and perhaps a little too polished-sounding. Prokofiev is less tonal here than in some of his other works, and this certainly makes the concerto a challenge to play. However, Vinnitskaya is more than up to the task, as her elegant, delicate touch moves through runs in the first movement with great precision and handles lively, playful passages in the third movement with great agility. Vinnitskaya’s style might be likened to a ballet dancer: supple, strong, but never ungraceful. Sometimes the phrasing in the first movement sounds mostly horizontal; that is, we get the sense of the flow of the melody, with less emphasis of the verti-cal chords. However, it is clear that, though she has performed since childhood, she is young and there is still exciting promise to see her growth as an artist. Gilbert Varga sets a rapid tempo with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in the fourth movement, but the pianist’s blooming, majestic arpeggi never lag behind. Prokofiev himself held Maurice Ravel in great admira-tion, so it is indeed fitting that Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major is the second work on the album. From its shimmering begin-ning with the piano and orchestra in a dialogue together, to the ethereal orchestral passages of beautiful tone color that are un-mistakably Ravellian, Vinnitskaya captures well the spirit of the composer. Overall, the concerto is less of a showcase of the pia-nist than it is a tightly knit work between the piano and the orchestra, and once again Varga leads the orchestra with great skill while respecting Vinnitskaya’s artistry.
International Piano CHOICE
Winner of the 2007 Queen Elisabeth Competition, Anna Vinnitskaya here takes on some of the most technically and musically demanding pieces in the repertoire and emerges triumphant. Whichever version you choose – Vinnitskaya elects to play the 1931 revision – there is no escaping the less than organic nature of Rachmaninoff´s thinking in the Second Sonata, in which ideas appear to collide rather than grow naturally out of one another. Vinnitskaya´s solution is to use colour and texture (deftly pedalled) as musically binding forces while keeping forward momentum on a fairly tide rein, theirby imparting a strong sense of ‘belonging’ to the work´s episodical leanings. Her control of dynamics is exemplary, from the gently whispered correspondences of the slow movement to the finale´s primeval eruptions, even if she doesn´t quite rival the emotional intensity of Gordon Fergus-Thompson´s classic account for Kingdom Records.
There is no shortage of electrical surge in Vinnitskaya´s gripping account of Gubaidulina´s 1962 Chaconne, which here emerges as a blinding masterpiece of coruscating invention. The way Vinnitskaya segues from the visceral central climax into the supreme delicacy of what follows and then builds inexorably towards another explosion of hyper-activity is unforgettable. Her ability to focus the listener’s attention on the ‘big picture’ rather than just play for the moment als pays special dividends in the Medtner-Sonata, which posseses a compelling emotional coherence.
Finest of all is the Prokofiev, which Vinnitskaya unleashes with elemental ferocity, underpinned by a heightened structural instinct, which keeps the music pushing forward to its exultant final resolution.
Performance ★★★★★ Recording ★★★★★
As winner of the 2007 Queen Elizabeth International Music Competition and the 2008 Leonard Bernstein Award, Russian-born pianist Anna Vinnitskaya is clearly a name to reckon with. Her imaginatively devised and vividly recorded programme juxtaposes late-Romantic bravura (Rachmaninov and Medtner) with the more acerbic language of Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata and Gubaidulina’s abrasive Chaconne. There’s little doubt that she has the measure of each work, demonstrating not only formidable technical control but also a truly remarkable range of tonal colouring. One might quibble that in adopting a more reflective pose in the opening movement of the Rachmaninov (here in the later 1931 version) she doesn’t always convey the composer’s prescribed Allegro agitato. Yet there’s no denying the sheer beauty and richness of her sound, the central movement presented in a particularly haunting manner. The Medtner, too, is spellbinding with a veiled quality that captures the music’s sense of nostalgia as well as its fragility.
Gubaidulina’s rugged Chaconne of 1962, mixing strongly percussive writing with more enigmatic and withdrawn passages, is a highly accessible work played here with tremendous brilliance. Finally Vinnitskaya offers an extremely compelling account of Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata with a terrifyingly relentless Finale. By opting for an unusually fast and furious tempo for much of the first movement she certainly coveys the music’s sense of unease, though some might argue that in the slow movement her approach is too chilly, somewhat in contradiction to Prokofiev’s marking of Andante caloroso.
Pianist Anna Vinnitskaya, a laureate of a half-dozen major international competitions, made her North American debut in the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater on Saturday afternoon, meeting high expectations with aplomb. This artist, at 25, is in the full flower of her musical and pianistic abilities. …
Vinnitskaya is a true lioness at the keyboard, devouring the most difficult pages of music with adamantine force. She seemed almost to relish the technical thickets, never rushing, never banging, maintaining control of wildly different simultaneous textures (in the Gubaidulina Chaconne) and pacing long buildups with unswerving focus. In this literature, she has everything a top-level artist needs.
But the question of what Vinnitskaya would do in Bach, Mozart or Schubert hung in the air afterward. … . In the contemplative F-sharp major section of the Liszt, the color and pacing were a little bland, almost as though her interest flagged when the technical challenges went away. But certainly, this was a most auspicious debut of a major talent.
Hats Off, Gentlemen...
The 2007 first prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition put together a blockbuster program that overwhelmed the senses both by its virtuosity and its musicality.
That someone could find so much music in a program that consisted primarily of Medtner, Rachmaninov, and Liszt and also get (almost) all the notes in this most difficult repertoire was a remarkable achievement. That the musician in question is a still largely unknown (at least on this side of the Atlantic) 20-something made it evident that Vinnitskaya has the potential to be making not only excellent, but extraordinary music in her career. … Let us just hope that we will have the chance to hear Vinnitskaya perform again and often.
The program first showcased Vinnitskaya’s exciting, hard-fingered pianism with Sofia Gubaidulina’s modern updating of the chaconne. With parallelisms, copious dissonance, and other 20th-century harmonic gestures, Gubaidulina explores the historical form and undermines it, notably with a fugal section where the bass repetition disappears completely. It was the only moment of austerity in a generally ear-pleasing program. Nikolai Medtner’s music is often as backward-looking and broadly neo-Romantic as that of Sergei Rachmaninov. Vinnitskaya gave Medtner’s Sonata Reminiscenza in A Minor (op. 38, no. 1) a smoky nostalgia, shaping it beautifully without indulging in too much of the treacle.
The real meat of the program was the paired sonatas of Rachmaninov and Liszt. The tempestuous opening of Rachmaninov’s second sonata, in the composer’s own 1931 version, had a few skittish slips that turned out to be a blip in a mind-blowing performance. Even more impressive than the booming sound of Vinnitskaya’s power playing was the lacy, dewy soft passages which were poignant yet contained. …
Liszt’s B minor sonata followed, in one of the more enigmatic, subdued, and yet astonishing performances of the work in my experience. The opening section was truly misterioso, not something puzzling to be passed over quickly, and the challenging passages had a magisterial sweep, even if some of the technical demands (octaves especially) could have used a little more polish. Again it was the gossamer touch in the rhapsodic sections that stood out as distinctive, with rubato used with sparing efficacy in both fast and slow sections. Even when large-chord sections reached a manic howl, the voicing of the melody within was etched and shaped. …
Vinnitskaya, poised and selfassured, was a commanding presence. She chose Beethoven´s Sonata No. 13, Quasi una fantasia, for her solo effort, with a soft, sure touch in the Andante´s opening measures that gave way to tempestuousness in the Allegro molto e vivace, expresiveness in the Adagio and joyful polyphony in the concluding Allegro. Her rendition of Prokofiev´s Concerto No. 2 went beyond virtuosity, making the work a musical whole.
… Pressler also said that the level of this year´s crop of candidates was exceptionally high.
Let´s not pussyfoot about here, Anna Vinnitskaya is almost certainly one of the potentially great pianists of tomorrow. Tomorrow? Well, maybe that´s a little soon. The girl, after all, has just turned 14. But she is already, on the stream of evidence in her recital yesterday at Hutchesons´ Hall, frighteningly close to being the complete musician. …
She plays with a maturity that would have an experienced listener place her at least a decade beyond her years. …
She has a physical power beyond her years – capable of delivering the meatiest Rachmaninov with a wallop – and immense lyrical strenghts, allied with a beautifully smooth, virtuosic finger technique and a awesome sommand of dynamic contrastsBut if there were elements that marked out her near-genious – and I do not exaggerate – they were evident in Prokofiev´s Toccata where her power-driven interpretation of the Russian´s obsessive, motoric rhythms was absolutely sensational, and, at another extreme, in her spell-binding, magical account of Chopin´s minor-key study where the composer spins out the distance between key notes of the melody, leaving the pianist to work miracles in connecting them endlessly-weaving figuration. Vinnitskaya did it wonderfully, with the ease and maturity of a master pianist.
