FRIENDS OF MUSIC: KONSTANTIN SOUKHOVETSKI

A privilege to hear this performance from consummate keyboard technician. (Review by Michael Green)

Konstantin Soukhovetski is a young Russian pianist who is not only a consummate keyboard technician but is also an artist with an acute understanding of the subtleties and nuances of the music he is playing. He delighted his Friends of Music audience at the Durban Jewish Centre with a programme that was mainly off the beaten track and offered much to digest and enjoy.

He is a lean, good-looking young man, late twenties, I would guess, with a deeply committed approach to his music and a pleasantly informal manner with the audience. He was born in Moscow and his family still live there, but he speaks fluent English with a marked American accent. He commented on the music from the stage and was responsible for the highly literate and rather philosophical programme notes.

He opened with Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22. This was an appropriate choice to mark the bicentenary of Chopin’s birth. It was on the programme with which the 22-year-old composer launched his career in Paris as a concert pianist in 1832, and it was there again when he gave his last public performance in Paris 16 years later.

The polonaise is a dazzling showpiece and it was played here with great brilliance, but the Andante Spianato (written some years after the polonaise) is musically far superior, a beautiful extended nocturne with hints of impressionism that look into the future. Konstantin Soukhovetski captured the magic of Chopin’s music, revealing, as a good pianist should, what a great composer he was.

He followed with two works which showed, as he put it, “two very different Russias”. Tchaikovsky’s Dumka is, I think, something of a rarity. It begins with a melancholy folk-music type of tune and then livens up considerably later. It is effectively scored for the piano and was played with high skills. Then came the Sonata in C minor, Op. 29, by Prokofiev, this composer’s fourth piano sonata, written in 1917. It is typically vigorous and abrasive, and the slow movement is highly original and evocative.

The pianist played these two Russian compositions without pausing to take a bow between them, and this caused some confusion in the audience, many of whom were under the impression that the Prokofiev was a continuation of the Tchaikovsky. Advanced Tchaikovsky. After a little time, of course, the penny dropped and they realised that they were listening to music of the twentieth century.

After the interval came Schubert’s long (45 minutes) and profound Sonata in B flat major, D.960. This is a great work, written shortly before Schubert’s death in 1828 at the age of 31. It was played with superb insight, especially the first two movements, in which the composer seems to ponder the mysteries of life and death. It was a privilege to hear this performance.

The programme note referred to Schubert’s last three piano sonatas as masterpieces that remain largely unknown. I would go further. Schubert wrote 18 piano sonatas, all of them of high quality and some of them absolutely outstanding, but they have been sadly neglected on the concert platform.

An encore was not really fitting after the sublime Schubert, but Konstantin Soukhovetski chose one that matched the mood: a piano transcription of Richard Strauss’s beautiful song Morgen, tomorrow the sun will shine.

The Prelude Performer of the evening was the well-known baritone Selby Hlangu, who is a Masters student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He showed good, confident delivery and expressive phrasing in four songs from Schubert’s Schone Mullerin. Danna Hadjiev was competent and sympathetic in the all-important piano parts. - Michael Green