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Stories   >   Grigory Sokolov. A meat & potatoes performer, with an assured confidence that is spare and genuine / Wild Mercury Rhythm

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Grigory Sokolov. A meat & potatoes performer, with an assured confidence that is spare and genuine / Wild Mercury Rhythm

Posted: September 22, 2024

The recital tours of Grigory Sokolov have become the stuff of legend. Even though his programmes are often shrouded in mystery until the last minute, audiences flock to hear him perform, knowing that, whatever the repertoire, they are guaranteed a thrilling musical experience. While Sokolov no longer goes into the studio, since signing with Deutsche Grammophon a decade ago he has curated an acclaimed series of live recordings for the Yellow Label. The latest of these was captured at two recitals he gave in Spain last summer.

Grigory Sokolov – Purcell & Mozart is out today on all digital platforms with a 3-LP version to follow on 11 October. The full recital progamme will be premiered on STAGE+ on 12 October.
 

The first half of the album, presenting music by the 17th-century English composer Henry Purcell, was recorded at Sokolov’s recital at the Santander International Festival on 18 August 2023, as were the five encores that round off the programme. For his focus on Purcell, a composer new to his public performances, the artist wove together an uninterrupted sequence made up of three minor-key suites from A Choice Collection of Lessons for the Harpsichord or Spinnet, published a year after Purcell’s death, and six other short keyboard works.

With clarity of articulation and graceful ornamentation, Sokolov uses the versatility of the grand piano to bring out hidden nuances of the poised, elegant suites, which reveal how Purcell adapted the French and Italian styles of his day to create his own personal idiom. Then, as noted by Bachtrack in its review of the Aix-en-Provence recital, the pianist captures the different moods of the other pieces to perfection. “Ground in Gamut is carefree and lighthearted. In the Irish and Scotch Tunes the piano lives and laughs, by turns bucolic and tenderly melancholy, while Sokolov’s dynamic touch brings nobility and a sense of momentum to the Trumpet Tune.”


Wild Mercury Rhythm writes…..Classical concert pianism benefits from the dramatic. The first step in that direction is the personality; the more iconoclastic, the better. Grigory Sokolov comes from an impressive line of Russian pianists who were both technically accomplished and mercurial: Artur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, and Emil Gilels. Sokolov proved to be a late bloomer having won the 1966 International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition (following another Russian, Vladimir Ashkenazi, who won in 1962) and not becomeing very wel known until 20 years later. Since that time, the pianist has taken on a cult status, where audiences show up early in spite of Sokolov’s practice of not revealing his program until the very last moment.

Purcell & Mozart find the pianist straddling the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries with a program collected from two performances given at the Quincena Musical festival16 August 2023 (Mozart) and the Santander International Festival two days later (Purcell). The Purcell section is devoted to that composers Suites for Harpsichord Nos. 2, 4, and 7, as well as several minitures for harpsichord. Sokolov’s articulation is studied and confident as he translates earlier work intend for earlier instruments to the expansive modern piano. The choice of Purcell as subject is inspired if for no other reason than it was not his inheritors Bach or even Handel.

Sokolov is a meat and potatoes performer, playing with an assured confidence that is spare and genuine. There is none of the theatrics of Horowitz nor bottom banging of Gilels. He gives the listeners just the facts. For the Mozart section of the pianist chose the Piano Sonata No. 13 in B-flat Major. Sokolav’s measured playing exposed the skeleton of the piece with enough space in which to walk around. Five encores followed including pieces by Rameau, Chopin (a Prelude and Mazurka) ending with Bach’s Prelude in E minor, BWV 255, arranged by Siloti for modern piano played convincingly with a pungent grace and insight.


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