Arts & Events

If anyone needed further proof of the daemonic wizardry of pianist Daniil Trifonov, his recital on Sunday, November 13, at Davies Hall offered proof in spades. The highlight of this recital was the fiendishly difficult Gaspard de la nuit by Maurice Ravel. Considered by many to be the most difficult work in the whole solo piano repertoire, Gaspard de la nuit received in the hands of Daniil Trifonov an absolutely jaw-dropping performance. Based on the ghoulish prose-poems by Aloysius Bertrand, Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit unfolds in three movements. The first, Ondine, depicts the fatally alluring nymph in her watery milieu. It opens with rippling music, full of shimmering tremolos that suggest the murmuring flows of a river. Occasionally, the music evokes cascades, and now and then one hears Ondine flirting openly with a male onlooker, then playfully frolicking away. Toward the end of this movement, Ondine departs with a sardonic or diabolic laugh.  

With the second movement, Le Gibet (The Gallows), Gaspard de la nuit takes a distinctly dark turn, opening with an image that suggests a corpse swaying in the breeze as it hangs from the gallows. This is a nightmarish vision worthy of Edgar Allen Poe. The slow, lugubrious rhythms are punctuated by relentlessly throbbing B flats. The third and final movement, Scarbo, depicts a ghoulish apparition. In this movement there are many long, difficult passages requiring rapid-fire cross-handed action. Daniil Trifonov displayed absolutely jaw-dropping technique in these fiendishly difficult passages. This was a masterful performance, full of the daemonic wizardry that has become the signature of Daniil Trifonov.  

The recital opened with Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album, composed in 1878. This work was intended to serve the musical education of young children and to encourage them to play the piano. Although some of the two-dozen miniatures are simple enough, many are quite challenging technically. To each of these miniatures Tchaikovsky gave child-friendly names such as Hobbyhorse, The Wooden Soldiers’ March, Mummy, The Doll’s Illlness, and so on. All in all, Children’s Album offers a kaleidoscope of differing moods, elegantly evoked here by Daniil Trifonov.  

The second work on the program was Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C Major, Opus 17, composed in 1838. This is a lengthy, deeply meditative work written with his future wife, Clara, in mind even as the composer dealt with Clara’s father’s unyielding opposition to their courtship. I found it intriguing to note Daniil Trifonov’s variety of postures during this performance. Often he sits hunched directly over the keyboard with his eyes riveted on the keys. At other times, especially in pensive or dreamy passages, Trifonov sits upright with his head tilted upward, his eyes half-closed or staring into space. At yet other moments, Trifonov suddenly bolts upright, tossing his head abruptly back and sending his hair flying.  

Trifonov departed from the printed program by deciding not to play Mozart’s Fantasia in C minor, K. 475 , as the closing work of the first half of his recital and instead perform it as the opening work after intermission. This change actually made sense, given how lengthy and demanding were the Tchaikovsky and Schumann works that opened this recital. Although full of Mozart’s characteristic melodic felicity, the Fantasia in C minor adheres to the ominous, foreboding mood associated with the key of C minor. There is much chromaticism in this work. To me, this work by Mozart was totally unfamiliar. I doubt I’d ever heard it before, and it was a welcome treat to hear it played so beautifully by Daniil Trifonov.  

After the performance of Gaspard de la nuit, dealt with at the outset of this review, Daniil Trifonov closed out the printed program with Piano Sonata No. 5 in F-sharp minor, Opus 53, by Alexander Scriabin. As program notes indicate, “Scriabin’s harmonic language verges on atonality, contributing to the sense of controlled delirium.” This seems to me an apt way to characterise so much of Scriabin’s music. Needless to say, Daniil Trifonov expertly navigated the strenuous difficulties of this work.  

After tumultuous applause and shouts of Bravo!, Daniil Trifonov offered as an encore Johann Sebastian Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. After all the drama of the works on the printed program, this work by Bach was given a serenely radiant, magisterial performance by Daniil Trifonov.