Review Details
MUSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY ROMAN RUDNYTSKY Piano
Alan Cooper
08 March 2009
ZESTE at CROMBIE HALL
“Shock and awe”, that was the phrase that leapt immediately to mind at the conclusion of Roman Rudnytsky’s astonishing performance of Vladimir Horowitz’s transcription of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. This was certainly not a leisurely stroll through a gallery, the promenade sequences were taken at an urgent not to say hurried pace and many of the sections representing the pictures themselves were terrifyingly fast. It certainly says something for Rudnytsky’s dizzying technical prowess that he was able to accomplish this while still playing all the notes and in the correct order. Sometimes the effect could be quite enlightening, for instance as he played The Marketplace at Limoges I could imagine in my minds eye one of these grainy early twentieth century historical films in which all the people rush about helter-skelter. The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks and The Hut of Baba Yaga were absolutely thrilling and the Great Gate of Kiev was like nothing else I have ever heard coming out of a single piano. As I said before, “shock and awe”.
Before Pictures at an Exhibition, Roman Rudnytsky played an amazing piece by the Armenian composer Arno Babajanian. In the composer’s home town of Yerevan, there is an extraordinary monument to him showing him about to assault a piano with tremendous vigour. Poem (1966) was something like the musical equivalent of this statue. Once again Rudnytsky’s high tensile technical brilliance was to the fore propelling Babajanian’s tone rows out of the piano almost faster than the ear or the eye could follow. This was one of the two finest performances of the entire concert. I will get back to the other one later.
The recital opened with Rachmaninoff’s transcription of Bach’s Preludio from the E major Partita for solo violin BWV 1006. This is one of those pieces where the performer can choose either to stress the Bach content or the Rachmaninoff content and Rudnytsky plumped firmly for Rachmaninoff bringing out all the rich harmonic additions in a fiery performance with lots of precision cross hand leaps.
Beethoven’s Sonata in E flat, op.7 was also given the same fiery treatment especially in its outer movements and I felt that it was in the finale that this worked best. I did appreciate the third movement though, for here in Beethoven, the minuet is starting to mutate into the scherzo and I thought Rudnytsky captured this idea nicely.
I mentioned another especially fine performance from this recital and this was in the second of two encores that Roman Rudnytsky performed. It was Aaron Copland’s Hoedown from Rodeo. Whether on piano or full orchestra I have never heard a better or more exciting performance of this piece. Never mind the rest of the concert; it was worth coming across town to a rather chilly Zeste just to hear this piece. I will never forget it.