Last night Russian-born pianist Nikolay Khozyainov made a return visit to Chamber Music San Francisco, presenting a solo recital in Herbst Theatre. Khozyainov is currently based in Germany, where he recently received an Advanced Degree from the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover (Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media), based in Lower Saxony. His touring schedule takes him to Japan and Australia, as well as Europe and the United States.
Last season Khozyainov recorded the complete works of Frédéric Chopin, so it was no surprise that last night’s program began with four Chopin selections. However, the heart of the program was shared by two pianist-composers that had a close relationship: Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The major Chopin offering was the Opus 52 (fourth) ballade in F minor, preceded by the seventh (in C-sharp minor) of the Opus 25 études and the Opus 51 impromptu in G-flat major. Sadly, all three of these performances dwelled entirely on jumping through technical hoops with little attention to any expressive rhetoric that presented a composition as a journey from beginning to end.
Fortunately, the accounts of both Scriabin and Rachmaninoff soared far above Khozyainov’s uninspiring Chopin terrain. The primary Scriabin selection was the Opus 53 (fifth) sonata, the first in the collection of ten sonatas in which the composer chose to dispense with the key signature. This was preceded by the last three of the twelve études published as Opus 8. The keys of these études were D-flat major, B-flat minor, and D-sharp minor.
It would be fair to say that those études were successfully engaged for both performer and listener to “warm up” for the Opus 53 sonata. That lack of a key signature does not indicate that the music is “atonal,” at least not in the sense that we associate with Arnold Schoenberg and his followers. However, the role of chord progression underlying Scriabin’s thickly embellished polyphony amounts to an impression of exploratory wandering.
This can be disquieting to listeners that want their music to be a well-defined journey from beginning to end. Nevertheless, if one is willing to take the wandering on its own terms, one encounters a diverse rhetoric of sonorities that compensate for the clarity of expression and expectation that usually serve as guideposts for a sonata. The score is one of a single uninterrupted music, but the notation of double-bars clearly indicates that the music was conceived as a series of episodes. That sense of an episodic structure was obscured through Khozyainov’s richly engaging account of all the embellishments; and, having poured over the score a few times, I would say that his approach to interpretation made for a convincing listening experience.
Following the intermission, the Rachmaninoff portion was structured the same as Scriabin’s. The major offering consisted of the six pieces collected as the Opus 58 Moments Musicaux. This was preceded by the first two of the five Morceaux de fantaisie (fantasy pieces) compositions that Rachmaninoff collected as his Opus 3. The first is identified as “Élégie” in E-flat minor, followed by the all-too-familiar prelude in C-sharp minor. The rhetorical ground for all eight of the offerings was much more familiar and presented with engaging confidence by Khozyainov.
The evening concluded with three finger-busting encores, which were not particularly well identified. The last of these was probably the most outrageous. As far as I can tell, it was an over-the-top virtuoso arrangement of “Yankee Doodle” prepared by Max Braun. (Once again I am indebted to the Web site for the Library of Congress.) This was preceded by a Scriabin selection that I was unable to identify. The same is true for the first encore, a wild-and-wooly paraphrase of “La donna e mobile,” the most famous aria from Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto. The best I can say is that it was composed by someone wanting to get even with Franz Liszt’s over-the-top paraphrase of the quartet sung in the final act of that opera.
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