Bach/Busoni, Beethoven, Chopin, Balakirev, D Scarlatti, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, etc

COMPOSERS: Bach/Busoni,Balakirev,Beethoven,Chopin,D Scarlatti,etc,Rachmaninoff,Scriabin
LABELS: DG
ALBUM TITLE: Collection: Pletnev Live at Carnegie Hall
WORKS: Chaconne in D minor; Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 111; Scherzo No. 1; Scherzo No. 2; Scherzo No. 3; Scherzo No. 4
PERFORMER: Mikhail Pletnev (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 471 157-2

I heard Pletnev play the four Chopin Scherzos in London last November, soon after he gave this recital in Carnegie Hall. Wonderful they were, too. But in New York the maestro seems to have been, if it’s possible, even more inspired. He makes each work his own, redeeming the repetitious character of the first and second Scherzos by finding viewpoints undreamt by any other pianist. Nor is it a matter only of imaginative moments or spontaneous caprice – Pletnev has thought through the music so that it grows from beginning to end. And, of course, he plays his audience, so that his full fury is withheld in the First Scherzo, while the Fourth glitters with the most ravishing effects. More unexpected is the visionary scope of Pletnev’s Beethoven – richly detailed, pianistically beautiful, yet with a sense of aspiring beyond mere pleasure. Only occasionally, in the first movement, are there touches of fastidious vanity in Pletnev’s handling of an ornament. Anyway, he’s never too dainty in the Bach/Busoni Chaconne, but brings to it an exalted, luminous quality, with his slim, finely chiselled tone on a particularly beautiful instrument. The five sumptuous encores pretty well defy description.