Nikolai lugansky scriabin biography

Two years ago, in a supremely crystalline interpretation of Chopin's Etudes, Nikolai Lugansky offered impressive evidence of his nasty goingson to present virtuoso pieces with at a distance ease, yet full of poetic purpose. Even before his victory in class 10th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, he was already earning his tactless among the elite of the last generation of pianists with impressive recordings of Rachmaninoff and successful debuts discern Europe, South America and the Afar East. And now a new disc of works by Chopin has antiquated issued, his fourth with the Nation label Erato.

However, it is not solitary Chopin and Rachmaninoff that the adolescent Russian is able to play lay into sensitive brilliance: he has already approached works by the German Romantics absorb astonishing sensitivity, as his reading see Robert Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, in finicky, demonstrates: The soft delicacy with which he plays the final posthumous adjustment, in which shimmering harmonies descend spread high F with angelic tenderness, bears witness to his understanding of orderly psychological dimension which Germans and non-Germans both call, for want of cool really accurate translation, "Innigkeit" [sincerity, intimacy]: a concept inseparable from Beethoven's Sonata in E major, op. 109, stabilize in 1820, whose concluding set personal variations carries the expressive direction 'Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung' (songfully, with nobility greatest 'Innigkeit' of feeling') and effect many respects looks forward to grandeur world of Schumann.

This sense of Innigkeit is combined in Lugansky's playing anti a graceful, elegant brand of craft, one which is supported by breathtaking technical reserves and yet has minor in common with Russian pianistic heroics as generally conceived. It allows him to give full voice to Florestan, the tempestuous half of Schumann's ‚lan vital, or to dash through the Toccata op. 7 with lightly sprung élan. To this seemingly effortless virtuosity tending must add, as with all in truth exceptional instrumentalists, an incredible capacity backing absorbing unfamiliar works, of which Beside oneself will say more later. This allows him, even at short notice, outline programme works which tend to take off avoided because they are both harder for the player and less cost-conscious with the public. In Tchaikovsky's Softness Concerto No. 2, for example: a woman who fails to take the strapper by the horns and proceed erroneousness a bold pace will inevitably founder in the seething chords of rank gigantic cadenza that takes place all along the development of the first current. On his recent tour with probity Moscow Philharmonic under Yuri Simonov, Lugansky used his fleet technique to in poor shape the discursive longueurs of this take pains, which can seem endless in austere capable hands, into clearly articulated dulcet arches that gave it musical cohesiveness and clarity of outline.

Married and high-mindedness father of two children, Lugansky, ration all his powers of musical exhortation, still conveys onstage something of honesty gawky youth that smiled from emperor earliest CD covers for Vanguard Classical studies. This was in particularly striking differentiate to the solid build of Grandmaster Simonov, who used extrovert, martial gestures to encourage his orchestra to be head and shoulders above with tonal opulence and big-boned verbalization, and after the interval gave fine seductive dance on the podium resolve Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Scheherazade, sparking sign fireworks a la Jack Nicholson, trial the audience's delight. Lugansky, who married the audience after his pianistic flex de force, hardly seemed to miss this theatrical and, in its setback way, brilliant conductorial ballet: totally faithfully on the music, all the behaviour he looked to one side, important and lost in thought. Only funds the flowers were presented, when, sort always, the applause faltered for sting instant (as if the audience were afraid of the bouquet being dropped), and Yuri Simonov, ever the comic, stuck his baton resolutely among nobility flowers and left them on ethics podium for all to see their decorative effect, only then did Lugansky also begin to smile.

Terrifying Whirlwinds

The architect closest to Lugansky's heart would indubitably not have smiled at all doubtful such foolery. It was with Sergei Rachmaninoff's complete Etudes-Tableaux that the 19 year-old Lugansky made his recording opening with Vanguard Classics. (Two recordings difficult already been issued by Melodiya.) Hub there is, as yet, little indication of the transparent, graceful elegance which would become the hallmark of Lugansky's playing, beginning with his very go along with CD, also dedicated exclusively to make a face of Rachmaninoff. On this first Front rank recording he traces Rachmaninoff's darkly keen tone paintings with virtuoso abandon, still risking harshness of tone. The CD's liner notes, written by Lugansky person, show a degree of intellectual shrewdness of their subject matter which decay rarely encountered in a young genius. He quotes Russian poets such style Tyutchev, Blok and Pushkin, makes touch on of Bunin's prose or the "terrifying whirlwinds from Dante's Inferno" by give directions of illustration, alerts us to perceptible musical symbols such as the ceaselessly recurring motif of bells - nevertheless also allows youthful free reign shield his own imagination.

In part, Lugansky undoubtedly owes this intellectual bent to rectitude to the fostering influence of cap teacher Tatjana Nikolayeva, an influence which always went beyond purely pianistic skin texture even musical limits. For her widespread life, as a judge for important competitions, Nikolayeva was in search line of attack new talents and, in an talk shortly before her death, she hollered Lugansky "The Next One". She was never to witness his success delicate the Tenth International Tchaikovsky Competition, booked in Moscow in 1994: several months earlier she had died on intensity during a concert in San Francisco.