By Clive O'Connell
MUSIC
DANIIL TRIFONOV ★★★★½
Melbourne Recital Centre
March 14
Trifonov gave only one recital here but it was a corker. Tuesday night began with a Schumann bracket well over an hour in length, comprising the Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana with the solid Toccata as a stocking filler. Here was extraordinarily fine pianism, brimful with sensitivity and interpretative craft. Through the familiar pages of the first collection, Trifonov demonstrated Schumann's supple voice-leading in a work that offers a world of emotional content in pieces that verge on the slight. The pianist concentrated on introspection more than whimsy, informed by careful placement of each phrase.
Daniil Trifonov – extraordinarily fine pianism, brimful with sensitivity and interpretative craft.
The Toccata tests clarity of articulation, as it's packed with streams of semiquaver chords, yet Trifonov successfully shaped the piece's continuous thick texture. But the pick of this sequence – indeed, of the night – came with the eight movements of Kreisleriana. In this chain of contrasts, Trifonov outlined Schumann's alternation between intensity and poised reflection better than any pianist I've heard for many years, nowhere more movingly than during the second movement with its engaging intermezzi, the complete execution impressing for its sheer spontaneity and intelligence: an ideal fusion of score and performance.
For the evening's second half, the output went Russian with five extracts from Shostakovich's Bach homage, the 24 Preludes and Fugues, ending with the large-scale D minor composite which again attested to Trifonov's digital and intellectual grasp of a large canvas. Ending the program was Stravinsky's three movements from Petrushka – the outer public segments accomplished with pounding virtuosity and an eye for every possible effect.