Thank you thank you thank you!! I've heard at least three versions of this programme from 2017-18 by now (Edinburgh, Warsaw, Verbier) and I'm so happy to discover there is more. Pletnev taking up these pieces is the best thing that happened to Rachmaninoff's music in decades
... and I've just realised it's the same recital you posted the B-flat prelude from a few years back - with these wonderful words below the video: "The precision and Voltairean outlook might be gone for good, but on the other hand he's opened the doors to a whole new artistic realm with his current playing. One which is deep, esoteric, otherworldly, and almost unfathomably complex. If you're used to Richter in this Prelude this is too mushy and low-key, you might say, but give him until the mid-section and I think you'll soon - to quote Schönberg - feel the breath of another world."
I remember first hearing this program and seeing Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev around the same time. Now in my memory those two have become intertwined experiences. Full of elements that bewilder and are seemingly incompatible. For me, the tattered Etude-Tableau at the end illustrates (in maybe the most shocking, painful, and glorious way) the construction of the giant bell from AR. Anecdote aside, this playing is extraordinary in every sense: hyper-modern, yet with a poetic sleekness and formal awareness of one of the old masters. Divisive in the way Horowitz was at his best.
Hardly the worst by any standard.. Range of colours, imagination, humour and artistic impression and love of the music shine through in this performance.. I can understand some may be struck by the very individual approach as being stretching the music beyond the composer's intention, but that can and should also be something to celebrate.
I heard him with a very similar all Rachmaninov program in 2018. The second part of the recital was dedicated to the Sonata no. 1. Unfortunately, this was one of the most boring recitals I have ever attended. Everything from start to finish was just dragged out, every pause in the score doubled or tripled, every dynamic inverted. I guess this Zen-style of piano playing just isn't my cup of tee; or maybe I haven't been in the mood (yet) to appreciate what he is doing. However, I think you cut out the most unsuccessful part which is the Sonata. There is good reason why it isn't performed as often as his other works. The absence of thematic material together with his Zen-approach made this one very painful to listen to although his control of every little detail was as good as ever.
It may be the most dividing programme in the piano world the past 45 years. The friend I mention above hates it to this day, we spoke about it again not long ago, while I love it. His position is that this isn't Rachmaninoff. Mine is that this is art. And it continues like that among all my friends, who were either bowled over by the programme, or are sharply against it. What it comes down to at the end of the day, I think, is how much you appreciate the artistic and suggestive aspects of music, and how attached you are to interpretation and a formal view of the works. For the former, these are heights few pianists have been able to offer. For either of the latter, playing like this is clearly bonkers.
Upon re-listening to this half of the recital, I realize that the Humoresque and the Preludes actually work pretty well. There is some hypnotic quality to his playing which shines a different light onto those pieces. Once you abandon your preconceptions about how Rachmaninov should be played, there is some sense of coherence throughout all of them. Of course, they have more intriguing thematic material so that the Zen-approach doesn't cause the dreaded disintegration as for the Sonata. However, the Etude Tableaux is exactly how I remember this evening: borderline unlistenable. So I guess you're right when you say that this is the most dividing program of the last couple of decades. Was this, by any chance, recorded in Cologne, Germany?
