BORIS BEREZOVSKY AT THE NATIONAL CONCERT HALL – 23/05/2009

Reviewed by Pat O’Kelly, Irish Independent

While not exactly keeping the best wine until last, the visit of Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky for the final recital in the National Concert Hall’s own 2008/09 celebrity series certainly means tasting the ‘crème de la crème’.

Here is an artist not only possessing incredible technique, which seems to have come naturally to him, but also enjoying unusual musical insight.

His choice of composers – Rakhmaninov, Chopin, Godowsky and Liszt – recalls legendary figures who were themselves phenomenal pianists and Berezovsky follows the path of these Herculean characters to stand in the upper echelons of today’s virtuosi.

He begins with Rakhmaninov’s First Sonata, itself something of a rarity due to its prodigious difficulty. Berezovsky ensures its melodic line is unerringly clear no matter how dense the surrounding textures.

The calmer central Lento has a constantly swaying undercurrent beneath its elongated lyrical phrases. The piece meanders quixotically but Berezovsky gives it a meaningful sense of purpose.

He makes the massive chordal sequences of the fiendish Finale resound like the bells of the Kremlin. The music is wildly self-indulgent, and even undisciplined, but Berezovsky’s interpretation raises it to Himalayan peaks.

Chopin’s First Scherzo is a shade too fast but a selection of his Studies in their original form and in Leopold Godowsky’s spectacular transformations are simply fantastic. The famous ‘Revolutionary’ Etude in Godowsky’s ‘left hand alone’ version loses some of its éclat but is still dazzling.

Five of Liszt’s Transcendental Studies come in awesome proportions with Berezovsky providing incredible variety through delicate pastel shading and outrageously flamboyant colour.

A musician of enormous stature, Boris Berezovsky is in class of his own.