I’ve had a great deal of pleasure from playing Yevgeny Sudbin’s
new Chopin recital and really
thinking about how he performs
this music. Make no mistake: these are thoughtful, immensely intelligent
performances all, and with each successive listen my admiration
increases.
How to describe Sudbin’s Chopin? It can be brisk, at times, and
at others can be as hefty and powerful as Liszt. It can be as
still as a lone cloud in the sky, too. There is always a sense
of momentum which makes transitions especially clear and which
may make the fastest passages - such as the central agitations
of the Fantaisie in F minor - feel rushed on first acquaintance.
After a while, though, these aren’t rushed any more; they feel
natural. One gets the sense of a keen performer doing his best
to understand how this music flows, how it can be communicated
at its clearest.
Compare, for instance, Daniel Barenboim’s rather square Warsaw
recital, released on DG in 2011. Barenboim’s
Fantaisie in
F minor is 13:31 to Sudbin’s 12:00. More than anything else
Barenboim feels studied. His playing is heavy, as if he had sat
before the piano spending too much time thinking the interpretation
out. There are fiddly pauses and chords which feel pulled down
by weights. Sudbin may dash through certain of the faster episodes,
but he understands the relationships between the work’s parts,
and his performance sounds off-the-cuff. It really captures the
work at its most impressionistic, successfully conveying a sense
of exploration, of journey, of – there’s no avoiding the word
any longer –
fantasy.
It wasn’t until my fourth complete listen that I finally read
the liner-notes. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but Sudbin has
written one of the best essays I’ve read on Chopin, explaining
his performance philosophy better than I could: “the music’s raw,
direct appeal to human emotions presents huge dilemmas when it
comes to execution … It is not easy to articulate these interpretative
challenges properly but, simply put, the notes as they stand have
such an incredible power of expression that imposing yourself
can often diminish the piece’s expressive impact. This can make
our job (as interpreters) deceptively easy or impossibly difficult.”
He also quotes a remark by Chopin: “Simplicity is the highest
goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties. After
one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is
simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
This should give us an idea. Sudbin, turning 32 this year, could
play this music as a young(ish) firebrand, with hotheadedness
and a penchant for emotional extremes; he could go to the opposite
extreme and aspire to cool objectivity. He does neither: he doesn’t
quite let the music speak for itself, but he doesn’t impose himself
either. Sudbin
amplifies Chopin. He never seems disconnected
from Chopin’s spirit. I know this is extremely high praise; it’s
meant to be.
A few moments stand out as especially powerful: the self-assured
but prayerful major-key line at the end of the nocturne Op 27
No 1, the urgently shattering reprise of the main theme in the
nocturne Op 48 No 1, and the whisper-soft darkness of the final
notes of the B flat minor mazurka. Another of my favorite mazurkas,
Op 33 No 4 in B minor, receives a suitably mysterious reading.
Sudbin clearly has a penchant for Chopin’s dark side: there are
only three works here - most notably the third Ballade - in major
keys, and the program’s bookends are in F minor, the Fantaisie
and the Ballade No 4, the second theme of which has unusual poise
and gentleness without being still. Sudbin brings crystal clarity
and emphatic finality to the ballade’s stunning coda, a combination
achieved by Richter, Moravec, and few others. Then there’s the
encore, in which Sudbin takes the famed “Minute” waltz and imagines
how it might have sounded if it had been written by Rachmaninov:
a combination of mad virtuosity and playful wit which sets the
cap on a tremendous listening experience.
Is this a ‘classic’ Chopin recital? I’ve wavered back and forth
on the question; after all, ‘classic’ suggests something rather
beyond reach, beyond the pale of criticism, and I do wish Sudbin
had been just a little less headstrong in the
Fantaisie
and a nocturne or two. This is a consistent, deeply felt approach
to the music which seems always to bring out the best in composer
and performer. Sudbin’s Chopin achieves what he intends: he allows
himself entry into the deepest and darkest of the composer’s emotions,
but without imposing himself upon them. “Deceptively easy”, indeed,
for one might think, listening to this disc, that playing so naturally
and fluidly must be the simplest thing in the world. Quite the
reverse is true, and if Sudbin’s Chopin is viewed as a classic
in coming years, this will be the reason why.
Brian Reinhart
Yevgeny Sudbin (piano)