Monday, December 22, 2008

Arcadi Volodos - Another Horowitz Among Us?

Like Horowitz, Arcadi Volodos was not a piano prodigy. He did not turn assiduously to the piano until the age of about sixteen, similar to Horowitz. It is most unusual for a musician with world status not to have overwhelmed audiences at age eight or nine, such as an Artur Rubinstein or a Michael Rabin.
At any rate, the teen-ager Volodos turned his entire attention to the piano, and is now considered by many to be the world's most exciting pianist (he was born in 1972).
I recently heard his recording of the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3, and was overwhelmed with the attention he pays to the elements within the melodic and transitional phases of this monumental work. It's as if Volodos has found ways to probe inside the very melody he is dealing with, and creates an additional layer of indefinable meaning and power to the outer structure we, as knowing listeners normally pay attention to and recognize.
What is astonishing to me is that with all of the intellectual and musical prowess Volodos possesses, he is as well the owner of the most prodigious physical technique extant today.
His transcription of the Mozart "Rondo Alla Turca" is every bit the equal, in terms of difficulty and diabolical cleverness in building simultaneity in sound as any of the legendary Horowitz transcriptions. I had never contemplated the possibility of any pianist equal to or exceeding Horowitz in the fashioning and playing of virtuoso - transcriptions; however, Volodos must be recognized for this possibility. Listen to his playing of the "Flight of the Bumble-bee" transcription; or, better yet, sit back for about 8 or 9 minutes and become enveloped by a staggering performance of Feinberg's immense transcription of the third movement of Tchaikowsky's 6th Symphony - it is truly Olympian.
To encapsulate - spend some time with Arcadi Volodos, and listen to History formed as you listen. He is still a young man; and above all else, he is a poet, not simply a pianist.

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