Performance: Konstantin Scherbakov (piano)

Concert Chamber

Reviewer: Heath Lees


If there have to be transcriptions for the piano, Scherbakov is the man to play them. Opening his recital on Sunday with a wily arrangement of the Nutcracker Suite, he reminded us that transcriptions offer the twin pleasures of savouring the piano's ability to sound like an orchestra and of hearing familiar music in a new light.

Scherbakov's crystal-clear articulation brought Tchaikovsky's delicate miniatures to springy life, while his effortless tone-control produced a sweet, bell-like sound for the Sugar Plum Fairy's heavenly celeste, and an almost real clarinet for the phrases in between.

Moussorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition lacked the same freshness. Although the more impressionistic colours came off well, as in the pictures of the unhatched chicks and the babbling market at Limoges, the larger tableaux were bottom-heavy, sometimes strident, often inflexible.

But the highlight of the concert was the well-chosen handful of preludes by Rachmaninov. Here, Scherbakov relaxed more, letting the music take a life of its own, exhibiting a huge range of piano textures and effects from a composer whose piano style is often accused of self-parody.

In stark contrast, Scherbakov had preceded these preludes with Shostakovich's early Piano Sonata, a multi-sectioned work, fiercely welded into a single, seething movement with some astonishingly avant-garde features like hammering the bass notes with the fist, and long stretches of relentlessly dissonant motor-rhythms. No wonder Stalin's cultural police quickly had their eye on this boisterous and wilfully decadent lad.

Worlds away, Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus provided luscious pickings for Dohnanyi's playful paraphrase, which Scherbakov played lovingly and, at times, with abandon.

As an added extra, the pianist offered a neatly expressive Mozart Fantasia. But the audience wanted more, so the permanently unsmiling Scherbakov finished not with a simper but a bang, in the form of a firecracking finale by Weber, which showed off his gift of imparting light and shade at a speed that makes you think he really has 15 fingers to each hand. Incredible playing.