“Welch Dunkel hier!” That’s what Florestan sings, in Fidelio (Beethoven): “What darkness here!” I thought of it in the Great Festival Hall at the Salzburg Festival on Friday night. In the seats, it was dark, and it was fairly dark onstage too. That’s because Grigory Sokolov, the great pianist, was playing, and he likes it that way, evidently. A recital by Sokolov is a curious ceremony.
There was overflow seating, with patrons at either side of the stage. I have the sense that people sense they are lucky to hear Sokolov (and they are right).
He played an unusual program, as befits an unusual pianist. The first half was all-Purcell; the second was all-Mozart. The Mozart half consisted of the Sonata in B flat, K. 333, and the Adagio in B minor, K. 540.
Tell me: Has any piano recital, ever, had an all-Purcell half? Has any recital, ever, ended with the B-minor Adagio?
The Purcell pieces were a trumpet tune, an Irish tune, a chaconne, etc. Along the way, we heard the piece that Benjamin Britten uses in his Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. I think Purcell would have been amazed to hear his keyboard pieces played on a modern grand piano, by Grigory Sokolov. Amazed and terribly pleased.
Of course, he would be amazed at the Young Person’s Guide, too.
Sokolov began with Purcell’s Ground in Gamut, Z. 645. (The initial stands for “Zimmerman,” as in Franklin B. Zimmerman, an American musicologist who turned one hundred this summer.) Sokolov filled the hall with pure G major. This was pure Sokolov, pure magic.
All of his Purcell, he played magically: with balance, lyricism, and an uncanny sense of rhythm. His ornamentation was graceful, crisp, and utterly musical. Every piece was sculpted more or less to perfection. Sokolov was born to play such music (along with Rachmaninoff preludes and a world of other music).
At the end of his Purcell half, the audience called him back again and again. This is unusual, in my experience: multiple curtain calls at the end of an opening half. And an all-Purcell half!
His Mozart, Sokolov played beautifully, as you might imagine. And wisely, generally. But I tell you: it was a little bit sleepy, both the sonata and the adagio. Too retiring for its own good.
Then came the pianist’s usual slew of encores. He certainly makes the audience wait for them, and applaud for them. Every year, there is a ritual, in the Great Festival Hall. Sokolov takes a long, slow walk across the wide stage. Sometimes he leaves and returns twice, before sitting down to another encore. The evening gets later and later.
On Friday night, I found myself a little irritated: Everyone knows he’s going to play five or six or seven encores. Why doesn’t he just stay there and play them?
But Mr. Sokolov is his own man, doing things his own way.
He began his encores with Rameau, another beloved Baroque composer of his: Le Tambourin. Then came Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude. When he started this, there were audible sighs throughout the hall—sighs of satisfaction and anticipation. Then another Rameau piece: Les Sauvages. Then more Chopin: two mazurkas and a prelude.
The mazurkas were witchcraft, I tell you—pure, wonderful witchcraft. Horowitz put witchcraft—that Horowitzian voodoo—into the mazurkas. Pletnev can. Sokolov does.
An unusual evening from an unusual pianist is what everyone came for, and we got it.