Pogorelich at the Met 26/10/06

[daniel patschan]

I heard him playing yesterday at the Met. It was, once again an astonishing experience. I have never heard before somebody playing so progressive. A lot of people left the audience during the performances.  The pieces he played (Beethoven Nr 32+24, Sriabin 4th sonata, Rach. 2nd sonata) sounded completely new !!! One might claim that in terms of being respectful to the so-called pianistic tradition it was a scandal - but: how many new voices he had discovered, how many impressive musical aspects of certain passages that were never heard before like that did he articulate. This evening i will always remember. It was the perfect synthesis of technique, musicality and progessivity.

[infectedmushroom]

I also love Pogorelich's playing !



It's a shame that people left during the performances...

[sevencircles]

The surprise factor is always there when you see him live. It may be the worst or the best concert you been too.

Pogo is the Glenn Gould of our time in many ways.

Pogorelich has got Asperger´s syndrome just like Gould did I believe

[Waldszenen]

He's a great pianist, definitely - manages to make everything sound new and unique without Gould's occasional eccentricities.

[pianowolfi]

Music Review | 'Ivo Pogorelich'
After a Decade Away, an Elusive Figure Returns
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Published: October 28, 2006

The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was packed on Thursday night, including extra rows of stage seats, for a recital by the Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich, his first appearance in New York in 10 years. When he emerged in the 1980’s, Mr. Pogorelich galvanized the concert world with his technically astounding, deeply personal and unabashedly eccentric playing. But in the last decade he has been an elusive and unpredictable figure.

How is he faring? His incoherent and interpretively perverse playing defies description. The first minutes of the opening work, Beethoven’s Sonata in No. 32 in C minor, were weirdly fascinating. Before long the performance was just plain weird. And so the evening continued.

These days Mr. Pogorelich, 48, presents himself with the trappings of a cult figure. The hall was nearly dark, except for a single spotlight on the pianist. Those who remember him as a lanky, broodingly handsome young man might have been startled by his current appearance — stocky build, shaved head, glowering glances to an audience he barely acknowledged.

He played using the printed scores with the assistance of a page-turner, an option I support in principle. Yet here his reliance on the scores seemed a compensation for insufficient preparation. How else to explain the many rough passages and overall aimlessness?

In Beethoven’s visionary final sonata, which begins in stormy complexity and ends in mystical bliss, Mr. Pogorelich’s timings were stretched to the point where the music lost forward motion and structural coherence. That a musical passage should have some semblance of a pulse is something that Mr. Pogorelich seems to think only lesser pianists who lack his brave originality concern themselves with. Consider this: the recordings of this work by Artur Schnabel, Richard Goode and Rudolf Serkin each clock in at about 26 minutes. Mr. Pogorelich’s performance lasted 41 minutes.

After this performance, which elicited some lusty boos along with bravos, Mr. Pogorelich’s playing of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 24 was, if anything, stranger. Who could tell slow from fast in this passive-aggressive performance where each phrase, sometimes each measure, inhabited its own world?

As the intermission dragged on for more than 40 minutes, some audience members started clapping in unison to prod him to reappear. Others just gave up and left. I was hoping that Scriabin’s Sonata No. 4 and Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2, rhapsodic works that invite Romantic-styled freedom, would better suit Mr. Pogorelich’s temperament.

Alas, his distortions were only part of the problem. His tone palette had, essentially, two extremes: either he played with almost inaudible lightness, or he slam-banged chords and thumped out voices so brutally you pitied his poor Hamburg Steinway, on loan to the museum from Steinway & Sons for this “Piano Forte” series.

Here is an immense talent gone tragically astray. What went wrong?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/arts/music/28pogo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


From NY Times. Pretty interesting what Tommasini wrote about the op. 111 performance.
Mabe the ones who have been there could add comments to this? Because there is a strange thing with op. 111. I have  a commented recording by the Russian pianist Vitaly Margulis. And he also needs much more time to play the second movement, about 25 min. if I remember correctly. He speaks of two different opinions about the "L'istesso tempo" According to Margulis that can be interpreted in two different ways. Most pianists play faster from the second variation, that means, one bar is shorter, but the notes are in the correct rhythmical relation to the notes before.  But Margulis plays "slower" from there because he relates the "istesso tempo" to the Arietta theme and one bar in his interpretation gets the same length as in the Arietta theme. Now my question to the Pogo listeners: Did he play "l'istesso tempo" that slow? I hope I'm writing that clearly enough

[counterpoint]

Who is suprised, that a critic, whose musical interest lies in "pulse" and in "forward motion", in other words: he likes motoric playing, will not be enthusiastic about Pogorelichs playing. Pogorelich is one of the very few pianists, who is NOT interested in showing his technical virtuosity, but showing the beauty and deepness of the music, he is playing. I'm sure, this concert was phantastic, but they sent the wrong critic to write about it. I'm a great fan of Pogorelich, and I hope, there will be a chance to hear, how he plays nowadays!

[Kassaa]

Who is suprised, that a critic, whose musical interest lies in "pulse" and in "forward motion", in other words: he likes motoric playing, will not be enthusiastic about Pogorelichs playing. Pogorelich is one of the very few pianists, who is NOT interested in showing his technical virtuosity, but showing the beauty and deepness of the music, he is playing. I'm sure, this concert was phantastic, but they sent the wrong critic to write about it. I'm a great fan of Pogorelich, and I hope, there will be a chance to hear, how he plays nowadays!

This is a bit a retarded opinion, pulse and forward motion are NECESSARY for keeping the structure and lines of a work. If you lack them, people will lose interest in your playing and won't get any of it. Also when playing very fast you can lack pulse and forward motion, this has nothing to do with virtuosity.

[counterpoint]

This is a bit a retarded opinion, pulse and forward motion are NECESSARY for keeping the structure and lines of a work. If you lack them, people will lose interest in your playing and won't get any of it. Also when playing very fast you can lack pulse and forward motion, this has nothing to do with virtuosity.

Let's say, some people will lose interest.

I am someone, who is more interested in details than in a "big form". I want to look at the music from the inside, not from the outside. And there must be more people like me, since Pogorelich has many enthusiastic fans.

[pianowolfi]

But what do you guys think about that op. 111 interpretation thing i mentioned?

[counterpoint]

But what do you guys think about that op. 111 interpretation thing i mentioned?

Besides the fact, that I myself wouldn't dare to play this sonata in public 

my feeling of the tempo changes in the Arietta is, that I would play the beginning sixteenth=120, then from the first "l'istesso tempo"  sixteenth=88 and from the second "l'istesso tempo" sixteenth=66.  I am aware, that this is very slow, but it seems to me, that's fitting the character of the music best.

[pianowolfi]

Ok I'll try that out. More opinions?

[mephisto]

He's a great pianist, definitely - manages to make everything sound new and unique without Gould's occasional eccentricities.

IMO his performances these days are more eccentric than Gould.

[thierry13]

Pogo is the Glenn Gould of our time in many ways.

No, because Pogo is, in fact, GOOD.

[jakev2.0]

No, because Pogo is, in fact, GOOD.

Yeah, none of Gould's interpretations are good - they're just eccentric. Gould couldn't even play a C major scale. What a lousy pianist. 

[sevencircles]

Many have accused Pogo for spitting in the face of both the composer and and the audience with the snailtempo performances he sometimes does.

I personally believe that he wants the performance to be a mirror of what he is feeling at the momement.

If he is feeling depressed then he wants to transmit that feeling to the audience by playing very slowly.

[arensky]

No, because Pogo is, in fact, GOOD.

noob.

Just because you don't care for an artist doesn't mean they are not "GOOD".

Particularly in this case.

[bachfan87]

Gould couldn't even play a C major scale. What a lousy pianist. 

Woah are you serious!



I love Pogorelich! I have the most amazing recording of him playing Gaspard de la Nuit.