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Rating: A Tornado at the Auditorium: Arcadi Volovos.
Every pianist has their 'idols', just like one might be a fan of a singer or a band. There is no difference.
The reason, I believe, lies in the ability to resonate with the character, the interpretative qualities, the world view that emerges with each note, each interpretative choice, each crescendo and diminuendo. I listened to Volodos live in Tchaikovsky's First Concerto years ago and then I found myself unable to sit still, overwhelmed, amazed, and admired by the great technical skills that make him today one of the most appreciated and applauded virtuosos, but above all, completely captured by the interpretative strength, brilliant yet capable of touching deep chords.
Volodos enters the stage like the operatic singer he once was, but he doesn't give himself airs as a great virtuoso; frank, authentic, extroverted, confident because of the patient practice that, despite his great technical abilities, he always does before a concert. Proud of his freedom of choice that leads him to decide the number of concerts to perform each year, because one cannot mature, cannot grow, cannot refine an Idea, if one is constantly occupied in bringing it out, offering it to the audience, forgive the expression, even 'selling it off'.
And studying is not just spending hours at the piano, it's feeling, living what one is called to interpret, it's finding the thousand threads that inexplicably bind us to that repertoire.
It is trusting, immersing oneself completely.
Hearing Volodos play live again, after following his career and the awards for his CDs, perceiving his growth also on an interpretative level, was like breathing high mountain air for the first time and to the fullest.
The 3rd Concerto by Rachmaninoff, unforgettable Rach3 in the interpretation by Martha Argerich and Rafael Orozco, last night was indeed like a whirlwind, a tornado from the first notes of the opening theme.
One of the most touching melodies.
Few notes, sweet, subdued, of clear popular origin that anticipate, with a sinuous and fascinating tread, the sometimes magniloquent intensity that characterizes this Concerto where themes overlap, are born, and blend into one another like the flow of thought in a rhapsodic improvisation.
Lightness and singability, charm and poetry, astonishment and wonder, playfulness, irony chased each other until giving way to an engaging passion that I had never before felt in Volodos, flaring up in the cadenza that 'is' the 'Cadenza', toccata-like in the first part and dramatic, powerful in the second.
Not only technical ability and mastery, not only the capacity to make each single note sing, each single line, each single finger, not only power and endurance, but also great musical imagination which made last night's performance perhaps as memorable as those of Argerich and Rafael Orozco.
But I can say no more.
I was completely absorbed and overwhelmed by a thousand emotions, pierced by chills, unable to breathe, with my heart crazily racing in a dance and then a mad run; for forty minutes I cried and laughed, and the emotions blended and blurred in that tornado of notes; everything vanished, the fatigue of a new journey begun, the disappointments, the anxieties; everything was swept away by a powerful, uncontrollable tornado.
The only regret is hearing and feeling an orchestra unable to keep up.
But how is it possible to have Volodos play with the 80-year-old Previn? Wouldn't it have been better if Pappano had been conducting?
Because the gentle breeze of the Castelli Romani cannot really keep pace with the 'tornado VOLODOS'.
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