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Rating: IN CAMPAGNANO DI ROMA: recital by pianist KONSTANTIN BOGINO
I have always thought it was written in the stars that once graduated I would have to study with a Russian; Pushkin and Pasternak, Gogol and Dostoevsky, their world was mine as a young girl, and then I happened to be given the name Vera, and as a child I always explained "It's a Russian name, it means Faith" and the first teacher of my Conservatory Master was called that, and so was the one of my current Master and musical mentor, Konstantin Bogino indeed.
It was written in the stars, and if it hadn't been, probably today I wouldn’t know the joy and fun of playing, and the effort always supported by confidence in one’s abilities by a musician who also had the great ability to convey his vision of music without ever imposing it, but rather guiding that of his students; certainly guiding mine: from a scribble to a finished drawing. That's how I know him and Friday evening he did not disappoint me, in fact, he has never disappointed me when I heard him play alone and with the Tchaikovsky trio of which he has always been a member, but this time he was truly stunning. And I say it in a Tacitian manner "sine ira et studio", especially "sine studio", without any partisanship whatsoever.
It was like traveling, like dreaming guided by the vital and creative imagination of a pianist who talks and does so in a straightforward, simple way, with the depth that only a child can have. Ingenious, protean, with now powerful and dense sound, now sweet and soft capable of creating emotional tension, of substantiating the music. And the music became an image taking the shape of the feeling that generated it; and so, the lugubrious tolling of the bell that marks the beginning of the funeral march for the fallen of the 1849 Hungarian revolution in Liszt's Funerailles, and in a moment I found myself WITHIN that Music which Bogino wanted to underline in the aspect of mourning and regret and then dark resignation. Poetic and touching the central part as vigorous for the ability to progressively open the sound of the ingenious quotation of Chopin's heroic Polonaise; and it was truly a shame that the generous acoustics of the Church of San Giovanni did not always render the harmony changes, the typical Hungarian music scale with its augmented second intervals, clearly perceptible, creating tension and sounding exotic to our unaccustomed ears.
And then, from crying to laughter that quickly turns back to crying, this time of a child, through Schumann's Kinderszenen and Debussy's Children's Corner; it was like a dance, a flutter of wings, telling of dreams and the children's room took shape: the way of playing free, relaxed but meticulous and attentive, absorbed like children playing, became the wooden horse, the blindfly, the sudden happiness; and then the anxiety for the news of the "important event" rendered with the solemn rigor of a child's perceptive feeling, and the fears and sudden veil of pensiveness of "Almost too serious," until fading away into the cradling dreams of "the child falling asleep."
Plasticity I thought among the emotions of 'as if'.
'As if I had played it myself';
'As if' I had lived the emotions of a child myself;
'As if' I had indeed been able to hear words in the notes of 'The Poet Speaks' that closes the Kinderszenen and is, at the same time, its key to interpretation.
Plasticity is the word I most often hear pronounced by Bogino in his lessons, which is flexibility, the ability to 'create' sound and 'through' sound, to give voice and shape to emotions and feelings, without constraints and in an absolutely free way.
He plays like this. 'It is' the music he is called to play yet it is never theatrical in this, everything flows naturally, without breaks neither in the phrasing nor in the rhythm, everything sounds true and immediate, direct, therefore, convincing.
The feeling that everything is right there where it should be, in its place and that place is 'home'. And from the 'Scenes' so tangible of Schumann to the sketches of pure color and timbre of Debussy, images unbound by Time that follow one another; from the irreverent irony of Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum in 'Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum' through the heavy dance of 'Jumbo's lullaby' to the Golliwogg's that closes the suite.
Irony and sense of the ephemeral, smile and bitterness, Bogino, versatile and original, never stops telling stories. The plasticity that gave shape to the poetic storytelling of Schumann turned into the fleeting impression of a Proustian narrative.
And when Music is transmitted like this, then you no longer care about the reverberation of imperfect acoustics, the too-small piano, nor even if 'the snow is dancing' from the Children's Corner has become a storm comparable to Liszt's Chasse neige or if 'on the wooden horse' from Kinderszenen the rocking turned into the mad speed of an assault on the fort.
Those who have practice in playing recognize those choices dictated by taste from those which are instead a natural and human 'letting oneself get carried away'. But a great lesson. Truly the greatest.
When 'you have music inside', it is there, it exists, and no one will ever be able to touch or take it from you, yet at the same time, you cannot help but let it flow and share it.
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