Motivated by a desire to explore the rich and seemingly limitless keyboard repertoire, many young pianists are tempted away from yet another recording of, say Beethoven's 'Waldstein' Sonata or the Mussorgsky Pictures. It is not so much a question of fearing comparison with celebrated names(Brendel in Beethoven, RIchter in Mussorgsky etc) as a genuine reaching out to music all too frequently hidden from sight and sound, and in Khozyainov's case, a relish for the unfamiliar. Russian, aged 32 and the winner of many prizes, his playing has been described as of a 'stunning virtuosity'(the New York Tidmes}. And, as a decorative addition, his Tokyo 2018 recital was graced by Japanese royalty.
But the stress in his 'Monument to Beethoven' is on enterprise rather than more familiar or obvious virtues. All the works he performs possess a common thread, whether by Beethoven himself, Mendelssohn or Schumann, though with the exception of the pianist's own 'Petals of Peace,' where 'beauty,' in his own word, is opposed to world-wide violence and war.
Opening with Liszt's transcription of the 'Allegretto' From Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, played with admirable strength and clarity, he confirms Donald Tovey's belief 'that Liszt was by far the most wonderful interpreter of orchestral scores on the piano the world is ever likely to see.'
Yet it is in Schumann's Etudes on themes from Beethoven' that Khozyainov's exploration takes a dramatic turn. Composed when Schumann was 20 and never played or published in his lifetime, they contain the seeds of that daring and ambiguity that so troubled Clara(her fear that they would be thought incomprehensible) foreshadowing in embryonic form ideas that would later find fulfilment in masterpieces such as the Bunte Blatter, Etudes Symphoniques and Kreisleriana.
Khozyainov is notably successful in the high-flying bravura required in several of Mendelssohn's Variations serieuses but perhaps not surprisingly he shows his truest range and form in the Schumann Fantasie. Here he is strikingly alert to melody and counter-melody, sending the left-hand ricocheting to and fro against the soaring right-hand declamation in the turbulent opening. Throughout, he carries you on a vivid and romantically charged journey through Schumann's greatest keyboard work. The unforgiving leaps at the close of the second movement-- that 'locus classicus of the wrong note'-- hold no fears for him, even if the quaver, semi quaver rhythm dissolves, as with virtually every other pianist, into quaver. quaver. His sudden surge of emotion in the finale's closing bars is, again, characteristic of his engagingly ardent and impetuous spirit. You could, of course, easily point to recordings which show a higher degree of pianistic refinement; Moiseiwitsch, whose inwardness remained a source of wonder to Jorge Bolet, Pollini with his flawlessly sculpted phrases, Argerich with her flashes of summer lightening come readily to mind. But given the overall aim of Khozyainov's programme such glory is less than fully relevant.
Nikolay Khozyainov has already recorded a sizeable repertoire and I look forward to hearing this gifted young pianist in Chopin, Liszt, Schubert and Ravel etc.
Bryce Morrison