THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, July 6, 2010
IVAN HEWETT
"...In the nine miniature tone-poems of Rachmaninov’s Études-Tableaux, young Russian pianist Alexander Romanovsky summoned a tremendous pianistic bravura, and an extravagant emotionalism which kept sentimentality at bay with a splendid Byronic haughtiness..."
THE TIMES, July 7, 2010
SARAH URWIN JONES
"...Robust, bright, harshly poetic, Romanovsky's take on Rachmaninov took no prisoners but still showed humour, his sixth movement appearing a delightfully manic chase between Rachmaninov's Little Red Riding Hood and her wolf..."
Alexander Romanovsky. Variations on a theme...
You trained in Italy and in London. Do you feel the influence of the Russian piano school or are European musicians more important for you?
Despite the fact that I live in Europe, my teachers were Russian pianists. My parents moved to Italy because my teacher went there – my teacher was Leonid Margarius, who trained in Kharkov under Regina Horowitz, the sister of Vladimir Horowitz. I studied under Leonid Margarius for fifteen years before going to London to study under Dmitry Alexeev, another renowned pianist and teacher. He gave me a good idea of the European performing style, but I would say I studied the Russian school of pianism and no other.
And which of the great 20th century pianists is particularly close to you, a key figure?
I love listening to violinists and conductors as well as pianists. I really like David Oistrakh and von Karajan. And, of course, of the pianists Horowitz is my “grandfather in music”.
Quite often pianists are split into two categories – “classics” and “romantics”.Which trend are you closest to? Or don’t you agree with that system of classification?
No, there is a grain of truth in that, because everyone has their preferences. I am still very young and maybe that’s why I have a broader approach to art. I like music of all styles – from early classicism (Rameau and Couperin) – to contemporary music. And, of course, the Russian school to which I belong draws me closer to the romantic style. It is closer to us and we understand it better. At the festival in St Petersburg I will be performing Beethoven’s Thirty-Three Variations on a Theme from a Waltz by Diabelli. It is a huge pleasure for me to perform that piece. It is a monumental work that lasts almost one hour. Audiences have a reverential fear of these variations, but when you hear them performed live it turns out that this music shows itself to greatest advantage in a concert performance. It is unbelievably deep, but very accessible.
According to Rikhter, every pianist who performs the Variations on a Theme by Diabelli ultimately understands that he knows nothing about this music and must begin everything again from the start...
Of course, performing one and the same work over many years, each time you regard it in a different light, you discover new intonations and accents of meaning. But I am speaking as if I were eighty years old! In fact, I haven’t yet come to appreciate the range of sensations that a musician feels performing one and the same work over twenty or thirty years... And maybe an entire lifetime would not be enough to understand everything that the composer invested in the music completely.
You are an “omnivorous” musician, but perhaps there is something that you are particularly close to?
If you look at what I play you will be convinced that I perform it because I like it. I took rather a long time to come to the Variations and at a certain instant I was sucked into them, headfirst. I felt so much I that I could express by performing this work. And, of course, Russian music is very close to me, I understand it very well, perhaps better that performers who do not have a Russian background. And yet it would be hard for me to choose one style now. Maybe that will come in the future.
Are you such a diverse person in life as well as in your attitude to art? Do you like travelling? Is freedom of movement or having secure ties to your home more important?
Everyone values freedom. I was lucky that I am doing something that I love and can do my whole life. That is one of the greatest freedoms that you can have at all. Of course, being a professional musician means travelling. I am lucky because I love to travel, meeting new people and discovering new countries and cities. We spoke of how a work shows off different facets every time you “approach” it. That’s also true for countries and people – with each new meeting you discover something new.
What do you do in your spare time? Do you have any unusual hobbies or pastimes?
For some reason everyone wants me to have an unusual pastime. You know, music is something that doesn’t just take up a large proportion of your time – it gets into every aspect of your life. Of course, I spend a great deal of time at the piano, and travelling takes up a great many hours. I also like reading, and it’s interesting to go and seen an exhibition. I like to be aware of what’s going on in the world, discovering new trends, and I try to understand where is world is heading in general. I am not a great computer expert, but I like that too. And for several years I practised fencing.
Fencing involves the use of your hands – isn’t that a hindrance when performing later?
There is a stereotypical image of the pianist protecting his hands, thin and puny (laughs). I think that for any normal and healthy young person, especially a pianist, the hands are not the weakest parts of the body, quite the reverse – they are the strongest. Of course, you have to be very careful and not take unnecessary risks, but there is nothing to say being a pianist is incompatible with leading an active lifestyle.
MUSICAL OPINION
by BILL NEWMAN
Immediately, following the opening phrases of Schumann's Études symphoniques, the poet's inspirations caught my imagination. Beauty of touch and phrasing on an ethereal, higher plane matched perfectly the stillness of the performer whose mane of black hair and pouting, concentrated expression gave emphasis to the long, perfectly proportioned fingers keeping in check the silky motivation of the musicc's building phrases which, like its companion piece, the Fantasie in C major edges into states of ecstasy as the variation writing progresses.
It seemed our performer, whose approach and personality reminded me of Sofronitzky 'live', was playing within the corresponding perimeters of the phrasework, extracting, without distorting the essence of the falling harmonies in the reply figures, containing them, and communing with their inner subtleties to such a degree that it never cheapened musical continuity. I say this with strong hints of masculinity: the ardent composer was, as always pictured addressing his loving pianist wife who always performed and instucted her pupils to play her husband's solo piano works in this manner, architectural growth at the outset measuring up to the whole. Years ago, Claudio Arrau in a Royal Festival Hall performance even more deliberately stressed their constructive element, particularlyin the left hand, that lay beneath the singing lines. Romanovsky, to his great credit, never deviated in his placement of the five other variations. Unlike some other performers tending to pinpoint their entries they eased comfortably into their natural habitat and the conviction of his whole reading, with its delicate touches of rubato throughout, led to a resplendent conclusion.
My own choice in following the Russian printed score of the Rachmaninov Études – Tableaux, Opus 39 (happily signed by Alexander) was to marvel in the phenomenal dexterity and clarity of his fingerwork coupled with the composer's sheer powers of invention throughout this Masterwork. I cannot imagine their pianist-creator himself bettering this remarkable performance where the pianist's natural ebb and flow appeared to be felt and suggested by Rachmaninov beforehand with the aid of expressive/tempo markings for each of the nine numbers. Following the final Scriabin encore – the one on film where Horowitz played for the composer's grand daughter – came a ravishing Debussy Clair de lune.
A truly wonderful evening!
JEREMY NICHOLAS
The nine pieces that make up the second of the two sets of Etudes-Tableaux contain some of the most technically demanding music Rachmaninov ever wrote, but any pianist must look beyond the notes to convey the (unspecified) story behind them. Romanovsky is a Rachmaninov player to the manner born – a dramatist (listen to No.6, the so-called “Little Red Riding Hood” étude) and poet of lyrical charm (No.2 is one of the best on record). The later (1931), more sober Corelli Variations offers further evidence of a hugely gifted young pianist, though the booklet discourteously makes no mention of him.
THE news of an emerging young Russian virtuoso pianist might provoke many classical music fans to wonder, “Do we really need another?” But Alexander Romanovsky is special, not just an extraordinary technician with a flair for color and fantasy but also a sensitive musician and lucid interpreter. His new Rachmaninoff recording for Decca, with the complete “Études-Tableaux” (Op. 39) and the Variations on a Theme of Corelli is a remarkable achievement.
Mr. Romanovsky does not fit the profile of the typical Russian Romantic virtuoso. Born in 1984, he was touring as a soloist with the Moscow Virtuosi at 11. At 13 he moved to Italy to further his studies, and at 17 he won top prize in the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano.
From the recording’s first track, the “Étude-Tableau” No. 1, Mr. Romanovsky’s effortless ability to dispatch swirling streams of agitated passagework and myriad colorings comes through excitingly. Yet for all the fireworks there is wondrous clarity and grace in the playing. The anguished intensity and relentless drive in the Fifth Étude, with its bursts of pummeling chords, recall the playing of Horowitz. Yet there is not a trace of indulgent Romantic excess here. Mr. Romanovsky finds Schumannesque whimsy in the Third Étude. And amid the murky textures and harmonic wanderings of the Seventh he reveals elusive inner voices that thread through the music.
He also gives a commanding account of the daunting “Corelli Variations.” Rather than luxuriating in the opportunities for display, Mr. Romanovsky highlights the contrapuntal intricacies and conveys the music’s cool, mysterious Neo-Classical restraint. His fleet runs and repeated chords are plenty dazzling of course. But he makes the piece seem important, a rarer achievement.
PHILIP KENNICOTT
...It's a magnificent recording, subtle and intelligent, filled with sharp ideas finessed out of thick textures, and thoroughly satisfying on all the basic grounds of so-called Russian pianism. The technique is solid, the emotional force compelling and there's even a touch of old-fashioned sentiment... Romanovsky can produce the thunderous sound and sharpedged, ringing bass that sends a tingle down the spine. But he does so very rarely, holding the big guns in reserve more to affright the listener than overwhelm him. The music is deeply felt but refined. It barrels along but there's nothing precipitous or breathless. He creates space between musical ideas without the whole becoming episodic, the mark of a pianist who knows the overarching structure firmly enough to integrate the rhetoric of rubato and pauses without distorting the integrity of the narrative... The Etudes-tableaux are paired with the short musical vignettes of the Corelli Variations, most of which are less than a minute in length and some of them barely long enough to project an idea before moving on. It's a smart choice to juxtapose the large-canvas Etudes with these etched miniatures. And perhaps it's no accident that this barely hour-long disc has 32 tracks, as if to prove the pianist's capacity for infinite variety within reasonable parameters. It's almost a sleight of hand, to plunge into the vastness of Russian music only to prove its versatility, its range, its contradictions and its variegated array of small surprises... Russian pianists are in the unenviable position of having to demonstrate they are capable of more than the one thing that audiences generally want: unbridled emotion and technical perfection. Romanovsky – who may, at this point in his life, be only as Russian as his last name – does that in this recording, and with no loss to the music, or our pleasure.
Con queste parole "Amadeus" di ottobre descrive il "Rachmaninov" di Alexander Romanovsky:
"...E suona davvero bene Alexander: ha poderose mani d'acciaio che scuotono l'anima percussiva del pianoforte come meglio non si potrebbe e affrontano le diavolerie tecniche più temibili come fosse acqua..."
