I read today an excellent and well informed review written by Hariett Smith in the "Gramophone" magazine - possibly the best magazine on classical music. The review refes to Volodos's live recording of his Vienna Recital. I copy some of excerpts here below. (Needless to say, I agree with every word!)
"You can keep your Lang Langs, your Yuja Wangs, your Evgeny Kissins...I'd
swap their collective virtuosity for one evening of Arcadi Volodos's
consummate pianism. To my mind, he has produced nothing finer on disc
than this live recital, captured in Vienna last spring.
[...]
But with this
latest release we're once again reminded that Volodos is a one-off. He
has Sokolov's genius for making even the unpianistic pianistic, yet
without his occasional eccentricities. He has the steel, combined with
the velvety sound, and the sense of a companionable relationship with
his instrument of Gilels. Yet there's fire aplenty too -- witness his
Dante Sonata, complete with the odd Volodosian touch (you'll recall from
earlier discs that he likes to make pieces his own). No one quite
achieves the incandescence of Ogdon in this work, as can be seen as well
as heard in a terrifying vision of the work on an EMI DVD. But the
sense that technically Volodos is in complete command, and that the
piano is not in pain -- even at the most extreme moments -- is
extraordinarily compelling. And through all the handfuls of notes he
never loses sight of the work's form, the imperious left-hand theme that
sweeps through the chorale-like texture done with complete assurance.
You
couldn't be in Vienna without presenting a waltz or two, and here we
get Ravel's skewed take on it (though less skewed than his post-war
vision, La valse). Volodos is less perfumed than some -- Thibaudet
(Decca) and Bavouzet (Chandos) in their different ways spring to mind --
but there's a wonderful warmth to his sound as well as a sensitivity to
the pieces' inner workings that delights. He attains the balance
between lyricism and a pungent neo-classicism every bit as effectively
as Casadesus in his classic CBS/Sony reading.
Right from the
start, this is an uncompromisingly programmed recital, Volodos plunging
his audience into the strange hinterland of Scriabin. Whether in the
insistent lopsided gait of the Danse languide or the deep-toned Prelude
No 16 from Op 11, more sensuous than Pletnev's sharply characterised
realisation, he is spellbinding. And in the Seventh Sonata Volodos is
still more incense-laden and edgier than Marc-André Hamelin's
beautifully etched reading, the sonorous bells building to a cataclysmic
climax.
Waldszenen is perhaps the finest jewel here, with
Volodos bringing his story-telling genius to every piece. Its outwardly
unassuming nature is deceptive, as the many great pianists who've been
drawn to it have shown. But Volodos is absolutely up there with the best
of them, Richter and Pires included. Just sample the rapt wonder he
brings to "Einsame blumen" or the combination of eeriness and an almost
Bachian purity of No 4, "Verrufene Stelle". His leave-taking, too, in No
9 couldn't be more poignantly done, without a trace of heart-on-sleeve
emoting, which makes the wistfulness all the more eloquent.
The
encores are supreme, from Volodos's Bach/Vivaldi Sicilienne, which is
informed by a restrained beauty worthy of Gilels, a Tchaikovsky song
rendered glorious even without voice yet its piano roulades never taking
the limelight, and, finally, a telling return to Scriabin. The
engineers have done wonders, in spite of the live conditions, and I'd be
surprised if I heard finer piano playing this year.
