With Kantorow everything he plays seems like a discovery . Works we have known and loved suddenly are seen in a different light as the penetrating innocence of his extraordinary mastery can make one question even Beethoven
The final work on the programme was indeed the final sonata of Beethoven and it was a vision that threw into question interpretations from many of the most important interpreters of all time.
A vision that was at times so immediate and overpowering where even Kantorow allowed himself to indulge in discoveries, sacrificing the rock like orchestral flow. But adding a sense of fantasy and freedom that was at the limit of our understanding .
Kantorow risked all as Beethoven was to do in these last works.
The Sonatas are not pianistic as such but more orchestral and require a very firm pulse if the structure is not to crack at the seams. But it is the energy and the genial invention of Beethoven that Kantorow brought to the fore even risking all, for a vision of genial enlightenment .
This was an interpretation of a young man armed with an incredible palette of sounds and a seemingly unlimited technical mastery who was on a voyage discovering of burning intensity and poetic, even prophetic fantasy.
The opening work, too, that Liszt had written on hearing of the death of his daughter Blandine,was a cry of grief , anguish and even anger before realising that this was God’s will and anger turns into rejoicing .
Kantorow’s was a harrowing journey of breathtaking daring, risking all as he entered into the world of Liszt with the same phenomenal gifts of a prophetic genius who had a whole orchestra in his fingers and toes ( let us not forget the sustaining pedal that could allow Liszt and Thalberg to revolutionise the piano as it had been known up to then ).
Kantorow produced sounds from this piano that I have never heard before in this hall or elsewhere. Volumes of sound that struck terror into an audience not used to such unbridled virtuosity . But there were never any brittle or brutal sounds because Kantorow had come to praise not to bury the composers.
Exulte would be more correct but less Shakespearian!
This was an artist who is above all a painter in sound and a young man desperately in love with the piano . A sense of balance of a magician who could conjure with the sounds and convince us that this box of hammers and strings could produce such magical sounds . A musicianship that could steer us through the maze of notes of Medtner’s first sonata as he had done on his last visit with Rachmaninov’s first . Medtner must be in the Guinness book of records for the amount of notes per bar. But which of these notes is the main course and which are just the filling, that is,until today, the unanswered question. This is the genius or should I say the genial inquisitiveness of this young man who explained on social media the route he was taking with this sonata and the importance of the journey.
‘Kalamazoo Flow’ a Gilmore commission was played with the same astonishing mastery and vision as all that Kantorow offered to share . How he found the time to master such a work with a career where the world has woken up to a light that has appeared on the horizon brighter than any other.
A comet shooting from one continent to another as the young man with a burning desire to communicate presents the MUSIC not himself with such dedicated mastery.
Chopin’s Prelude in C sharp minor was recreated before our astonished eyes as the ravishing beauty and subtle freedom could have been Chopin himself on a voyage of discovery.
I doubted that anything so beautiful has ever been heard in this hall .
That is until Kantorow intoned Wagner’s Liebestod . Counterpoints that appeared like jewels glistening unexpectedly with a beauty of ravishment as the tension built with breathtaking audacity. Always intuitively judging the intensity with a control of sound and the subtle sense of balance of a great conductor who can show us the way with simplicity and passionate involvement .
A recital that will long remain in the memory until the next visit from this daring young man on the flying trapeze .
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 