Recording of the Week, Sokolov plays Purcell and Mozart

Grigory Sokolov is a pianist with a firm belief that a performance is a unique moment in time, an experience shared between musician and audience that is unrepeatable, even if the programme is the same on a different occasion. Hence, Sokolov chooses to record live performances rather than working in the studio, and he builds a relationship with the music by playing only one programme each year. This new album was recorded in Spain, across two of around seventy concerts in 2023, and the results demonstrate the power of Sokolov’s philosophy. 

The first half of the programme is dedicated to Purcell, a composer normally associated more with music drama, chamber and consort music rather than these posthumously published solo keyboard works. From the opening crystalline ornamentation and with a deft balance between parts, Sokolov demonstrates that this is music deserving of attention. A consistent feature of his playing is a sense of measure that avoids unnecessary complication, a simplicity which focuses on the shape of the music.

Sokolov’s use of the pedal is, as ever, limited so that it never diminishes clarity of texture or harmony, and his control is so fine that melodic lines are naturally expressive, the longest of them benefitting from the phrasing a sensitive singer would bring. He uses the capabilities of the modern Steinway judiciously, maintaining some of the qualities of the spinet and harpsichord of Purcell’s time whilst using but not over-using the vast tonal and dynamic canvas of the piano to draw out a wealth of colours and inner detail. Purcell’s Round O, ZT684, known to most listeners as the theme used by Benjamin Britten for The Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra, is a great example, including a quality of pianissimo that is rarely heard.

Sokolov’s playing in both the Purcell and Mozart works featured here is grounded in an innate understanding of every structural element of the music, bringing an organic sense of the music unfolding rather than being imposed.

Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.13, K.333, is played with graceful elegance and a beautifully song-like approach to the melodies. He chooses to play the repeats and this demonstrates his philosophy of unique musical moments in time even when revisiting sections within the same work. Not a single note is wasted, each one playing its part in conveying Mozart’s statement and development of ideas without ever sounding out of place. Chords are skilfully voiced, and accompanying figurations in the left hand, and runs in the right, are notably expressive where some players take them for granted and give them little shape. After the composed conversation of the middle movement, Sokolov brings playful character to the final movement, also finding places of wistful seriousness.

Adagio in B Minor, K.540, the final piece of the planned programme, is played with pathos that never over-reaches into sentimentality, and the interplay between all elements of the music is seamlessly expressed.

Understandably, the audience didn’t want to let Sokolov go, and there are five encores included here. The two Rameau pieces recall Purcell’s music from the first half, Sokolov’s ornamentation florid but with full respect for the musical line. Chopin’s so-called Raindrop Prelude (Op.28, No.15) is a masterclass in musical contrast, tension and awareness of both high-level structure and inner detail. Voicing, dynamic gradations and phrasing are so carefully judged that it is impossible to not be completely engaged with the music, and Sokolov’s handling of the stormily intense middle section is such that the D-flat major melody returns as does an old friend after a period of separation.

The final encore is Silotti’s arrangement of Bach’s Prelude in E Minor, BWV 855, emerging out of the enthusiastic applause as a fitting and beautifully expressed end to an enthralling display of exceptional musicianship supported by Sokolov’s command of the piano, of which I am in awe.

Deutsche Grammophon have beautifully captured the sound of the piano (no doubt benefitting from Sokolov’s well known collaborative approach with technicians), and a sense of the space in which these performances took place - though the audience sounds, whilst rarely intrusive, haven’t been edited here and are audible at several points in the programme. I will be playing this regularly whilst I look forward to the next in Sokolov’s superb series of live recordings, whatever and whenever that may be.