Virtuosic Promenade: Interview with Khatia Buniatishvili

[mariodisarli]

THE TELEGRAPH   05.06.2014 <Khatia Buniatishvili, Queen Elizabeth
Hall, review: 'sorely disappointing'> By Ivan Hewett
Comment Tales abound of the heroic pianists of old, who beat
pianos into submission, and broke strings without even raising a
forearm. Young Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili clearly wants to
join that company. True, I didn’t actually see any keys flying or hear
any strings snap. But by the end of the Three Dances from Stravinsky’s
Petrouchka, one or two notes had acquired that worrying out-of-tune rasp
that shows a piano is wilting under the strain. Buniatishvili’s
blistering power went hand-in-hand with an astonishing steely-wristed
technique, which was a boon in the Stravinsky, and in the mad dance of
Ravel’s La Valse, and in Chopin’s B flat minor Scherzo. Under her hands
these pieces took on a crazed, tumultuous quality. At the opposite pole
was the spectral calm of Le Gibet, Ravel’s evocation of a corpse
swinging from a gallows. I’ve never heard this piece played with such a
threadbare sound, and at such a slow pace. In between came three
Intermezzi by Brahms, which were so quiet and thin in sound it seemed as
if they’d died and returned as ghosts. This was all very striking. But
where was the musical sense in it all? When everything is pushed to
extremes, all we’re left with is a series of shocks to the nervous
system, which very soon wear off. I never thought the beginning of
Chopin’s heroic and tragic Scherzo could sound trivial, but
Buniatishvili somehow managed it. The piece began fast and then
accelerated, skidding to a halt at the first cadence with cartoonish
suddenness. Buniatishvili’s problem is that she gets intoxicated by her
own virtuosity, and musical judgment goes out of the window. This isn’t
to say an effect of intoxication isn’t appropriate at times. In fact in
Ravel’s La Valse a sense of encroaching delirium is the essence of the
piece. But we have to feel delirium pushing against a firm underlying
waltz tempo, and in Buniatishvili’s performance that dance pulse barely
registered. It was crazed from the start. All this exaggeration was
sorely disappointing, because here and there moments of real sensitivity
emerged. The delicacy of the very first piece, Ravel’s Ondine, promised
something special. In Brahms’s deeply nostalgic B flat minor Intermezzo
her sound took on a lovely entangled, cobwebby quality, clear and hazy
all at once. But to really savour these little nuances one needs a basic
trust in the performer. That, I’d long since lost.