Review: Dmitri Alexeev at the Penderecki European Centre for Music

On Tuesday evening I had the great fortune of hearing a recital the likes of which are rare–if even possible–to hear in concert halls today.

Dmitri Alexeev, in a rare public appearance, performed three Chopin nocturnes followed by Rachmaninoff’s monumental First Piano Sonata.

I say public; it was still a rather exclusive event. I am attending the Bacewicz International Summer Music Academy this week, held in the pristine and modern Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music, and the participants of the course were given the luxury of hearing Dmitri Alexeev–one of the professors on the course this week–perform this programme.

Chopin is one of the composers who are so well-known today–his music known to the greater population, played by virtually every able piano student–that one almost unconsciously forms an expectation of how his music should sound like. Of course, all this is great, it takes the performance of Chopin’s music to the highest, most polished (pun intended) level.

Yet when Alexeev performed the Chopin nocturnes, I immediately perceived how much space there is yet in his music for a very different kind of creative imagination.

The three Chopin nocturnes performed were op. 48 no. 2 in F sharp minor, op. 62 no. 2 in E major, and op. 27 no. 1 in C sharp minor. In all of them, Alexeev enlarged the scope of Chopin’s sound world by creating a rich sound in the bass. The melodic voice was on the other hand rather light and floating, as opposed to conventional practice which emphasizes a substantial, “singing” melodic voice over a soft bass accompaniment.

The result was an infinitely more sombre and desolate sound world, with a lonely voice singing to itself. Added to this was the spontaneity in the way Alexeev handled the melody, sometimes delaying its placement by a whole beat; he wasn’t singing for the audience, but rather the audience has been invited to take a look into the private world of the artist, an experience wholly more intimate and yet devastating.

The performance of the last nocturne, in C sharp minor, struck me the most. The effect Alexeev created with the hollow broken fifths in the bass at the beginning of the piece started as a vibration, growing and growing even as it threatened the integrity of the fragile melody, into a thunderous climax of such emotional intensity that exceeded all my expectations of what Chopin could sound like. In his performance, it was sound, not form, that governed the structure of the piece, through and through.

To witness a Russian master perform a Russian masterpiece is truly a unique experience. Alexeev’s understanding of Rachmaninov’s First Sonata was so totally organic that everything else–technical difficulties, rhythm, clarity of sound–were subsumed into irrelevance. Even amidst the impossible mass of notes, Alexeev showed that what stands at the heart of Rachmaninov’s music is extremely basic and extremely human. As the performance of the sonata progressed, the great master himself only seemed to get more worked up, his stoop figure producing colossal waves of sound, crashing ashore in one gigantic emotional climax.

This was an unforgettable performance of Rachmaninov’s First Sonata for me. If ever there was a thing as a truly “authentic” Russian performance, this would most certainly be an example.

Featured photo credits to Adam Golec.