What: Nikolai Demidenko
Where: Auckland Museum
Reviewer: William Dart
The final instalment of Auckland Museum's Fazioli International Piano Recital Series featured Nikolai Demidenko, a familiar concerto soloist with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra of late.
Liszt's ingenious transcription of Bach's great G minor Fantasy and Fugue opened the evening.The Fantasy, which can so easily come across as overly fragmented, moved towards its Fugue with singular drive and purpose. In Demidenko's hands, the Fazioli piano lent the Fantasy a special resonance, the Fugue a luminescent clarity.
Bach's Italian Concerto had gusto aplenty in its outer movements; the Finale, in particular, was a headlong rush of energy. Demidenko's personal signature could be heard in its subtly blurred chords, as it had been in the singing melody of the slow movement.
Liszt's Variations on a theme from Bach's Cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen showed Demidenko's skill in catching the architectural span of the piece - there was always a sense of line, even when harmonies were at their most dense.
At one point we were enchanted by the "personal harp" that the pianist finds in this instrument and, later on, bewitched by the breath-catching chorale entry, molto pianissimo.
Schumann's Piano Sonatas are infrequently heard in concert and, to many, his early F sharp minor work is the most problematic.
Heath Lees' finely-turned programme notes made much of Schumann's alter egos of the fiery Florestan and dreamy Eusebius and Demidenko caught the multi-faceted spirits of both.
The rhetoric of the Introduction was compulsive, drawing one into the obsessive fandango of the Allegro vivace, which Demidenko set in a brilliant array of colours.
The Aria was the ultimate in Schumanesque intimacy, with yearning tenor lines; adrenalin surged through most of the remaining pages until the Finale was a showcase for the pianist's unsparing virtuosity.
Demidenko has given us Scarlatti encores before and, on Saturday, two Sonatas by the Italian composer were sleek, streamlined and contemporary in sound. As a third encore, Sgambati's transcription of Gluck's Orfeo's song was a diaphanous delight.
And, to cap off a successful season, Rodney Wilson, the Museum's director, announced the Fazioli Series will be back next year, bringing us Martin Roscoe and Alexander Melnikov.
