The master of mood returns

By WILLIAM DART

Piano recitals are rare enough in this part of the world, and dazzling showcases like the concert that Oleg Marshev gave us in 1998 are rarer still.

The Russian pianist is back in the country, on his third New Zealand tour, which opens in Thames on Saturday.

Over the past decade, Marshev has been cementing his international reputation with a series of brilliant recordings, ranging from the complete piano music of Prokofiev to that of 19th-century obscurities like Emil von Sauer.

"It's like the Guinness Book of Records," Marshev tells me, with a laugh, but he clearly enjoys the studio experience. "There's never the atmosphere of the concert where an audience is bonding with you, but you have more chances to catch the interpretation of the day."

"Only for today, mind you," he adds, playfully, "tomorrow I might think that I was completely wrong."

Reviews from the likes of Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine would suggest his interpretations are spot on. A "master of every mood from strip-cartoon crispness to thundering monster, but above all a controlling sensibility of intelligence and feeling" was how Gramophone assessed his recent disc of Shostakovich Concertos.

Marshev is eager to talk about the music that he's bringing to New Zealand. It's a curious selection with Brahms Opus 39 Waltzes "(a chance to show Brahms intimate, lyrical side") sitting between powerhouse repertoire by Liszt and Prokofiev.

Liszt is a firm favourite. Marshev is proud that he's directly "descended" from the great man in terms of piano teachers and enthusiastically describes the Hungarian composer as "an unbelievable pianist, musician and person".

"He helped so many people and often didn't get much acknowledgement from them. He never said a bad word about Brahms, but it wasn't the same the other way."

Liszt's Funerailles is one work we will hear and I was interested if he was familiar with the 1932 Horovitz recording. "Absolutely marvellous," is the immediate reply. "I'm not going to compete with that, no way." But he does promise a very theatrical experience.

You can appreciate Marshev's deep affinity for Prokofiev when he talks about the Seventh Sonata, which is also on his New Zealand programme. He highlights the dark, lyrical theme of the first movement, the "huge emotional melody of the second which Prokofiev probably borrowed from Schumann but it doesn't matter" and the "Devil's Staircase" of the finale.

I've always been fascinated as to why the cosmopolitan Prokofiev eventually returned to the Soviet Union. "I am too," replies Marshev, "and I was talking about it to Daniel Jaffe who's just written this wonderful book about Prokofiev. How could he go back, after 10 years spent outside the country? Of course, some of it was nostalgia, but, like Gorky who returned to Russia when the country assured him he would be the number one writer of the Soviet Union, Prokofiev was probably told the same thing."

There's too much music in this pianist's repertoire to fit into a short conversation. Von Sauer's name comes up ("wonderful music but nobody plays them and nobody knows them") as well as Tchaikovsky ("he was one of those people who did not play [the piano] very well and for whom the great musical idea was more important than its realisation).

Marshev seems most thrilled to have recorded a number of concertos by Danish composers for his label Danacord ("Denmark didn't have the good fortune like Norway to have Grieg, but it's still very proud of its composers"). Perhaps, over the next few weeks, someone might slip a few New Zealand works into the man's luggage.

Performance

* Who: Oleg Marshev, pianist

* Where and when: Thames, Saturday; Tokoroa, Sunday; Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, Tue, 7.30pm; Apr 17; New Plymouth, Wed Apr 21; Wanganui, Sat Apr 24; Taihape, Sun Apr 25; Palmerston North, Tue Apr 27