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The Swagger of Sultanov · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  you This is Jed Disler, and welcome to The Piano
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  Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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  Consider subscribing to The Piano Maven through
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  our Substack page, and I've provided a link for
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  you to do so in our episode comments. I've also
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  provided a link to my Gramophone blog about the
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  17th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition,
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  where on one of the performance -free days, I
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  offered a reflection. about the late pianist
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  Alexei Sultanov, who won the 1989 Clyburn Gold
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  Medal at the age of 19. After his Clyburn victory,
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  Sultanov found himself to be an overnight sensation,
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  and he was thrown into a maelstrom of press events,
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  television appearances, and concert dates. galvanizing
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  Daredevil -style polarized critics and even the
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  Clyburn jurors, but it certainly excited his
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  audiences. My blog piece goes into detail about
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  Soltanov's rise and his tragic fall, along with
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  a recording recommendation. So I do hope you
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  will read this blog entry because it will provide
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  a little bit of context about the recording that
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  I'm going to talk about now. Solzhenitsyn's Klyburn
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  victory resulted in several commercial releases
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  that he made for the Teldeck label, including
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  a pairing of the Tchaikovsky first and Rachmaninoff
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  second concertos with Maxim Shostakovich conducting.
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  Then there was an all Chopin release with the
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  four scherzos at the center. And then there was
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  a solo disc that I'm going to talk about now
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  that featured three Russian sonatas, the Rachmaninoff
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  Second, the Prokofiev Seventh, and the Scriabin
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  Fifth. When this first was released in 1993,
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  several critics called Soltanov on his self -indulgence
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  and overextended rebatos and sometimes very harsh
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  sonority. And there's some truth to that. His
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  loudest playing certainly hammers you over the
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  head. But some of his soft playing is so exquisitely
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  shaded and full of color. His style is basically
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  impulsive. He shoots from the hip moment to moment,
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  and architecture takes second place, let's put
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  it that way. But I am more drawn into his volatility
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  and unpredictable mood swings throughout the
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  Rachmaninoff Second Sonata than I was when I
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  first heard this, oh, some 30 -something years
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  ago. Some of the fast downward runs have a kind
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  of rocket ship kind of scintillation that reminds
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  me of Vladimir Horowitz or even Alexis Weissenberg.
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  And those big leaping chords in the finale, man,
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  Soltanov just nails them to the proverbial wall.
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  He plays the original 1913 edition of the sonata,
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  by the way, which is longer and more diffuse
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  than Rachmaninoff's 1931 revision, which is the
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  one we usually hear these days. Now, you know,
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  the pianism is all over the place, but Solzhenitsyn
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  does take you all over the place as a listener.
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  I kind of like this, and it's grown on me hearing
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  it a few times after a long period of not hearing
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  it. The Prokofiev Seventh Sonata does not have
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  that... absolute rhythmic center that you get
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  from pianists like Vladimir Ashkenazi or Maurizio
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  Pollini or Sviatoslav Richter. But there are
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  a lot of cool local details of voicing in the
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  first movement when the thematic material goes
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  back and forth between the hands. I like his
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  curvaceous andante coloroso, which has smoldering
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  legato lines. This performance is a far cry from
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  the steady reserve of Pellini, of course, but
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  I think it works on its own terms. Now, you might
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  think that a firebrand like Soltanov would be
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  off to the races in the precipitato finale. But
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  he really holds back at the beginning, and he
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  distinguishes the textural levels with great
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  sophistication. And as the performance unfolds,
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  Sultan of Sound gets bigger and clangier, which...
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  kind of gives the impression that he's accelerating,
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  but he's actually not accelerating. He really
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  does hold on to the tempo he sets at the outset.
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  In the Scriabin fifth sonata, sometimes Solzhenitsyn's
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  impulsiveness gets in the way of rhythmic momentum
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  establishing itself. And there's not as much
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  textural contrast between the lyrical themes
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  and the more driving episodes than I would like.
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  And sometimes I find his attention wandering
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  when the music gets very introspective. He doesn't
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  really pull you in in the way that Horowitz does
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  or Richter does or Ashkenazi or Marc -Andre Hamelin,
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  actually. And I don't find the same kind of harmonic
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  awareness or structural concentration that you
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  get from Richter and Horowitz. But there's none
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  of the mindless banging that I remember from
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  hearing Soltanov live back in the early 1990s.
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  To sum things up, I would prefer more discipline
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  and tension in the Scriabin than Soltanov allows.
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  But I was very happy to hear his Studio Rachmaninoff
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  Second Sonata and Prokofiev Seventh Sonata again.
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  I have the original Teldeck release in my collection.
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  It was kind of buried in the Soltenoff section.
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  Yeah, I do have a small Soltenoff section, and
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  it's like way up, so I have to climb on a ladder
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  to get hold of it. This disc was reissued on
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  Teldeck's budget Apex line, and it is this Apex
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  incarnation that you can still obtain as a download
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  or via streaming, although the physical disc
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  is kind of hard to source. This is Jed Disler,
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  and you've been listening to The Piano Maven,
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  your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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  Take good care until we meet again for our next
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  episode.