When one eavesdrops upon conversations between Russian musicians about the relative merits of pianists, one often hears terms such as “mastery,” “genius,’ “god,” and “dinosaur.”
“Dinosaur” usually refers to giants of the recent past – such as Richter and Gilels. In one such debate about these two, I once heard one of the disputants (both of them, by the way, violinists) say to the other, “Gilels, he was my God!” One thing both fiddlers agreed was that both pianists were “dinosaurs” — giants who no longer tread the earth, or rather, the keys.
Not long after World War II, Heinrich Neuhaus introduced his star pupil, Sviatoslav Richter, to his old friend, Vladimir Sofronitsky. “Genius!” Sofronitsky exclaimed, as shook Richter’s hand.
“God!” responded the younger to the older pianjst.
A “god” always becomes a future dinosaur even if he remains alive. While also flattering, the term “genius” is another matter. What Sofronitsky was telling the much younger Richter was that he had heard him make pieces such as Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy or Scriabin’s Sonata No. 5 come to life in ways he never expected.
But a “genius” doesn’t always become a “god,” nor, for that matter, does he always remain a “master.” Almost 15 years later, in 1958 during the first Tchaikovsky Competition in, Richter described Van Cliburn, the First Prize winner, as “a genius,” adding that it was a term he “did not use lightly.” What Richter meant was that Cliburn had performed Rachmaninov’s Concerto No. 3 in a revelatory manner, setting a new standard that replaced those created by Vladimir Horowitz and the composer himself several generations earlier.
But Cliburn did not remain a “genius”; only a few years later, he wasn’t even a “master.” A “master” is a pianist skilled enough to undertake anything – no matter how difficult – successfully. And that was not something that Cliburn (1934-2013) was able to do just a few years after the first prize that made him famous.
It was such mastery that Lev Vlasenko (1928-1996) and Naum Shtarkman (1927-2006), the second and third prizewinners in the first Tchaikovsky, were able to do throughout the remainder of their careers.
All of this is to say that, on the basis of her appearance Wednesday evening in the Celebrity Series in Longy’s Pickman Hall, Yulianna Avdeeva is well on her way to becoming a goddess of the keyboard and a future dinosaur. In 2010, the then 25-year-oid Russian pianist won first prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition — only the fourth woman in the competition’s 98-year history to do so and the first since Martha Argerich in 1965.
Her performances 15 years ago of Chopin’s two mature piano sonatas were undeniably those of a master and her take on one of the composer’s greatest and most difficult work, the Fantasy-Polonaise, even exceeded them. She brought to it a depth of insight and narrative drive that I had not heard since the prime of Sviatoslav Richter.
Avdeeva surpassed my lofty expectations. The program could not have been more difficult: a Liszt group of four of the composer’s late (1882) works that concluded with his Legend No. 2, “St. Francis de Paule Walking on the Waves,” which was written 20 years earlier; and Beethoven’s longest (45 minutes) and technically most difficult Sonata, No. 29 in B-flat Major Opus 106, Hammerklavier ― the dragon at the gate to the composer’s late period.
Few pianists posses the courage or imagination to combine these works on a single program. But Avdeeva realizes that both Liszt and Beethoven understood that some of their music that would not be understood until after their death. The Hammerklavier was not performed in public until Liszt took up its challenge in 1836, nearly 20 years after Beethoven had completed it. Experiments in atonality such as those in the four late Liszt works Avdeeva chose (La lugubre gondola II, Bagatelle sans tonalite, Csardas macabre, Unstern! Sinistre, disastro) were not to be attempted again until the 20th century, with the mature works of Bartok and Schoenberg.
Her sequencing was inspired. All four works are filled with darkness, share the same sense of once-ornate decoration cut to a minimum, the same austerity of melody, more genuinely Hungarian inflection than earlier works, counterpoint that is implicit rather than explicit and rhythmic structure that is more fluid and more unstable. Avdeeva delivered all four pieces seamlessly: La lugubre gondola II, a kind of deathly barcarolle, with its ghastly oar strokes and death-by-water suggestions of Venetian funeral processions on the Grand Canal; the Bagatelle sans tonality, sometimes known as the Mephisto Waltz No. 4, is a mischievously playful recasting of pieces such as the Gnomenreigen, whose elves are now revealed as genuinely demonic; the Csardas macabre, with its remarkable and spooky chain of consecutive fifths; and the terror-impending doom of Unstern! Sinistre, disastro. All of this flowed without interruption into the mystic vision of St. Francis de Paule Walking on the Waves, with its combination of delicacy and power. The way the pianist shaped all this material suggested a stark search for threads of meaning lodged within Liszt’s harmonic vagaries, stalled as they are by abysses of anguish and silence. The effect was mesmerizing, as if the first half were a single brooding meditation upon life and death.
But with the arrival of St. Francis came a return to the waves, this time not to the waters of death, but to those of eternal life. Avdeeva called upon the full arsenal of her stupendous technique. Her execution, while unfailingly beautiful, could not have been more thunderous. Her octave leaps went faster and faster without any loss in clarity and her fast-as-speed-of-light chromatic thirds were articulated without a hint of fear or struggle. She served up Liszt’s celestial harmonies and gossamer ornaments with scintillating transparency.
Her reading of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier was almost equally triumphal. This piece used to pay infrequent visits to the concert hall. But in the last few years it seems to have become a permanent guest.
In many respects, Avdeeva’s Hammerklavier resembled the superb traversal Beatrice Rana played in Jordan Hall about three seasons ago in the Celebrity Series, though it felt far different from the equally superb take by Eduardus Halim in Seully Hall in last season’s Boston Conservatory Piano Series or Daniil Trifonov’s rather feckless one in Symphony Hall in last season’s Celebrity Series.
Like Rana, Avdeeva delivered a fiery first movement that observed the composer’s markings. And, again like the Italian pianist, Avdeeva captured Beethoven’s parodic intentions in the second movement scherzo. Avdeeva’s fugue in the sonata’s final movement may have been even better than Rana’s. The Russian pianist navigated Beethoven’s counterpoint with even more astonishing accuracy, without sounding rushed and with tremendous sonorities that never turned harsh. The only slight disappointment came in the slow movement. Ever since Artur Schnabel’s pioneering 1930’s recording, pianists have seemingly contested to see how slow they can make an adagio go. Avdeeva declined to participate in that competition. She projected some beautiful sonorities and remained lyrical throughout — she is, after all, a great Chopin exponent. But at her faster tempos, which resembled those of Backhaus or Kempff, rather than those of Schnabel, Avdeeva seemed somewhat more interested in achieving lucidity than in expressing pain and sorrow. Nevertheless, her intelligent performance made this listener look forward to her Beethoven performances in the years to come.
She encored with Schubert’s Op. 94, No.3 in F Minor
Wish I had heard this! Especially given SamW’s judgments.
Her online Chopin, including informal video classes, is something, the two sonatas notably, for detail, sweep, and drive. One might wish a louder lefthand often. But I will for sure be alert to her return visits now.
One striking thing from her video demos and also the fine Chopin performances is Avdeeva’s (caption spelling above could be fixed) lack of strong interest in touch, beauty of tone, key caress, that sort of production (a la Lisitsa and Lisiecki). Indeed, watching Avdeeva’s hands at work is kind of the opposite of ravishing: human effort in practice.
Comment by David R Moran — January 27, 2025 at 8:43 pm
Should “unskilled audiences” be paid to attend concerts as Berlioz suggests in his hilarious “Les Grotesques de la Musique”? Recently translated as “The Music Madhouse,” the slender volume meditates with great wit on connections among composers, audiences, critics, and musicians.
Comment by Lee Eiseman — January 19, 2025 at 10:40 am
I am happy to see full houses and enthusiastic audiences. I do not think every performance deserves a standing ovation, which thereby becomes a meaningless accolade. Is only indiscriminate enthusiasm sufficient? I think that praising all performances equally is to disrespect all performers equally, because it suggests that we are not really listening.
Comment by SamW — January 19, 2025 at 10:40 am
Sam W — I take umbrage to your statement that “Boston audiences aren’t critical enough.” Maybe we’re so famished for beauty and meaning in a bleak world that we value and salute every sincere effort to bring music to our poor Athens? Maybe we feel that MORE is involved in a concert than some kind of virtuoso performance of trained trapeze-artists and the commercial success of “stars”? Ranking and “conoisseurship” are important, no doubt: but my heart goes out to unskilled audiences who take the risk of discovering new sources of joy by attending live concerts.. Beware of Count Pococurante! (Voltaire, Candide).
Comment by Ashley — January 19, 2025 at 9:51 am
Buniatishvili is a brilliant, wonderful pianist, one of the finest of her remarkable generation, in the company of Igor Levit, Danil Trifonov, Beatrice Rana, Rafał Blechaz, Víkingur Ólafsson, Seong-Jin Cho, and Yuja Wang. I do not mean to disparage Avdeeva; I am not familiar with her, except from this concert, which I did not think was successful, and from recordings of Chopin and Bach which I found on the streaming service Idagio, both of which I liked, the Chopin very much. Perhaps she belongs in the same company. I haven’t heard enough of her to have an opinion.
All the above pianists (except Buniatishvili) have played here, including, now, Avdeeva, who was received very enthusiastically. I agree that they don’t come often enough, and that others I would like to hear don’t come at all, but it certainly isn’t because they aren’t warmly welcomed. Perhaps it’s because Boston audiences aren’t critical enough.
Comment by SamW — January 19, 2025 at 8:08 am
Comparing Khatia Buniatishvili to Yulianna Avdeeva?? This is really sad.
This is why good pianists are rarely playing here, unfortunately.
Comment by Vesna — January 18, 2025 at 7:06 pm
False gods are the most numerous kind, whether or not they are the only kind. I declare myself an unbeliever in this case. I did not think the performance was very good, particularly the first half. Her Liszt was simpleminded, relentlessly clamorous, without phrasing or dynamic shading. Liszt thunders, but he also whispers, and converses amiably, and sings like a bird, often within the same piece. In this performance the only quiet moments seemed mere preparation for the next crash. An acquaintance remarked that the programming was weak, because all the pieces were so similar. In reality they are not, but she made them seem so. I have spent the last couple of days recovering by listening to recordings of Liszt, of these pieces and others, mostly by Brendel, but also by Khatia Buniatishvili, Arcadi Volodos, and Krystian Zimerman, all of whom find great variety and beauty in them far beyond anything Avdeeva revealed.
Her Hammerklavier was better, but still had many weaknesses. The first movement was mostly clear, but lacked flow and momentum. This was a larger problem in the adagio sostenuto, where, to be fair, the pianist is asked to perform a miracle of sorts, to stop time without ever losing the silent pulse that gives this long, slow, apparently halting movement its coherence. She failed to perform this miracle; the beautiful passages were beautiful, but detached, not inevitable. They seemed to happen by chance.
The best parts of the performance were the scherzo and the last movement. The fugue sounded like a fugue; you could hear the individual voices climbing over each other’s backs to get ahead. The amazing last few bars were clear and resolute. This is, however, like saying of a bad egg that parts of it were excellent.
Comment by SamW — January 18, 2025 at 1:35 pm
Thanks so much, Stephen, for this colorful review of Yulianna Avdeeva’s performance, which was literally outstanding. That is to say, her magnificently realized program stood well outside the piano tour mainstream, starting with 4 late works of Liszt that the composer advised his own students never to play in public. Their spooky atonal atmospheres may indeed have alienated his contemporary listeners, but modern ears tempered by Bartók, Schoenberg, and Berg, yes – not to mention late Debussy and Scriabin – don’t seem to be put off by their chilly abstractions, nor their touches of the morbid and macabre. Avdeeva rendered these fascinating works, and then the Legend of St. Francis de Paule, with the kind of sincerity and conviction one imagines of Liszt himself – a revelation in and of itself.
As for the 2nd half, a Beethoven sonata, but by far the thorniest and most difficult for performer and audience alike. Hats off to any pianist who can play it convincingly! The clarity and precision Avdeeva brought to the composer’s mindbending counterpoints, cascading leaps and trills were thrilling; and I have to part with Stephen here to say that the 3rd mvt: Adagio sostenuto made the deepest impression on me, lacking none of the composer’s pain or sorrow. Avdeeva’s performance, like Beethoven’s masterpiece, was utterly triumphant.
What a balm, too, that the pianist offered as an encore in Schuberts 3rd Musical Moment – a gently rustic last dance.
Let me add, in reply to a couple of the commenters above: Richard and Ginta, I found Stephen’s introduction evocative and amusing – it added to my appreciation for this review. And, by my count, the reviewer wrote more than twice as much about the performer and performance than he did about Russian piano gods and geniuses. Finally, I love Chopin and admire what I’ve heard of Avdeeva’s performances, but it was great to hear this ‘outstanding’ repertoire, especially played so well. I’d say more about this, but I’m feeling peckish, i.e. hungry, and will have to stop here for supper.
Comment by nimitta — January 17, 2025 at 8:32 pm
She didn’t play a mazurka in Groton Hill. The encore was Schubert’s F minor musical moment
Comment by Dmitry — January 17, 2025 at 3:03 pm
This review truly looks like the writers show off. This review (like many others here) not much about the pianist, more about how much extra info the writer was able to find. Would be nice the reviewers were able to focus more on the concert itself, not the entire history of the pieces performed or comparisons to the other artist.
The pianist was no doubt exceptional in her performance, but her concert choices could have been a bit more audience pleasing; I’m a professional, it was even for me a bit more desired. She goes after the game of Chopin competition winning, people expect some Chopin may be? All we got was one (!) tiny Mazurka anchor (in Groyin hill)
Comment by Ginta Bistras — January 17, 2025 at 2:42 pm
Hammerklavier is no.29
Comment by Thomas Yang — January 17, 2025 at 12:07 pm
perhaps I am in a peckish mood but why the extended and irrelevant introduction before getting to the actual review? sorry
Comment by Richard L Carle — January 17, 2025 at 11:29 am