Nikita Lukinov’s triumphant tour for the Keyboard Trust of Italy
Venice, Padua, Abano Terme & Vicenza
Venice awaits … and was rewarded with the first of three recitals that include two masterworks from the piano repertoire kept at bay from one another with three little bons bons from Tchaikowsky’s Sleeping Beauty. They acted as a link between the sublime romantic outpourings of Schumann and the monumental edifice of Mussorgsky where the ‘Great Gate of Kiev’ takes on a particular significance these days.
Schumann’s Symphonic Studies in the hands of this young poet becomes a lesson in style and musicianship. From the subtle beauty of the opening theme played with a chameleonic sense of colour that allowed it to be transformed and remodelled with a technical mastery that was never placed in evidence but was always present.
The diabolical ‘presto possibile’ was played not like a tour de force of virtuosity but more with the Mendelssohnian radiance and lightness that Schumann intended coming as it does after the majesty of what Agosti used to liken to a Gothic Cathedral. It followed four of the ‘posthumous’ studies that Brahms was to include in the first edition after Schumann’s death. These are ethereal improvised rough drafts that in the hands of a true poet can add a ray of sunlight on variations that verge almost on the too seriously complex as they lead to the Chopin like bel canto that precedes the nobility of the finale.
