Trifonov launches CSO residency with faultless virtuosity and insight
Two sonatas, each in four movements and separated by 84 years, formed the twin pillars of Daniil Trifonov’s recital Sunday afternoon in the SCP Piano series. One sonata is an obscure student work and the other a repertoire staple. Oddly, the little-known piece was by Tchaikovsky and the rep work by Samuel Barber.
In addition to drawing one of the largest Orchestra Hall audiences of the season, Trifonov’s recital launched his 2024-25 term as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s artist in residence. In addition to Sunday’s concert, the pianist conducted a master class on Monday and will return March 9 for a chamber event with violinist Leonidas Kavakos. Trifonov will wrap his residency with the CSO May 1-4, performing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with music director designate Klaus Mäkelä on the podium.
Composed in 1865 in his final months as a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor was soon stowed away and forgotten by the composer. Discovered among his papers by his brother Modeste, the sonata was published in 1900, seven years after Tchaikovsky’s death.
It may seem surprising that any music by Tchaikovsky is rarely performed but there are reasons in this case. While there are some characteristic melodic moments, the C-sharp Minor Sonata is not an entirely satisfying work. Further, few pianists are likely to dedicate a half-hour of their program to an unknown middle-shelf work, even one by Tchaikovsky.
Trifonov invested this neglected curio by his homeland’s greatest composer with characteristic intelligence and the sympathetic advocacy it requires. In the long opening movement, the pianist wisely declined to inflate the drama, understating the weighty, repeated-note opening motif and not lingering unduly in the rhapsodic second theme. He built the movement with great skill, inexorably bringing a sense of culmination to the climax.
In the Andante, Trifonov floated the limpid main theme with tender delicacy. He brought piquancy to the Scherzo, the sonata’s most characteristic music, which would find a more familiar place in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1. The somewhat clunky finale poses interpretive challenges, yet the pianist finessed the emphatic first theme and the cascading second, building a torrent of speed and bravura to the brilliant final bars.
In contrast to that of Tchaikovsky, Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata—completed in 1949 and premiered by Vladimir Horowitz—enjoyed instant acclaim and popularity that has only grown with the years.
Trifonov has shown himself an exceptional exponent for music by American composers—witness his recent two-disc DG release, “My American Story.” Barber’s Sonata was not included in that set, but the pianist brought total understanding and nonchalant virtuosity to Sunday’s performance. Throughout the four movements Trifonov held the hard steel and pensive lyricism in a finely calibrated balance. He put across the leggiero charm of the Scherzo and took a spacious approach in the Adagio mesto, exploring the chromatic rumination with acute concentration, unfazed by the persistent (and unmuffled) audience coughing.
The concluding movement is one of Barber’s finest achievements, a four-part fugue that seems to seamlessly mix Baroque, jazz and bumptious American humor into a rollicking whirlwind of impossible difficulties and hyperactivity. Trifonov handled the myriad challenges with faultless aplomb, ratcheting up the power and acceleration of the broken-shard bravura to a stunning coda.
A group of six Chopin waltzes showed the pianist distilling a variety of expression and elegance, from the easy grace and fluency of the opening Waltz in E major (Op. Posth.) to the pensive melancholy of the F minor (Op. 70, no. 2), bringing sly charm to the A flat Major (Op. 64, no. 3), gossamer lightness to the D flat Major (Op. 64, no 1) and galant introspection to the A minor (Op. 34, no. 2). The Op. post. Waltz in E minor closed the set with a brilliant sunburst of vitality.
The afternoon began with music of Tchaikovsky and concluded with it via an oddball work, Mikhail Pletnev’s Concert Suite of music from Sleeping Beauty. In addition to neatly framing with the Tchaikovsky sonata, the piece provided a hat tip to a great compatriot pianist of an earlier generation who is also an extraordinary technician.
One misses the kaleidoscopic brilliance of Tchaikovsky’s orchestra in the composer’s greatest ballet, yet Trifonov put across the essence of each excerpt with such focused expression and easy bravura that the music emerged as a multi-hued keyboard showpiece. Highlights included the ditsy ”Dance of the Pages,” plaintive “Andante,” the tinkling music-box of the “Singing Canary” and the anarchic majesty of the “Finale.”
The near-capacity audience showered Trifonov with ovations and clearly wanted an encore, bringing the pianist back four times for curtain calls. But it was not to be on this occasion. No matter, as Trifonov’s stellar musicianship left plenty of musical sustenance to sate one until his return next year.
Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs Books I and II of Debussy’s Preludes, 3 p.m. January, 19, 2025. cso.org
