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RECITAL REVIEW
Andrew Gugnin Andrei Korobeinikov
February 18, 2007
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Young Russian Powerhouses By Vera Breheda
Russia produces great pianists the way Texas does oil millionaires. The Sunday afternoon concert showcasing the 2006 Guzik Award winners, pianists Andrei Korobeinikov and Andrew Gugnin, at the San Francisco Legion of Honor, proved that still to be true.
The performances of these two pianists, barely out of their teens, gave testimony to the great tradition of piano playing that started in 19th-century Russia and has been passed down to the present, in spite of the vast emigration of many fine musicians from that country to the West over the past 30 years.
Andrei Korobeinikov not only has won first prize at many national and international competitions, but also is currently a postgraduate student of law at Moscow State University. Starting out the program with Beethoven's Op.126 Bagatelles, Scriabin's Vers la Flamme (Op. 72), and Rachmaninov's Sonata No. 2, he delivered a performance that was a feast of amazing pianism, sans any showmanship.
In the set of six bagatelles, Korobeinikov exuded an intimate eloquence in the slower pieces and an exciting bravura in the faster, dramatic bagatelles, as in No. 4, marked presto. In this set of small "trifles," Beethoven can change the mood at the drop of a hat, from quiet contemplation to a sudden four measures of "dashing off to chase a rabbit." The exemplary musicianship of Korobeinikov's dramatic pacing, nuanced phrasing, and textural voicing was nothing short of miraculous.
According to the renowned pianist Vladimir Horowitz, Scriabin wrote Vers la Flamme after a psychotic vision in which he witnessed the end of the world. The piece's title reflects the Earth's fiery destruction, as well as the constant emotional buildup and crescendo leading ultimately "toward the flame."
Our young pianist brought out the piece's many shades of luminescent colors, starting with the opening descending half-step melody over smoldering tremolo harmonies. As the gradual, fiery buildup seemed to burst into flames, this listener was left stunned and breathless at its eerie suggestiveness. The technical and musical extravagances of the Rachmaninov Second Sonata seemed to melt away in Korobeinikov's hands, as he spun out the lush, multilayered textures and harmonies. The opening Allegro agitato seized you by the hair with an arpeggiated plunge to the bass and, after two sharply peremptory chords, gave way to great waves of kinetic nervous agitation. In the second movement, the pianist's wonderful chordal voicing supported the long, achingly nostalgic melodic lines. The piece ends with surging chords before a final virtuoso wash of triumphant sonorities. In the hands of this great pianist, the impact was compellingly visceral. The one encore, Russian Bells, by Rodion Shchedrin (a la Mussorgsky), suitably gave the end of the concert's first half a sense of grandeur and gaiety.
Following intermission came Andrew Gugnin, a Guzik Foundation Scholarship recipient since 2003 and prizewinner in his native Russia, who offered a highly compelling and "picturesque" account of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The notes jumped off the page as each painting came to life. Gugnin also exemplified pianism at its highest level, with his staggering technical prowess and musical sensitivity. Each "picture" offered its own distinctive sound and mood, from the playful, childlike innocence of "Tuileries" to the relentless driving energy of "Baba-Yaga" and the final grandiose, ceremonial "Great Gates of Kiev." Gugnin's exceptional singing tone was heard throughout, from the pianissimo sections to the fortissimo parts. Even in the loudest, thick-textured chordal passages of "Bydlo" and "The Great Gates of Kiev," the sound was always lush and rich, never strident or harsh. There was sweet cuteness and humor in the "Ballet of the Chicks," and a feeling of hustle-bustle in "Limoges, the Market Place." Gugnin executed the final fearsome passage, with its alternating hands, with lightning speed and accuracy. One of Mussorgsky's most ingenious ideas was to introduce the visit to the art exhibition of his friend Victor Hartmann with a Promenade that recurs after several movements, as if to record the impressions that the various paintings make on the strolling viewer. Among the work's arresting touches of inspiration is the way the Promenade, in some of its returns, is suddenly interrupted by the onset of the next picture — precisely evoking the way our attention is often suddenly caught as we walk around an actual art exhibition. Gugnin caught this aspect of the Promenade beautifully, especially in the lingering mood of "The Catacombs," which seemed to mirror the power some paintings have of refusing to let us move away. After Gugnin sailed through his encore, Bartók's fiendishly difficult First Etude, he earned thunderous applause from an awestruck audience who realized that this was a concert that would linger in our memories for a long time.
(Vera Breheda is a Bay Area pianist who has concertized in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, as well as in Europe and Japan. Her Brahms CD was selected as best Classical solo album from the 2006 Just Plain Folks Music Awards.)
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