CANCELLED: NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Daniil Trifonov / Alan Gilbert

In the shortest space of time, he has played his way to the highest echelon of international pianists: Daniil Trifonov, born in 1991, eclipses not a little of what was seen for decades as great piano art. Martha Argerich for example, who is an admirer of the young Russian alongside other piano grandees such as Alfred Brendel, enthused that she had »never heard anything like him before«. The winner of the top international piano competitions makes his long-awaited debut with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra with two works.

Sergei Prokofiev wrote his First Piano Concerto aged 21, and it was premiered in 1912; with its one-movement structure and a mere 15 minutes’ playing time, the work is as compact as it is original. The same applies to Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Concerto of 1979, which displays complete self-confidence in its surprising mixture of serial techniques and familiar-sounding melodies.

Then, under the baton of Alan Gilbert, the waves foam and the sparks fly quite literally: Claude Debussy declared that his symphonic sketches »La Mer« were »as stormy and capricious as the ocean itself«. The changeablity, the iridescence and the haziness of the liquid element were exactly in keeping with Debussy’s musical aesthetics, which contemporaries called »impressionistic«.
A very similar vision inspired Igor Stravinsky to compose his ballet »The Firebird«: the story of the magic bird with its glowing feathers is full of magical moments – sometimes veiled, then shimmering and then in turn menacing.