United States Bach, Chopin, Shostakovich: Evgeny Kissin (piano). Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, 17.5.2025. (ES-S)
Bach – Partita No.2 in C minor, BWV826
Chopin – Nocturne No.7 in C-sharp minor, Op.27 No.1; Nocturne No.10 in A-flat main, Op.32 No.2; Scherzo No.4 in E main, Op.54
Shostakovich – Piano Sonata No.2 in B minor, Op.61; Prelude and Fugue in D-flat main, Op.87 No.15; Prelude and Fugue in D minor, Op.87 No.24
Encores:
Bach – ‘Siciliano’ in G minor from Flute Sonata in E-flat main, BWV1031
Chopin – Scherzo No.2 in B-flat minor, Op.31; Waltz No.7 in C-sharp minor, Op.64 No.2
Thirty-five years have handed since Evgeny Kissin’s debut recital at Carnegie Hall, a efficiency that shortly took on a near-mythic dimension and helped cement his status as one of the prodigious pianists of his era. Since then, Kissin has returned often to the identical stage, every look eagerly awaited and warmly acquired. These solo recitals have typically adopted a well-recognized logic: anchored in core repertoire, formed by thoughtfully constructed packages and delivered with a combination of command and inwardness that has turn into his hallmark. His newest recital supplied no surprises in repertoire, but it surely did reveal refined connections between composers and types – by means of voicing, rhythmic contour and expressive depth – encouraging Bach, Chopin and Shostakovich to converse throughout centuries in unexpectedly kindred phrases.
It started with Bach’s Partita No.2 in C minor, performed not within the spirit of historic reconstruction however as a dramatic construction formed by the expressive capacities of the fashionable piano. Kissin gave the French overture-style Sinfonia solemn weight, its cantabile center part unfolding in lengthy, lyrical arcs, adopted by a sharply etched fugue whose rhythmic pressure felt virtually Beethovenian. Across the dance actions, he emphasised distinction of character over continuity of pulse: the Allemande was hushed and looking out, its inward tone suggesting a northern restraint; the Courante flowed with urgency and supple momentum, flippantly inflected by its French lineage; and the Sarabande, grounded and deliberate, mirrored the solemnity it acquired within the French Baroque, with solely distant echoes of its extra sensual Spanish ancestry. In the ultimate Capriccio, whimsical sequences gave solution to bursts of power that appeared to anticipate the fugues of Shostakovich.
Chopin, a near-constant presence in Kissin’s recitals, introduced a shift in environment however no diminution in depth. The Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op.27 No.1, emerged with luminous stillness and inward pressure. Kissin traced the melodic line with lengthy breath and restrained rubato, permitting the disquiet of the center part to swell with urgency earlier than subsiding into shadow. The Nocturne in A-flat main, Op.32 No.2, supplied a gentler counterpart: its opening theme was tinged with a quiet sense of loneliness and remorse, and later darkened by sudden gusts of drama. When the opening materials returned, it appeared subtly modified – much less veiled by melancholy, extra like a reminiscence gently launched than a wound revisited.
In the Scherzo No.4 in E main, Kissin moved between brilliance and introspection with a tightly coiled sense of type. Though the outer sections dazzled with their leaping figuration and lightness of contact, it was the central episode in C-sharp minor – a long-arched melody shrouded in reverie – that gave the efficiency its emotional middle. If Kissin’s Bach had emphasised structure and shifting historic voices, his Chopin confirmed how a lot of that structural readability and contrapuntal layering remained embedded in Romantic lyricism – and the way naturally it might floor when voiced with such transparency. Even Bach’s daring chromaticism appeared to echo by means of the harmonic twists of the Nocturnes, rendered by Kissin with voicing that introduced out their expressive depth with out ever tipping into overt Romantic sentimentality.
After the intermission, the main focus shifted to Shostakovich, in what was clearly supposed as a private homage on the fiftieth anniversary of the composer’s demise (Kissin may even carry out Shostakovich’s chamber music with distinguished colleagues later this month). The Piano Sonata No.2 in B minor, written in 1943 amid the bleakest years of the warfare, was devoted to Leonid Nikolayev, the composer’s late instructor. Performed by Kissin from the rating, it stays a hardly ever performed entry in Shostakovich’s catalogue. Its three actions are marked much less by growth than by fragmentation, with little in the best way of historically sustained melodic strains. Kissin’s efficiency mirrored that haunted structure. The opening Allegretto was taut; its stressed figuration edged with unease. In the gradual motion, tolling left-hand octaves supported a halting melodic line, voiced with a spareness that made every interval really feel uncovered. The finale unfolded as a sequence of variations, every extra naked or obsessive than the final. There was no effort to melt the work’s bleakness, however neither was there a hint of theatrical despair – solely a way of personal reckoning unfolding in actual time.
The two Preludes and Fugues from Op.87 that adopted made the connection to Bach express, bringing the night full circle. Shostakovich’s cycle, composed in 1950–51 as a contemporary response to Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, is each an homage and a metamorphosis: grounded in contrapuntal custom however charged with twentieth-century concord, rhythm, and psychology. Kissin chosen No.15 in D-flat main and No.24 in D minor – among the many most contrasting within the set – and appeared intent on tracing that lineage by means of extremes of character and shade. The D-flat main Prelude was peppery and rhythmically clipped, its brittle humor enhanced by dry articulation and quicksilver pacing. The querulous Fugue darted ahead with manic class; its dense polyphony delivered with glowing readability and a type of gleeful defiance – recalling the sooner Scherzo from the Violin Concerto No.1. The D minor pair, the final within the set, supplied a reversal of temper: the Prelude was spacious and somber, darkly coloured and deliberate in its pacing. The Fugue emerged as a monumental construction, its weight and complexity deepened by Kissin’s broad dynamic vary and cautious layering of voices. It rose to a climax of implacable depth, the place grandeur gave solution to bitterness. If the Sonata charted grief and disorientation, the Fugues answered with pressure, order, and one thing near defiance.
In response to extended ovations, Kissin shifted to encore territory with attribute poise. First got here Bach, within the type of the ‘Siciliano’ from the E-flat main Flute Sonata (BWV1031), in Wilhelm Kempff’s transcription – performed with a mild inwardness that nodded again to the recital’s opening and quietly reestablished the voice of the primary half. Two Chopin encores adopted: one other of the 4 scherzos, No.2 in B-flat minor, grand and storm-driven, dispatched with readability and hearth, and the Waltz in C-sharp minor, extra reserved however nonetheless carrying a quiet undercurrent of pressure. These weren’t random encores, however components of a recital conceived in arch type, intentionally folding again on itself.
Edward Sava-Segal
Featured Image: Evgeny Kissin at Carnegie Hall in 2024 © Steve J. Sherman