United States Various: Daniil Trifonov (piano). Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, New York, 13.12.2025. (ES-S)
Sergey Taneyev – Prelude and Fugue, Op.29
Prokofiev – Visions fugitives, Op.22
Nikolai Myaskovsky – Piano Sonata No.2 in F-sharp minor, Op.13
Robert Schumann – Piano Sonata No.1 in F-sharp minor, Op.11
Few pianists with a repertoire as wide as Daniil Trifonov’s continue to expand it with such consistency and curiosity. His Carnegie Hall recital made that commitment unmistakable, not through novelty for its own sake, but through a carefully constructed program that brought lesser-heard works into meaningful dialogue with established repertory. Spanning Taneyev, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky and Robert Schumann, the evening traced a path across contrasting idioms unified by a concern for how musical ideas evolve through counterpoint, fragmentation, compression or improvisatory impulse.
Sergey Taneyev remains a marginal figure in the piano repertory, despite his pivotal position in Russian musical life at the turn of the century. A pupil of Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rubinstein and the teacher of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, he represented a strand of Russian composition grounded less in nationalism than in the disciplined assimilation of Western counterpoint. Trifonov approached the Prelude and Fugue, Op.29, with a clarity that brought these opposing impulses into focus. The Prelude unfolded with a restrained lyricism, its rhapsodic gestures shaped into long, unhurried arcs that never lost their sense of direction. In the Fugue, Trifonov favored transparency over mass, allowing the chromatic strands to interlock with steadily accumulating tension. The virtuosity of the writing was never overemphasized; instead, the music gained momentum through its internal logic, revealing Taneyev’s effort to fashion a modern polyphonic language distinct from Baroque models.
Nikolai Myaskovsky’s Piano Sonata No.2 offered a different kind of rediscovery. Written in 1912, the work compresses its argument into a single, unbroken span, unfolding as a somber monologue shaped by harmonic restlessness and rhythmic turbulence. Trifonov approached the sonata with a firm sense of trajectory, allowing its dense textures to register without turning opaque. The music’s recurring shadows and surging climaxes were integrated into a continuous narrative, their tension accumulating through pacing. Allusions to the Dies irae were woven into the musical fabric, not singled out for effect. Even in its most vehement passages, the playing remained inward and controlled. Trifonov’s command of color and timing gave the sonata an almost symphonic breadth, while preserving its private, unsettled character, revealing a work that searches persistently for resolution without attaining it.
Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives preceded the Myaskovsky Sonata, flowing into it with little sense of interruption. The two composers were close contemporaries and longtime friends, though posterity has treated them very differently. In a performance that was the evening’s highlight, Trifonov shaped the twenty Visions fugitives as a succession of fleeting psychological vignettes. The balance he struck b3etween continuity and the vivid delineation of individual character was outstanding. In movements such as Con eleganza and Pittoresco (Arpa), he drew out a Debussy-like transparency, softening attack and allowing harmonic color to hover rather than resolve. Allegretto (No.3) carried a French inflection that, in its clarity, restraint and ludic character, leaned more toward Ravel than Debussy. Toying with chromaticism, Assai moderato was imbued with an exotic hue. Elsewhere, in the more sardonic numbers, including Animato and Ridicolosamente, Prokofiev’s irony emerged through clipped articulation and dry timing, the music’s wit conveyed without exaggeration. Inquieto, by contrast, projected a nervous inward agitation, its restless motion suggesting unease. The most lyrical miniatures, notably Dolente, unfolded in long, carefully shaped phrases, hinting at the expressive world of Romeo and Juliet.
After intermission, the program shifted to the German Romantic repertoire, with Trifonov turning to Robert Schumann’s Piano Sonata No.1. Written during the early years of his courtship with Clara Wieck, the work thrives on contradiction: insistent rhythmic figures collide with sweeping lyric episodes and threaten the music’s internal balance. Trifonov approached the sonata with a clear view of its architectural scaffolding, allowing its surges of energy to accumulate without bursting. The opening movement’s nervous drive maintained forward momentum, its uneasy relationship to sonata form driven more by obsession than by dialectical contrast. The Aria unfolded in a sustained cantabile line, shaped with simplicity and focus. In the third movement’s scherzo-like passages, agility and bite were finely judged, and the episodic finale emerged as a coherent culmination rather than a mere sequence of episodes, its momentum secured through pacing and clarity of articulation. That disciplined approach, however, came at a cost: the sense of volatility as a generative force was occasionally blunted, the sonata’s premonitory abrupt shifts and nervous edges rounded off in favor of structural coherence.
Edward Sava-Segal