Denis Matsuev’s Piano Recital / BTF 2017

Beethoven: Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110

Schumann: Kreisleriana, Op. 16

Interval

Rachmaninoff: Études-Tableaux, Op. 39 – excerpts

Tchaikovsky: Méditation, Op. 72/5

Rachmaninoff: Prelude in G minor, Op. 23/5

Rachmaninoff: Prelude in G sharp minor, Op. 32/12

Rachmaninoff: Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 36

One of the world’s celebrated pianists, who regularly demonstrates his exceptional technical and physical abilities in Hungarian concert halls, Denis Matsuev is a charismatic personality. His impeccable playing and his seemingly ungovernable keenness to improvise are equally captivating. He has a penchant for grand and very challenging concert programmes that feature some of the most complex pieces of the piano’s literature.

Few would undertake to play a late Beethoven sonata on the same night with Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2. The artist, who was born in Irkutsk, Siberia, and gives over 200 concerts a year, believes he owes his energy to the incomparable nature of his native land – to things like Lake Baikal. “It’s one of the deepest and clearest lakes in the world. I go home at least twice a year, like at Christmas. On these occasions I also take long sessions in the sauna. A real Siberian sauna! Which is no joke. It’s one of the strongest, for big boys only! Then I dive in Lake Baikal, whose temperature is no more than 8 degrees,” he said before his last Budapest concert.