Alexei Tartakovsky in Review
Alexei Tartakovsky, Pianist
Baisley Powell Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center (CUNY), New York, NY
March 17, 2023
After the concert I heard at the Graduate Center Friday, March 17th, I would say that Alexei Tartakovsky is one of the finest young pianists that I’ve heard in recent years. He took on a fiercely difficult program which included Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (Pastoral) as the first half and after intermission Schumann’s Geistervariationen (“Ghost” Variations in E-flat, WoO 24), and the complete Etudes-Tableaux Op. 33 of Rachmaninoff. In it all, one heard not just the command of a master pianist, but the depth of a true musician.
Though this concert was held at the CUNY Graduate Center, where Mr. Tartakovsky is pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree, it would have been equally at home at Carnegie Hall or the Concertgebouw. For now, it represented a partial fulfillment of the requirements of his program, for which he is currently the recipient of a Graduate Center Fellowship. His playing (like his insightful program notes) bodes well for his completion of the degree at the very least, and one expects much more. He has been a student of Richard Goode, having also studied with Matti Raekallio, Nina Lelchuk, Boris Slutsky, Boris Berman, and Horacio Gutierrez. He completed his undergraduate studies at Juilliard and Queens College (CUNY), his MM from Peabody, and an Artists Diploma from the Yale School of Music. His biography reflects success in several important competitions, including as Laureate of the 2021 International Beethoven Competition in Bonn, but he is much more than a mere competition winner.
His program opened with Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6. There are now quite a few pianists who play one or two of the Liszt transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies, and some who have played all nine (including notably Cyprien Katsaris, Idil Biret, who was the first to record them all – plus several others); in live concert, though, I’ve rarely heard a pianist play a single one of these and emerge without some “wear and tear.” Though countless performers exploit Liszt’s more idiomatic works to sound (as the joke goes) “like better pianists than they actually are,” those same pianists get bruised by these symphony transcriptions and end up sounding not quite as good as they should be. Though they are amazingly well-written for piano (created by Liszt, after all!), the demands are simply too gargantuan for most.
The Beethoven-Liszt Pastoral, as with the other eight transcriptions, requires the pianistto capture each instrumental timbre as the focus rapidly shifts and to pass voices unobtrusively between hands. Mr. Tartakovsky’s ability here was remarkable right from the first movement, Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside, and memorably so in the more serene second movement, Scene by the brook. All through this juggling of demands, one must maintain supreme control and consistency of tempo and mood, and he did just that. There are the more obvious challenges, from the clarity of the thirds near the opening of the piece to the rapid octaves in the third movement (the Merry gathering of country folk), but Mr. Tartakovsky was undaunted and addressed most of them better than I’ve heard before. He unleashed his force with fire in the brilliant fourth movement (Thunder, Storm), the most quintessentially Lisztian of the five. By intermission, the audience could only join the fifth movement’s shepherds in Thankful feelings.
From even the best pianists there are inevitably some unflattering flubs and glitches without the help of a recording editor, so there has to be not just great skill, but passionate commitment, even bravery to perform them live. Mr. Tartakovsky has these qualities and more. Though he was not exempt from the occasional smudge himself, he was infallible in matters of memory and was able to convey all the intricacies of Beethoven’s orchestration via Liszt, while projecting a powerful overall conception of each movement. It was a thrilling performance.
What originally had this listener most eager to hear this program, though, was the set of Variations in E-flat, WoO 24, one of Schumann’s last works, a profound and relatively neglected one – lacking the popular appeal of say the Symphonic Etudes or Schumann’s more youthful sets. It is based on a theme so dear to the composer that it had found its way (with certain differences) into several other works, including the slow movement of his Violin Concerto. The theme is so moving that one wants simply to hear it by itself over and over; variations can be a way of giving listeners their “fill” of such beauty, but things don’t always work out that way. For whatever reason (pursuit of balance or variety perhaps) these variations in most performances I’ve heard have had a dilutive rather than deepening effect on one’s recollection of the theme; Mr. Tartakovsky, however, drew the listener’s focus to the musical heart. The variations naturally radiated from it and looked back toward it.
If one were to find a reservation about this recital, it would be a non-pianistic observation that arose repeatedly. Mr. Tartakovsky feels the music so intensely that occasionally his magnificent phrases are accompanied by quite audible breathing, occasional humming, and other vocal sounds. Having grown up with the grunts and moans of Casals and having felt that I would still not give up any of his recordings, it is still good to try for the best of all possible worlds (and such habits can intensify with time so should be curbed). With playing so wonderful that several of us were ready to do battle with two bearers of flowers rattling their noisy wrappings (yes – skip the flowers, but don’t ruin the recording), the performer himself should at least not sabotage his own recordings.
The Op. 33 Etudes-Tableaux of Rachmaninoff closed the recital with equally powerful and musical interpretations. As the pianist aptly states in his program notes, these Etudes are “less overtly virtuosic and flashy than many of the Preludes, and certainly less demonstrative than the etudes by Liszt or even Chopin. Rather they require a refined pianism of greater precision of expression and tonal control.” Exactly right, and Mr. Tartakovsky lived up to his own words, bringing them a wide range of intense emotions and colors and sustaining interest throughout (no small feat, as this reviewer knows from performing the entire set as well). Bravo!
After this far-from-light program, one would have understood if there had been no encores, but the audience was treated to four, the first three with no words of introduction. First, he gave us a sensitively voiced rendition of the lyrical Rachmaninoff Prelude Op. 23, No. 10 in G-flat major. After still more applause he lit into the Bach-Busoni Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein – at lightning speed and with superb clarity. A highlight of the evening for this listener was the next encore, the Brahms Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118, No. 2, given a mature pacing with ample time to absorb its great beauty. One wanted to say “Amen.”
Before his fourth and final encore, Mr. Tartakovsky made some remarks about leaving school soon with “tearful goodbyes” and announced that he would play Rachmaninoff’s own arrangement of Nunc Dimittis from the All-Night Vigil (or Vespers) Op. 37. The text begins (as he announced) “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace” (St. Luke 2:29). Indeed, we wish the future Dr. Tartakovsky peace – but we also wish him the long fruitful career he richly deserves.
