Nadejda Vlaeva
Nadejda Vlaeva, a Bulgarian pianist who studied at The Sofia Music School, The Sofia Music Academy, The Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam and The Manhattan School of Music with teachers Antoanetta Arsova, Anton Dikov, Jan Wijn, and Ruth Laredo (she also worked closely with Lazar Berman), played unusual fare on her recital at YASI Piano Salon on October 4th—a program co-hosted by the American Liszt Society NY/NJ Chapter and the Yamaha Artists Service.
Ms. Vlaeva, who resides in New York, has extensive concert experience in Bulgaria, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, The Netherlands, Germany, England, Spain, Barbados, Canada and the United States, and she has garnered extravagant encomiums from conductor Hans Graf (“her musicality and the depth of her interpretation amazed me”), Guarneri Quartet Primarius Arnold Steinhardt (“One of the people of extraordinary ability whom we hope for but rarely see”) and Lazar Berman (a “God Given” talent). She has made several CDs for MSR Classics, the Bulgarian Gega New Series, and her latest release for Hyperion.
Six of the 13 Bach/Saint-Saens transcriptions formed the first group on the recital program: the Recitative and Air from Cantata No. 30; from the Violin Partita No. 3; the Largo from the Violin Sonata No. 3; the Bouree from the Violin Partita No. 1; the Adagio from Cantata No. 3; and the Overture from Cantata No. 29 “Wir danken dir Gott,” BWV 29. Nowadays, concertgoers are accustomed to the heavy gravy of Bach-Busoni or Bach-Liszt, so I found it refreshing and fascinating to hear Bach’s music with a light mayonnaise dressing (Romantic to be sure, but French rather than Germanic). The aforementioned Overture from Cantata No. 29 turned to be none other than a D Major transcription of the ubiquitous Preludio to the E Major Violin Partita; what a world of difference–harmonically and stylistically–between Rachmaninoff’s (“Bachmaninoff’s”) arrangement of the selfsame piece! Ms. Vlaeva produced some of her strongest, most winning playing for this opening salvo: she has color, temperament, vitality and considerable dexterity.
“Carnivale di Milano,” Op. 21, by Hans von Bulow, was interesting to hear from the conductor who pompously donned black gloves for the Eroica’s Funeral March, called Brahms’s first symphony “Beethoven’s Tenth,” and condescendingly “dissed” Verdi’s Requiem. Ms. Vlaeva played five movements from the Suite: No. 1, Polacca; No. 4,Intermezzo fantastico; No. 7, Intermezzo lirico; No. 9, Intermezzo scherzoso; and No. 10, Galop. As in Hugo Wolf’s “Italian Serenade”, von Bulow found a modicum of levity and cuteness—not his most natural temperamental attire, to be sure, but essentially congenial.
After the intermission, Ms. Vlaeva gave a clarion, thrusting, and rhetorical account of Liszt’s “Dante Sonata”, a Bulow arrangement of Liszt’s Dante Sonnet “Tanto gentile”, and ended the printed part of her program with an intermittently potent, sometimes sprawling and slapdash account of the Liszt “Carnival in Pest” (his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 9).
There were three encores: among them, an ostensible spirited but messy, and rhythmically spastic Liszt “Gnomenreigen”, and Rebikov’s “Music Box.”
