Music Reviews : Lavrov Masterful in Ambassador Recital

One look at the program told a lot. Russian pianist Igor Lavrov obviously wasn’t shy of technical challenges, what with knuckle-busting Scriabin, Barber and Rachmaninoff on the agenda.

What one couldn’t have been prepared for was his musical mastery of these works, his sensitivity, his forceful bravura, in short, his complete understanding of their rhetoric. Despite the program, his recital never seemed for a moment about technical display, it was about poetry--not quiet poetry, to be sure, but poetry nonetheless.

Appearing in a benefit recital for the 30th Southwestern Youth Music Festival at Ambassador Auditorium on Wednesday evening, Lavrov also offered the U.S. premiere of the 12 Transcendental Etudes on a Theme by Liszt, by Vladimir Ryabov.

This gnarled, hyper-chromatic, 20-minute work, based on a theme from “Via Cruxis,” proved fascinating, manic and hugely dramatic--knuckle-busting turned up a notch.

Indeed, if Lavrov could be criticized at all it would be for his chosen pieces’ sameness of ends. After three brief preludes from Scriabin’s Opus 11, and a wondrous, multilayered reading of the Nocturne for the Left Hand, it was mostly all uphill, big, thick Romantic outpourings.

Nevertheless, he brought unfailing strong feeling to Scriabin’s Opus 28 Fantasy and to the seven “Etudes-Tableaux” from Rachmaninoff’s Opus 33 and Opus 39, and the technical means to bring them off.

These readings were multicolored--despite the bright, monochromatic instrument at his disposal--pliant and fluent, combining a perfect mix of measured care and casual spontaneity. And Lavrov’s pianissimo was nothing short of magical.

In a rare offering, Samuel Barber’s “Four Excursions” emerged in a freewheeling, quirky but stylistically assured performance that seemed to be asking, why don’t you Americans play this more often?