Arcadi Volodos: A Thoughtful Virtuoso

A lot of poetic, self-regarding, thoughtful piano playing emerged in the pre-intermission portion of Arcadi Volodos’ first Los Angeles-area recital, Friday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Some even began to think the celebrated Russian-born virtuoso was going to forget to include the fast and furious musical material that has created his image as a pianistic powerhouse.

But the young keyboard whiz did, finally, get around to the whirlwind stuff, at the end of the program, when he played Liszt’s Ballade No. 2 and his own florid edition of the practically forgotten Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13.

Then, in four encores, Volodos let it all out.

He played a tiny but quick Scriabin Prelude; he revived Rachmaninoff’s flying-fingered “Italian Polka”; he brought back Moskowski’s beloved “Etincelles”; and, ending in a traffic jam of fast notes, he demolished once again Horowitz’s fabled “Carmen” Variations. The audience didn’t just bellow; it screamed.

What the screaming is all about is no mystery: The 28-year old pianist has power, technique, accuracy, stamina and a flair for showmanship. He plays the piano with splendid control. And he makes music to thrill the masses as well as the sophisticated.

He is not an intellectual; he does not unravel conundrums or lay out the logic in lengthy linear equations. But he plays with an incorrigible personal style based on his unerring command of the keyboard. He is a bona fide virtuoso.

That said, one cannot help but admire even more the artful balance in the rest of his program, one which began unpromisingly with a Brahmsian snooze, the Theme and Variations in D minor of Opus 18, and which included, later, one of Schubert’s least charming sonatas, the one in E, D. 157. Volodos almost made them cherishable.

Even better, he followed the depths and quiet byways of Schumann’s “Kreisleriana” with nuanced and thorough probing. And he achieved a peak of poetic involvement and pianistic colorations in three Schubert songs as transcribed by Liszt: “Der Muller und der Bach,” “Aufentalt” and “Der Doppelganger.”

These may have been the most touching examples of beautiful piano playing one has heard this year, to compare with Daniel Barenboim’s ravishing and understated playing of Albeniz’s “Evocacion” in San Diego in September.

Despite much evidence to the contrary, the piano recital is not dead; it still thrives, via the vivid and resourceful imaginations of a few great practitioners, one of whom is Arcadi Volodos.