Bulgarian pianist: a keyboard lion
Prof. Rostislav Yovchev who entertained an intimate but appreciative audience at the Music Room, St James Cavalier last week, has an impressive curriculum vitae. If you wish to know about him, which I did after listening to his piano playing, then you had better go to Google.
The Bulgarian soprano Andriana Yordanova, who did a great job publicising the concert, introduced the professor to the audience. This was a Maltese-Bulgarian Circle event and Prof. Yovchev was only the second pianist to visit Malta.
Prof. Godfrey Pirotta who is chairman of the Circle and Mrs Pirotta were present as was former ambassador Lino Bianco.
The pianist introduced each piece to the audience which I always think is an excellent idea especially when there are no notes in the programme about the music being performed. He said that he was going to take us on a musical journey throughout Europe.
The first two pieces he played were by Robert Schumann, Reverie, from Scenes from Childhood, full of charming nostalgia and a staple of the repertoire, and The Prophet Bird from Forest Scenes.
Prof. Yovchev said that Schumann's wife, Clara had given a number of public and private concerts in St Petersburg including one at court in front of the tsar. Schumann's works were regularly performed in Russia where Schumann's music was to become popular after their visit in 1844.
Tchaikovsky was next on this musical journey. Our pianist had selected February (Carnival) and June (Barcarolle) from Seasons for this occasion, the latter, a favourite with everyone I know. Perhaps the composer should have called this composition Months, rather than Seasons.They are lightweight pieces but attractive, varied in character and style. Here's a little insight into Tchaikovsky's day.
At noon precisely he broke for lunch, which he always enjoyed - the composer was not picky about his food, his biographers tell us, and found virtually every dish excellently prepared, often conveying his compliments to the chef. After lunch he went for a long walk regardless of the weather. His brother Modest writes, "somewhere at some time he had discovered that a man needs a two-hour walk for his health, and his observance of this rule was pedantic and superstitious, as though if he returned five minutes early he would fall ill, and unbelievable misfortunes of some sort would ensue." Perhaps the composer's superstitions could be justified - his walks were essential to his creativity, and he often stopped to jot down ideas that he would later flesh out at the piano.
Surely no musical journey can be complete without Chopin and Prof. Yovchev gave us two Nocturnes - in B-flat major and in C-sharp minor. The latter was made even more immortal, if that is possible, in The Pianist, a film I have seen several times. I can still visualise the scene: war torn Warsaw, not a building left standing, devastation, and dry leaves blowing in the streets... and the feeling that ghosts had visited. The pianist, having been through hell, is playing this nocturne for the German officer, who was so moved that he saved his life.
As the pianist pointed out, it was not Chopin who invented the nocturne but the Irish pianist and composer, John Field.
Here is what the French novelist Georges Sand with whom Chopin spent most of his summers at her country estate in Nohant, in central France, noted on his work habits. "His creation was spontaneous and miraculous. He found it without seeking it, without foreseeing it. It came on his piano suddenly, complete, sublime, or it sang in his head during a walk, and he was impatient to play it to himself. But then began the most heart-rending labour I ever saw. It was a series of efforts, of irresolutions, and of fretting to seize again certain details of the theme he had heard; what he had conceived as a whole he analysed too much when wishing to write it, and his regret at not finding it again, in his opinion, clearly defined, threw him in a kind of despair. He shut himself up in his room for whole days, weeping, walking, breaking his pens, repeating and altering a bar a hundred times, writing and effacing it as many times, and recommencing the next day with a minute and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single page to write it, at last, as he had noted it down at the very first."
Such are the agonies of the creative process. Even a genius, such as Chopin, could not escape these agonies.
The pianist brought out the pathos in these beautiful nocturnes, every note was crystal clear. His technique is something else. How many hours of practice must one need to play like that.
Back to Russia with Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer, pianist and conductor. Prof.Yovchev played two preludes by another Russian genius - No 2 in B-Flat minor and the most celebrated of all, No 7 in C-minor.
From photos Rachmaninoff seems to have been a dour man. He was not spared by fellow Russian composer Igor Stravinsky: "Rachmaninoff's immortalising totality was his scowl. He was a six-and-a-half-foot scowl... he was an awesome man."
Rachmaninoff settled and died in America where he had such a huge success. Like many men he was incredibly proud of his large Cadillac, and often offered to drive guests home from his house, just so that he could show it off.
Next on the journey was Claude Debussy and two of his famous pieces: La cathédrale engloutie and Feux d'artifice. The Swiss-born American composer, Ernest Bloch, said of Debussy: "Debussy is like a painter who looks at his canvas to see what more he can take out. Strauss is like a painter who has covered every inch and then takes the paint he has left and throws it at the canvas."
Prof. Yovchev played La Cathédrale with great delicacy and a real sense of mystery and Feux d'artifice with panache.
The last piece on the programme was by the Bulgarian composer Pancho Vladigerov - Improvisation and Toccata, which provided us with a thrilling burst of bravura. A very powerful composition it also has splendid fire. This was a finale of great dash.
The programme notes tell us that Prof. Yovchev "successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on Bulgarian piano music. He is professor of piano and head of the department of piano at the Faculty of Theory, Composition and Conducting, National Music Academy 'Pancho Vladigerov' in Sofia."
After much clapping and before we could give the pianist a standing ovation he stood up to say that since he had left out Spain from his programme he was going to play Manuel de Falla's Fire Dance. De Falla was no slouch and important enough a musician that his image appeared on Spain's 1970 100-pesetas banknote. Fire Dance is another bravura piece which is well known and well loved.
And so, up on our feet we got to give Prof. Yovchev a standing ovation which was so richly deserved.
He was completely at home in this repertoire. His technique is prodigious and almost let it run away with him in Improvisation and Toccata. He has fleet fingers, too.
Well, Bulgaria would only send us the best it has, wouldn't it.
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