Chronic Coronations of Rachmaninov: The Stateliness of Nikolai Lugansky in Recital at Wigmore Hall
Enforcing fortitude into interpretations of the late Romantic, the emphatic pianist dealt lyricism (sometimes literal) blows.
Nikolai Lugansky in performance. Photo credit: krasfil.ru (The Krasnoyarsk Regional Philharmonic).
Itching to let rip from the pronouncement of its central theme—Chopin’s Prelude in C Minor, Op. 28, No. 20—the chords across Rachmaninov’s voracious variations emerge racked with madcap impulses; diverging into cracks of errant melodies amidst andante scales; vicissitudes of vying turns and slowly burning slurs.
What hammers home their commonality is twentieth-century disregard for linearity; an ushering of the unhinged through a half-open door.
Embedding excess pedal in the addled work, performer Nikolai Lugansky frequently imperilled its unreason. An insuperable suspense was introduced before a horde of chord changes; scales came out clenched in overwrought accentuation. Often the main melody of the right hand was executed in a predetermined rhythm: marching feet amid a royal procession couldn’t have been better synchronised.
Rubato made no barter in the second variation as chromatic scales hard-pressed to run stretched limits of refinement. The perfecting pianist’s technique repressed confessionals in moderated sections baptized in andante. Occasionally this meant the imposition of the motif came out half-concealed; an exile clamouring to get back home amidst a crowd of overzealous dazzle.
Equidistance characterised purposeful delays in Variation 4, which also turned out sleepy pledges of arpeggios. Ominousness mined an on-the-fence crescendo when it came to Number Six: a bloom of volume so discouraged that it stalled.
Staccato latched on to the later variations with a tactful accuracy fearing spillage. Overall these gems of reinterpretations under the performer’s aegis doled out tones identically cut.
Embarking on Rachmaninov’s eight Études, Lugansky fortressed notes in his right hand with forte’s brash magnification. Simultaneously certain chords at ends of themes slipped off in neither slick diminuendo nor abrupt removal; finishing at mf inconclusively. The ever-present pedal daunted both hands equally in Étude-tableau in C minor—whose diminuendos struggled to self-realise. Arpeggios dredged out chances for impetuousness in their same imperialness throughout Number 5; G minor’s Étude spaced out chords with single-minded evenness. Despite these strictures the inurement of accelerated, roaming high-pitched chords imbued its second half with tasteful grace.
Remonstrations against lyric playfulness plagued the composer’s first sonata likewise. Summoning a mounting strength in its “Allegro moderato”, Lugansky led the right hand chords with a procrastinating pulse: the beats of blasting indecision. Slower moments wrapped in rallentando tumbled into maudlin meditations. In a lullabying fashion Movement Two—a “Lento”—mellowed out into a somnolent pacification. The final part, “Allegro molto”, seemed to interchange its notes with little thought to their respective characters; replacing one extension of an aching clarity with its successor in monastical panache.
An eerie effervescence cast a programmatic spell over the evening: one suggesting the potential polish of AI more closely than inimitable human feats. Artistic choices on Lugansky’s part were unimpeachably foreseeable—and therein lay the problem.