Newspaper “New St.Petersburg”

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11/03/2011, Newspaper  “New St.Petersburg”

www.vechespp.ru    V.Kochnov

WHO BRINGS BACK CLASSIC  MUSIC

Recital of the duet- Peoples’ Artist of Russia Maxim Fedotov and  Merited Artist of Russia Galina Petrova in the Maly Hall of St.Petersburg Philharmony on  October 30, 2011

 

The Maxim Fedotov’s first and, according to the poster, not the last concert in St.Petersburg in this season was held with full house: the banquettes from the lobby were put  in the Small Hall of the Philharmony so that those who obtained entrance tickets could find at least a small place. Still, dozens of people were left standing.

 

Maxim Fedotov, this time performed as a violinist in duet with his beautiful wife, a brilliant pianist Galina Petrova. The program comprised two Violin Sonatas by Beethoven and transcriptions of “Sheherazade” by Rimsky-Korsakov and "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Mussorgsky. When speaking about their ensemble, which existed for 20 years and acquired a lot of high competitive awards, the first thing to mention is the complete artistic equality of partners, which is exposed by overall style and dynamics of the performance of each musician, even  grand piano fully open ...

The execution of music by Ludwig van Beethoven by the duet  - Fedotov and Petrova, proves  Beethoven to be a human being who is consumed with passions of rage and sadness, love and contemplation, longing for the Vienna night and laughing with fellows in the pub  when drinking beer. He is our contemporary: the duet played the music of the great Fleming as if it was written yesterday, and executed by the author. This performance is very unexpected, it reminded me the conducting manner of Furtwängler.

 

Or even the unusual drive of some cool guitar "gash" of Blackmore, playing their own variation on the “An die Freude" (he has such composition «Difficult to Cure»). And similar style of playing collects stable sold out, because the previous concert here in the Big Hall, where maestro Fedotov has served as conductor and soloist, in March this year was held at the crowded hall.

 

In the transcription of "Sheherazade" by Rimsky-Korsakov, the piano played by Galina Petrova sounded more rich and powerful than any other orchestra, and violin under the fingers of Fedotov just worked wonders. Sometimes it seemed that the violin and the piano sounded as some instrument, which is played by not two  performers, but by one musician, and certainly, by brilliant musician.

 

Selected pieces from "Pictures at an Exhibition" sounded expressionist-like -  vividly and riggid, and very few people would suspect them of a contemporary of Brahms and Tchaikovsky.

 

P.S. Today a book "Who Killed Classical Music?" by Norman Lebrecht is very popular. In my opinion, nobody killed it, as it is alive, but there are people who mummified it with pseudo-academic and authentic performance. And there are other musicians who revive the great music of the past, like Dr. Faust evoked Homer’s heroes before his Krakow students. And the wonderful duet of Maxim Fedotov and Galina Petrova  is among the latter.

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