Volodos - Live at Carnegie Hall

The only applause not left edited out of this recording of Arcadi Volodos's Carnegie Hall debut recital--given on October 21, 1998--comes after his house-burning encore of Liszt's maniacally florid variations (à la Horowitz) on the famous Mendelssohn "Wedding March." But the volley of enthusiastic cheers and wallops that ensues is enough to register the charismatic spell this young Russian pianist must have cast over his audience. Only in his mid-20s, Volodos seems to channel a bygone era of the Russian variety of Romantic virtuosity in its dual aspect, from hyperathletic prowess to exquisitely poised lyrical refinement. The recital opens with dazzlingly calibrated fireworks for Liszt's 15th Hungarian Rhapsody ("after Vladimir Horowitz," with whom Volodos justifiably invites comparison--as he did on his spectacular debut album--for his sinewy, larger-than-life negotiation of its thunderous octave runs and tangle of skittering flourishes). A far different world is brought to life in the enigmatic, compressed motivic echoes of the Scriabin pieces. The multiply trilled outbursts of ecstatic transport in his Sonata No. 10 beckon and dissipate like voluptuous hallucinations. Volodos can master the kind of interior poetry--breathtaking in its simple eloquence--needed for the two Rachmaninoff Études-tableaux. So too the aching, barely achieved tranquillity Schumann calls for in the most introspective of the "Bunte Blätter." Indeed, the variety of tonal color, warm legato, playful animation, and fully voiced harmonies Volodos brings out suggests the "varicolored leaves" of the collection's title. This is pianistic poetry that lingers long in the mind's ear, as it undoubtedly did for the lucky audience that night in Carnegie Hall. --Thomas May