Ephemerides and other objects in ephemeral states

Pianists can be divided into Grigory Sokolov and all the others.
No, not that. 
There's Grigory Sokolov and then there's everybody else.

It makes no sense to write about his performance as it will be most likely a number of fruitless attempts to pin an angel on a pinhead or to drag a pen across the globe, from East to West, trying to write The Odyssey – obviously, in vain.

One can, of course, continue showing off his skills in verbal gymnastics, to draw Sokolov’s own musical time – from hypothesis to the hypotenuse, trying to compute its coordinates – Ephemerides and other objects in ephemeral states.

But what for?

Fernando Pessoa, reaching his ripe age, writes: “We are our dreams of ourselves.”

Grigory Sokolov, I think, would wish us to see in his music our own dreams – about Haydn and Schubert. We heard them in Valletta, at the Malta International Music Festival, in the 16th century castle-like building, where the Knights of St. John used to have their hospital; in the hall accessible only if one passes first a huge foyer with ex-bed niches; by the way, next to this large hall there is a small one, the former morgue. And in the corner, at the entrance, stand the Knights of Malta, who, apparently, are deep in their own slumbers.

Sokolov is a maverick pianist, and by this capacious word here comes a description of him as an individualist and a dissident. Still, more remains uncovered, as all you have to do is listen to Sokolov's playing.

When he plays, you fall whether in anabiosis or in a daze, or in anything else. Again, your condition cannot be described by common words. How he makes you do it is incomprehensible, and it is not necessary to comprehend. What for? Does it matter, in the end, what happens to notes, sounds, passages? If he wants to give us this very message, no need to know how he did it.

Sokolov played three Sonatas of Joseph Haydn and four Impromptus of Franz Schubert in semi-darkness, deliberately set-up. He performed Haydn’s rarities: not his last eight sonatas, but the three from his mid-period, “Sturm und Drang,” and in minor – to be noticed: Sonata (Divertimento) No 32 in G minor, Sonata (Divertissement) No 47 in B minor and Sonata No 49 in C-sharp minor. Their rarity is to be explained this way: “Papa” Haydn, a notable wit, used to compose excellently moody music, mostly in major key. Rarely being gloomy, even he used to be “blessed” with a gloomy mood occasionally. Both rhythm and melody are frown in these sonatas, and it’s not easy for a modern instrument to cope with them. But not for Sokolov – no matter how deep the composer fell into minor, the unusual sounds going out from under the pianist’s hands, seems the exact and only true. Heaven – not sky, enlightened – not light. Muted tones, conscious asymmetry, almost whispering, timbral variety, the known privilege of the old instruments, are now lost; and real hushed mystery in the pauses, and mysticism of détaché, and occasional use of pedal – these features bring together the modern piano and its predecessor of the Haydn’s times.

In the following the four late-period Impromptus (D. 935) of Schubert, who is another Viennese composer but is a Romantic yet, and whose music seem to sound appropriate on a modern piano – although everything is approproate under Sokolov’s hands, even Rameau the harpsichordist with his “Le rappel des oiseaux” – the composition of the air suddenly changed in the hall. And the pianist seems to change his hands: they became two times greater, softer and kinder. Sokolov performed Haydn with fingertips; performed Schubert caressing the keyboard with his whole palm.

There was a thousand-moods-a-minute acting. Sokolov differentiated registers and shades of all things, brought the harmonic vertical to the highest degree of transparency – you somehow miraculously heard every note of every chord, – did magic and did something else, which does not succumb to any reason, neither objective nor even subjective reality given to us in sensation. He just, like Schubert, heard and seized the music, and took it out of the world inaudible.

But we seem to start drowning in descriptions, verbal, excessive, absolutely sophisticated which shouldn't be because Sokolov's words belong to him only and if someone of us is given to hear them, it is only in order to get a revelation. He's disdaining to wear his heart on his sleeve. At the same time, he is surprisingly simple in his semantic complexity, in his weird logic, in his strange meanings. This is yet another Zen story: there is nothing prohibitively high, all is here, around us, and sometimes even next to us. One just has to have a right point of view.

And his man-made music...

A traditional part of the Sokolov’s recitals ritual became a series of encores – they are not the pianist’s mark of favor, but in fact the third part of the concert. There were five encores: Schubert, Rameau, again Schubert, Chopin and Scriabin. The hands again changed their size, volume and position on the keyboard revealing each and every poetic thought. “But these music worlds are different,” said Grigory Sokolov to me after the concert.

According to Tertullian's credo, one should believe in what – from the point of view of the ancient wisdom, – is anti-reasonable, and perhaps only this should be believed in. This paradox is fundamentally unsolvable, no matter how deep we try to penetrate under its surface.

But what for?

All we need is to simply listen to Sokolov.

Photo: © Mary Slepkova / DG