Why do certain pianists play so fast? Because they can. That crossed my mind while hearing Daniil Trifonov and his erstwhile teacher Sergei Babayan tear through the Rachmaninov Suite No. 2’s Waltz and Tarantella movements at record speed. To their credit, the pianists achieve this feat with the utmost control, as the swirling inner lines perfectly align against elegantly shaped foreground cantabiles. Their ensemble values are beyond cavil. Yet so are those of Martha Argerich and Alexandre Rabinovitch in their more imaginatively inflected and playfully detailed interpretations. Trifonov and Babayan tone down for a mellifluous Romance movement that is a touch rounded off for my taste; I prefer the steadier trajectory and clearer textural perspectives characterizing the Dmitri Alexeev/Nikolai Demidenko recording on Hyperion.
On the other hand, Trifonov and Babayan largely score over the First suite’s recorded competition, especially in regard to their long-lined flexibility in the first and third movements. I’ve always likened the concluding Easter movement to the Coronation Scene from Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov with its wheels stuck in the mud. The duo’s grandeur and gravitas are stylistically apt, yet I feel that the music truly moves only when played in a headlong and streamlined fashion, such as in the recording by Peter Donohoe and Martin Roscoe.
Either intentionally or coincidentally, the duo’s balletic vigor in the outer sections of the Symphonic Dances first movement evokes the joy and spontaneity conveyed in Rachmaninov’s own informally recorded solo performance, as well as the bracing thrust of the Finale’s cross-rhythms. No qualms whatsoever about Trifonov’s skillfully wrought and gorgeously played arrangement of the Adagio from Rachmaninov’s Second symphony; I encourage him to transcribe the remaining movements! The remarkably high standard of duo pianism throughout this release surely will galvanize keyboard connoisseurs.
