The young pianist Vassily Primakov, Russian-born and American-trained, has a sort of hyper-precise style that he's been applying to High Romantic pieces. This isn't really paradoxical, for there are quite a few works that can benefit from such treatment. Exhibit A is the Dvorák Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33, a work much less often played than the concertos of Brahms or other composers of the period. It has been deemed unidiomatic to the piano and has even been simplified by later performers and editors, but Primakov, ...
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The young pianist Vassily Primakov, Russian-born and American-trained, has a sort of hyper-precise style that he's been applying to High Romantic pieces. This isn't really paradoxical, for there are quite a few works that can benefit from such treatment. Exhibit A is the Dvorák Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33, a work much less often played than the concertos of Brahms or other composers of the period. It has been deemed unidiomatic to the piano and has even been simplified by later performers and editors, but Primakov, using Dvorák's original version, "with just a few slight modifications," is just the player to find his way through the snarls. He's not the kind of pianist who brings you to your feet, but he offers a crisp reading of the very Czech final movement, and the pastoral slow movement, with a very striking sudden moment of threat in the middle, has an attractive air of mystery. Denmark's Odense Symphony Orchestra under Justin Brown offers better support than the orchestras of cities of...
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