Konstantin Emelyanov is a 30-year-old prize-winning Russian pianist whose avowed aim in this intriguingly named recital is ‘to weave a tapestry from a Golden Age, an epoch of eternal beauty and poetry’. Prefacing Rachmaninov with Rameau and following him with Bach is an audacious but deliberate move designed to tell you that there is a hidden thread of continuity. Whether looking backwards (Rachmaninov’s choice as the subject of his Variations of the old theme ‘La folia’, as used by Corelli in his Violin Sonata No 12) or forwards, most notably in ‘L’enharmonique’ from Rameau’s G major/minor Suite (Nouvelles Suites de pièces de clavecin), you are made aware of a sense of evolution rather than revolution. More subjectively, Emelyanov follows Rachmaninov’s Corelli Variations with Bach’s French Suite No 3 in B minor, with its vigorous and joyful Gigue providing a shining end after what he sees as so much darkness and despondency.

For Emelyanov, Rameau’s Suite is ‘a string of pearls’, though with a jewel of a different hue in ‘L’enharmonique’, looking ahead as far as late Romanticism. Rameau’s titles for each section of his Suite evoke a world the reverse of abstraction, and ‘La poule’ could hardly have its pecking and clucking more playfully presented.

But it is when you come to Rachmaninov that Emelyanov’s stature and quality become fully apparent. Unlike Ashkenazy’s more urbane but justifiably celebrated early and later recordings, he reflects a greater sense of pain in exile, of bitterness at changing times, the shock of the new that would consign his standing for many years to little more than passé and old-fashioned. Yet given with Emelyanov’s drama, Rachmaninov has seldom sounded less of a salon figure or a composer of decorative pianism and small talk (Brendel). For Emelyanov (as vivid verbally as he is in performance), the final bars are like ‘an ultimate blow to the heart’ and are among ‘the most soul-searing pages of music that have ever been written’.

A return from darkness to light, to Bach’s more positive perspective, brings this powerful and most individual recital to a close. To say that Emelyanov is a committed artist is to deal in understatement.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of International Piano. Never miss an issue – subscribe today