Alerted to Arcadi Volodos’s calibre I hurried to London’s Wigmore Hall some months ago. I was not disappointed. Performing a bewildering bits and bobs programme Volodos, who is 25, Russian-born but Spanish-based, declared himself an elegant lyricist and spectacular virtuoso in every bar. Some of that recital is repeated on this recording where once again the playing is as tactful as it is audacious, the work, surely, of a romantic pianist for our times.
His tributes to Horowitz (the ultimate Russian virtuoso icon) and Cziffra (the ne plus ultra of pianistic necromancy) are as coolly masterful as they are personally engaging and are wholly devoid of wilfulness or undue idiosyncrasy. Those anxious for Horowitz’s splintering treble and thundering bass or for Cziffra’s manic explosions and accelerations will listen in vain. Mercifully, Volodos remains his own man, tempering some heart-stopping octaves and glissandos at the close of Feinberg’s transcription of the scherzo from Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony with a touch of nonchalance, and in Feinberg’s other arrangement, guiding Bach gently but firmly into the nineteenth century.
Volodos is no less beguiling in his own Rachmaninov song transcriptions; here is that dreamed-of vocal ‘line’, luscious cantabile and aristocratic rather than ostentatious voicing and texturing. Last but far from least his elaboration of Mozart’s “Turkish March” seasons the most decadent and epicurean taste with a teasing wit and insouciance (poor Sir Clifford Curzon, arch-hater of Schubert- Godowsky, must surely be turning in his grave at such unapologetic mischief-making).
Sony’s sound is superlative and this delectable recital makes one long for more substantial as well as glittering fare from a pianist who, as his producer puts it, “never loosens the reins of his guiding intellect”.'