BBC Music Magazine, July 2006
INSTRUMENTAL CHOICE
A great Exhibition
DAVID NICE applauds Boris Giltburg's Russian recital
MUSORGSKY
Pictures at an Exhibition
PROKOFIEV
Piano Sonata No. 8
SCRIABIN
Piano Sonata No. 2
Boris Giltburg (piano)
EMI 353 2322 73:58 mins
Any young pianist of character is going to stand or fall by launching with Pictures at an Exhibition. 22-year old Russian Boris Giltburg is completely inside Musorgsky's multiple personalities, offering a few intriguing stylistic kinks in 'Gnomus' and 'Samuel Goldenburg and Schmuyle' without ever going as perversely far as a player like Pletnev (on Virgin, now deleted), who ultimately seems to have his own rather than the text's best interests at heart. There are some riveting crystalline staccatos and accurate but always musical sudden accents for squabbling French children and chirping balletic chicks, as well as a Russian-school orchestral pianism as Musorgsky's Polish ox cart lumbers and the bells of Kiev ring out.
Giltburg's Pictures are only the start of a Russian recital spanning 70 years, with Scriabin's Second Sonata coming as something of an interlude. Giltburg captures its post-Chopinesque candour here to perfection. In Prokofiev's towering Eighth Sonata, as in the Musorgsky, he faces inevitable comparisons with the very greatest, Sviatoslav Richter, turning in an equally valid reading, terracing the distant voices of the opening Andante and the central minuet with tender heartbreak.
He's surely more convincing than any other interpreter in linking the finale's demonic central parade back to the tolling of the first movement. This is easily the most complete Prokofiev debut since Frederic Chiu's 14 years ago on Harmonia Mundi. EMI have gone for a closer piano sound in Suffolk's Potton Hall than they did for Simon Trpceski four years ago; but how wonderful that they have backed another pianist in the same imaginative league.
PERFORMANCE * * * * *
SOUND * * * * *
Review by David Nice
BBC Music Magazine interview with Jeremy Pound
RISING STAR GREAT ARTISTS OF TOMORROW
BORIS GILTBURG pianist
The 22-year-old Russo-lsraeli makes his mark with a debut disc of Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition
'MY MOTHER IS A PIANO TEACHER,' Boris Giltburg tells BBC Music Magazine. 'My grandmother was a pianist and a piano teacher and my great grandmother was also a piano teacher! It was I, though, who asked my mother to teach me. It came from me.'
Though the family history seemingly pre-destined him to sit at a piano stool, this request by Giltburg, made at the age of five, has nonetheless proved prescient. Seventeen years later, the review of his debut disc, of Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition plus Scriabin and Prokofiev sonatas, suggests that he's set to make as big an impact on disc as he already as in concert halls across Europe and in his native Israel. But wasn't the choice of the much-recorded Musorgsky - a work by which, as reviewer David Nice says, a young pianist can 'stand or fall' - a brave one to launch with? 'What one plays best is what one wants to play,' comes the reply. 'Russian music is very close to me and is incredibly rich. There are a lot of Russian composers, all different, and I have tried to show on the disc a few facets of what for me is a magical world in music.'
There is more to the Moscow-born Giltburg than Russian repertoire, however. Last year, he mesmerised with a solo recital of Schubert, Scriabin, Mompou and Prokofiev at the Cheltenham Festival, where he returns this year with Bach-Busoni, Beethoven, Debussy, Scriabin and the Musorgsky Pictures. 'In general, when building a programme I try and make it as varied as possible,' he says. 'German repertoire in particular is also very important to me.' While the international concert circuit will inevitably take up increasing amounts of Giltburg's time, continuing to perform in Israel, where he has lived and studied since early childhood, will remain important. 'In Israel there are seven or eight orchestras and many halls and concert theatres - there are good opportunities to play. It's hard to say whether it's possible to make a career out of playing just here, but for me the Israeli audience is a very important part. It's home and I like playing here very much.'
Interview by Jeremy Pound