The Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos devoted his Barbican recital to just two composers – Brahms and Schubert – beginning with the former’s rarely performed transcription of the theme and variations from his First String Sextet.
It’s a distinctive piece, with just a hint in its harmonic structure of the Hungarian Gypsy music the composer always found so appealing. Volodos sought out all its richness and diversity of texture while highlighting the theme itself in clear and perfectly shaped profile.
Next came the Eight Piano Pieces, Op 76, the earliest of the character works in which Brahms would eventually specialise. Volodos explored the vivid contrasts of mood throughout this sequence of capriccios and intermezzos, with the definition and tonal warmth of his playing providing a solid bedrock for an interpretation that made light of technical difficulties and focused instead on imaginative expression.
But the best was yet to come. His second half consisted of Schubert’s late Sonata in B-flat major – a substantial and wide-ranging work, but also one that can lose coherence if carelessly handled. There was no danger of that here. Not only did Volodos succeed in maintaining tension in between the movements, but his deeply considered performance, delivered with the keenest sense of the work’s expansive structure, comprised a masterly overview in which even the tiniest detail assumed its rightful place.
Reaching the encore stage, Volodos continued with distinguished accounts of miniatures by Schubert and Brahms, but he also moved away from the Austro-German tradition with a tasty morsel by the Spanish composer Federico Mompou, whose work he has consistently championed, and his own flamboyant reworking of the Cuban Ernesto Lecuona’s Malagueña – a salutary reminder that this superb musician is at the same time a top-ranking virtuoso.
