LA NOTTE MAGAZINE

The 2025 Pianissimo Summer Festival has come to an end. This year it took place in five cities: St. Petersburg, Peterhof, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Kaliningrad.

Photos: Georgy Pavlovsky, Pianissimo Festival

This summer I was lucky to attend three concerts in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The first of them was performed by Ron Maxim Huang from Germany with works by romanticists such as Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as composers of the second half of the 20th century Wang Jianzhong and Charles Trenet. The young pianist conveyed the ringing lightness of Wang Jianzhong’s Silver Clouds Chasing the Moon (彩云追月). Although many of the composer’s works (in 1960s and 1970s) were written during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and contained themes from Chinese folk music, since compositions not based on traditional Chinese folk melodies or revolutionary songs were banned, Wang’s works are a kind of “bridge” between Chinese folk music and the Western classical piano tradition. The lightness of Charles Trenet’s music, performed by Huang, led listeners to the poetic period of Paris just before the birth of the French New Wave, a cinematic movement that also became iconic in music, fashion and photography. Ron Maxim is at ease in various styles and musical periods, carefully guiding audience through the piano history of the two previous centuries.

Photos: Julia Sumzina

Alexander Doronin, who won the hearts of the festival fans back in 2021, once again presented the audience with a very interesting program, starting with the ringing short piece “Hymn to Spring” (1993) by Elena Firsova, where the passages of “birdsong” are in harmony with the overall major tonality. Domenico Scarlatti’s Baroque sonatas and Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, written in the late 19th — early 20th centuries, prepared listeners for a stunning performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s First Sonata (in D minor, Op. 28), a work with an interesting history. The sonata was completed in 1908. It is the first of three “Dresden pieces” (along with Symphony No. 2 and part of the opera), which were written in Dresden, Germany. Initially, according to contemporaries, it was inspired by Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust; although Rachmaninoff rejected this idea. Konstantin Igumnov performed it for the public for the first time in Moscow on October 17, 1908. At that time, the work received not very warm reception and remains one of the composer’s least performed works. Alexander’s bright performance, containing a huge palette of emotions, did not leave indifferent even those who had previously treated the works of Sergei Rachmaninoff with stable calm (and yes, I am talking about myself – author’s note).

Photo: Denis Denisov, Pianissimo Festival

In the concert that concluded the St. Petersburg season, Dmitry Shishkin performed a unique musical “assortment”, including works by Johann Sebastian Bach, César Franck, Franz Schubert, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Medtner and Sergei Prokofiev. The atmospheric performance of Schubert’s “Auf dem Wasser zu Singen” in Franz Liszt’s arrangement, as if accompanying the narration of a fairy tale on a rainy evening, which sounded so harmoniously in the acoustics of the palace halls of the Hermitage, was a striking contrast to Tchaikovsky’s powerful performance in Shishkin’s style. The mood of the concert, very appropriate to the city and the place where it was held, was determined by the Baroque era and musical romanticism with a slight flavor of modernism, and Dmitry Shishkin once again confirmed his reputation as one of the most outstanding pianists of our time.

Photos: Denis Denisov, Pianissimo Festival

The Pianissimo festival has become a wonderful tradition for St. Petersburg. The opportunity to meet young pianists from different countries and watch the development of their favorite musicians attracts more and more connoisseurs of piano music. And we, with a pleasant aftertaste of the summer festival, begin to anticipate the winter season.

Text: Julia Sumzina