Much has been said about the virtuoso who dares to go on stage alone and bravely takes on the masses of notes. When Grigory Sokolov performs, it doesn’t come to mind. Looking straight ahead, frozen face, he moves to the wing, which becomes his lifeline. Everything extra-musical flows down on him, including the standing applause that lasted for several minutes after the sixth encore. With this serving attitude, like no other living pianist, he gives the listener an insight into what it means to make music – letting the laws of time disappear for a moment and thus making them conscious. In the middle of Brahms’ Intermezzi (Opus 117), for example, Sokolov’s art of legato turns the strings of notes into plastic curves; his absolute control over the instrument’s timbre allows him to make register changes that knock the rug out from under the listener’s feet. Reality only returns with the two octaves that close the piece. In between: merging into the timelessness of Sokolov’s sound universe. That sounds somewhat mystical, and perhaps it is, especially in pieces like Scriabin’s Prélude in E minor (Opus 11 number 4).
But you can also experience a humorous Sokolov on this evening in the Hercules Hall. He begins Beethoven’s Eroica Variations cautiously, dull, even the fortissimo octaves with which other pianists achieve the first surprise effect. Here you can hear the music being created. For example, the buffonesque third variation with chromatic chord shifts or the ninth with a rudely insistent B flat in the bass that doesn’t cover anything. Everything matters and deserves to be heard, that is the consequence of Sokolov’s sense of musical responsibility. In Schumann’s Kreisleriana, therefore, each part of the (pseudo)polyphonic numbers has its own timbre. Nevertheless, nothing sounds constructed, but authentically naive, wild, moody. As is the case with pianists of the century: thinking and feeling merge into one.