Walter Benjamin wrote that storytelling goes downhill. What was true in 1936 for the tradition of passing on experiences orally can be said today about the art of the piano: not much is left of the once self-evident gift of virtuosos to tell a gripping story on the instrument. A talent like Maximilian Haberstock is doubly wonderful. Not only because the seventeen-year-old pianist plays Liszt and Prokofiev in the small concert hall in the Gasteig with a certainty that is impressive in itself, but above all because in Liszt’s ballad in B minor it becomes clear that every note cataract here is really only a medium is to set an underlying drama to music.
It doesn’t matter that Beethoven’s “Appassionata” gets a little out of joint at the beginning, too hasty and therefore not soundly mature. That was initial nervousness. Who could blame Haberstock? Young artists have hardly had the opportunity to gain concert experience in the past two years. So it’s rather astonishing how confidently the young pianist develops Liszt’s ballad. Here he is completely with himself and can breathe life into the tumultuous score with a conductor’s perspective.
It is not difficult to believe that conducting an orchestra is Haberstock’s long-term goal. Or: one more thing, because he already directs a chamber orchestra, who studies conducting alongside piano. And why limit yourself? That’s why Haberstock also composes, for example a charming “Fantasy about German Late Romanticism” with creative adaptation of Richard Strauss melody and Wagnerian harmonies. The gap to Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata could not be greater. But in the course of the evening Haberstock found more and more sound control – his head grew cooler, so that he also designed this constructivist-inspired sonata with biting sarcasm and broken melodies full of character.