Youri EGOROV

Courtesy: James H. North Reprinted with permission of Fanfare / James H. North. . Youri Egorov: A Life. The Foundation. New releases. A Discography. BY JAMES H. NORTH Youri Egorov was born May 28, 1954, in Kazan a Russian city on the Volga River 440 miles east of Moscow. He began playing the piano at age six, and was soon admitted to the music school of the Kazan Conservatory, where he studied for eleven years with Irina Dubinina, a pupil of Yakov Zak. At age twelve, he won a national contest for a performance of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto and was given an inscribed score by the composer. By that early age, Egorov had mastered all the fundamentals of piano technique, so that he could concentrate on matters of style and interpretation. From age seventeen he studied with Yakov Zak at the Moscow Conservatory. The early technical mastery, as in the career of Yevgeny Kissin, enabled Egorov to becortie a fully mature artist in his early twenties. In 1976, while on a concert tour in Italy, Egorov requested political asylum. He soon moved to Amsterdam, and then to New York as well; he eventually gave up his New York apartment and centered his activities in Amsterdam. Egorov’s history in major piano competitions worldwide was a strange one; perhaps no other consistently third-place finisher received so much attention at competitions. At age seventeen he made a strong impression in the 1971 Marguerite Long/Jacques Thîbaud Competition in Paris, taking the fourth prize. He won the Bronze Medal at the 1974 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, from which comes the Melodiya recording listed below. In 1975 he won the Prix du Comte de Launoit—-again a third prize—-at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium. The performances which won him that prize are documented, live and unretouched, by a Deutsche Gramophon recording. One can hear why he won a high prize, why he did not win a higher prize, and why he was a big hit with the audience. He plays a sixteen-minute piano concerto by the Belgian composer Jef Maes (b. 1909), an impressionistic blend of Ravel, Prokofiev, and even Khachaturian; its strongest point is the virtuoso writing for piano, which Egorov sails through easily. Then he plays Schumann’s Carnaval; this performance is flashy and rushed; Egorov generates great excitement but finds less poetry than in his later EMI recording. There are a couple of technical slips: perhaps a dozen wrong notes, none in the more difficult passages, but he sounds momentarily flustered. The technical slips were atypical, as Egorov was to give later recitals which were virtuaily note-perfect. Oddly, three consecutive sections of the piece are omitted, some of the more poetical sections at that: Chiarina, Chopin, and Estrella. whether this was a mental lapse or a conscious choice is unclear; what is certain is that this is an exciting but in the end less than satisfactory performance. All this could be thought of as preparation for the fiasco that was the 1977 Van Cliburn competition, where the jury awarded first prize to Steven de Groote, the critics felt it should go to Alexander Toradze, and the audience awarded Youri Egorov its vote by raising ten thousand dollars for him—-the equivalent of the first-prize stipend. Heated arguments about that competition continued for many months, with contributions in the New York Times from the likes of Leon Fleisher and Lilli Kraus, who said that the entrants were of a standard that would have made them worldfamous pianists forty years earlier. All this generated so much publicity and support for Egorov that his American career was launched. The promoter Maxim Gershunoff signed Egorov up on the spot, and he soon gave debut recitals in New York (Alice Tully Hall, January 23, 1978) and Chicago (April 23, 1978), to much acclaim. But the event that put Egorov over the top was his Carnegie Hall debut recital on December 16, 1978. His unusual program consisted of four major Fantasies, by Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and Schumann. The New York critics were ecstatic, several of them going so far as to say that this was the greatest recital they had ever heard. Andrew Porter, in The New Yorker, called Egorov ‘’ the biggest and most poetical young pianistic talent I have ever encountered. His technical ability is apparently boundless. . . . It was marvelous—-majestic, energetic but quite unhurried, grandly powertul at the climaxes without any harshness or hardness of tone. . . . May he survive unspoiled. “ Fortunately for the serious record collector, this recital was recorded live, and it is the one Egorov recording which has stayed almost continually in print on LP and now on CD. Details may be found below. Along with its other virtues, this recital was note perfect, judging from the recording. Although I am not one who believes that LPs are generally superior to CDs, in this case I do feel that the LP captures Egorov’s lucid tones more truly than the very satisfactory CD. In addition to his pianistic talents, the Peters International LP displays another aspect of Egorov’s magnetism for audiences: the cover photo shows a slight, frail- looking young man standing by the piano as the audience cheers. His deceptive size hid another aspect of his physique: gigantic, powerful fingers which were probably a result of as well as a contribution to his piano playing. And so Egorov was launched on a major career. He played recitals in the important musical centers and concertos with great orchestras. In Holland he played violin and piano sonatas with Emmy Verhey, a David Oistrakh pupil. I heard him play Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Schubert, Debussy, Prokofiev, and Bartók in and around New York, plus the Brahms D-Minor Concerto and the Rachmaninov Rhapsody. But after his second Carnegie Hall recital, in December 1979, a simmering dispute between his American and European managements came to a head, and his 1980 Carnegie Hall recital was canceled. In the end, Egorov decided to give up his New York apartment, and he moved back to Amsterdam for good. Though he still toured internationally, America received a lesser share of his time. Recordings appeared about twice a year; from them it appeared that the Romantics were his specialty, Schumann in particular. One problem is that some of his EMI recordings were made in the early days of digital technology, before recording teams had fully adapted to the new medium. While thest generally sound better on compact disc reissues than on the original digital records, some fail to capture the richness and variety of his tone. The recordings of Mozart and Beethoven concertos are somewhat problematic; one suspects that pianist and conductor were of notably disparate temperaments. On the other hand, the Debussy Preludes are superb, highlights among his EMI recordings. Egorov had had utile experience with French music in Russia; when he settled in the West he found special delight in it, and he taught himself the music and the style of Debussy and Ravel. Among Egorov’s triumphs were his performances of Ravel’s Miroirs; we may hope that these are given a high priority in planning future releases. Egorov listened to music constantly, from morning until night. He listened often to recordings of other pianists; his favorites were Michelangeli and Richter. Judging from his enormous record collection, he was also sympathetic to Gieseking, Gould, Schiff, Rachmaninov, and Solomon. He admired Pollini’s technique but found his interpretations devoid of feeling. There were also some well-known performers whose playing Egorov disliked intensely. But his playing was always his own, carefully thought through and sometimes running counter to accepted views. His interpretations were never based on current trends or practices, no matter how valid or how in vogue they rnight be. His Bach did flot resemble that of Glenn Gould, nor was it based on contemporary musicological views; his recordings show it to be warm and solid, yet always of file greatest clarity. This triumphant career rolled along, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, there was Egorov’s obituary in the newspaper: dead at thirty-three, from AIDS, on April 16, 1988. Another tragedy to add to the list of great young performers—Feuermann, Ferrier, Lipatti, Kapell, Brain, Du Pré, Wunderlich—fill in your own most-cherished names! The career, the playing, the age, all seemed a ghostly echo of Dinu Lipatti; Le Monde had called him "the new Lipatti" in 1981, on the occasion of his Paris debut. Only Egorov’s closest friends had known of his illness, and he had continued to play in public. He considered his final recital in Amsterdam, November 27, 1987, to be his farewell appearance, although he did play in public twice more, in Maastricht and Florence. From that Amsterdam recital, we now have Schubert’s Moments Musicaux. It is immediately recognizable as an unusual, extraordinary performance; knowing the circumstances helps explain that Egorov was making a final statement of his views on Schubert. Egorov had a wide interest in other arts, notably architecture and poetry; those were also the two aspects of music with which he was most concerned. He was a quiet, retiring person with great powers of concentration. Although not conventionally religious, he sometimes retired to a monastery outside Moscow, where he would live and meditate for a time. When asked what the music he played meant to him, he once replied "I can’t explain this. That is why I play the piano." Indeed, he communicated fully to his audiences through his playing. Like his idol, Sviatoslav Richter, his live performances display that communication more than some of his studio recordings. He expanded his repertoire slowly, making sure he understood the content of a work before playing it in public. He was also exceptionally modest about his talents; at a time when he was working hard on Schubert and gave the magnificent performance of the C-Minor Sonata discussed below, he wrote in his diary "I am beginning to understand." Youri Egorov was an artist whose powerful fingers and unerring technique were always at the service of his probing musical mind. He could articulate the notes at the wildest presto, and he could hold a line at the stillest largo. He relished pianistic challenges, but he strove for the utmost simplicity. As yet, comparatively little bas been written about Egorov; it is as if the world is still recovering from the shock of his death. Much of the information in these pages bas been gleaned from articles and reviews in the New York Times, from the liner notes to Egorov’s recordings, from Stichting Youri Egorov in Amsterdam, and from an interview with its president, Dick Swaan. Especial thanks for assistance with the discography go to Donald R. Hodgman and to the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The Youri Egorov Foundation After Egorov’s death, a group of his closest friends formed the Stichting Youri Egorov (Youri Egorov Foundation) in Amsterdam; its goals are to keep alive his memory and to further the causes to which he was devoted. Although several pianists have claimed to be his pupils, Egorov did not teach; he had held only a few master classes, in Amsterdam, Paris, and Monaco. But he was always interested in helping young artists, especially in keeping open the contacts between musicians in Western and Eastern Europe, of which he said "We have so much to learn from each other, if only we would listen to each other." Since Egorov’s death, many barriers between East and West have fallen, but conditions in Russia and elsewhere are such that the Foundation’s efforts aet needed more than ever. Its representatives have traveled in Russia to find young musicians who "fall through the cracks" of standard development in the Russian system, and to arrange for an exchange program with Russian teachers and students. Dick Swaan, president of the Foundation, tells of many talented young People heard in the cell-like practice rooms of the old and decrepit building of the Moscow Conservatory. One young pianist there of extraordinary promise is Nikolai Luganski—watch for the name. The Foundation considers western European pianists as well, helping them to build careers in harmony with their own feelings, as opposed to the pressures of commerce. The Foundation also sponsors a series of recitals and chamber music in the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw, which presents young musicians with opportunities to appear before a knowledgeable public; these concerts are broadcast for all to hear. In addition, such world figures as Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky, and Maria João Pires have appeared in benefit concerts for the Foundation. For several years, the Foundation operated from Egorov’s sumptuous apartment on the Keizersgracht, a canal in the center of Amsterdarn which is definitely the high-class, high-rent district; among other uses, it was available as a pied-à-terre and practice space for traveling young musicians, at a minimnum cost to them. But the opulence of the apartment was out of keeping with its uses, and its potential value represented a solution to the Foundation’s many expenses, so in 1992 it was put up for sale. Not only did the Foundation have to be relocated, but Youri’s Steinway concert grand still sat in his apartment, dwarfed by the size of the now near-empty living room, even on its raised platform. Although the Foundation could operate out of someone else’s apartment, a proper home had to be found for the Steinway. At the last minute, the Foundation arranged with a church in the Begijnhof (a quiet, elegant square set right in te heart of commercial Amsterdam) to house the piano and to hold a new series of concerts there, which have already begun. As the Foundation had tapes of most of Egorov’s performances worldwide, they began to issue compact discs of his live performances. The plan was to eventually issue a dozen or so discs; they were sold directly to members and also in record stores troughout Holland. But with tree discs published and a fourth in the planning stages, they found that te success of the discs was too much for their own small staff to cope wit. To the rescue came—eagerly—Channel Classics, an Amsterdam-based record company with wide distribution in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. But before discussing these discs, we should note some of the Foundation’s continuing efforts. They are currently developing plans to have a Youri Egorov prize for young pianists—details are not yet available—and a book on Egorov is planned for the future. The Youri Egorov Foundation remains a committed, active enterprise. New Releases Channel Classics has repackaged the tree discs originally produced by the Foundation and has published the one that had been in preparation. The four discs are now available on Channel Classics’ Canal Grande label, singly and as a four-disc set packaged in a cardboard box entitled "Youri Egorov Legacy." As will be seen in the listings below, these discs are taken from live performances given in Amsterdarn and te nearly city of Hilversum. The former were public recitals; the Hilversum recordings were radio broadcasts given before live audiences. Disc one is all Schubert. The composer was especially close to Egorov’s heart, and his reading of te C-Minor Sonata is original and moving. He is certainly not following Richter, who emphasizes the variety among the sections of the outer movements, where Egorov finds continuity. Those movements are played faster than Richter, the finale is also much faster than Pollini or than Brendel’s second Philips recording. The C-Minor opening is more heroic than tragic this way, and the pace brings all of the finale into line with its tarantellalike beginning, which helps the huge, complex movement coalesce into a unified whole. Egorov’s tone is always full of color, and he never plays harshly even at fullest fortissimo. The minuet is exceptionally lyrical, yet its odd rhythms are articulated cleanly. Pollini and Brendel play the sonata almost as if it were Beetoven —and it works that way—but Egorov finds a simpler, more human spirit, and convinces this listener that it is the essence of te work. The live recording from the Concertgebouw is excellent. One senses why Egorov preferred this hall above all oters; its sweet warmth enhances his human approach to the music and makes Schubert sound beautiful, yet it does not obscure details. A few distant coughs are indicative of the February date. The Schubert disc continues with the Moments Musicaux; this is the performance from Egorov’s "farewell recital" in Amsterdam. He plays all the repeats until the Allegro vivace, where he ignores the second repeat, and the finale, where he takes only the first repeat in the Allegretto and none in the Trio. Tempos are extremely relaxed throughout, excepting only the Allegro vivace, and the playing is rapturous. The finale is extraordinarily intimate, its da capo even slower and more eloquent; one can easily hear it as a pensive farewell. The recording, from the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw, is a bit oppressive in the bass, notably in the left-hand staccato passages of the Allegro vivace. Disc two has the advantage of being from a single recital program, first played at Carnegie Hall in December 1979 and here repeated in the Concertgebouw; Chopin’s twelve op. 25 Études completed the program. In a self-mocking letter to a friend, Egorov had written I have submitted a completely idiotic program. Why? I could have confined myself to Bach, Bartók, and op. 10 by Chopin. But I didn’t, I wanted to show off: Just look what that Egorov is capable of! In Carnegie Hall, the exhausting program did have its effect; perhaps dissatisfied with his performance, he repeated two of the Études as encores. But the entire program would not fit on one disc, so we cannot detect if the problem occurred in the Concertgebouw as well. In the long pause —forty-four seconds—between the opening applause and the first notes of the Bach Partita, there is a lot of audience and ambient noise (this is a very live hall); but after the pianist begins, it is no longer objectionable; once again a mid-winter date produces a few coughs. Egorov’s Bach partita os deeply serious, emotional without ever being Romantic. We get a sense of noble detachment but also of intense concentration, a minor paradox compared to Bach’s turning a few simple dance forms into a consummate masterpiece. The Bartók sonata is played with stunning power, especially the Allegro molto finale, yet Egorov maintains plenty of color and tonal shading. It is one of the outstanding characteristics of his playing that he can pound the piano without any hardening of tone; in another context, he had said "I try to tense my muscles as little as possible, or the sound will be too harmmer like." He also said the slow movement was "like a Sarabande"; he plays it very slowly, but fails to register the folidike quality often found in this Sostenuto e pesante movement. What with recitals, studio recordings, encores, and private recordings, as many as four Egorov performances of some Chopin Études may now be heard. These twelve are performances for the ages. Seldom has music in which matter is nothing and manner everything been so enthralling; seldom has an artist’s communication with his audience come through so clearly on records. Occasional bursts of applause break out between Études; after the final Allegro con fuoco, the normally staid Amsterdam audience goes wild, in a screaming, roaring ovation uncommon to the Concertgebouw since the reign of Willem Mengelberg. The listener at home will be hard pressed to refrain from joining in; I have seldom been so stirred by a recorded performance. The live recording is glorious throughout the second disc; the clarity, warmth, and solidity of Egorov’s Bach, the blazing brilliance of his Bartók, and the irresistible panache of his Chopin fill the listening room. The MHS studio recording, made the previous month, has every note in place, but the excitement of the live performance is almost totally absent. Disc three explores music of twentieth-century Russia. Egorov played the Prokofiev Eighth Sonata in the 1974 Tchaikovsky Competition; he prepared that performance in the house outside Moscow where Prokofiev had composed it. In this 1981 performance, the long, varied opening movement 15 played more gendy yet faster than Richter’s 1962 studio recording on a DG disc. Richter emphasizes individual note values, Egorov the overall line. Similar comparisons obtain in the brief Andante sognando; both play with a great deal of color, but Egorov maintains a steady pace, which Richter finds more variety by slowing the tempos in many places. Both pianists play the dramatic Vivace finale wildly; once again Egorov views a movement in a unified fashion, rolling rapidly along where Richter gots for greater pianistic effects, punching the keys much harder. Yet Egorov achieves every bit as much power; this is what Andrew Porter meant: "energetic but quite unhurried, grandly powerful at the clirnaxes without any harshness or hardness of tone." Egorov plays the quiet central Andantino section of the movement in a ghostly mariner; he called it "terrifying," and that feeling comes across on the disc. The swirling final coda brings another roar from the Concertgebouw audience, who have been quiet throughout. Maxim Shostakovich has called his father’s 1943 Second Sonata "one of Shostakovich’s most tragic scores." Egorov agreed: "I discern in it the thoughts of a lonely man who sees no way out." He plays even the opening Allegretto in a restrained manner, avoiding the brilliance by which some pianists make it sound like the satire of the earlier Shostakovich. The largo and the variations of the finale become ever more black. This is a tragic portrayal indeed. Arno Babadjanyan (1921–83) wrote these six Pictures for Piano in 1965; they have only musical titles rather than pictorial ones à la Mussorgsky. They alternate between calm linearity and a splashy, percussive style recalling early Prokofiev. Egorov gives them the full virtuoso treatment. All three live recordings on this disc are clear and solid from top to bottom. The fourth disc retreats to earlier centuries; all these pieces are played on a modern grand piano. Haydn’s C-Minor Sonata of 1771 is played with less Sturm und Drang than Richter’s controversial account; Egorov’s dynamic scale is smaller, with less of Richter’s overpowering muscle. Yet much of the intensity remains, now tamed by classical phrasings of exquisitely pearled notes. Egorov never forgets that this is minor-key music, but he stays within Haydnesque boundaries; there are no Beetovenian anachronisms here. As always with this pianist, he is able to play very rapidly without seeming rushed. The six Scarlatti sonatas were recorded within weeks of Egorov’s 1976 defection to the West. His reasons for escape had to do primarily with his homosexuality, a serious crime in the Soviet Union; he felt sure he would be found out, which would mean the end of his career and certain prison. Europe meant safety (in retrospect, illusory), but he was still depressed for some monts, until his new life began to take shape. Both the choice of sonatas and these extremely serious performances hang like a dark cloud, for we are accustomed to mixtures which include more lighthearted Scarlatti. Once again, this is Egorov’s own way of playing; there is little if any nod to current convention. Even the ever-popular K. 380 is turned inward, with each phrase seeming more forlorn than the last. The Allegro of K. 38 is absolutely ferocious here, with sudden fistfuls of notes and no hint of gaiety. K. 518 should be a ray of light, but Egorov plays very formally, keeping the charm at arm’s length. The D-Minor of K. 32 brings the set to a tragic close. The two performances of Beetoven’ s Andante favori were given more than five years apart; continual refinement of this oft-played overture to Egorov’s recitals produced a number of changes. The annotator for this disc exaggerates the differences; the second performance is not "two minutes longer" but only forty-two seconds, excepting te applause. The slower tempo is maintained troughout, until the final coda, which is identical. Even more noticeable is a change in attitude; the later performance is statelier as well as slower, with a more forceful left hand; individual chords and notes are emphasized, at the expense of Egorov’s cherished rubato. One might say that the piece now sounds less like Schubert and more like Beethoven. Perhaps because of the smoothness of the earlier performance, there are one or two details which sound fussy: a hesitation at 6:44 of track eleven is unconvincing. It all makes for a fascinating comparison: here is a pianist perfectly at home with Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and Bartók who is still adjusting to Beethoven. Throughout these four Canal Grande discs, Egorov finds his own way of playing the music. Aided by an exemplary technique, he consistently convinces the listener that he has something valuable, even unique, to say about each piece. There is not a work, except perhaps the lesserknown Babadjanyan Pictures, which does not suggest careful, revelatory study of the music. One may disagree with a point or a movement, but this is great artistry as well as superb pianism. The Recordings of Youd Egorov: A Discography Many of Youri Egorov’s recordings have bad a history of quick deletion from the catalog which has been typical of EMI/Angel in the era of digital LPs and CDs. In addition, the CD releases generally do not duplicate the exact contents of the LPs. Thus the serious record collector will need all the information he or she can get to track down some Egorov performances. The first five compact discs listed contain live performances which were never available on LP. The rest of the compact discs contain reissues of performances that first appeared on LPs; for them, discographic information beyond that necessary to identify the performances is given in the LP section which follows the list of compact discs. Youri Egorov plays the piano in every recording; other artists are listed for piano concertos and violin sonatas. Several of his early recordings were issued both by Peters International in New York and by EMI-Bovema in Holland. Collectors will recognize German, English, and American identifications for EMI/Angel LPs; identical numbers usually apply to compact disc issues in all countries, but the name of the series may vary (EMI, EMI Classics, EMI Studio). The LP of Schumann’s Bunte Blätter and Arabeske was apparently flot issued in America by Angel, no doubt because CDs were taking over the American market by 1986. All of the EMI LPs, with the possible exception of that one, were also issued on cassette tapes; they had identical numbers with additional prefixes and different suffixes. Similarly, the three Peters International records were issued on cassettes PCE-113, PCE-121, and PCE-122. The earliest recordings were issued only in Russia (the Melodiya LP), in Belgium (the Maes Piano Concerto), or in Holland (the violin sonatas with Emmy Verhey), or not issued to the public at all (the Saint-Saëns concerto). Note some subtle points: one of the Chopin encores from the 1978 Carnegie Hall concert was not included on the Globe CD for lack of space; the Schumann Fantasy from the concert was never issued because it was disturbed by applause, but the 1979 studio recording was added to the Globe CD. The Bach/Bartók/Chopin CD from the Concertgebouw does not include Chopin’s op. 25 Études, also played at that recital. Egorov had played the same program at Carnegie Hall the previous month, but the Musical Heritage Society LP of both sets of Études is a studio recording made in New York shortly before that recital. The Dutch Erasmus CD of violin sonatas contains different performances than the Dutch EMI-Bovema LP of two of those sonatas by the same artists. Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw (literaliy: concert-building), contains both the famous concert hall (Grote Zaal) and a smaller hall (Kleine Zaal) for chamber music; of these performances, only the Schubert Moments Musicaux are known to come from the Kleine Zaal. De IJsbreker is a concert hall in another part of Amsterdam. In addition to long-playing records, cassette tapes, and compact discs, at least two videotapes exist of Egorov performances. A German tape contains Schumann’s Carnaval, the Prokofiev Sonata No. 8, and Liszt’s "La campanella." A performance of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, op. 37, with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, was broadcast on Milwaukee Public Television. Audio tapes exist of virtually all Egorov’s public performances; the Youri Egorov Foundation and Channel Classics expect to issue more discs in the future. Finally, there is a private recording of Egorov playing Brahms’s op. 118 on his Steinway grand in his Amsterdam apartment the month before his death. A cassette tape of those six pieces has some Chopin Études (op. 10, nos. 3–12) of unknown provenance on the second side; it was at one time distributed to members of the Youri Egorov Foundation. The autor has seen and heard at least one issue of every recording listed below. I ask our readers to please inform me of any additions or corrections to these lists; errata will be noted and credited in future "Critics’ Corners."