Upcoming concert in Copenhagen, Denmark:

 

Wednesday the 3rd of April 2013

Mřstings Hus, Frederiksberg

________________________________________

 

Nina Kavtaradze´s latest album - "In Fun and Earnest" 

 

Robert Schumann: Etudes Symphoniques op. 13 and posth.

Frantz Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody nr. 6 D Flat Major

Rodion Schedrin: Humoresque

Nina Kavtaradze: Nostalgic Tango (2001)

 

"Nina Kavtaradze plays with incredible mastery. Every chord is balanced, every rhythmic figure has cogency, every melody its sensual curve, everything totally effortless. But what particularly impresses is the concentrated musical content, the daring, but completely controlled rubato, and the impetuous artistic drive which permeates the playing. This is the great romantic piano tradition which lives on here at full sail with strong feelings, a warm heart and dramatic contempt for death. Nina Kavtaradze was a pupil of the legendary Lev Oborin (1907-1974) at the Moscow conservatoire and thus a pianistic descendant of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) and again of his teacher, Franz Liszt (1811-1886). That is to say a tradition where virtuosity goes hand in hand with great pathos, and where the player’s personality and temperament become an important ingredient in the expression as a whole." Thomas Viggo Pedersen

"This is a highly distinguished recording in which many details are in evidence. One feels drawn to both the outward and inner vitality of Nina Kavtaradze’s brilliant playing." John Christiansen, Jyllands-Posten.

 

Danacord Records 

Order (DACOCD 681)

________________________________________

 

Review of Nina Kavtaradze´s concert

October the 18th, 2008

at the

St. Petersburg Philharmonic

RUSSIA

Neva News

The Lion Roar of the Piano

Woman with a Spine of Steel

By Guylara Sadykh-sade

Nina Kavtaradze belongs to the brilliant cohort of pianists, who graduated from the Moscow Conservatory when it was in its heyday.

She studied under Lev Oborin, and gives concerts worldwide, although she settled permanently in Copenhagen with her family many years ago. “The Lioness of the Piano” is one of the fitting nick names given to her by the critics. And it fits her very well: a brilliant, temperamental, willful virtuoso, who plays with an open, powerful tone, at full force – just as she lives her life.

Kavtaradze’s career as a pianist started when she was only eight years old, when as a student of the Central Music School – the legendary CMS – she performed for the first time with an orchestra in the Pillar Hall of the Union House in Moscow. After this came studies at the Moscow Conservatory. Contemporary students included Gidon Kremer and David Geringas, and the pianists Mikhail Voskressensky and Arkady Sevidov. Nina emigrated in the mid-70’s, and soon became one of the most prominent artistic figures in Denmark. Concerts, recording CDs, various invitations to festivals, jury duty at international competitions… CDs with recordings of the collected piano works of Richard Wagner and Mussorgsky became particularly famous: the German music magazine “Neue Muzikzeitung”, founded by Robert Schumann, named the Wagner CD one of the ten best piano recordings of the year 2000.

Her repertoire as a pianist is unusually broad, but mainly tends towards the classic-romantic, with a dash of Soviet classics; Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Skriabin. This is the “Golden Fount” of the piano repertoire, which many “first class” pianists command. However, what is particularly noteworthy about Nina, is the style of playing: challenging, grand, daring. Perhaps not the way present day pianists play. The time of “great pianism” with its pure pathos and remarkable oratory gesture is over. Actually, Nina Kavtaradze carries the torch of the “great Moscow piano style”, which is now impossible to find, even in Moscow, no matter how hard one tries.

Nina Kavtaradze was in St. Petersburg two years ago, where she took part in the festival “Music of the Great Hermitage”. There she endured the dizzying tempo of mid-twentieth century Danish composer Herman D. Koppel’s virtuoso Concerto for Piano with impeccable artistry and steel. In the Small Concert Hall she performed an exquisite Chopin programme, which elicited standing ovations from the audience. During her latest visit Nina Kavtaradze performed far larger pieces than the Waltzes and Mazurkas of Chopin. The first part opened with Mozart’s Sonata in A-Major and five Preludes by Shostakovich. After these came Liszt’s Rhapsody nr. 6, served with a dark expression, and then came the grandiose Symphonic Etudes by Schumann, which demand an extreme expenditure of strength.

The latter composition is so technically demanding and long that hardly anyone plays it nowadays. A rich, saturated, many-layered texture, pierced with shattering passages of octaves and cascades of chords, presented in the regime of polyphonic imitations, demanding of the performer not only a fine and accurate ear – for the difficult tapestry of piano music that Schumann weaves demands a discerning and differentiating listening.  Indeed, the piece also demands “muscular strength”: it is precisely for this reason that “Symphonic Etudes” is primarily performed by male pianists. However, Nina Kavtaradze, for all her seeming frailty, appears to have a spine of steel. She wisely and calculatingly modulated the form of variation, all the while saving her strength for the victorious, triumphant episodes of the finale. She did not unnecessarily overdo the tempo where it might be avoided, and added liveliness of tone and tempo, where it was indeed necessary. “Symphonic Etudes” was the climax of the piano evening, and also its finale. A few miniatures by Chopin and Skriabin played as encores rounded off the complicated piano marathon, which stands as one of the most moving experiences of the season at the Small Concert Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.

 

________________________________________

  

Back     Biography     Repertoire    Albums     Photos     Links     Contact