Light-filled brilliance
From Wienerzeitung, 27 November 2002
Written by Herbert Müller
Translated
from the original German by E. Lumpe
Edited by
the
webmaster
Vadim Repin began his beautifully programmed violin evening with a
splendid piece for warming-up: Schumann's Sonata in A Minor. The 31-year-old
Russian artist played it principally in a noble, lyrical way, without
overloading its content; only in the very rapid final movement did he let
his brilliance shine out. At the piano his compatriot Nikolai Lugansky, one
year his junior, was completely in accord with him and played on the highest level as well.
Naturally Prokofiev's Violin Sonata in F Minor received the virtuoso treatment.
From the
expressive side - the "Russian wildness" - to the tender, tension-filled
cantabile, everything was
presented in a lively, virtuoso manner which was, at the same time, rock
solid. There was absolute certainty of fingering, an elegant bow technique and a
sonorous tone with neither any hint of obtrusiveness nor
fashionable understatement. Lugansky rivaled him for beauty of tone - and
Repin played a Stradivarius after all!
Anyway, glory and honor to his name! Here is a musician who has the courage to
also
play the unwieldy, the unpopular. Otherwise he would not have played Schönberg's Fantasy for violin and piano op. 47. Yet if
twelve-tone music is presented so lucidly and, together with Lugansky, so
transparently and with such a fine musical mind, such "truth does not ask
too much of people".
Afterwards they went back to the early Romantic period. With elfin fingers, Lugansky
began
to play Schubert's Fantasy in C Major (including
variations on Oh du Entriss'ne mir). Repin responded, as if
meditating, until the entire performance was filled with light and brilliance. What an
ending!
REPIN AND LUGANSKY - A COLLABORATION