Pianoroll

I want to tell you the story of a very unusual Pogorelich recital I heard in Jerusalem a few weeks ago (on March 17th).
When I arrived at the concert, a few minutes before it was to begin, Pogorelich was on stage playing Islamey with two fingers, dressed in a gym suit and wearing a Santa Claus hat. Islamey was not on the program. Some people applauded, but he told them that the concert hadn’t started yet. He then left to change and returned later with a page turner who stayed with him throughout the concert.
Pogorelich began with Chopin’s Nocturne Op 62 No 2 in the most bizarre interpretation I ever heard. He played it sooooooo slowly (with a metronome sometimes as low as 50) that it took him about 12 minutes – I kid you not. I was thankful he didn’t play Op 62 No 1, which is my favorite. For some reason, he chose to emphasize (bang?..) all the wrong notes, the ones that should be played piano. The unusual interpretation produced some whispers in the hall, and every few minutes he turned to the audience and said:
“Stop toking!”
After he finished the Nocturne, he got up and faced the audience:
“Let’s make e deel. You stay silent, I stay on steij. You tok, I go hom. We are in e concert, not in de Knesset.”
Someone must have said something rude (judging from the tone) in Serbian, and Pogorelich answered in Serbian (using the same tone). Then he sat down and played Chopin’s Sonata No 3 without any breaks between the parts. He didn’t even take his foot off the pedal between the parts. Again, there was some stir in the audience, and he continued yelling “Stop toking” every now and then. Pogorelich once said in an interview, many years ago, that you may not like how he plays Chopin, but you will remember it. Well, this was once concert I am sure to remember for a long time.
The concert reached its lowest point with Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No 1.
Here is a Youtube rendition that illustrates the general style of his playing Mephisto these days (in 2 parts).

But the performance was not as good as the one on Youtube, and people really started talking, so there was more yelling from the stage.
After the Mephisto the piano was a mess, so during the break a tuner came on stage to fix it and bring it back into shape. Some people left at the intermission.

The second part consisted of Sibelius’s Venus Waltz and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. There was more “stop toking” during the Sibelius, and everyone started laughing. Someone yelled back:
“Start playing and we’ll stop talking.”
Pogorelich yelled back: “Ven I am play you are shut ap.” This piece was not a success, and people kept leaving.
The concert ended with Gaspard de la Nuit by Ravel, which was in fact the best part. But then a phone rang in the middle of the piece, and Pogorelich said:
“You are de chempions over us Serbs. Why you go to concerts? Stay hom.”
Then at bar 232 of Scarbo he snapped the lowest D# string on the piano.
After he finished playing he stood up, closed the lid and the keyboard of the piano, walked backstage and locked himself up in the green room. There was no encore, lol.

After the concert, a bunch of my friends and I went back stage to talk with him, but he was locked in his room for so long that we were about to go, when he came out of the room and seeing us said in Russian всего хорошего (“all the best”).
Before anyone gets any wrong ideas from this blog, Pogorelich is a phenomenal pianist, as can be seen both in his early and recent recordings. I think he plays Bach better than anyone. Watch this breathtaking performance from the English Suites and enjoy!

.

Another awesome Pogorelich performance is Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit of 1983, maybe the best performance ever. Here is Ondine, the most difficult part.

The number of people who can play this piece well can be counted on one hand.