Music helps see the world in a different way

Bulgarian pianist Vesselin Stanev has broken his tradition to play concerts in Russia in autumn and this time has come to the Russian capital at the end of spring. And this is not the only change that has happened to him within the recent times. This time the world-famous virtuoso pianist performs his new concert program in Moscow. He plays compositions by romantic composers that the Russian audience already heard at his concerts and also surprisingly included Johann Sebastian Bach into the concert.

Photo: Music helps see the world in a different way

Bach is to some extent a romantic composer as well. It is said that he probably managed to directly communicate with God which helped him compose a lot of brilliant sacred compositions. And it is quite understandable why Vesselin Stanev who has so many times performed his romantic program every autumn in Russia now chooses such a serious composer for playing at concerts. The pianist is 63 and he is getting mature as a musician. Stanev chooses Bach because he sees him as a mature and profound company who gives much knowledge rather than mere emotions; his compositions are much more than mere tempest but a real triumph of truth. Bach’s Organ Prelude and Fugue A-minor, BWV 543, for piano adapted by F.Liszt that Stanev performs this time in Moscow requires much filigree and pathetic technique from pianists.

A graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, Vesselin Stanev is completely devoted to his alma mater despite of his breath-taking triumph all over the world. It is likely that Stanev’s intensive concert tours in Europe make the pianist stay abstracted from everything and be concentrated on music only; he realizes his responsibility for the talent of a pianist and makes efforts to understand its purport. This concentration of a soul inevitably results in its inner development. Bach and Truth are the notions that go inseparable in music. Vesselin Stanev turned to the notions, and his talent revealed the entire of its beauty and strength thanks to them as truth always means power. Generally, wonderfully talented people and geniuses particularly cannot value themselves properly. It is true because the way a genius performs music can tell much more than he himself understands in this music and life by this particular moment.

For seven years already Stanev appears on the scene during his Moscow concerts, bows to the audience and invariably gets abstracted from people at a concert as soon as he touches piano keys. It seems that deep in his soul some feeling makes him seek a component of absolute happiness in music as it cannot be found in everyday human life. And it is not only Stanev’s masterly technique that attracts people to his concerts. Audience loves the pianist for his individuality, the ability to experience intense emotions and the philosophical way of thinking. The way Stamev performs every particular composition sounds like a daring as if the pianist intentionally makes us agitated in perception of the beautiful truth.

Stanev’s frank smile implies that his inner world is not that simple. He is perfectly sure that Goethe was right when said that greatness of art is especially apparent in music. With years Stanev’s professional and personal level is getting even higher. He cannot be satisfied with just playing the piano masterly which would be quite enough for any other pianist, Stanev wants to understand the epoch, the meaning and the value of life each time he performs piano compositions.

May 26, at a concert in the Rakhmaninov Hall of the Moscow Conservatory Vesselin Stanev played the same program he did in the St.Petersburg Philharmonic Society on May 24. Besides Bach’s Prelude and Fugue, Stanev played Joseph Haydn’s Sonata 52, G-dur, Hob. XVI;39, Schubert’s Sonata A-dur, D664, eight piano pieces opus 76 by Johannes Brahms, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies S244, #8 F sharp minor and #13 A-minor. The pianist played all the pieces wonderfully as he always does. Indeed, as Russian writer Chekhov said that art could carry us away from dirt, worthless concerns and everyday offenses. It is the beautiful only that gives peace and satisfaction, Chekhov said.

Alexandra Koroleva