Modest genius of pianist Vesselin Stanev

Last week Moscow and Saint Petersburg warmly greeted a famous Russian piano player Vesselin Stanev. Such annual concerts by a brilliant Moscow music conservatory graduate have already become traditional.

Photo: Modest genius of pianist Vesselin Stanev

Each Stanev’s concert is unique. Each one helps the audience to discover both the piano player and the composers, whose masterpieces he plays, in a new angle. His proficiency grows with each year, and with each concert his music becomes more difficult to play. But something about him never changes: his personal, sophisticated manner of playing.

He thinks deeply and thoroughly about what the composer was thinking about while writing this music and then tries his best to express the composer’s inner world.

The suite No 2 by Bach was published in 1727. The critics then wrote that ‘the piano player that can reveal in front of the audience the suite’s complicated mix of emotions and motives is to become world famous’. Vesselin Stanev made us go back emotionally into Bach’s time.

Then comes the music by Ludwig Van Beethoven. His symphony No 11 is considered one of the most difficult pieces of music to play. The composer himself considered this symphony ‘great’. Beethoven expressed in it the bright, emotional and passionate spirit of the 19th century – and this spirit was expressed to the audience through Stanev’s brilliant execution.

Frédéric Chopin is great pioneer in music that put a lot of new musical innovations into each of his works. He was often called ‘a poet of music’. Maybe that’s the reason why Vesselin Stanev chose Chopin’s music for his concert. His opus No 46 was played by the piano only, but it sounded as if the entire orchestra was playing.

Franz Liszt’s virtuosic music was also played by Stanev. Franz Liszt’s works were played by Russia’s most prominent piano players and composers. Now it is played by Russia’s new star - Vesselin Stanev.

What is very important, Stanev remains a modest person. He doesn’t try to show off in front of the audience. He doesn’t have any of those awkward gestures that many of Russian young piano players have. It seems that he’s playing for himself. His goal is not to show off. His goal is to play the piano and give his audience pleasure and delight.

Translated by Lena Ksandinova