Your
correspondent has been attending People’s
Symphony Concerts for well-nigh 25 years, and one of the many attendant
pleasures is seeing emerging masters before they become household names.
Such a
pleasure was on hand last Saturday while watching pianist Behzod Abduraimov in a concert that could only be called magical.
Born in
Tashkent in 1990 Behzod began to play the piano at the age of five. He was a
pupil of Tamara Popovich at the Uspensky State Central Lyceum in
Tashkent, and studied with Stanislav
Ioudenitch at the International
Center for Music at Park University, Kansas City, where he is now Artist in
Residence.
Clad in
a simple black shirt and slacks, Abduraimov opened with Four Impromptus for Piano, D. 935 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828), a performance of wonderful subtlety and
delicacy. His playing went from lightly
(indeed, liltingly) melodic to melancholy and back with effortless
transition. The Impromptus are a
challenge to even the most accomplished player, and Abduraimov played with all
the sensitivity of a man three times his age.
He
followed with the Mephisto Waltz No. 1,
S. 514, by Franz Liszt
(1811-1886), a performance filled with drama and passion. Abduraimov did not play the piano as much as
he assaulted it … providing the dual
pleasure of listening and watching the performance. A showman as much as a musician, Abduraimov
understand the body language of great playing, and the crowd rose to loud and
rapturous applause at the end of the piece.
Abduraimov
concluded with Pictures at an Exhibition,
by Modest Mussorgsky
(1839-1881). Here is, of course, a
splendid showcase for the young pianist’s many talents. Mussorgsky guides the listener through a
series of painting, each eliciting separate and distinctive emotions. It is a great test of virtuosity, and
Abduraimov rose to the occasion splendidly.
This is surely a great talent who will leave his mark on the classical
music world.
A word
now about Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, founded in 1900 by the conductor Franz Arens to bring the world’s finest
music to students and workers for minimum prices. That winter, more than 7,000 people swarmed Cooper
Union to hear Arens, the son of an immigrant farmer, conduct his series of five
Peoples' Symphony Concerts.
Subscriptions for the five concerts ranged from $.25 to $1.25 and single
tickets went for as little as $0.10 each.
Arens
himself started out a poor student in Europe who had been too broke to attend
many concerts. When Arens returned to
New York, he was determined to find a way to bring music to students, teachers,
workers, and others unable to pay standard ticket prices. Since those early years, hundreds of
thousands of Peoples' Symphony Concerts audience members have heard the world's
foremost concert artists and ensembles at the lowest admission prices of any
major series in the country.
During
many years of attending, Your Correspondent heard such masters as Richard Goode, Garrick Ohlsson, and Marc-Andre
Hamelin. There are three concert series,
two taking place on Saturday evenings at the spacious (and newly-renovated)
theater at Washington Irving High School
in Gramercy Park, and one on Sunday afternoons at Town Hall in midtown Manhattan.
Many of
my readers support the New York
Metropolitan Opera, WQXR and/or Tanglewood, but few seem to know this
wonderful resource for people who are serious about music.
There
are still tickets available for this season; visit http://pscny.org or call (212) 586-4680 for more
information.
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