Arcadi Volodos: notes to one side

A character in a Julio Cortázar story used to look carefully on the floor of the stalls every time he went to a recital of a virtuoso. “What have you lost?”. “The music, Madame, the music!”. At every performance by Arcadi Volodos all the notes are flawlessly executed, the articulation is meticulous and there is an absolute respect for what the composer has written. But the essential is always at the forefront, that which is perceived behind the notes: the music.

A virtuoso who only began to take his career seriously as of the age of 15, in his distinctive lyrical and moving pianism, perhaps there is an influence from the singing classes at the beginning of his musical education.

Volodos has a large repertory, from works which require fingers of steel to those which seem to emerge from silence and then return to it: listen to his recording of Frederic Mompou to discover the extreme delicacy, expressive modesty and transcendence of an artist who leaves the notes to one side to enter the very heart of the score. On the stage of the Teatro de la Maestranza is a great master of the piano who, at the same time, is a servant of music.

F. Schubert
Sonata in G major D. 894 op. 78

F. Chopin
Mazurka op. 33 n. 4 in B Minor: Mesto
Mazurka op. 41 n. 2 in E Minor: Andantino
Mazurka op. 63 n. 2 in F Minor: Lento
Prelude op. 45 in C sharp Minor
Sonata n. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op.35