Balakirev: Islamey (Jando, Pogorelich, Kantorow, Gavrilov, Berezovsky)

Islamey is one of those works (like Schumann’s Toccata, or Liszt’s better paraphrases) whose very substantial musical merits tend to be obscured by the virtuosity of its writing. It’s not uncommon to hear people complaining that it’s loud, messy, repetitive, or some unpleasant mixture of these qualities. And there’s a certain logic to this: Islamey employs a very unusual series of textures for a virtuoso work, textures that, measured by Romantic standards, have a certain crudity to them (rhythmically unvaried thematic material; prolonged passages in bare thirds; bare octaves used for both RH melodies and LH accompaniment; stark toccata-like passages; ugly pedal points (m.77), unusual harmonic movement – is there a single V-I in the whole work?).

But Islamey’s weirdness is also its virtue – it tends to abhor middle-of-the-road interpretations, so that extremity in performance works very well: extremity of volume (very loud or soft), extremity of tempo (very fast or slow), extremity of clarity (or abandon). You can’t try to be too conventionally musical with this material – you sort of just have to go for it, and if you’re lucky it turns out musical, in its earthy, ungainly, ingenious way. There’s a surprising amount of discipline in how the work is put together, in fact – it’s essentially a series of variations on three folk themes, organised into a clear ABA’-Coda structure. The way Balakirev continuously develops material that doesn’t sound promising at first blush is very clever, and some of the thematic transformations are so smoothly pulled off you might not even realise you’re listening to the same material – see for instance the transformation of Theme 2 (0:26) into the smoky haze of 1:29, or the reduction of Theme 1 into a five-note motif (5:05).

Here are five performances that really nail it:

00:00 – Jando. Played in a completely unshowy way, but still totally effective owing to its clarity and sense of control. Proof that anti-virtuoso approaches to virtuoso works can produce great results. Jando never gets enough love.
09:38 – Pogorelich. Slow, like Jando (at least at first), but the sheer mass of sound produced gives the impression of something gnarled, inhuman, volcanic. Melodic intensity, hard, metallic accents. Sometimes all sense of harmony is lost and you’re just left with a torrent of transcendent, terrifying noise (15:41). [Shoutout to @Gazda Mitke II, whose recording of Pogo’s 1990 concert at Carnegie Hall produced this account for the ages.]
18:12 – Kantorow. Conceptually almost the opposite of Pogorelich. Lithe, playful, with superhuman control of colour, voicing, and phrasing even at extremely fast speeds. Of all the performances, this one also best captures the dancelike character of the first two themes.
26:28 – Gavrilov. Occupies a nice middle ground between Pogorelich and Kantorow. What really stands out is his ability to project large-scale structure in a work of such sustained fantasy – the entire last section starting from 30:51 is experienced like a constant acceleration to the finish, with the momentum never letting up.
34:23 – Berezovsky. Of all these performances, Berezovsky makes the most out of the contrasts in the work. It’s surprising how much of the performance is spent in piano-pianissimo—and how delicate and intimate Berezovsky makes these sections sound. In the final pages he also really cuts loose in a really nice way – you can sense he’s riding right on the edge of what’s technically possible for him, and it’s tremendously exciting (41:32).

Видео Balakirev: Islamey (Jando, Pogorelich, Kantorow, Gavrilov, Berezovsky) канала Ashish Xiangyi Kumar