It's great, isn't it? Volodos himself doesn't take it too seriously, and only plays it as an encore piece (in fact he's an extremely "serious" pianist the rest of the time). His own performance is remarkable - Arion "slows" a little towards the end once the l/h goes into parallel octaves, but Volodos - who wrote the variations for his own prodigious technical ability - maintains a uniform tempo through, even picking-up a little towards the end
I hope he'll keep playing - there are rumours that he is interested in playing less, in order to devote more time to "serious" composition (which he has been studying intensively recently).
I was pointed to a performance by Volodos himself on YouTube - although the picture-quality is clearly a "pirate" copy made from a tv broadcast, and the sound-quality is as bad as you'd expect from that!
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24CtaG5QS24"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24CtaG5QS24[/ame]
Despite the impression you might get that he only plays these madcap transcription arrangements, in fact he's a very serious pianist in the mainstream repertoire (I believe he's become quite annoyed at the way this side of his work is ignored by the media). Here is in the ending of Rach #2, showing his more serious side in a superb interpretation that relies on musicianship as much as technique:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJtAy2IKYTc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJtAy2IKYTc[/ame]
12-10-08, 07:05 AM
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