The Carnegie Recital

Daniil Trifonov secured his status as natural successor to the great Russian pianists of the past in 2013 with his Carnegie Hall debut recital. He also signaled his maturity as an artist, not least with a compelling interpretation of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor that transcends the work’s technical challenges and transforms the piano into an apparently infinite resource of sounds, shades, textures, and timbres. Trifonov’s towering combination of musicianship, expressive insights, and Zen-like focus, supported by jaw-dropping recorded sound, is by turns overwhelming, consoling, poetic, dramatic, yet never artificial or insincere. He’s equally convincing in Scriabin’s haunting “Sonata Fantasy,” god-like in his dazzling delivery of its “Presto,” and so connected to the shifting emotions of Chopin’s 24 Preludes that each feels as if it is being improvised in the moment.