Closer to Mozart

Pianist Yuri Rozum excelled at the Rheighau music festival.

Everybody was waiting for the announced recital of Sofia Mautner, who gave a successful performance last summer at the Furst von Metternich Halle. But unexpectedly she was taken ill. Yuri Rozum who has frequently appreared in many chamber music halls over the last few years was invited to stand in for her.

Nobody could expect, that that evening such technically perfect and polished mastery in palying Mozart would be offered to the audience at the Rheigau Music Festival, and especially by a Russian musician. We heard a toatlly individual and free from oter influences interpretation of the pianist.

...In Mozart’s Sonata in c-major KV330 Rozum evoked an illusion of light music-making, which only few interpreters can achieve. Especially, as it is feared by many famed classical pianists. It was a well-measured interpretation, always true to the stylistic ideals, which despite a fast tempo stayed clear in thought, varied in touch and sonorous until the end. All these qualities lacked during the Mozart piano evening given by Elisabeth Leonskaya.

... In the second half of the programme Rozum was able to get the audience off their seats in the sold-out hall. He proved his technical mastery in Frans Liszt’s virtuoso showpiece “Reminisances of Don Juan” G 418. He developed lively playing, which never sounded hard, even in fortissimo. Like in Mozart he used the pedal skilfully to bring out the finest varieties of colour, filigree pearliness and thundery storms.

The audience responded with admiration to the bunch of encores at the end of the concert, which included pieces by Chopin, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky and the most impressive again Frans Liszt’s 6th Hungarian Rhapsody.