Vladimir Feltsman, Piano

Friday, March 6, 2015 | 8:00 pm

Baldwin Auditorium

Virtuoso pianist Vladimir Feltsman was banned from performing in his native Russia for eight years after he tried defecting in 1979, but he has made up for this long period of silence since immigrating to the United States three decades ago. Feltsman sets a formidable standard with his vast repertoire, “an effortless yet Herculean technique, and an even more formidable ability to stretch a piece to its stylistic limits and beyond” (The San Diego Union-Tribune).

Feltsman opens with the Haydn Piano Sonata No. 31, an impeccably-crafted showpiece containing one of the composer’s finest Adagios. Schubert’s first completed sonata, D. 537, incorporates extreme contrasts of serenity and storminess. The program ends with Mussorgsky’s masterful Pictures at an Exhibition, in which the composer renders in music a friend’s exhibition of drawings and paintings in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky recreates the experience of a visitor to the exhibition, pausing before each of ten pictures. Promenade music between the movements evokes both the physical experience of moving through a gallery, and the changes to the inner life inspired by great works of art.

Program