A Quintessentially Pianistic Program

SUPPLEMENT TO THE ASPEN TIMES MONDAY, JULY 26, 2021 VOL. 31, NO. 5

A Quintessentially Pianistic Program

JESSICA MOORE

AMFS Director of Marketing

Pianist Behzod Abduraimov returns to Aspen for two performances that place piano repertoire at center stage. In the first, on Friday, July 30, he performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Aspen Chamber Symphony, and on Wednesday, August 4, he presents a solo recital.

With an international touring schedule that features engagements in the major capitals of the world, Abduraimov’s career has taken him miles away from his hometown of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. AMFS’s Vice President for Artistic Administration and Artistic Advisor Asadour Santourian says, “He emerged on the world stage as a tween, and then a teen, and has maintained an unbelievable star trajectory his entire young life.”

Pianist Behzod Abduraimov, who impressed audiences last summer with his virtual AMFS recital, performs in Aspen on July 30 and August 4.

A regular in Aspen since his 2016 Festival debut, Abduraimov’s programmatic focus this season is wholly pianistic—a fact that sounds entirely obvious given his instrument of choice, yet is noteworthy because the featured composers—Beethoven, Scarlatti, Schumann, and Rachmaninoff—were all pianists themselves. The demands on the performer are not only technical, but also require a certain maturity of expression.

Santourian feels Abduraimov has certainly reached the appropriate stage of his artistic development to tackle such programmatic choices. “He always demonstrated maturity as an artist, regardless of age, and now he’s reached a point where he actually is more defined and definitive about his view on the music that he’s performing.”

For his August 4 recital, Abduraimov will perform two sonatas by Scarlatti, Schumann’s Kreisleriana, and Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli. Regarding his choice of recital repertoire Abduraimov says, “In general, there is always an overarching connection in my program building. I strived to build a program that is designed to exhibit the scope of piano literature from the different eras and schools.”

Santourian echoes this, explaining that “Scarlatti represents the bridge between Baroque and Classical, and then we have the Schumann, which is the height of nineteenth-century Romanticism, and the Rachmaninoff, which is the culmination of Romanticism—so we have a spread of 150 years in musical style and idiom represented in the program.” Where Santourian calls the two Scarlatti sonatas “little flourishes that are concert openers,” the Schumann and the Rachmaninoff are “real, substantive concert pieces.”

A quintessential early Romantic composer, Schumann would compose musical character studies to describe people around him. His Kreisleriana is one such work, created as an homage to the character of ‘Kreisler’—the nom de plume of writer, critic, and thinker E.T.A. Hoffman, of whom Schumann was a deep admirer. Abduraimov looks forward to performing this work, admitting that “it is my very first time playing Schumann’s music. Perhaps I wasn’t feeling ready for it, so it’s definitely a very special occasion for me.”

On the other hand, Abduraimov is no stranger to Rachmaninoff. “My fascination with Rachmaninoff and his music goes back to my childhood years. I will never forget my first encounter with his Concerto No. 2 that I performed with the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan when I was 12,” he recalls, continuing, “I do have a special affinity towards the man, the artist, and his music.”

In the Corelli variations, Santourian explains that Rachmaninoff takes the recognizable “La Folia” tune “through its paces in a very virtuosic way, through different keys and different piano techniques.” He continues, “It will be extraordinarily interesting to see what Behzod does with this because Rachmaninoff had unusually large hands and therefore had a very large reach. Some of these chords are quite full and the demands are muscular.”

For his part, Abduraimov looks forward to returning to the Tent and performing this work, saying, “While I have no doubt the audience will enjoy this real gem, I myself can’t stop enjoying it as a pianist for its absolute ingenuity.”

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