In the 33rd year of its existence, the Musiktage Mondsee have long since become an institution and have gained a good reputation far beyond the Salzkammergut region. The artistic director Matthias Lingenfelder and his active team have always succeeded in creating exciting programs and attracting outstanding artists to Mondsee.
The fact that Lingenfelder was able to win Khatia Buniatishvili for this year’s opening concert fits perfectly into this gratifying success story. The Georgian-French star pianist did not make a contribution to the thematic focus of the Musiktage 2022, which is dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, but did contribute to the composer’s music-sociological environment. The selection of program items from Schubert to Chopin and Liszt to Erik Satie proved to be a successful reminiscence of the upper-class music salon of the 19th century, where these composers were often guests, where they presented new works or delighted with well-known and popular ones, not least with Arrangements of older masterpieces.
Khatia Buniatishvili likes to explore the extremes, not least in the tempi. Her presto is always a furious one, in which she impresses with incredible technical mastery. Her Adagio is a testing ground for delay and slowing down. But anyone who fears that tension could be lost as a result is mistaken, the opposite is the case. Through clear articulation and highly sensitive interpretation of details, she also makes small sound nuances clear. With Franz Schubert’s Impromptu in G flat major (D 899) and the Serenade in D minor after “Leise flehen meine Lieder” (D 957), the audience’s tense listening was palpable in the atmosphere.
Piano arrangements of older masterpieces were not uncommon in the music salon of the 19th century. Khatia Buniatishvili’s interpretation of JS Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A minor (BWV 543), arranged by Franz Liszt, was of overwhelming intensity. She brought the virtuoso finale to Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C sharp minor in the version by Vladimir Horowitz.
Source: Nachrichten
