When ten fingers dance brilliantly on 88 keys

After a furiously played “Danza Ritual del Fuego” from Manuel de Falla’s “El armor brujo”, Michael Korstick thanked the audience and regretted not wanting to play any more because he was massively weakened by a corona disease. The piano evening on Wednesday in the Brucknerhaus was more than just impressive.

Especially the second part, which he introduced with the extremely difficult piano version of Béla Bartók’s dance suite and developed into a true masterpiece of pianistic art. Fascinating how he managed to articulate it so clearly while focusing on the shimmering sound world of the original orchestral version. Alberto Ginastera’s “Suite de danzas criollas” op. In between there are such fine pieces as the F minor Mazurka by Władysław Szpilman and dances by Charles Koechlin, Isaac Albéniz and Federico Mompou.

In the first part, Michael Korstick dedicated himself to German Romanticism and focused on Robert Schumann’s “Carnaval” op. 9 as an ideal, dance-oriented carnival piece. Played virtuoso, perhaps some things too quickly to be able to be articulated precisely or to make Schumann’s fine dynamics and surprising accents clear. Overall, it’s more of a lavishly sonorous masquerade ball than a subtly explored game with the cheerful and yet always a little pensive characters. It started with a somewhat hasty “invitation to dance” based on music by Carl Maria von Weber, who, as a piano composer, is unfortunately still underexposed and rarely heard.

Conclusion: A huge feat of strength with a lot of enjoyment in the second part