Yulianna Avdeeva wears the gold brooch to Año Shostakovich at the Círculo de Bellas Artes | Culture

There is no doubt that the Shostakovich Festival in Leipzig, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian composer’s death, should be among the most significant of the year 2025. Celebrated at the Gewandhaus in the town of Sajona, between May 15 and June 1, it has programmed a large part of his main compositions in memorable performances, including the complete symphonies, chamber music and opera. Lady Macbeth of Msensk. We tell you all this at EL PAÍS.

One of the main attractions of this festival was the performance of Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva. On May 30, he performed them in full 24 preludes and fugues, op. 87composed between 1951 and 1952, an imposing physical and mental challenge which lasted three hours. It is also a work closely linked to Leipzig: Shostakovich wrote it after participating as a piano juror in the first edition of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition, in July 1950.

Avdeeva transformed the proposal for the Lipsiense festival into a project to which she dedicated a large part of the year both in the concert hall and on social networks. In February he began a series of ten marathons devoted to this magnificent piano composition by Shostakovich, which began in the Swiss town of Seon and continued with its recording for the Pentatone label. The world tour continued with a monthly performance in Ostrava, Barcelona and Berlin; He also traveled to China, Japan and Canada and also performed at Shostakovich’s German festival Days Internacionales in Gohrisch.

The final pin of the project was celebrated last Sunday, December 14, at the emblematic Teatro Fernando de Rojas of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. Before a practically sold-out room in 500 venues, with a silent and fully engaged audience, and acoustics adapted to appreciate the musical progression of this monumental score.

It was clear in the last minutes with the last breakaway there. 24 in minor, the most extensive and complete of the entire cycle. Shostakovich converted it into its emotional climax and, at the same time, the synthesis of everything heard over the previous two hours and media. Avdeeva masterfully developed it from organic to symphonic, demonstrating exceptional mastery of the dynamics and sonority of the instrument. In particular, from this crucial indication of gradually accelerate The composer introduces a pianissimo to trigger an arrollador approach, which simultaneously combines the themes of this double fugue, multiplied in chords and octaves.

The audience erupted in a largely suppressed ovation. It is clear that the impact Shostakovich had with this monumental ending would not be out of context. Avdeeva chose to divide the cycle with a brief five-minute break after the prelude and fugue number. 12. I therefore managed to differentiate a first part with a more neoclassical and less dense character, from a second part in which a more introspective, sarcastic, violent and personal song emerges.

It is important to remember that this cycle of 24 preludes and fugues, op. 87 It is the only major composition that Shostakovich managed to debut and publish in the years before Stalin’s death in 1953. Other significant works from this same period, such as his Violin Concerto no. 1know String quartet number. 4 the song cycle About Jewish folk poetryremained stored in a box. But the composer did not miss the opportunity to inoculate into this supposed homage to Bach all the psychological complexity of his inner world.

He even made recordings of these pieces for Moscow Radio between 1951 and 1952. A deep and nervous interpretation, which sometimes contradicts what was written in his own score, but in which we also glimpse the essence of his expression: this apparent moderation and this slight superficiality which lay behind a passionate creative energy, as reported by the singer Nadezhda Welter during the rehearsals of Lady Macbeth of Msenskcollected in the biography of Elizabeth Wilson.

However, the sonic reference par excellence of this work continues to be recorded by Tatyana Nikolayeva. It was she who inspired the cycle after winning the aforementioned Leipzig Bach Competition, its dedication and even its performer in its debut. His first recording from 1962 (Doremi) is the classic interpretation of reference, which dazzles with its timbral imagination and its global vision of the transcendental drama that the work presents. It was also the first time a three-hour marathon became a regular practice, meaning running it in concert. A habit that would eventually cost him his life, he died in 1993, at the age of 69, during a performance of the cycle at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, the cause of a massive cerebral hemorrhage from which he suffered while running away. 16 in B flat minor.

Since Nikolayeva, many pianists – some all Russian or of Russian origin – have performed and recorded the cycle. Perhaps the expressive extremes oscillate between the sentimentalism of Boris Petrushansky (Dynamic) and the coldness of Vladímir Ashkenazi (Decca). More recent pianists who have taken on this work include the poised Alexander Melnikov (Harmonia Mundi), the narrative and virtuoso Igor Levit (Sony Classical), and now adds the nuanced and subtle version of Yulianna Avdeeva (Pentatone).

The Russian pianist performed live with maximum sobriety. Sitting in front of the keyboard, her back perfectly raised and a minimal gesture – which, occasionally, comes to life with her left hand supporting her right hand – her face reflects the states of mind that evoke the music: a light smile in the most humorous passages, a severe grin when the sound density predominates. He refused to depend on a page or technological solutions like the iPad and instead prepared a system of panels with reductions of Shostakovich’s scores for each prelude and fugue.

However, Avdeeva failed to connect with the spirit of the cycle in the first part. Beneath his meticulous precision in phrasing, articulation and dynamics of the first two preludes and fugues, there is none of the nerve and energy so characteristic of Shostakovich. However, I used the escape number. 9 in my mayor — the only one of the voices and another frenetic homage to Bach — where he began to perceive a tension and a risk that would only ease at the end of the veil. The prelude and the escape number. 10 in sharp minor was the first real highlight of the evening. In the number. 11 there was the sardonic spark, but it was in the leak of the number. 12, bring it back passacaglia from the prelude, where this implacable determination is heard which goes beyond simple technical precision.

The second part, with preludes and fugues. 13 to 24, a much better result. From the austere architecture of the flight to the five voices of the number. 13 until prelude no. 14, which evokes the foggy beginning of a symphony. The number. 15 impresses with an ironic vals in the prelude topped by an atonal and implacable fugue, like the baroque filigrees of the number. 16. Another notable moment was the number. 19, with a prelude of ideal contrasts and a biting escape; the number. 21, with a frenetic toccata leading into an energetic fugue that often elicited spontaneous applause; and also the number. 23, where we demonstrate that depth is not contained in contained melodicism. It all ended with the ideal colophon of the number. 24 and an expanded celebration.