Mikhail Pletnev may rank among the leading pianists of our time, but that does not prevent him being an infuriating performer when the mood takes him.
The languid, almost coy way he comes on to the stage is no clue to what might follow, and his Festival Hall recital last night was one of those occasions when the anarchic streak in Pletnev came to the fore, or at least the first half of his programme was; after the interval he played superbly, with immaculate technique matched to similarly impeccable musicianship.
Technically the first half was faultless too; it was the uses to which Pletnev put that deftness and control in Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that sometimes raised eyebrows. It is a rough hewn work, but Pletnev seemed intent on making it seem even more radical and provisional. Phrases were torn off, left hanging in mid air; transitions had to be as abrupt as possible. Even the opening Promenade was scrutinised and tested, pulled around to see how much of an expressive load it could bear; in Bydlo, the Polish ox-cart sounded as if its main axle had broken, while the dynamics in the final Great Gate of Kiev were so inverted that the pounding left hand often obliterated the right's decoration altogether.
Yet it was all totally compelling. Every bar was alive and freshly thought out; Pletnev never plays safe, always looks to experiment. One sensed that he had never presented Pictures exactly like that before and would never do so again, that the successful ideas would be kept, the problematic ones discarded. And alongside the contentious moments other sections were brilliantly projected - it was hard to imagine the Marketplace at Limoges purled off more evenly, or the snarling energy Baba Yaga's Hut more fiercely concentrated.
A work written for piano but now more familiar in orchestral transcriptions was followed by a famous orchestral score transcribed for piano by Pletnev himself. His suite from Tchaikovsky's ballet the Sleeping Beauty is half an hour long, yet with some artful editing manages to convey the essence of the score.
