Yevgeny Sudbin: ‘As soon as I sit down, start playing, start trying things, I find the right texture’

You don’t have to look far to find glowing opinions of Yevgeny Sudbin. Gramophone magazine called a Scriabin album by the Russia-born British pianist “a disc in a million”. The Guardian described Sudbin’s Scarlatti as “close to perfection”. Even back in 2006, when Sudbin was just 26, the New York Times suggested “it’s hard to imagine that he finds any music technically daunting”.

Sudbin, who is performing in three concerts at the New Ross Piano Festival this week, grew up in St Petersburg in a household where both parents were pianists. His influences were mostly Russian – Emil Gilels (especially a recording of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto), Evgeny Kissin (”in Russia he was always on TV playing concerts when he was still very young, 16 or so”), Vladimir Horowitz (from videos of his live concerts) and Mikhail Pletnev.

He is full of praise for his teachers, Lyubov Pevsner in St Petersburg, Galina Iwanzowa after the family fled to Berlin in 1990, and Christopher Elton in London. “I already had quite a good basis. And he sort of let me free.” But, he adds, “I also had a lot of encounters with wonderful teachers like Claude Frank, Stephen Kovacevich, Leon Fleisher, Murray Perahia. I used to go to Italy, to the piano academy [in Imola], where I would meet them in person and have lessons with them. It was very inspiring.”

What might a perfect recital be for Sudbin? He beams as he says, “Maybe a recital without encores. I can see why they can be useful sometimes, and that people like them. I feel it takes away something. It’s a little bit trivial, maybe. Also, maybe it’s got something to do with the kind of pieces people play. I think a recital should be from first piece to last piece, and it should make sense, musically. And then, I think, you don’t need anything afterwards.

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“Of course, it depends maybe what your programme is. If it’s all Alkan’s piano music…“ He trails off with another big grin. Alkan wrote some of the most technically challenging piano pieces of the 19th century, not excluding the great piano concertos or the works of Liszt, but his music has remained a fringe interest both for performers and for listeners.

In New Ross, he’s playing works by Scarlatti, Scriabin, Haydn, Liszt and Rachmaninov. Scarlatti, he says, “is someone I always had a very special relationship with. My first recording was Scarlatti sonatas. I always loved the music. I actually find it quite modern for what it is.” Scarlatti’s dates are 1685-1757.

Sudbin writes very colourful notes for his own albums. The one for the Scarlatti album opens, “Probably one of the most outrageously individual compositional outputs of the baroque era is to be found in the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti… To me, they seem like an assortment of diverse guests at a masquerade, where the conflict of a disguised character with the real individual behind the mask amplifies the almost schizophrenic duality which seems apparent in virtually all of Scarlatti’s sonatas.”

He relishes the range of colour that he can bring to bear on the mystical music of Scriabin through the modern Steinway. The Fifth Sonata in particular, he says, “is a crazy piece. I like it very much. It’s not really early Scriabin, it’s not late Scriabin, it’s in between. This kind of in-betweenness is quite interesting. It’s kind of when he transformed from being just a kind of romantic, salon composer to a more crazy and out-of-this-world type.”

Haydn he likes because “he had a lot of humour in his music. Although this particular Sonata in B minor is actually quite bad-tempered. I chose it specifically because it’s even more bad-tempered than some of Beethoven’s music.” He has recorded the sonata, and his note asks, “Is laughter the best medicine? I certainly hope so and would not hesitate to prescribe a healthy dose of Joseph Haydn… twice daily. Surely music by a composer who delights in silliness, outrageous wit and the breaking of all conventions can only be beneficial.”

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His enthusiasm for Liszt is more muted. He’s playing Harmonies du Soir, from the composer’s Transcendental Etudes. “I find wonderful sonorities there. You can experiment with touch, voicing, all of the things that are available to a pianist. I love this piece. It’s not as pretentious as some of his other works.” He laughs at himself as he says this. “I don’t usually play a lot of Liszt, actually. I don’t really like Liszt.” He laughs again. “But that particular work I do like.”

I’m always interested to transfer music from another instrument to piano, just to see if it can work

He demurs when I mention Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata, which he’s playing with Alexander Chaushian, saying “I don’t know if I would call it that.” He’s pointing to the fact that a lot of pieces we now call cello sonatas were called sonatas for piano and cello, in that order, by their composers. Brahms, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Beethoven were among them.

“That’s right,” he says, still smiling, “it’s a wonderful piece for cello accompaniment. It’s a wonderful piece for cello. It’s just that I always have to laugh how much less notes the cello has to play than the piano.”

He suggests it’s in the same spirit as the composer’s Third Piano Concerto. “A lot of texture, a lot of notes. You have to fit it under a cello, which is not always easy, because the cello can be drowned out by all these notes. If you find the texture and the right balance it can be wonderful. I think it’s a wonderful piece, actually. It’s perfect duo piece. All the movements have so much variety, as well.”

His latest album offers piano arrangements of works by Glinka and Tchaikovsky. “I love arranging orchestral music,” he says. “Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is a piece I always wanted to arrange, and the Glinka Russlan and Ludmilla Overture as well. Especially Tchaikovsky, I think his best music is his orchestral music, actually.”

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The passion for arrangements comes from the fact that he always been wondering how to make these pieces sound “acceptable on the piano. Because it’s just so wonderful and rich in the orchestral score. Since I’ve been playing the Scarlatti sonatas, I’ve been interested in transferring things to piano. Because the Scarlatti sonatas are also not written for piano. They’re written for harpsichord.

“I’m always interested to transfer music from another instrument to piano, just to see if it can work.” He says that sometimes he’s been surprised at how well it does, and he has not been disappointed so far. “But, then, I’ve chosen pieces that I think would fit from the beginning. I can already hear how they would sound on the piano.

“For me, the arrangement has less to do with making them flashy. It’s more to do with trying to find what the composer wants to say. The spirit of it. And then the notes kind of don’t matter. The textures find themselves. As soon as I sit down, start playing, start trying things, then I find the right texture.” The key he suggests, is “to understand a composer’s idea. So that nothing gets lost in translation.”

Yevgeny Sudbin is at New Ross Piano Festival from Friday, September 22nd, to Sunday, September 24th. The festival opens with a children’s concert on Wednesday, September 20th, and a jazz day on Thursday, September 21st