Magier – dieses Wort taucht oft auf im Zusammenhang mit Grigory Sokolov. Der russische Pianist gilt als einer der größten unserer Zeit. Und einer der scheuesten und eigenwilligsten: Ebenso berühmt wie sein fabelhaftes Spiel ist seine Abneigung gegen Interviews. Und seine rigorose Ablehnung des Studios: Sokolov spielt nur live, nur solo. Am Donnerstagabend war er mit Chopin und Rachmaninow zu Gast bei den Salzburger Festspielen. Und hat wieder gezaubert.
When you stop to look at the world with even the slightest detail, you think that there is not much room for optimism: a pandemic ravaging left and right, absolute moral relativism, a political class that is governed by the latest trend in networks and — oh, last refuge—an artistic world increasingly dominated by marketing and what they call 'the taste of the public' (?). Faced with such a scenario (and please forgive my pessimism: when asked if I see the bottle half empty or half full, I always answer that I don't see any bottle), one of the possible consolations consists in thinking about those things that human beings have fact and that they remain against all odds. And while I was listening to Sokolov at the Kursaal, the image of the columns of the Parthenon came to mind, which continue to support everything with that solidity and elegance. Even the field of so-called classical music is succumbing to the tyranny of the image, of production and post-production, of stuccoing and tiling, distracting us from the essential, because the essential no longer matters, or it has been decided to place it in less sublime and more easy to handle, sell and buy. And of course, a man like Sokolov arrives and we have no choice but to call things by his name and stop confusing ourselves, because he only offers one thing: MUSIC.
