The first bars played at the Tonhalle in Zurich impressed me — it was an incredible sound, it seemed as if the pianist was playing several instruments rather than a single piano. But after a few minutes the sound changed and already became uninteresting, the ears passively continued to listen without much enthusiasm. And then absolute chaos began. There was an impression that for the pianist this concert was one of many concerts in his tour, which had to be played as quickly as possible and leave the stage. Therefore, he walked quickly onto the stage, bowed hastily, without waiting for the applause to subside, he began to play, and then, without even lifting his hands from the piano, he bowed and hurried backstage. And so after each performed piece. As an encore he performed two pieces, one of which was “Sweet Dream” by Tchaikovsky, which was played automatically without any emotional involvement.
After the concert, a couple of days later, I came across this same piece in a playlist that was automatically playing on my device, and it was an absolutely identical performance. Of course, it was a performance by D. Trifonov, which was absolutely no different from the performance at the concert. Such consistency of playing may contribute to the automatic fulfillment of his tasks on stage, but is this musical and artistic emotional expression? Here one must ask the question: why does the audience go to live music concerts? Precisely to hear a unique, unrepeatable performance that will not be similar to what you can hear from speakers by turning on a recording at home…