Hitting the right keys

A young Israeli pianist is making waves with the way he interprets pieces written by famous composers

As young Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg begins to talk about his unique musical interpretations, his eyes light up noticeably, radiating excitement and enthusiasm.

For him, music evokes imagery in the same way poetry does. Composers intricately weave the notes, and within their musical phrases they deftly and wittily conceal their wild fantasies and subtle sensitivities, Giltburg says.

Though he has toured China almost every year since 2007, Giltburg is faced with a particularly intense schedule on this year's musical circuit. Just hours after his arrival in Beijing, for example, he presented a three-hour piano recital at an art salon.

But Giltburg says he never tires:

"Performing for me is a pleasure. If anything, I get energy from the audience, from the interaction and from the music itself."

Among the pieces Giltburg performed at the recital was Etu des-Tableaux, Op. 39, a homage to Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of his favorite composers.

He has recorded a number of Rachmaninoff's representative piano works, including in his most recent recording, which came out earlier this year - Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Variations on a Theme of Corelli.

While his dexterity is widely recognized, as his previous recording of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto was awarded Best Soloist Recording (20th/21st century) at the Opus Klassik Awards, what is more interesting is how he channels the composers through his performances.

"While it is obvious that everything is deeply felt, what we hear seems to be a portrayal of the composer's musical imagery rather than the soloist's take on it," music critic Patrick Rucker said of Giltburg's previous Rachmaninoff recording.

This is, in fact, how Giltburg approaches each piano piece he plays.

His approach searches for the composer's vision deep within the notes, rather than actively creating certain imagery based on previous experience.

"It's really important not to come up with an idea before you actually play the piece. It means you already closed off all the other possibilities for looking at the music," Giltburg says. "It's much better when, after having played a piece for maybe three, four months, you suddenly realize that something begins to grow from the music. And it's always a lot stronger and more organic because it's really connected."

With the Etudes-Tableaux, literally meaning "study-pictures", Giltburg vividly illustrates his concept, exemplified evidently by Etude-tableau Op. 39, No. 6, called Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, which offers a darker yet more thrilling account of the famous fairy tale.

"It's now not one wolf but three, because there are three voices playing in the same line, one after another, louder as the wolves chase her. And it ends with the growl of the wolf. So in this version, it's the wolves who survive in the end," Giltburg says.

"But then you look at these three wolves in the middle, and you see that the lines that are playing very low in the keyboard are the same lines as the previous Red Riding Hood motif. So it's as if it's not the wolves that are chasing her, but some kind of copy of her, like a doppelganger. So what does it mean that the wolves are growling in the end?"

In looking for interpretations from within, Giltburg exhibits a level of reverence for the music, an influence that comes predominantly from Israeli classical pianist Arie Vardi, with whom he has studied for 15 years.

Giltburg, who was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1984, first started learning piano from his mother, a piano teacher, at the age of 4.

But the family soon moved to Tel Aviv, where Giltburg started learning piano systematically from Vardi.

"He taught me almost everything I know today. In terms of the approach to the musical text, of seeing the notes, the score, as the highest truth and the highest authority," Giltburg says.

Later, after winning a range of awards, including second prize at the Anton Rubinstein Competition in 2011 and first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2013, Giltburg was approached by Klaus Heymann, founder and chairman of the Hong Kong-based Naxos Music Group, in 2015. That marked the start of a long-term collaboration with Naxos.

Giltburg says his current plan centers on recording more pieces from his core repertoire.

"Recordings advance you tremendously, with the kind of concentration and focus on preparation you need for the recording sessions. So, when you come out of the studio you always know the piece much better than you did before."

Apart from performing and recording classical music, Giltburg, as a person with various interests, including reading, writing, cooking and photography, also enjoys writing about classical music.

The stories and listening guides he writes on his blog, Classical Music for All, have been published by various media, including the Guardian, Gramophone magazine and BBC Music Magazine.

"My friends who are not musicians once told me that there's so much going on when you play, especially with an orchestra. It's like chaos. But for me, it's the exact opposite of chaos," Giltburg says. "And I thought, maybe that's what I need to do. I need to tell people what's going on, so then they can follow."

Giltburg says he plans to continue writing about his interpretations of piano pieces and his performances.

"There is such power in classical music. The ability to touch your soul in such a direct and timeless way," he says. "Some of the pieces we're playing today were written more than 300 years ago, and they are still relevant. They still say something to people in the 21st century."

chengyuezhu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 12/21/2018 page23)