A rave review from Peninsula Review editor, Lyn Bronson, for a recent Vadym Kholodenko Carmel Music Society performance in which he featured the Rachmaninoff portion you’ll hear on his new Vadym Kholodenko Plays Medtner; Rachmaninoff recording:
“Opening the second half of the program was Rachmaninoff’s transcription of three movements of Bach’s Partita in E Major for solo violin. Although somewhat romanticized Bach, Kholodenko’s lovely clean, articulated playing brought out the best in this piece, as it also did in Wohin by Schubert and in the Lullaby, Op. 16, No. 1, by Tchaikovsky.
The most magical performances we heard in the second half of the program were the ‘Polka de W.R.,’ the transcriptions of ‘Liebesleid’ and ‘Liebesfreud’ by Fritz Kreisler, and most of all the magnificent performance of Rachmaninoff’s transcription of the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ In these works we were hearing transcendental pianistic performances that demonstrated technical mastery of the highest order, plus superb musicianship that gave these performances a sense of inevitability. The Mendelssohn Scherzo is horrendously difficult to bring off in public performance. So much technical accuracy and skill in playing rapid passages with a gossamer leggiero lightness makes it a scary work to perform. Koholodenko made it look easy, yet it was never glib. This was a performance you wanted to hear over and over again.” —Lyn Bronson, Peninsula Review
Read the full review on peninsulareviews.com!
Relive the above-mentioned performance today!
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