Not a pianist for »cosy sleepyheads«: What Heinrich Heine once wrote about Franz Liszt can be applied to the contemporary pianist Alexandre Kantorow. The French musician is often seen in the same line as Liszt - if not as his successor. Anyone who has ever experienced one of his concerts knows about the breathtaking virtuosity and sophistication with which Kantorow effortlessly conquers the entire keyboard. At 22, he catapulted himself straight into the upper echelons of the piano world by winning first prize at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition.

With his expressive style, he captures the multifaceted nature of the romantic repertoire particularly well, delighting the Ludwigsburg audience for the third time in a row. Johannes Brahms' Rhapsody No. 1 and the piano arrangement of Bach's famous Violin Chaconne form the beginning and end of the evening and open up completely different expressive worlds of the piano, expanded by the music of Franz Liszt, Béla Bartók and Sergei Rachmaninov. Kantorov's playing tells of wild snowstorms, elegiac raptures and the three main characters from Goethe's »Faust« tragedy. It is this versatility that the pianist particularly likes: at the piano, he is »like a chameleon« and can make »every kind of music and express every conceivable emotion«. Perhaps Alexandre Kantorow's versatility also appeals to those sleepyheads that Heinrich Heine excluded back then.

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Production image © Sasha Gusov