At Soka, Trifonov Argues His Case for Neglected Repertoire

REVIEW: The celebrated virtuoso pianist had trouble putting across the program of German and Russian composers.

Daniil Trifonov takes a bow during a concert at Soka Performing Arts Center on Sept. 26, 2025. Photo courtesy of Soka University/Pablo Cabrera

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Pianist Daniil Trifonov, among the most gifted and celebrated classical musicians working today, brought what initially looked like a welcome recital program Friday evening to Soka Performing Arts Center, opening the venue’s 15th season. It was full of music by important Russian and German composers of the 19th and 20th centuries that isn’t performed very often. This listener scanned his memory wondering if he had ever heard any of the pieces played live, and decided he hadn’t. 

Past experiences hearing Trifonov, 34, perform suggested that he might play the phone book (if he could find one) and make it interesting. Such is his artistry and virtuosity. But, in the event, Friday’s program — of music by Sergei Taneyev, Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky and Robert Schumann — turned out to be poorly chosen, at least from a listener’s standpoint. 

What should a program be? It can be many things, but it should cohere in some way. The pieces chosen should complement each other, and add together to form some sort of logical whole, to congeal in a way to create a satisfying evening’s experience. We were grateful enough to hear the individual pieces on Friday, but taken together they rather sapped each other’s charms and strengths than highlighted them. 

The first half of the program consisted of Russian composers in search of a tune, or, possibly, trying to avoid one. It consisted of 23 separate movements and it was announced that Trifonov would play them without pause (and he did). It opened with Taneyev’s Prelude and Fugue in G-sharp minor from 1910, which consisted of a short Scriabinesque prelude (beautifully voiced by Trifonov) and a furious, frenetic, slightly longer fugue (which Trifonov tore into impressively and headlong).

This was immediately followed by Prokofiev’s “Visions fugitives” (1915-17), a collection of fleeting musical images, most lasting but a minute or less. What, exactly, those visions are is never disclosed, each piece being merely labeled with a tempo or expressive marking. What’s more, the selections (when played together) aren’t really meant to form a complete piece. Prokofiev himself apparently rarely if ever performed all of these “Visions” at one sitting. They have no cumulative power.

Daniil Trifonov plays at Soka Performing Arts Center on Sept. 26, 2025. Photo courtesy of Soka University/Pablo Cabrera

It’s a highly chromatic set, each piece taking a motif or two out for a short stroll, sometimes in Prokofiev’s marcato mode, a little more often in his lyrical guise, sometimes with a cute ending thrown on. They sound improvised. They rarely amount to much. Played complete and without pauses, the piece was tiresome.

Myaskovsky’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor (1912) came next, a gnarly, dour, dissonant one-movement work, complete with use of the plainchant “Dies Irae,” which (oh boy) he builds a fugue on. Trifonov gave it a committed and thunderous account, all you could ask.

Soka has decided to go with online only program notes (to save trees, an usher said). So, not only were Eric Bromberger’s fine program notes relegated to the digital desert, but a listener who would have liked to follow the many movement titles on this first half, to get a little sense of order, was necessarily reduced to looking at his phone (which I didn’t).

The second half of the program consisted of one work, Robert Schumann’s Piano Sonata No. 1 (like the Myaskovsky, also in F-sharp minor), written in the composer’s early 20s. It’s no masterpiece. Schumann is, of course, a supreme master of piano music, but his most characteristic and important pieces for the keyboard are non-sonatas. Here in the sonata, among many fine things, you sense the young composer struggling with the form. The work is overly repetitive and diffuse and never quite reaches its footing. It’s sacrilegious to say, but it would probably benefit from some cuts.

Trifonov lavished his many gifts on it, making a case: Lovely phrases, bejeweled touch, magnificent, ringing fortes, delicate rubato. Occasionally, it was too much. The finale meandered and lost its way where a more straightforward reading might not have.

Trifonov looked exhausted after a hard night’s work, even stumbling a bit in his bows, but he gave two encores. They were the simplest things, almost a wink to an audience who had sat through an evening of tough music. Both were by Tchaikovsky: a piano arrangement of “The Silver Fairy” from “The Sleeping Beauty” (a mere ditty) and “Sweet Dreams” from “The Children’s Album” (a veritable nursery song). They came as relief.

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Classical music coverage at Culture OC is supported in part by a grant from the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism. Culture OC makes all editorial decisions.