Kenny Broberg: Sonatas by Medtner, Rachmaninov, Scriabin
Steinway & Sons

Kenny Broberg scales some considerable mountains on this stellar contribution to the Steinway & Sons label. The 2021 American Pianists Awards winner tackles sonatas by Sergei Rachmaninov, Nikolai Medtner, and Alexander Scriabin, the latter's Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 sometimes described as one of the hardest pieces ever written for piano. That Broberg was drawn to include it on the album for that reason (among others) says much about the pianist's intrepid nature. He began piano lessons on his family's upright when he was six years old and after playing through his high school years studied at the University of Houston's Moores School of Music and Park University in Parkville, Missouri. Last fall, Broberg joined the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid as Deputy Professor of the Fundación Banco Santander Piano Chair. Six years ago, he was awarded the silver medal at the 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and two years later a bronze medal at the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition. Other awards crowd his mantlepiece, making him one of the most highly regarded pianists of his generation.

His formidable technique is put to the test by the at times tumultuous and turbulent material on the album. It's not overstating it to say that its pieces aren't for the faint of heart and include passages that pose a challenge to even the most accomplished pianist. That the seventy-minute album was recorded in but a single day, in November 2021 at Sono Luminus Studios in Boyce, Virginia, testifies to Broberg's stamina and ability.

A work Rachmaninov began writing in Rome and completed at his Ivanovka country estate, the set-opening Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 36 (1913) is in three parts, the first aptly designated “Allegro agitato.” The restless movement establishes its towering presence quickly, though balances its lofty declamations with shimmering runs, lyrical expressions, and serene passages. Regardless of the character of the music in play, Broberg's assured execution and acute sensitivity dazzle. Marked “Non allegro-Lento,” the enrapturing central movement offers an enticing six-minute shelter from the storm, after which the closing “Allegro molto” fluidly oscillates between gentle and tempestuous episodes.

A single-movement piece the composer wrote in three or four days in 1907, Scriabin's Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 begins with a fragile introduction before blossoming into an ecstatic expression. Text accompanying the sonata reads, “I call you to life, mysterious forces!,” words that suggest creative energy rising from the unconscious depths to the surface, much as the material did for Scriabin more than a century ago. Occasionally pensive and contemplative, the work palpably conveys that sense of emergence in the numerous declamatory moments that erupt during the twelve-minute performance.

Whereas Scriabin's is, as mentioned, thought to be as one of the most difficult pieces for pianists, Medtner's Sonata in E minor, Op. 25 No. 2 “Night Wind” is considered by some the greatest piano sonata of the twentieth century. That might be debatable; what's not is how effectively his piece complements Rachmaninov's. While Medtner's is in two movements and his counterpart's in three, the thirty-three-minute running time of “Night Wind” dwarfs the twenty of Rachmaninov's. At eighteen minutes, the “Introduzione: Andante-Allegro” naturally ranges widely, alternating as it does between wildness and stability. Moments of grandeur and agitation intersect with expressions of longing and desire in Broberg's rendering, which transitions into the equally Dionysian and panoramic “Allegro molto sfrenatamente” without pause.

February 2023