Every year, if not every semester of this era, we enjoy an emerging supravirtuoso, and we have to admit that the best on Earth are more numerous, that the nec plus ultra is more considerable than ever. A few weeks ago, for example, a Montreal teenager electrified the small Salle Claude-Léveillée, as Sophia Shuya Liu’s hallucinatory abilities were revealed to her precocious public, including international agents who had heard about her exceptional technique and playing.
On Sunday afternoon, Pro Musica brought us Jaeden Izik-Dzurko, a young man with a string of major awards, including the Leeds, Maria Canals and Montreal International Music Competitions (MIMC), who verges on perfection.
We got the full measure of this prodigious 26-year-old Canadian musician, based in Germany.
As for JS Bach, Izik-Dzurko’s performance of the Partita no.4 in D major BWV 828 is simply ideal. Izik-Dzurko’s respect for the score is impeccable, with no unnecessary affectation or exaggeration. Exemplary precision and clarity, period. Here, the performer is concerned to respect the composer’s exact intentions, without becoming technically austere or clinically obsessive – which is often the case with excellent… technicians. This fine line between virtuosity and musicality will be honored from the first to the last bar of this excellent concert.
From JSB, we move on to Rachmaninov’s Preludes op.23, imagined by the virtuoso pianist and composer at the turn of the 20th century (1901-1903), of which no. 5 in G minor has gone down in history. Again, the performer is dazzling in his refinement, tone and accuracy. The virtuosity stakes are exceptional here, and any concert pianist must master this repertoire, whereas Izik-Dzurko manages to transcend it without going overboard.
After the interval, Scriabin’s Fantaisie in B minor, also composed at the dawn of the previous century (1900), also generates this impression of perfection, of absolute understanding of the score and a rendering that is both sober and deeply musical, even in its most entangled moments.
For a musician who claims to be less naturally inclined to master Chopin, whose Sonata no.3 in B minor Op.58 he played, one can’t help noticing irritations, tensions and other excesses of zeal, even during the most vertiginous phase from the sonata to its conclusion. Here again, it’s pure music-loving bliss.
At the age of 26, Izik-Dzurco has reached this level of mastery and has a long road ahead of him. Of course, life should provide him with the rough edges to further refine his artistic personality and make him even more relevant. What’s more, more touching.
