The Salzburg Festival has a few regular pianists, who give a recital every year. One of those pianists is Arcadi Volodos, born in the Soviet Union in 1972. (He has lived most of his life in the West. According to reports, he is a French citizen who resides in Spain.) Volodos played in Salzburg’s Great Festival Hall on Wednesday night. His program was all-Schubert.
By the way, the recital began at 9. In New York, the question is usually “7:30 or 8?” I can’t recall a 9 o’clock start in New York (in the classical realm, that is).
Volodos took the stage in his customary black Mao suit and sat down in his chair. He does not use a bench but rather a chair, against whose back he often leans. He appears a picture of relaxation.
He opened this Schubert evening with the Moments musicaux (of which there are six). He was simplicity itself. There was a child-like quality to his playing (not “childish”). He sang, with right hand and left hand alike. The music was intimate, as though not for public consumption. Volodos was playing for himself, and for Schubert, but in front of a large audience.
Everyone’s favorite Moment musical, probably, is the third one, in F minor. Volodos pounced on this lightly—somewhat impishly. And never have I heard this little dance so “ethnic.” Throughout the pieces, there were nuances that would have been hard to imagine, before Volodos showed them to us.
Regular readers of mine know that I have a pet peeve—well, many, but I am now thinking of this one: In a concert hall, shushers are usually far more annoying and intrusive than those they shush. In the midst of the Moments musicaux, there was a very loud, vicious shush. It was startling. Only after this shush did I notice that someone was coughing.
Good thing the shusher shushed, because the cougher had chosen to cough, you see, and the shusher had informed the cougher that this was wrong.
After this bout of sarcasm, I will move on . . .
Volodos himself moved on to two songs by Schubert in arrangements by Liszt. Thus did Volodos play two of his favorite composers at the same time. He launched into the first song right after the sixth Moment musical. This has been the fashion for some years now—moving from one work to another, with no pause. I look forward to the passing of this fashion. For one thing, it’s confusing. After the recital, a friend of mine, who is a lifelong concertgoer, told me, “I was not sure that the Moments musicaux had ended.”
In any event, Volodos played the songs with beautiful lyricism. He seemed to have Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, or Fritz Wunderlich, in his fingers.
The second half of the program was devoted to the late A-major sonata, D. 959. Volodos played it in his 2021 Salzburg recital. In my review, I quoted my review of his 2016 Salzburg recital:
After intermission, Volodos played one work, a late Schubert sonata, as is his wont. This one was the Sonata in A, D. 959. I found myself slightly resentful: How many times does a recital-goer have to hear this work? Can we give it a rest maybe?
Volodos does not give it much of a rest. He programs it again and again. I will quote a few more sentences from 2016:
The first movement was beautifully judged. I forgot Volodos—forgot interpretation—and listened only to Schubert. In fact, I want to say there was no interpretation. It was just Schubert.
This was not exactly true in 2025. I had never heard Volodos play Schubert so “creatively” or “imaginatively.” It was even, in spots, a little eccentric. But it was still Volodos playing Schubert—always a valuable experience.
At the outset, Volodos seemed just slightly tense, and he missed several notes, which is uncharacteristic. That was almost a relief: this great pianist is human after all.
Typically, he plays a “second concert” after the printed program is finished—a slew of encores. On Wednesday night, he played four, which is on the low side for him.
He began with some more Schubert-Liszt—an excerpt from the German Dances. He then played one of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies: No. 13 in A minor. (This was on the printed program of his recital last year.) In the Rhapsody, we were treated to the pianist’s virtuosity. Although he may choose not to play much virtuosic music anymore, Volodos is still in possession of a phenomenal technique.
We then had one of those sublime little Brahms pieces: the Intermezzo in E flat, Op. 117. Volodos closed the evening with a piece by his beloved Mompou—Federico Mompou, the Catalan composer who lived from 1893 to 1987. This was one of the Intimate Impressions, “Sad Bird.” (Alicia de Larrocha used to play “Secret,” another of the Impressions, as an encore—haunting, hypnotic, and indelible.)
I already look forward to Volodos’s 2026 recital here in Salzburg. And if he brings back Schubert’s D. 959—well, that is a fate a listener can bear.
