Today it is Yefim Bronfman (piano) and Shlomo Mintz (violin) playing Sergej Prokofiev. I came about this music because Yefim Bronfman is mentioned in Philip Roth’s book “The human stain” and described as follows: “Then Bronfman appears. Bronfman the brontosaur! Mr. Fortissimo! Enter Bronfman to play Prokofiev at such a pace and with such bravado as to knock my morbidity clear out of the ring. He is conspiciously massive through the upper torso, a force of nature camouflaged in a sweatshirt, somebody who has strolled into the Music Shed out of a circus where he is the strongman and who takes on the piano as a ridiculous challenge to the gargantuan strength he revels in. Yefim Bronfman looks less like the person who is going to play the piano than like the guy who should be moving it. I had never before seen anybody go at a piano like this sturdy little bastard of an unshaven Russian Jew. When he’s finished, I thought, they’ll have to throw the thing out. He crushes it. He doesn’t let the piano conceal a thing. Whatever’s in there is going to come out, and come out with its hands in the air. And when it does, everything there out in the open, the last of the last pulsation, he himself gets up an goes, leaving behind him our redemption. With a jaunty wave, he is suddenly gone, and he takes all his fire off with him like no less a force than Prometheus, our own lives now seem inextinguishable. Nobody is dying, nobody – not if Bronfman has anything to say about it!”
Apart from that little musical quotation, the book is an overall treat. Am hugly enjoying it and do get slower and slower in reading as I get closer to the last page, to not make it end too soon.
Yefim Bronfman + Shlomo Mintz, Sergej Prokofiev, Sonata op.94 Mvt 2-3
floatsome 