Pletnev Live at Carnegie Hall

The 44-year-old Russian pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev made a belated Carnegie Hall debut as a pianist in November 2000. Listening to that recital on this CD confirms the wisdom of the pianist's decision to resign as music director of the Russian National Orchestra. In the Bach-Busoni "Chaconne," Pletnev's crescendos wash over the listener like tidal waves; the mighty edifice of the music seems to rise, mysteriously and inexorably, on its own. The angry surges in the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata, opus 111, are perhaps overdrawn. But the concluding movement's variations glide by as if in a dream, suggesting the transformation of the earlier movement's passionate anger into a vision of Paradise beyond the power of words to describe. In Chopin's Four Scherzos, Pletnev emphasizes too many details and inhibits the music's lyrical sweep. But the charm and dazzling pyrotechnics of his encores help make this the first great piano recording of the millennium. After Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Scarlatti, and Moszkowski, Pletnev's fifth and final encore was Balakirev's transcendentally difficult Islamey. The superhuman virtuosity, sonorous splendor, and Technicolor exoticism of this performance will knock your socks off--and the rest of your clothes as well! --Stephen Wigler