Daniel Kogan, a prize-winner of the Long-Thibaud International Competition in Paris, has recorded an unusual program combining chamber works by Franz Schubert, Karol Szymanowski and Arnold Schoenberg.
The grandson of Leonid Kogan and Elizaveta Gilels, a graduate of the Central Music School and the Moscow Conservatory, Daniel Kogan attracted attention after the 2006 International Karol Lipiński Violin Competition in Poland and the 2017 Yampolsky International Competition in Moscow. Critics note the depth and seriousness of his performance, as well as the young musician’s romantic spirituality, delicate taste and sense of style that are inherent in the Russian violin tradition.
In recent years, Daniel Kogan has been performing together with Oleg Khudyakov, a winner of the best accompanist diploma at the 15th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and a pianist with a pronounced personality, a master of fine phrasing and filigree sound.
Daniel Kogan’s permanent ensemble partners, violinist Fyodor Beznosikov, violists Andrei Usov and Pavel Romanenko, cellists Sergei Antonov and Mikhail Kalashnikov, also took part in the recording.
The suite Mythes by the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski, which opens the program, is perhaps the major ‘intrigue’ of the album, not only because of its status as a musical rarity. The violinist and pianist immerse us in the atmosphere of antiquity reflected in the misty mirror of modernity, where the contours of Polish romanticism, the harmonious spice of French impressionism and the Scriabin-esque sense of levitation are intricately intertwined. The opposite pole is the original version of the sextet Transfigured Night, which is better known in its orchestral version. It is one of the most famous works of Arnold Schoenberg, the then rising leader of the Second Viennese School. Here, the post-Wagnerian nerve of naked feelings is ready to break into the black abyss of expressionism. And then we have Schubert’s variations on the theme of his own song Withered Flowers from the cycle The Fair Maid of the Mill. It sounds like a lyrical intermezzo, an islet of the cozy and naive Biedermeier.
The article The Perils of Love for this CD was written by musicologist Roman Nasonov.
