{"id":4074,"date":"2019-03-14T16:24:49","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T09:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/?p=4074"},"modified":"2019-03-15T10:26:02","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T03:26:02","slug":"a-remarkable-feat-of-identification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/?p=4074","title":{"rendered":"A Remarkable Feat of Identification"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Remarkable Feat of Identification<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Chetana Nagavajara<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANDREY GUGNIN is a regular visitor to our Thai musical circles,\nbut his main audience seems to have concentrated in a small community of music\nlovers at Eelswamp (Nong Plalai) near Pattaya, operated by that indefatigable\ndevotee and impressario Gregory Barton. His past appearances in Bangkok, both\nin solo as well as duo performances, were not so well attended. I remember his\nstunning interpretation of Franz Liszt\u2019s ,,Etudes transcendentales\u201d at the Siam\nSociety, attended by a sparse audience of mainly non-pianists!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last night\u2019s recital at the Goethe-Institut marked a new departure.\nNoted Thai piano teachers were there with their pupils (who might have been\ndrafted to hear the master!), and Pro Musica, the organizer, must have been\nsurprised by a full house. Those present had every right to congratulate\nthemselves for being there. It was the right strategy to have a varied programme,\nwhich was aptly called \u201cBach to the Future\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impression I gained from this unique exposure to very\ndemanding piano music was that the range of emotions was immense and that music\nas an art form could unravel the secrets of human life in all its multifaceted\ncomplexity. Consequently, the range of styles peculiar to the individual\ncomposers and compositions was also equally challenging. Gugnin unquestionably\nrose to the occasion.  There is no need\nto talk about his technique: I don\u2019t mean to say that we should take it for\ngranted; on the contrary we should pay respect to the \u201cRussian School\u201d for\nhaving given him a darn good musical education. It was his interpretative power\nthat came to the fore \u2013 in a programme ranging from Bach transcriptions by\nBusoni and Rachmaninoff via Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin, to Prokofiev.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do not propose to address all the compositions that Gugnin\nperformed. Suffice it to say that he did justice to them all. It was his Chopin\nthat I found particularly engaging: it was so differentiated, and so   intimate, so humane, not a vehicle for\npianistic prowess, but a meeting of minds and personalities between the\ncomposer and his interpreter, with the latter  i d e n t i f y i n g  himself completely with the former. This was\nmusic-making at its most sublime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Gugnin first came to Thailand, he had just won the Gina\nBachauer Competition.  (and that\nparticularly caught my attention, because I had the good fortune of hearing the\ndistinguished Greek pianist live in Manchester when I was in my late teens.) He\nhas since won the Sydney International Competition (parts of which I followed\nlive on my computer with much excitement.) But I don\u2019t think those credentials\nmatter to us as much as his attachment to Thailand and to Thai audiences (who\nare now just about to wake up to his great artistry.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can take it from this old man: what we heard at the\nGoethe-Institut in the evening of 13 March 2019 was of comparable (if not\nsuperior!) calibre to what people usually hear at the Wigmore Hall in London or\nthe Kammermusiksaal of the Berlin Philharmonie. Aren\u2019t we lucky?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Remarkable Feat of Identification Chetana Nagavajara ANDREY GUGNIN is a regular visitor to our Thai musical circles, but his main audience seems to have concentrated in a small community of music lovers at Eelswamp (Nong Plalai) near Pattaya, opera […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7026,"featured_media":4071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[61],"class_list":["post-4074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-153","tag-chetana-nagavajara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4074"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4078,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074\/revisions\/4078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}