Arcadi Volodos - Piano Transcriptions (1997)

This disc was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra)."
Long live the Golden Age! A look at the program and all the hyphenation, Schubert-Liszt, Bach-Feinberg, etc., tells you you're in a bygone era, the Golden Age of pianism when titans straddled the bench and ruled the world from their keyboards. So you put on this CD and the first thing you hear is unbelievable, Horowitz's 'Carmen' paraphrase played as brilliantly as, but obviously not by, Horowitz--the tone is much too suave and rounded. It is Arcadi Volodos, of Madrid by way of St. Petersburg and yes, he has the stuff to keep you enthralled for the sixty-one minutes it takes to play this disk.
There is something very right about Volodos' playing. The romantic attitude seems genuine, he has the sensitivity to offset the brilliance and all the jaw-dropping virtuosity is achieved with a sense of fun that communicates readily to the listener. The recital carefully balances the sublime, such as the Prokofiev 'Cinderella' pieces or the Bach-Feinberg "Largo" with the delirious, such as the Rimsky-Cziffra "Flight of the Bumblebee" or the utterly zany Mozart-Volodos "Turkish March." This is a knockout debut.