Making a recording debut during a pandemic doesn’t look like a very inspired idea. You risk getting lost in the general rush of all kinds of panic, or at best noticed in passing and promptly dismissed as irrelevant. Art does not draw trumps in times of crisis. It is either cast aside as a frivolous occupation, or it is associated with a kind of indulgence, a luxurious fad, even if a sophisticated one. We have more important things to do and the artists are invited to find other jobs if they want to be taken seriously. No, this idea is not a sarcastic suggestion of my own, nor does it come from the well of thought of a high dignitary in Bucharest, but it springs spontaneously from the brain of the British finance minister. In other words, the culture of a civilisation will not protect it from ridicule. You can be a central figure in Piatra Neamt but peripheral in London. That is if we sincerely wish to adopt an international approach.
Out of Piatra Neamt comes the pianist Daniel Ciobanu, who, determined to take himself very seriously, raised two fingers to the closure of concert halls and recorded his first album on the Accentus Music label. A bit outdated, is it not, to think today that you can have something important to say by playing Prokofiev, Enescu, Debussy and Liszt? Actually, for Ciobanu, this disc is a manifesto. It is not that the music had become irrelevant, but we had forgotten our cultural signposts, trapped in a survival scenario dictated to us from above.
The way the young Romanian pianist plays on this eponymous disc forces you to take him seriously. Original, energetic, lively, reflective, melancholic, suspended and unstoppable - these are just a few impressions. Listening to it reminds you that refinement, depth, emotional artistic interpretation and aesthetic pleasure are not disposable whims. These are values that resist both the relativistic assault of postmodernism and the wasteland laid bare by the virus.
In Sonata no 7 by Prokofiev, for example, the pianist reveals not only the composer’s narrative, releasing through music, forces capable of nurturing the hope of victory in the war against the Nazis. The precarious nature of the human condition, its insecurity, fear and fragility in the face of the threat of death, suddenly sounds very current. In the spirit of Prokofiev, Ciobanu avoids easy virtuosity and sentimentality. Like a skilled theatre director, he produces the desired effect by staging every means of expression available to him precisely when needed. And his technical arsenal is unlimited. In the outer movements of the Sonata, the Russian composer’s passion for rhythm fits Ciobanu like a glove and he wears it as an actor who identifies with the character being played. Ciobanu’s talent for jazz and improvisation can be felt throughout, but this is not easy listening light music. At the same time, he exhibits a sense of the tragic and the telluric, an instinct for primordial forces which are unleashed without warning. That non-legato sound peculiar to Prokofiev, who played whole passages without pedal in a manner quite distinct from the elegance of the Mozartian pearls, is, through poignancy and restlessness, precision and rhythmic determination, achieved completely by Ciobanu, who succeeds, still in his twenties, to place an extraordinary piano technique at the service of the music. In the middle, slow movement, the warmth required by the composer never falters in melodrama in this interpretation by the Neamt pianist. On the contrary, there is a dignified detachment, the restrained melancholy of an introverted lyricism and a fresh ability to conjure contrasts. The famous finale of the sonata, a real tour de force for any pianist, has from Ciobanu unexpected cinematic connotations. Commonly performed by others hurriedly and expansively from the very beginning as a triumphant march by the Red Army towards a final victory, under Ciobanu’s fingers we start with the insinuation of further tension and the suggestion of a distant but moving tumult, an oppressive presence, the dark skies of which are torn now and then by the blinding light from explosions arising out of the armed conflict. The cinematic dimension immediately captures the listener’s attention and evokes Prokofiev’s talent as a composer of soundtracks for Eisenstein’s historical and war films. But what convinces me most that Daniel Ciobanu has reached the level of a great artist is the deep knowledge of musical timing. His interpretation creates space: the pauses, the chosen tempi, the agogic accents and his use of rubato all control the timing of sound in such a way that you get to breathe with him as you listen to him.
Immediately after the apotheosis of the Russian Sonata, Ciobanu plunges into a disturbing universe separating him by a spiritual distance from the story just ended. We find ourselves in Sinaia, in 1916, on the eve of Romania’s entry into the First World War. At Peles Castle, George Enescu hears the bells of the nearby monastery and completes a piece begun a few years before, the Carillon nocturne. There are at least two notable recordings already, by Cristian Petrescu and Raluca Știrbăț, both performers of the marathon for the fingers which is the entire works of Enescu for the piano. What arrives completely new with Daniel Ciobanu is the configuration of time. An escape from the material world expands this watercolour of night bells until the idea of musical tempo is transformed. There are no more constraints, only vibrations and an enormous space in which can be glimpsed the Carpathians, the outline of fir trees framing an endless ancestral litany. At one point, following the dissolution of the hours, the clock is heard ringing twelve times, announcing midnight in equal monotonous echoing impulses. Daniel Ciobanu creates a moment of magic: eternity and temporality meet through the patience and mastery of each beat, gradually restoring the cyclical course of the natural world.
This temporarily suspended state continues into the selection of Debussy’s Preludes which follows. Colours, hypostases and sound spectra are illuminated with delicacy and sensual, hazy, ambiguous touches. The art of seduction takes time and Ciobanu knows how to provide it.
The disc must be listened to in full, in the predetermined order as programmed, so as to reveal the dramatic intention of the Romanian pianist. Enescu and Debussy represent the shadows and some space of relief between the dramatic colossi: Prokofiev and Liszt.
Fantasia quasi una sonata “ after a reading from Dante” ends the programme by returning to the existential theme of confrontation with death but in the romantic key of personal destiny in which the composer imagines himself as the principal hero, starting from the Dantesque fresco of Hell and Purgatory. Many pianists attack this most representative work from the collection, Années de Pèlerinage, as the greatest opportunity to demonstrate their technical skills. To be fair, Liszt is very generous with his offerings of technical bravura and his critics always see him as a showman. His obsession, however, was not to display a skill with octaves and other impossible passages but, in common with all the great romantics, he aspired to the poetic: how to capture the ineffable in sound? Daniel Ciobanu gives an admirable response, surprisingly mature and profound. Beyond the enthusiastic and technically impeccable impetuosity of the most difficult sections, a conductor’s intelligence emerges, which manoeuvres each section of his orchestra towards goals more important than their individual satisfaction. The initiation path evoked for the hero is fashioned gradually, without prematurely exhausting resources, but also without missing the main poetic moments. Of these, there is a sequence which can be considered brilliant and which truly touched me as only an exceptional book, a spiritual experience or an essential encounter can. The so-called theme of Beatrice or the love motif emerges between extreme states of mind, dominated by paroxysms of struggle, despair and agitation that would later destroy from the inside the edifice of credibility of the romantic spirit. Under the fingers of Daniel Ciobanu, this feeling is absolved of any sense of mannerism and simply becomes again sincere. Following the melodic line, the intimacy and blinding purity of the confessional envelops the listener to a wonderful moment beyond critical thought. Just at that moment, the pianist turns wizard and imperceptibly introduces a theme hidden in the inner voice, the most precious of all - the voice of the heart. Do you know of anything more serious than this? This is the voice of true art, without which everything would tend to be silent and meaningless. It is said that if you wrote only one good poem, you would be a poet forever. Such a musical moment assures Daniel Ciobanu a unique place among the new generation of pianists, a place confirmed by this debut.