Classical: Power and imagination

ARCADI VOLODOS

QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL SOUTH BANK CENTRE

LONDON

THE RUSSIAN-BORN pianist Arcadi Volodos is a man of few words, as more than one interview has made plain. Perhaps this laconic charmer failed to communicate clearly with the organisers of the South Bank piano series about his intended changes of programme on Sunday, for after a misleading announcement we were left - literally - in the dark.

Volodos is, however, a pianist of many notes and prodigious feats of virtuosity, which by the time of his fourth encore began to seem too much of a good thing, as he hoovered up and down the keyboard gobbling up more complications than the brain could untangle.

Yet there is more to him than a note-spinning machine. He has, for a start, a wonderful sound - sumptuously cushioned, and melting through an infinite range of dynamic levels. Then there are no hard edges or awkward corners in the way he phrases, except where incisive attacks are called for. He has authority.

A short, strange piece by Scriabin introduced at the very beginning a world of extravagant fantasy, before Volodos slipped straight into the effulgent, jangling Tenth Sonata - kept relatively muted here, even at its delirious climax, and in the best possible sense - as liberated from the page as it is possible to imagine.

Volodos looks like a bouncer - not someone you'd mess with - but his massive weight is held in reserve as he toys with technical challenges with an imperturbable confidence. He began to reveal his full prowess in a group of preludes and Etudes-tableaux by Rachmaninov, first uncovering his magnificent tone at its fullest in the C sharp minor Etude from the first set, revelling in the effortless velocity of his octaves and double notes in the D major Etude from the second.

Yet who would have thought he had such feeling for Schumann's neglected collection of Bunte Blatter? Some of these gems are brilliant, but many are simple, even homely, and Volodos handled every one as if it were priceless. His quality of impulsive ardour and delicious fluency, the joy communicated in his dexterity, reminded me of the way Martha Argerich treats Schumann - as a composer whose endless invention grew not only from deep warmth, but also from fathomless darkness.

Finally, what prompted all those encores was a mind-numbing athletic display in the Horowitz version of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 15. There's no point in playing it unless like this - with a super-charged pugilism that seemed to cost this keyboard heavyweight little effort. He vouchsafed hardly the ghost of a smile the whole evening.