Andrejs Osokins: Expressive Shaping of Time

A ndrejs Osokins delivered on Friday a sincere and heartfelt account of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E-flat minor BWV 853 at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The Prelude was played at about mm=40, lentissimo, with a wide expressive palette… more loss-evoking and ‘bereft’ than any performance I’ve previously heard.

H is interpretation is as smooth as can be. The tempi he chooses are somewhat exaggerated, to great expressive effect. Cadences are executed with confidence and strength.

S uch speed! Such brilliant playing of Liszt’s Widmung S.566, Liebestraum No. 2 in E major, and Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat major! Such imaginative exploring of all possibilities in Debussy’s Prelude No. 6 ‘Des pas sur la neige’ and ‘L'Isle joyeuse’! He has energy and resources to spare! Impressive!

T he expressive timing Osokins applies to his interpretations is superb—the encounter of a sensitive musician with the structure of these pieces. We hear his playing as the ‘effect’ of each composer and the score (the ‘cause’).

• Bach – Prelude & Fugue No. 8 in E-flat minor BWV 853
  
• Liszt – Widmung S.566
  
• Liszt – Transcription of Schubert’s ‘Shakespeare Serenade’
  
• Liszt – Liebestraum No. 2 in E major
  
• Liszt – Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat major
  
• Liszt – Transcription of Wagner’s Liebestod S.447
  
• Debussy – Prelude No. 6 ‘Des pas sur la neige’
  
• Debussy – L’Isle joyeuse

T here is an ‘average’ tempo to each piece as he plays it, of course, but the ratio between the slowest and the fastest tempi within each is really large—I estimate it to be between 1.6 and 2.0. It is a sort of dramatic ‘modal’ effect—resembling French storytelling? Idiomatic Baltic narrative style, like how his parents or grandparents in Latvia used to speak when he was a kid? A style that aims more for clarity and sound color than for ‘expressivity of timing’ per se?

I n any case, the result is highly personal—not just technically excellent but really convincing, persuasive. Bravo!

O sokins graduated from the Latvian Academy of music in 2007 and since 2008 has been studying in the post-graduate program at the Royal Academy of music, London with Professor Hamish Milne. Osokins was born in 1984. He received the Lillian Davies Prize, won First Prize in the Brant International Piano Competition, Birmingham in 2005, and was joint Second Prize winner in Porto International Piano Competition, Portugal. In 2008, Osokins won First Prize and the Audience Prize in the 5th International J. Vitols Piano Competition, Riga. The same year he was also winner of the Beethoven Intercollegiate Piano Competition in London, as well as Semi-finalist in the Montreal International Music Competition and the Liszt-Bartók International Piano Competition, Budapest. In 2010 he won the Laureate of Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd International Piano Competition, Brussels. He has performed at Wigmore Hall, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Drapers Hall, Rachmaninov Hall in Moscow, and as a soloist with orchestras including the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonietta Riga, and the Latvian National Opera Orchestra.

• Andrejs Osokins page at Queen Elisabeth Competition website
  
• Andrejs Osokins page at Latvian National Symphony Orchestra website
  
• Andrejs Osokins page at London International Piano Competition website
  
• Bowen J. Tempo, duration, and flexibility. J Musicol Res 1996;16:1-47.
  
• Cook N. Music, Imagination, and Culture. Oxford Univ, 1992.
  
• Repp B. The aesthetic quality of a quantitatively average music performance. Music Perception 1997;14:419-44.
  
• Todd N. A model of expressive timing in tonal music. Music Perception 1985;3:33-58.