Splendour from fine musician.
Thursday, June 8, 2000.
Violonist Marat Bisengaliev, 38-year-old Kazakh resident in this country since 1991, gave the lunchtime recital at St David's Hall on Tuesday.
His accompanist was the pianist Benjamin Frith, a very fine musician in his own right, lumbered with the mixed blessing of being very much the second voice.
I can truly say that in more than four decades of attending live musical events I have never experienced anything so impressively stunning.
It felt as if the universe of thought and expertise on the violin had been miraculously slotted into one little hour.
Looking every inch the consummate master, Marat sounded even more so as he opened up with Brahms' Hungarian Dance.
Words fall away before such brilliance.
It seems inadequate to say that the music overall had a wildly gipsyish and oriental flavour to it.
And, yet, in playing works by De Falla,
Elgar, Wienaiwski, Paganini and Ravel, he was somehow able to give each piece his own special voice and register.
Electronically unaided, Marat seemed capable of throwing such voices around the hall like a ventriloquist.
How could such a little box with strings generate such splendour? The sanse of perspective he gave was simply breathtaking.
Now a bit of raucously funny and rowdy pandemonium followed by chilling whispers of an earthly beauty - and, all from the one player with his single instrument.
Yet this little instrument often sounded like several at once as he plucked andiowed and double-stopped in flawless acrobatics of sound.
It took a while after leaving St David's Hall to come back to earth. Truly all who saw and heard this genius will feel like me in wanting to her and see so much more of him.
DAVID REID
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