A Sober and Definitive Triumph for the Pianist Gustavo Miranda at Teatro Oriente

On October 21, 1901, at a special concert organized by the Liszt Academy in Budapest, a twenty-something Béla Bartók performed, with resounding success, Liszt's Sonata in B minor (1853). Thus began his prodigious career as a pianist, in which that work was central; It would also have enormous consequences on his own creations as a composer.

On Tuesday, in a packed Teatro Oriente, the Chilean Gustavo Miranda offered – in addition to some well-served Chopin's Scherzi – this formidable piece: astonishing in its complex framework and fearsome for its difficulty. The same interpreter has said that Liszt's Sonata failed to excite him. That is until he heard the version that the Polish Krystian Zimerman recorded in 1991 and from that moment knew he wanted to play it: he studied it in his first year at the Juilliard School in New York, and since then he has had it in his repertoire. But it is one thing to be able to play it – which is already a feat – and another to properly interpret it.

From the gloomy beginning, Miranda presented the themes with aplomb, and returned to them again and again, like someone who trips over the same stone, but always reacts in an original way. In his magnetic and ultra-concentrated delivery, the pianist showed that he understands the magnitude what he is dealing with and made even the most unexpected incidents of this magical – and strictly musical – story sound logical. He made it sound true.

The fugato, that chilling fugato that introduces the final part, was played by Miranda with lightness, diaphanous, and with very defined contours that allowed everything to be heard, making one feel and think at the same time. After the last dizzying development that Liszt gives to his ideas, the pianist led again into depth to end only with the short, low B, which is like an exhausted certainty. A sober and definitive triumph. The best that has been heard from this great performer.