Nikolai Anatolievich Demidenko |

Nikolai Demidenko

“In everything that N. Demidenko does at the instrument, you feel the freshness of the artistic feeling, the need for him of those means of expression that he uses in the process of performance. Everything comes from music, from boundless faith in it. Such a critical assessment well explains the interest in the pianist’s work in our country and abroad.

Time passes quickly. It seems that relatively recently we counted Dmitry Bashkirov among young pianists, and today music lovers are increasingly meeting his students on the concert stage. One of them is Nikolai Demidenko, who graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in the class of D. A. Bashkirov in 1978 and completed an assistant-internship course with his professor.

What are the most attractive features of a young musician who has only recently begun an independent artistic life? The teacher notes in his pet an organic combination of free virtuoso skill with the freshness of musical expression, the naturalness of the performing manner, and good taste. To this should be added a special charm that allows the pianist to establish contact with the audience. Demidenko shows these qualities in his approach to very different, even contrasting works. On the one hand, he succeeds in Haydn’s sonatas, early Beethoven, and on the other hand, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, opuses by Stravinsky and Bartok. Chopin’s lyrics are also close to him (among his best achievements are four scherzos by the Polish composer), Liszt’s virtuoso plays are full of inner nobility. Finally, he does not pass by contemporary music, playing works by S. Prokofiev, D. Shostakovich, R. Shchedrin, V. Kikta. A wide repertoire range, which includes rarely heard works, including, for example, Clementi’s sonatas, allowed Nikolai Demidenko to make a successful debut on the competitive stage – in 1976 he became a laureate of the International Competition in Montreal.

And in 1978 a new success came to him – the third prize of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Here is the assessment given to him then by the jury member E. V. Malinin: “The talent of Nikolai Demidenko is very nice. One can say about him as a singer: he has a “good voice” – the piano sounds wonderful under Demidenko’s fingers, even a powerful fortissimo never develops into a sharply “percussive” one with him … This pianist is technically excellently equipped; when you listen to him, it seems that the most difficult compositions are easy to play … At the same time, I would like to hear in his interpretations sometimes more conflict, a dramatic beginning. However, soon the critic V. Chinaev wrote in Musical Life: “A young musician is in constant creative movement. This is evidenced not only by his ever-expanding and renewing repertoire, but also by his internal performing evolution. What seemed less noticeable in his playing just two years ago, hidden behind the colorful sound or behind the filigree virtuosity, today comes to the fore: the desire for psychological truthfulness, for the embodiment of discreet but soul-touching beauty… There are pianists who are firmly behind this or that role acquired by them from the very first concert performances is fixed. It is impossible to classify Demidenko as such: his art is intriguing, with its variability, it pleases with the ability for creative development.

Over the past time, the scope of the artist’s concert activity has increased unusually. His performances, as a rule, arouse the interest of listeners by the non-standard nature of both interpretive principles and sometimes repertoire searches. “The excellent pianistic data of N. Demidenko would not have manifested itself so clearly if they had not served as the basis for meaningful interpretations of a living, heart-felt appeal to the listener.” This is the main reason for the artistic success of Nikolai Demidenko.

Since 1990 the pianist has been living in the UK.

L. Grigoriev, J. Platek, 1990

Автор фото — Mercedes Segovia