“But he is also a genius,” said Kirill Petrenko, when asked about Sokolov three years ago, to clear that we are now leaving the area of matters that can be discussed. Nevertheless, there is a desire to find out why a pianist is so capable of astonishing people in such an extreme way.
Talking about Grigory Sokolov, we are beyond discussing technique and text accuracy, style and understanding of form. His gift has to do with a special understanding of time and sound, with a feeling for the present which is full of meaning and the need to vanish, with a resonance of the not-yet and no-longer.
And this is what touches the basic conditions of human being, where questions of aesthetic are already irrelevant.

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