Martin Stadtfeld

Martin Stadtfeld, born 1980 in Koblenz, has had a comet-like career since winning first prize in Leipzig's International Bach Competition four years ago, but he remains sufficiently new on even the German scene for the Berliner Morgenpost to misspell his surname as Stadtfeldt after his most recent Berlin appearance Jan. 27 with the Komische Oper Orchestra. His blazing talent would almost certainly have prevailed sooner or later, but what launched him into international orbit reinforced the fact that a bit of chutzpa rarely does any harm in such situations.

Entirely on his own, but supported by his veterinarian father, he not only went into a professional studio and recorded J. S. Bach's daunting "Goldberg" Variations but also mailed the results in to the Berlin branch of Sony, undeterred by the fact that that major label already had two formidable "Goldberg" recordings in its catalog, by Murray Perahia and the legendary Canadian Glenn Gould. Improbably, almost incredibly, Sony bought it, rushed it out, and immediately nailed him down with an exclusive contract. Wolfgang Fuhrmann's recent review in the Berliner Zeitung opens thus: "As young as he is, a legend has already entwined itself around" Stadtfeld. On my own experience, I would not hesitate to say he manifests the potential to restore the international reputation of German pianism to the glory days of such titans as Wilhelm Backhaus and Walter Gieseking.

In this 250th anniversary year of Mozart's birth, we in this part of the world have his music almost coming out of our ears as well as besieging them, and on this occasion Stadtfeld departed from his Baroque specialty to give us a pristine realization of Mozart's C minor Concerto K. 491 -- in its own patrician way as impressive as his Bach, which he takes coltish delight in gingering up with such thoroughly legitimate fireworks as zipping into the left-hand part a startling flight of lightning-like octaves. At all points his Mozart remained Classically pure, just short of severe (with noticeably spare and discrete use of the sustaining pedal), except for the first movement's cadenza where an invigorating infusion of Stadtfeld even included a fleeting tip of his hat to thoroughly American jazz. His audience reacted with such explosive enthusiasm that he had no recourse but to play not one but two encores -- something that almost never happens in a Berlin symphony concert, but which on this occasion became an inevitable necessity, to which he responded with almost apologetic body-language.

Sebastian Weigle appeared as guest conductor. He set the scene with the overture to Mozart's opera "La clemenza di Tito," but he came into his own in the second half, when he had a vastly enlarged orchestra at his disposal for the early Arnold Schoenberg tone poem (Op. 5) that paid tribute to the same drama that had inspired Claude Debussy's masterpiece, the Belgian mystic Maurice Maeterlinck's "Pelléas and Mélisande."

The Komische Oper has a pit orchestra to match almost any of Berlin's seven other symphony orchestras, and at no point did it sound less than impressive, but not even that excellence could camouflage the fact that at least for my musical sensibilities this sprawling work, which contains some ravishingly lush Romantic music, would have profited from considerable pruning before its composer turned loose of it.

We got a delicious taste of Stadtfeld in his primary element with his second encore, Ferruccio Busoni's showy transcription of J. S. Bach's chorale prelude "Nun freut euch liebe Christen G'mein," although he did tend to let the fleet right-hand rippling overshadow the original Bach melody sounded primarily by the pianist's left thumb.

Already at 14 Martin Stadtfeld had become exposed to the Russian school of pianism when Lev Natochenny accepted him as a pupil at Frankfurt's Musikhochschule. At 17 he won first prize in Paris' International Nikolai Rubinstein Competition; four years later he made it into the finals of Bolzano's especially demanding Busoni Competition. Before his 2002 Leipzig victory, the Bach Competition there had for 14 years awarded no first prize. Especially since the widespread central European whoop-te-do over his "Goldberg" coup, his career has taken off on a global scale.

The immediate future has him busy in important cities in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, and shows him spreading his musical wings. On Feb. 15 in Leipzig's historic Gewandhaus he will venture afield with the early Alban Berg Sonata, and later this month he will offer Delmenhorst and Bremen a major departure, Rachmaninoff's Sonata No. 2; in May he will give Coburg concert-goers the Liszt Sonata. Next month: Tokyo and Vienna; August will bring a pinnacle Salzburg Festival gig: a recital in the hallowed Mozarteum. If you haven't yet had the opportunity to hear this thrillingly gifted young artist, I feel confident in predicting that you soon will.