With pianist Mark Taratushkin from Ukraine, the Kulturring Straelen had invited an exceptional talent to the European Translators’ College. Kulturring chairman Alexander Voigt promised an exciting concert with works by Bella Bartok and Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew. Doctor Mikhail Rudnitsky from the EÜK translated the 24-year-old artist’s explanations of the individual works from Russian.

In Bela Bartok’s suite “In the Open”, Taratushkin favored a hard, almost percussive touch in the first movement “With Drums and Whistles”. Quiet tones dominated in the “Wailers of the Night”. In the turbulent “Hetzjagd”, Taratushkin enjoyed the effective improvisational moments and the playful, sometimes aggressive motifs. The pianist described the “Drei Erüden Opus 18” as an incomparably experimental work. In the Suite op. 14, the listener searched in vain for Bartok’s many reminiscences of his Hungarian folk music and traditional compositional techniques. The focus here was exclusively on a rhythmically intense, challenging tonal language, which Taratushkin performed with an enormously strong, extremely metallic touch and great intensity of tone on the Kawai grand piano with exceptional technical brilliance and musical stringency. A richness of sound combined with great virtuosity was also evident in the “Improvisation on a Hungarian peasant song”.

With Sergei Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives Opus 22, the audience experienced a kind of musical diary in the second part of the concert with a total of 20 movements, which danced nimbly along or burlesquely lost itself in rapidly sparkling, more precise garlands of sound. As a result, the music faltered, stumbled and ran in the usual and never arbitrary manner. Carried by a high emotional expressive content, Taratushkin’s interpretation preserved a rich, almost orchestral spectrum of expression in the work, which expressed itself in a concentrated density of sound. He played the disillusioned “Sarcasms” op. 17 with a clear, pithy, slightly dry touch and impressed with his perfect homogeneity both in the forte and in the lyrical, dreamy piano. Much applause for a performance of the highest piano culture.