5th Piano Concerto of Beethoven, Emperor, Van Cliburn (1934 – 2013) & Kirill Kondrashin

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been drawn to listening to Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, the Imperial, as it’s called in the original. But not all of it, only the first part of it. The rest somehow does not cause a special surge of emotions.

Since I mentioned emotions, I immediately declare: Van Clyburn is a very talented pianist, but his “extra” behavior during the performance annoys me to such an extent that I just move the screen so as not to see his cheap mimics and antics.

No! He can’t!

He’s a great pianist, so convey your feelings through your piano playing, and don’t make faces like a cheap clown.

He lifts his head, closes his eyes, or raises them half-closed to the ceiling, wrinkles his forehead and curls his mouth, as already drowning in an ocean of emotions. He gives out all these pseudo-artistic antics to the audience during any of his performances, no matter WHAT he performs.

It’s cheap, designed for fools.

After the abusive introduction, I turn to the actual concert.

I tried to recreate in my mind’s eye a certain picture of what I was hearing. I listened to the concert five or six times and nothing showed up.

Suddenly, a certain lightning flashed, multicolored, and interested me.

I started to “unfold” it to the music of the concert and something very interesting began to emerge:

From the very beginning…

Let’s imagine that we are flying to the Solar System on a spaceship, which, unlike modern clumsy chemical-fueled rockets, uses other physical principles of motion, for example, changes the curvature of space, can move back and forth in time, and so on.

So, we flew up to Mercury’s orbit and spun BEHIND it, so that Mercury either obscures the Sun or opens it.

The orchestra’s beat is the sun from a distance of only fifty million kilometers – the power of fire and light is blinding.

The ship is hiding behind Mercury, our eyes and ears are resting a little, we come to our senses.

(Ears, because the ship is equipped with external sensors of electromagnetic radiation invisible to the eye and transformed into sound inside the ship),

We’re in the shadows! Something, maybe pulsating streams of neutrinos, make their way through the planet, but all the others are still absorbed.

Again we carefully look out of the shadows and again a powerful blow from the full power of the luminary. So – several times. Then, having got used to this power of the star, we move into the orbit of Mercury and begin, like him, to perceive the full force and energy of the electromagnetic radiation of the Sun, alternating flashes, fountains of prominences, flying by, suddenly, we see a spot, then again the red-hot bubbling surface of the star. Our ship, without any overloads, can instantly approach the Sun and just as quickly move away from it by tens and hundreds of millions of kilometers.

(After all, as mentioned at the beginning, we use the curvature of space and changes in the course of time, so our ship either falls freely in these local spatial depressions or smoothly slides off the bulges).

All of this corresponds to the evolving musical themes. When playing the piano resembles a quiet murmur, it means that we are somewhere far away and perceive only soft waves of radiation reaching us and weakened streams of particles.

With an instant leap, we find ourselves at the luminary – again, the power of both the piano and the orchestra.

A little idea has appeared: The piano, with its playing, does not tell us about all the solar radiation, but only about a certain part of it, and the orchestra undertakes a COMPLETE description of all its types.

In general, this is how we listen to solar activity with different sensors from different distances and listening points.

I wanted to see how it shone a couple of billion years ago and how it will shine in the same future, we easily move into the past, then into the future.

The only thing slightly annoying about the concert was the suddenly ridiculous student chromatic scales, performed by the piano. They do not fit into the perception of the pilots of the ship. Unless there is also a piano on the ship and some cosmonaut decided to support his performing technique as a pianist and began to knead his fingers with chromatic scales?

It doesn’t fit in with the overall melodic picture of the concert!

I don’t think it’s necessary to explain that this is just MY purely personal perception of this concert. Each listener can perceive this talented work in their own unique way.

Listen, perceive, fantasize…

17 II 2026