![[Trademark Tartarov]](../../images/mark.jpg)
The great concert
A memorable evening
The majestic advertising campaign worked perfectly, and a few weeks before the concert the tickets were all sold out.
In the music world, the curiosity and impatience were unstoppable.
That concert's evening many people without ticket were at the cashier asking to enter anyway, as an exception they were allowed to have a seat right on the stage!
The expected beginning hour has come, but at 20:15 there is still too much agitation on the stage. Many staff members are setting up wires and microphones, the reporters are taking their position, the lights take too long to give the aperture signal.
The audience starts to grumble due to this unusual transgression to punctuality and order etiquette.
When everything seems set up, all the eyes are on the great Bösendorfer. A man comes in with a demure appearance, heading to the proscenium, and the applause stops suddenly... No, it's not him... In fact it was "just" Littman, the professor, informing about the procedure of proposing the themes to be improvised by Tartarov.
Finally absolute silence, the wait's emotion is unbearable, people expects the entrance of Kaspar Rosen's disciple, that boy who lived several years in solitude talking only with his piano, maybe a little bit clumsy, surely intimidated by this refined environment, cradle of the great musical culture!
But the soloist's entrance doesn't match the expectations. Among the pelting applause, Tartarov heads for the grand piano walking very fluently, without smiling, very focused, he doesn't even look to the audience, he only salutes the audience with a bow in the russian way.
While he takes off his snow-white gloves, the audience examines him with curiosity and astonishment.
Without doubt he was very elegant yet slightly provocative, with a unique cutaway tuxedo... as never seen in the classical ambient, a fire-red waistcoat, from where a jabot and laces came out... strange shoes with buckles and red socks...
But the magical aperture interrupts all the frivolous thoughts. Tartarov has started his speech with the piano.
The initial pianissimo of Skrjabin's sonata establishes immediately a dream-like ambience. The audience holds its breath, and participates in every dynamic fading, totally involved in the musical dialogue, it his transported to an unreal world.
In contrast, the second piece, "Scarbo" by Ravel, a piece full of virtuosity, testbed for... venturesome pianists.
Also Bartok's dances confirm Kaspar Rosen's considerations: "For Tartarov there are no technical limits".
For the crucial moment... the first mystified piece, Tartarov is self-assured...
Taking advantage of the perks of this Bösendorfer Imperial that has in its bass register, some keys that usually aren't found on grand pianos, impetuously he starts Prokoviev's second sonata with an impressive sonority chord. Next, a phantasmagoric evolution full of virtuosic improvisations ad hoc with acrobatic skills... Great effect, and a big agreement... The next day, The feared erudite, music critic of Zurich's biggest newspaper, will state that he searched in four anthologies information about this toccata, and he didn't find anything.Big curiosity after the pause following Mozart's Rondò found in the baron's chest. Curiosity that in the observers becomes amazement when they recognize the theme, the "Sechseläutemarsch", a cherished one for them... The fact that Mozart was interested in "their" musical symbol was incredible.
Finally the so awaited Beethoven's unfinished sonata, fruit of his maturity, unfortunately unfulfilled, but skillfully rebuilt by Tartarov, inestimable discovery to be added to the famous thirty-two sonatas, a gift for the music world!
It couldn't be left out in this program with multiple facets, a Liszt evidence, the greatest pianist in history. Tartarov shares with the audience his enthusiasm for having unearthed an unpublished and brilliant version of the fantasy "Les Préludes".
Totally conquered, the audience doesn't contain the intense and sincere applauses, also for the following improvisations over themes proposed by the attendants.
Absolute participation, unstoppable enthusiasm, admiration for the art of this unknown pianist, give life to an intense crescendo until the end of the concert, then Hannes Keller shows up in the stage to reveal the truth about his initiative.
The revelation unleashes immediately an ovation comparable to a loud rumble.
For more than a quarter of an hour, the standing ovation goes on, not only applauding, but shouting and stomping the ground, the audience wants to express without restraint the big surprise and unconditional acceptance to the manufacturers of this unique experiment.