Let me start by saying that seventeen-year-old Weimar-born Justus Eichhorn's playing on 'The Source'(a tribute to Bach and Liszt and to Goethe and Schiller all of whom were resident in Weimar) is beyond extraordinary. Everything he plays in this wide-ranging tapestry—including several of his own compositions and arrangements-- is as natural and unaffectedly poetic as it is breathtaking in its virtuosity. Always he makes you recall Liszt's definition of the virtuoso as 'one who conjures scent and blossom and breathes the breath of life,' the reverse of self-conscious display, of 'sound and fury signifying nothing.'
For many years I taught at a college in America specialising in exceptional young pianists so often contradicting the crusty and conservative view that children are too young to be in touch with an intellectual and particularly emotional life beyond their years. From time to time, I heard playing that instantly moved from innocence to experience, that held a key beyond glib verbal reduction.
I say this because although Justus Eichhorn, at the ripe old age of seventeen, has moved beyond the prodigy years, it is all too easy to make assumptions about such a young and prodigious talent. At every level Eichhorn inhabits a world that is as comprehensive as it is mature. He made me recall Alice Pogorelich(wife of Ivo Pogorelich) and her impulsive outburst, 'you see, I just adore talent!' that quality you instinctively and immediately sense while at the same time finding beyond easy definition.
Again, listening to Eichhorn's recording you perhaps understandably ask, how can such be playing advance beyond itself when it is already of such mastery? Yet all such questioning is erased in the blaze and beauty of his playing. In Czerny's G minor Etude(arranged by Eichhorn) he brings down the heavens in his tornado like advance. Yet he has all the poise and inwardness you could wish for in his further arrangement of Vivaldi's Largo from his 'Flautino' C major Concerto. In Bach's 'Italian' Concerto(one of two sizeable offerings) you are left in wonder at his finesse in the central 'Andante's richly ornate line and at his rhythmic buoyancy in the finale. His joy in re-creation in Cortot's arrangement of Schubert's 'Heidenrostein' would surely have beguiled that incomparable pianist himself, while the 'Adagio' from Bach's D minor Concerto is a model of delicacy and restraint. Reger's arrangement of Richard Strauss's 'Morgen' is given with a moving sense of stillness and Liszt's Mephisto Waltz No 1 is played in a manner which erases tempting comparisons with even the greatest most celebrated recorded rivals. Eichhorns' instinctive feel for Liszt's scintillating diablery is entirely his own, alive with mischievously pointed detail and a jaw-dropping bravura.
DG's recorded sound captures all of the astonishing range and quality of Eichhorn's pianism and they include elven photographs of the pianist as well as a simple and moving essay by Eichhorn himself.
Bryce Morrison