piano
Robert Beale
The second of the Philharmonic’s Boulez-Ravel celebrations (birth centenary of the former, 150th of the latter) brought Bertrand Chamayou back: after his performance of the G major piano concerto in January, this time it was as soloist in the Concerto for the Left Hand, with Ludovic Morlot on the podium.It’s a different piece of stuff from the two-hands concerto (though contemporary). Whereas the G major varies the role of the soloist, sometimes offering a balance of power between orchestral and keyboard resources, in the left-hand one Ravel was at pains to see that the solo should never seem Read more ...
David Nice
At the end of an exhausting week in which Holocaust Memorial Day struck a more urgent note than ever as fascism started tearing through the USA, parts of this concert were bound to hit hard. That they did so to the power of 100 was thanks to the extraordinary impact of Jakub Hrůša, now recognised as one of the greats by British audiences as he waits to take up the full-time reins at the Royal Opera. The BBC Symphony Orchestra burned for him in fullest focus.Shostakovich’s Eleventh is one of his symphonies which require special pleading (which is much better than bad, the only adjective to Read more ...
Robert Beale
There was excellent music making in the Hallé concert in Manchester last night, and there was self-admitted “noise”. Briefly, the two coincided in one work.The outstanding music making of the evening came from pianist Giorgi Gigashvili, winner of the 2024-25 Terence Judd-Hallé Award, now fulfilling the opportunities that success gave him. Together with the orchestra and conductor Roderick Cox, he gave a beautiful and stylish performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 (in C major – the one they used to bill as “the Elvira Madigan concerto”, if your memory goes back that far).His playing was Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Forthright and upright, powerful and lucid, the frank and bold pianism of Leif Ove Andsnes took his Wigmore Hall audience from Norway to Poland (or rather, Paris and Majorca) with a final stop in France. A recital that began with two large-scale Norwegian sonatas – one a remarkable discovery – culminated in the ostensibly remote sound-world of Chopin’s 24 Preludes, part-written on the Balearic island.Yet Andsnes’s sturdy, direct, immaculately even-tempered, playing united these disparate territories, and even stamped his Debussy encore with the same robust character. Fans of a more nebulous, Read more ...
David Nice
Is this the same Roman Rabinovich who drew harp-like delicacy from one of Chopin’s Pleyel pianos, and seeming authenticity from a 1790s grand which may have belonged to Haydn, both in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, Surrey? He clearly cares about the possibilities of any instrument on which he plays, so the natural consequence is maximum sonority on a modern Steinway. Too cultured to deafen, as Beatrice Rana did in this small space, he still compels you to listen to every note.You feel that Haydn would have loved the startling fullness with which the Sonata in F, HXV1/29 began. Rabinovich Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Beethoven’s renown in his own day was not just as a composer but also as an improvising pianist. He wrote in a letter in July 1819 that “freedom, and to move forward is the purpose of the world of art, as it is of the whole of creation.’So it is a paradox that his written compositions are seen by many as immutable holy writ, and the very idea that musicians of subsequent musicians might take liberties with them still seen as transgressive. Django Bates recently told me that “I went to a piano room during my second week (as a composition student at the Royal College of Music, shortly before Read more ...
Robert Beale
The BBC Philharmonic were right to bill Garrick Ohlsson, soloist in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, as the main attraction in Saturday’s concert.The septuagenarian American is a force of nature and an exceptional artist: his playing of Rachmaninov in his last visit to Manchester remains in the memory as an exhibition of mastery. So it was again, in another concerto thick with notes.But those notes were played with entrancing grace and melodic power, as well as virtuosity, and delicacy of touch as well as insight. Clara Schumann (whose performances did much to establish it at first) said there Read more ...
David Nice
Wonders never ceased in Elisabeth Leonskaja’s return to the Wigmore Hall. Not only did she play Schubert’s last three sonatas with all repeats and the full range of a unique power undiminished in a 78-year old alongside a never too overstated pathos, radiance and delicacy; just before receiving the Wigmore Hall Medal (presentation by John Gilhooly pictured below), she also gave us more revelations in the compressed world of Schoenberg’s Six Little Pieces, Op. 19.Only this pianist could possibly follow Pavel Kolesnikov's revelatory take on Schubert's crowning glory, the B flat Sonata D960 the Read more ...
David Nice
If there was ever a time for the inevitable "Rach Three” (piano concerto, not symphony) in the composer’s 150th anniversary year – and I confess I dodged other occasions – it might as well have come in the fresh and racy shape of Leif Ove Andsnes' interpretation and the equally alert, forward-moving playing of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under a kindred spirit, its principal conductor Edward Gardner.In short, there was no slack either in the concerto or an even greater masterpiece, the Choral Symphony The Bells, and yet no lack of emotional intensity either. Andsnes is usually Read more ...
David Nice
All five finalists in the Leeds International Piano Competition, at which Pavel Kolesnikov was one of the jurors, should have been given tickets, transport and accommodation to hear his Wigmore recital the evening after the prizegiving. Not that supreme imagination can be taught, but to witness the degree of physical ease (and freeflowing concert wear) that allows all the miracles to happen would be a good lesson to so many tension-racked pianists, including some of Kolesnikov’s peers.As always, the connections he made in his programme were surprising, though obvious once you thought about it Read more ...
David Nice
How do you make a two-part final featuring five piano concertos work as a couple of totally satisfying programmes? First, give a wide list of concerto options, ask each pianist for two choices, settle on what will make the best contrasts – and then engage the brilliant Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra of which he has been chief conductor since 2021 as partnersThe fact remains that, despite differing levels of interpretation, the five finalists, all in their twenties, were as one with their fellow players and their conductor. It takes both elements to pull that Read more ...
Robert Beale
“Mozart, made in Manchester”, the project to perform and record an edition of the piano concertos plus all the opera overtures, seemed a distant destination and an unlikely marathon when Manchester Camerata embarked on it eight years ago.But with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy sticking with it through thick and thin (including Covid), they got to the final tape last night at the Stoller Hall in Chetham’s School of Music. The hall didn’t even exist when it all began: the first performances were at the Royal Northern College of Music. But the idea has slowly taken flight and Read more ...