Dinara Klinton (piano)
Chopin: Nocturne Op 27 no 2
Chopin: Barcarolle Op 60
Chopin: Prelude in D flat Op 28 no 15 ‘Raindrop’
Chopin: Grand Valse Brillante in A minor Op 34 no 2
Chopin: Valse in E minor Op posth
Tchaikovsky: Meditation Op 72 no 5
Tchaikovsky: Valse Sentimentale Op 51
Rachmaninov Elegie Op 3 no 1
Rachmaninov: Preludes Op 23 nos 4 and 5
Admission free with retiring collection. No tickets issued beforehand
Dinara Klinton was born in Ukraine and has recently completed the Artist Diploma in Performance course at the Royal College of Music. Dinara is the first recipient of the prestigious Benjamin Britten Fellowship, generously supported by the Philip Loubser Foundation. Prior to this she was awarded a Master of Performance degree with distinction at the RCM where she studied with Dina Parakhina and Vanessa Latarche. Upon graduating from the Moscow Central Music School, she went on her Graduate Diploma with Honors at the Moscow State Conservatory, where she worked with Eliso Virsaladze.Dinara has won many awards in prestigious international competitions, including Third prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition in USA (2016), Third prize at the BNDES International Piano Competition in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2014), Second Prize at the 9th International Paderewski Competition in Bydgoszcz, Poland (2013), Second Prize at the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy (2007), Grand Prix at the Berne Interlaken Classics International Piano Competition (2010) etc. She has also received the Diploma for the best semi-finalist at the XVII International Chopin Competition in Warsaw (2015) and Diploma of Outstanding Merit at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan (2006).Dinara has appeared at many international music festivals including the Rheingau Music Festival, International Festival of Piano “La Roque d’Antheron”, Aldeburgh Proms, Cheltenham festival. She has performed all over the globe in such venues as Royal Festival Hall, Cadogan Hall in London, Tchaikoivsky Concert hall in Moscow, Great hall of Moscow state Conservatory, Konzerthaus Berlin, Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, Warsaw Philharmonic, Tokyo Sumida Triphony Hall. She made her debut recording at the age of sixteen, with Delos Records, and the album Music of Chopin and Liszt. Her second album Liszt: Études d’exécution transcendante, S. 139 was released in 2016 with GENUIN Classics. She is an Assistant Professor at the Royal College of Music.
I have heard Dinara play many times and I even heard a masterclass with Emanuel Ax in which she played some of the Liszt Trascendental Studies.She recorded the studies to great aclaim too.
On this occasion she had chosen to play Paysage and Chasse Neige but as the next pianist for the masterclass had not arrived in time she was asked if she would like to play another study.We were all astounded when she played Feux Follets with such ease and style.It is one of the most transcendentally difficult pieces in the piano repertoire.Emanuel Ax just grinned and wanted to know the secret of how she managed to play it so perfectly.
She became known affectionately as Miss Feux Follets at the College.
She has the most flexible hand and fingers but they are fingers of steel trained at a very early age at the Central Music School in Moscow.A technique that allows her to play not only with a sumptuous rich sound,never hard or brittle but also extraordinarily quiet sounds with so many different gradations of sound from mezzo forte to pianissimo.
It was this that we were aware of today in a programme of popular classics.Works that are particularly close to her heart since listening as a little girl to the LP’s that her mother had at home. A few short early pieces of Chopin were a framework for the Barcarolle op 60 considered by many to be one of his greatest works.
The nocturne in D flat op 27 and the Prelude op 28 n.15 were played with ravishingly beautiful sound.The Nocturne in particular was played with an exquisite sense of balance and colour where Chopin’s magical bel canto seemed to float on a layer of sumptuous sounds.The Prelude too one could appreciate why it has earned the name of Raindrop.Such was the refined beauty of the melodic line with a very subtle sense of rubato.It gave such flexibility to what in many hands can be a great tone poem with a menacing but overpowering middle section.Dinara kept the sound in strict control never letting the middle section overpower the out melodic sections from which it grows.
The two waltzes were played with all the subtle charm of someone who has lived with the music for a long time.They were played with a flexibility but also with great taste and simplicity.The melancholic waltz in A minor op 34 was paired with the brilliant waltz in E minor op posth.
It was though the Barcarolle in which Dinara’s poetic vision and sensibility was apparent from the very opening.The gentle ebb and flow of the left hand allowed the melodic line to float so magically above it.The cascading embellishments were like jewels being threaded through this magic world of sumptuous sounds.A sound both rich and yet delicate and multi coloured.It reminded me very much of the moulding that Volodos reveals in his unique playing where sound,movement and shape seem to be one.Playing with gloves of pure velvet even in the most passionate outpourings where the piano is made to sound like a truly ‘grand’piano with a seemless outpouring of ravishing golden sounds.
The second part of the programme was given over to Russian music of Tchaikowsky and Rachmaninov.Here she truly came into her own and the piano sang with such nostaglia and melancholy.Never more so than in the Rachmaninov Elegie .Creating a magic wave of sound on which the melancholic melody could float with an aristicratic sense of nostalgia.Perlemuter used to tell me that Rachmaninov looked as though he had swallowed a knife but that the sounds he drew from the piano were some of the most romantic he had ever heard.And so it was here with a left hand melody of such expressivness with the right hand just hovering delicately above it.It was one of those truly magical moments when a bond is created between the performer and the audience and where you can feel that we are all listening together in hushed silence to every single nuance.
The Valse Sentimentale was thrown off with an ease and delicacy together with such a sense of yearning,The Meditation was a magical outpouring of melodic invention and the trills at the end in the right hand accompanied a left hand of such subtle colouring.
The Prelude in D op 23 n.4 by Rachmaninov showed how much he owed Tchaikowsky with a melodic line of such ravishing beauty and accompaniments of great delicacy.The final Prelude in G major op 23 n.5 was played with an infectious rhythmic impulse and foreward drive contrasting with the central section of such romantic seduction.The climaxes were thrown off with superb technical assurance but always within the framework of the sound world she had created.
The Tchaikowsky Humoresque was played with great charm and style .It brought this recital to an end and that was a great lesson of ravishingly beautiful playing.
On Wings of Song one could say…………
…………….and what a song she shared with us today!
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 