Now the race was on to hear Aleksandar Swigut in the Fazioli Piano Festival.I had heard her recently in the final of the Grieg International Competition where she was a top prize winner with a very deeply felt performance of Chopin’s E minor concerto.It had been framed in the final on either side by the Grieg Concerto which only made one more aware of how much the slow movement is inspired by Chopin’s concertos.
She chose to open with one of Chopin’s last works and finished with one of his first and in between his large scale masterpiece that is the B flat Sonata Sonata op 35.She also included Liszt’s Liebestraum n.3 strangely neglected these days and also included Liszt’s ravishing transcription of Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade ( a work that we were to hear in this same hall when Chelsea Guo also sang Goethe’s words from Faust).Many consider the Barcarolle Chopin’s most perfect work .It is an outpouring of song of sublime poetical inspiration.I remember Janina Fialkowska playing it in a commemoration for my wife and coming off the platform she whispered in my ear :’That was Ileana’…….there could not have been a more moving tribute to one of Italy’s most loved dramatic actresses.Aleksandra played it with sumptuous tone from the very first bass C sharp.So often a call to arms instead of the magic opening of a box of jewels which Aleksandra opened to perfection.If later she allowed her emotion to show above rather than in the notes what could one say when it is obvious that she loves it so deeply.The simplicity or distilling emotion into the very core of the notes will come like Rubinstein with living and loving the work for a lifetime.
Liebestraum was played with aristocratic poise and poetic style.Gretchen too showed her kaleidoscopic sense of colour and a technical prowess that allowed her to caress the notes even in the moments of most fervent passion.The B flat minor Sonata was played as a true musician – one with a heart that beats intensely.It was,though,the Trio of the Funeral March that took our breath away for it’s timeless beauty (especially as we had just heard the brass band play it in marching time as the guardsmen accompanied their Queen on her final journey through the streets of London).There were truly wondrous colours in the last movement as we could almost feel the wind blowing over the graves.And after all that puffing and blowing what aristocratic poise she gave to the final great chords of rich vibrancy.It was the radiance and ‘joie de vivre’ of Chopin’s variations op 2 that left us breathless and mesmerised.The work that Schumann was to describe on Chopin’s first appearance in the Paris Salons with ‘Hats off a genius’.Here was the radiance and style of jeux perlé thrown of with an ease and elegance by Aleksandra.A show piece like Liszt or Moscheles but already with the aristocratic refined taste of the genius of Chopin.
A beautiful recital by a pianist of such humility and grace off stage but a colossus of great authority at the keyboard.Like many great actors and artists she looses her true self in the part that she is playing.Goethe’s words were as expressive from her fingers as they were from the greatest of lieder singers of Schubert’s sublime masterpiece.
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 