The refined musicianship and solid artistic pedigree of Krystyna was immediately apparent from this 18 year old pianist’s opening with the four last Impromptus by Franz Schubert.Much longer and more complex than the earlier four that make up op 90,they are a challenge that only great musicians can attempt.Those who can allow the simplicity and mellifluous outpouring of Schubert in his final years to speak for itself without any superficial or superfluous intervention from the interpreter.That is not to say that within the notes there is not a lifetime experience of colour and inflections that as with speech allow the message of the musical conversation to be transmitted directly to the listener.

Annie Fischer and Rudolf Serkin are two whose performances are indelibly imprinted on my memory .The four Impromptus played together last as long as any of Schubert’s later Sonatas and seem as though they may have been written with that architectural shape in mind.It was just this mature musicianship allied to a technical mastery of beauty and infallible security that made her fingers seem like limpets that were sucking the life out of every key.A beauty of rich sound but also a sense of balance that allowed the musical line to ring out with a purity and simplicity that was of authoritative tenderness.It was the same sense of line and style that she gave to the beautifully evocative work by Amy Beach.

Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody I have not heard played with such authority and sterling intelligent musicianship since Gilels’ monumental performance in London in the ‘70’s.She gave a remarkable performance where all of Liszt’s quite considerable demands were turned into poetry and music with a sense of style and artistry that was of a mature artist.Lacking only that driving rhythm of Gilels and passionate aristocratic bearing that made him appear like Arrau as though he was born to be seated in front of this box of ivory keys just as Liszt obviously was.That is a very exciting development that her musicianship will take as her personality develops and her experience of life widens.But this was quite extraordinary playing from someone who has just come of age.

Khrystyna Mykhailichenko is an 18 year old Ukrainian pianist who was born in Crimea. She began to play the piano when she was only four and her parents quickly realised that their little child was extraordinarily gifted. Within six years, she was winning international piano competitions and was performing in concerts throughout Europe and in the USA. The venues include Salle Cortot in Paris, Bozar Hall in Brussels, the Music Academies of Bruges, Antwerp, Krakow, Bremen, Gariunu concert hall in Vilnius, the University of Miami and Broward Centre for the Performing Arts, the World Bank in Washington DC, the UN residence in New York and all the National Philharmonics of Ukraine. In 2014, when the Russians occupied Crimea, Khrystyna moved to the capital of Ukraine – Kyiv. In March 2016, Khrystyna met the international concert pianist Professor Alexei Grynyuk who became her teacher and mentor. He said “Khrystyna’s gift is stronger and more powerful than anyone I have ever been able to work with before. This is a performer of the highest level.” At the outbreak of war in February 2022, she fled to Poland with her mother and sister before settling in Corbridge in June. As well as continuing to travel extensively for performances, she studied at the Junior RNCM under Graham Scott. She won a full scholarship from the Royal Academy of Music in London and has started her undergraduate course there in September 2023.she now lives in Ealing.

The second set was also like the first composed in 1827 but published posthumously as Op. 142 in 1839 (with a dedication added by the publisher to Franz Liszt )

The first Impromptu in F minor follows the form of a sonata exposition The second Impromptu in A-flat major is written in the standard minuet form. The third Impromptu in B-flat major is a theme with variations. Finally, the fourth Impromptu in F minor is highly virtuosic and the most technically demanding of the set. Due to their structural and thematic links, some envisioned the four Impromptus as parts of a multi-movement sonata, a conjecture which is subject of debate among musicologists and scholars.

Rhapsodie espagnole (Spanish Rhapsody), S.254 R.90, was written in 1858 and is very suggestive of traditional Spanish music,that was inspired by Liszt’s tour in Spain and Portugal in 1845.The Spanish Rhapsody has become one of Liszt’s best-known compositions, although it took some while to establish itself in the repertoire. Liszt told Lina Ramann that he had written the piece in recollection of his Spanish tour whilst in Rome in about 1863.

The work was published in 1867—subtitled Folies d’Espagne et Jota aragonesa.Rhapsodie espagnole, folies d’espagne et Jota aragonesa (Spanish Rhapsody, Spanish leaves and Jota Aragonesa), S. 254, was based on his earlier Grosse Konzertfantasie über spanische Weisen, S. 253. It was composed in 1858 and published in 1867 in Leipzig by C.F.W. Siegel, dedicated to Eugénie, Empress of France (1826–1920).

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music .Her “Gaelic” Symphony , premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.