I have heard Misha play many times over the past two years since his mentor and teacher at the Royal College of Music Ian Jones asked me to listen to his performance in Cadogan Hall of the Rachmaninov First Piano Concerto.Misha who had recently left his homeland as Ukraine was being invaded and sought refuge in the UK .Ian has become his mentor and in these two years since first listening to him he has grown in stature and is fast becoming a master.His Beethoven op 110 and the Godowsky ‘Fledermaus’ I have written about just a month ago when he played them in the Autumn Festival in Perivale for the Keyboard Trust.

Misha Kaploukhii at St Mary’s Perivale The Keyboard Trust Autumn Festival 2023

They were remarkable performances then but now even in this short space of time his Beethoven has grown in weight and authority.The simplicity and maturity he brought to op 110 was masterly.An important statement where he had understood the real meaning of an interpreter to transmit the wishes as written in the score to the listener.Beethoven was completely deaf when he wrote these last sonatas but he could obviously hear them in his head and miraculously was able to write down meticulously the sounds that he wanted.Of course it is not only the notes but the meaning behind the notes too that depends on the personality and technical mastery of the performer.So it was quite remarkable how this 21 year old could have played with such mature mastery today.

Godowsky ‘Fledermaus’ too was thrown off with the ease of the great virtuosi of the golden age of piano playing.The age when Godowsky,Lhevine,Rosenthal,Levitski could ravish and seduce their listeners with a range of sounds that only Tobias Matthay could explain.Every note has an infinite number of sounds in it and the real virtuoso is the pianist who can seek out the most sounds ,not he who plays fastest and loudest but he who can play the quietest with what is known as jeux perlé.Encore pieces could be used to excite and seduce their audiences as we have in our time experienced only with Horowitz or Rubinstein.As Joan Chissell remarked in a review of Rubinstein playing Villa Lobos :”Mr Rubinstein turned baubles into gems’.

It was exactly this that Misha did today too.After the intelligence and faithfulness to a masterwork by Beethoven he was able to seduce,beguile,enchant and excite with a piece by Godowsky written especially as a crowd pleaser.Busoni was a pupil of Liszt – the greatest showman after Paganini who ever lived.Noble ladies would be turned into a screaming mob trying to grab any souvenir they could when Liszt played in the aristocratic salons of the day.But Busoni like Liszt was a musical genius too with a mind always pointed to the future.He was able to continue the sound world of late Liszt and bring it to its ultimate conclusion as explained so magnificently by Kirill Gerstein in a recent lecture recital at the Wigmore Hall .

Kirill Gerstein – Busoni is alive and well and returned to the Wigmore Hall

The Elegie that Misha played took me by surprise as I had not heard it since Ogdon used to play it in his recitals.It is a fantasy on Greensleeves just as Busoni had written a Sonatina sopra Carmen better known as the Carmen Fantasy.They are showpieces too but written by an intellectual not a showman.

Misha brought a ravishing beauty to the arpeggiated opening bars of intermingled harmonic changes before bursting into bucolic rhythmic chords out of which emerged the melody that we know as Greensleeves.The melodic line embellished as Liszt or Thalberg might have done and played with a nonchalant ease and old world style. Busoni always ending with a question mark as if to say where are we going to now? A remarkable performance of intelligence and virtuosity added to a sense of style that was absolutely enticing.The Liszt del Petrarca Sonnetto 123 was played in grand style with golden sounds of great beauty.Passion and beauty combined with ravishing glistening sounds and a remarkable sense of elasticity to the melodic line without ever losing the architectural thread that weaves it all together into a sumptuous whole.The Bartok Study op 18 n.2 was a tour de force of virtuosity which again showed Misha’s remarkable musicianship as he managed to find the musical line within the enormous technical demands that Bartok requests from the performer.

An ovation as rarely heard at St James’s greeted this young artist headed for the heights.

Kaploukhii – Matthews at St James’s Piccadilly – Two stars of Talent Unlimited shining brightly