Oxana Yablonskaya at 85 the undisputed Queen of the Keyboard
A superb recital during her gruelling schedule as president of the Jury in Trapani.Having spent the entire day listening to five young pianists and as President supervising the votes of her much younger colleagues before having a cup of tea and appearing on stage with a solo recital and a programme that would have tired a pianist even half her age.

Here this regal lady appeared on stage and proceeded to create the magic that she has been sharing with her public for the past four decades.It was the same authority and presence that I remember from the first time I heard her in Rome forty years ago or as she suggested even more than that !

Lost for words for such a warm heartfelt welcome from one of the truly great artists of our time.
This regal artist here in Sicily dedicating her time and energy to helping and encouraging young musicians as she has always done in a long and distinguished career.
Oxana Yablonskaya,in Trapani as presidente of a jury that includes many distinguished colleagues all united for their friend Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti in his wish to launch his home town of Trapani as a centre of cultural excellence on the world stage.
Oxana now in her 85th year has come from Jerusalem where she lives and teaches to listen to young musicians gathered from around the world whose only wish is to be able to dedicate their lives to sharing their art.
We hear everyday about war and greed but there is also another world that is not spoken about which is our only hope for a better future.
Young musicians dedicating their youth to their art and despite differences and worldly grievances searching for the same Eutopia that we are all in the end striving for .
I have never forgotten Oxana’s Prokofiev third sonata ,that she played for Bruno Nicolai’s Edipan in Rome forty years ago,in the theatre that my wife and I had built and run just next door to St.Peter’s Square.
And only twenty years ago playing again in Rome a magnificent Rachmaninov Third Concerto where her regal presence and command allowed her to take over from a conductor overcome by emotion.
She not only played magnificently but also conducted the performance from the keyboard!
It is we that should thank you dear Oxana for the honour of wanting still to share with aspiring young artists your vast experience and legendary musicianship with such humility and humanity.

I had heard her twenty years on take over the reigns of a performance of Rachmaninov Third Concerto that was at risk of falling apart in the hands of an ‘elderly’ Turkish conductor overcome with emotion from such a towering performance as Oxana’s.

Today the moment she sat at the piano she became another person as the serenity and simplicity she unfolded in C.P.E Bach’s Rondo espressivo from his B minor Sonata H.245 seemed to give her the vigour and stamina to contemplate a programme that included two major Sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart.
The rondo was played with a delicacy and a ravishing sense of colour but above all a simplicity that allowed the music to speak for itself with disarming beauty.It is the same simplicity that Rubinstein was to share with his public when he too had reached Oxana’s age.It is a simplicity born of total mastery not only as a musician but also being able to play with such natural movements that it is like a great sage seated before us ready to recount the most wondrous stories.

Relaxation in tension because to play the piano is also a physical exercise and Oxana’s technical mastery allows her to place her hands on the keys like a swimmer floating in water.The physical effort is reduced to a minimum with no superfluous crowd pleasing gestures .She like Rubinstein is there at the service of the music with the disarming simplicity of Art that disguises Art.
The Mozart Sonata in F K 280 she told me afterwards she had learnt as a child .The little Polka by Tchaikowsky played as one of three encores she had first played when she was seven!

It was Schnabel who said that Mozart is too difficult for adults and too easy for children as it must be played with simplicity and style where every note has been placed by a Genius in its proper place.There is also a theatricality in Mozart that is apparent in his sonatas and it was this that Oxana made so apparent and which brought her performance vividly to life as the characters entered onto the scene with dynamic drive and individuality.The years just disappeared as she too became one of those characters enjoying acting a part with such vitality .A slow movement that was of etched beauty and the last movement played with buoyancy and a scintillating ‘joie de vivre’ where the years just seemed to disappear as she became once more the child prodigy discovering the genius of Mozart for the first time in this early F major Sonata .The Beethoven she had chosen to play is one of the first major sonatas of the 32 that were to span the composers entire life.Breaking away from the model of his illustrious mentor Haydn it is in the Sonatas op 2 n 3 , op 7 and this op 10 n 3 that the composer reveals his revolutionary spirit in opening new paths into the future.It is in all three of these early sonatas that the slow movements become of great poignancy and beauty and show the depth of feeling and orchestral thinking of Beethoven.

From the very first notes Oxana took us into a world of dynamic drive and suprising contrasts with the opening octaves shaped with her great artistry into a wind that blew in from a far to arrive at a light where the beautiful second subject could flourish with greater beauty but without ever sacrificing the drive that was to guide us from the first to the last note of this remarkable sonata .The dark sombre string quartet texture of the extraordinarily poignant Largo and mesto was followed by the wonderful way Oxana just allowed the minuet to float in like a ray of sunlight after such sombre brooding .The wonderful expression on this great artist’s face as Beethoven’s question and answer in the Rondo became ever more insistent .There was an ethereal ending with jeux perlé scales accompanying the still questioning left hand as it disappeared so peacefully into the depths of the keyboard .
A remarkable performance of mastery and musicianship that will long be remembered.

An all too short break brought her back on stage to play the two Rhapsodies by Brahms.I don’t know what happened in the Green Room but she attacked the first Rhapsody with a force and drive that were breathtaking and overwhelming .There were great orchestral sounds where this great black beast was aflame with passionate outpourings of great intensity.There were moments when the music dissolved to leave a heart melting mellifluous outpouring of nostalgia and beauty. Not allowing herself a break between the two Rhapsodies she burst into the second with a kaleidoscope of colour and sumptuous richness.A breath of fresh air blew over the keys as she brought simplicity and purity to the contrasting central episode.

Three Chopin Mazurkas were indeed ‘canons covered in flowers’ and became miniature tone poems in Oxana’s poetic hands.There was searing beauty full of nostalgia in the barely whispered A minor op 17 which was the bridge between two boisterous folk dances of Chopin’s native homeland.
It was though the Barcarolle that will be long remembered where Chopin’s greatest outpouring of song is united in one continuous work.Oxana played it with the same aristocratic ease as Rubinstein where the music was allowed to unfold with sumptuous beauty and ravishing colour.There was passion too but always with every strand of counterpoints allowed to sing as it built to the final beautiful bars where the tenor melodic line is accompanied by a florid accompaniment ,that was Ravel’s favourite passage, as it rose to the top of the keyboard only to cascade to the final four chords and the end of a dream.

Our Queen of the Keyboard was submerged with bouquets of flowers and a standing ovation from a public who knew no other way to thank her for coming to their city.Three encores were her way of repaying their kindness with a Scarlatti Sonata ,a Polka by Tchaikowsky and another Mazurka by Chopin.

She even had enough energy to make a little speech together with the artistic director Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberto with her only thought being to publicise the concert the next day of the young musicians that she had been listening to all week.

After such a long day one might have thought that Madam Yablonskaya would want to to get home to rest.This indomitable great artist had other ideas and was happy to enjoy the hospitality of her colleagues and friends way into the early hours!

With fellow jury members Anna Chiara D’Ascoli and Daniel Rivera

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