Eternal wonders exclaims the poster and indeed there were wonders from the 84 year old veteran pianist Alberto Portugheis that after a performance of Mozart’s sublimely mellifluous Concerto K488 and the concert aria ‘Ch’io mi scordo di te’ ,with a superb Marion Wilmann.
He could still sit down at the end and rattle off the Turkish March in a subtle refined way that would have shamed a pianist a third his age.
It seems like only yesterday that I turned pages, as I did today for the Concert Aria, for his 75th birthday concert with his close childhood friend Martha Argerich. That was nine years ago and both Alberto and Martha are still astonishing the world with their eternally youthful Indian Summer .
The sublime slow movement of the concerto was played with the passion of a mature artist still with a heart of gold beating vibrantly. A cadenza in the first movement played with great poetic significance and the last movement just sprung from his agile fingers with youthful mastery but mature insightful meaning. Mozart may be too easy for children and too difficult for adults but Schnabel obviously did not contemplate an 84 year old in his Indian Summer playing with such intelligence and ‘joie de vivre’ .
An orchestra miraculously bonded together by George Hlawiczka …..Eternal wonders were indeed in evidence tonight.
Sinners night indeed ! ( for those not tennis fans, during the performance of Mozart, Jannik Sinner beat Carlos Alcaraz in the men’s final at Wimbledon ).
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 