Chethams, day one with Martin Roscoe allowing Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann to speak for themselves with music making of intelligence and mastery but above all with a love and passion that as Murray McLachlan said makes him a National treasure.

Beethoven , Schubert and Schumann were allowed to speak with masterly simplicity. A musicianship that belies any importance except to the music of which he is a servant. Allowing the music to speak with the voice of the composer.

A lifetime studying the scores allows him to transmit what the composer actually wrote in the score without any distortions or personal interventions, but with a vivid imagination and mastery that could recreate Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann as if the ink was still wet on the page . Martin had confided that at the age of sixty it was time to prioritise his dedication to the composer and not to the ritual dance of the concert platform

With a hall full of pianists it was the turn of the pianist’s pianist with Steven Osborne firstly seducing us with sounds of Schumann’s Kinderszenen that were indeed the thing that dreams are made of. A whispered poetry so much more intimate than Curzon but with that same fantasy and respect for what the composer indicates, that makes it sound so simple – too easy for children but usually too difficult for adults .This was certainly not the case tonight. But Osborne is a chameleonic pianist and one who relishes the very sound of the piano at the moment of recreation . An eclectic programme that fits into no pattern except for a passionate wish to communicate without any preconceived barriers.

Ending with a scintillating Oscar Peterson having taken us on an unexpected voyage with Meredith Monk’s hypnotic ‘Railroad’ or Rzewski’s revolutionary ‘Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues’ where fingers were just not enough , like with Ives, to transmit the emotions of a disturbed soul .
It was with the gentle encore, maybe a song from his native Scotland that like Maxwell Davis the stillness of natural beauty was the very genesis of music itself. https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2025/02/25/steven-osborne-at-the-wigmore-hall-the-wings-of-song-of-a-poet-of-the-piano/

Tomorrow Leon Mc Cawley , Murray McLachlan and Nina Tichman not forgetting the first late night Chopin recital by Yuanfan Yang .https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2025/04/14/nina-tichman-bachs-goldberg-alive-and-well-and-safely-grazing-in-palermo/

What a start with a National Treasure to quote Murray McLachlan introducing Martin Roscoe.

It was with the same humility that Steven Osborne entered the scene with the second recital of this opening day.
An eclectic programme ranging from Schumann to Oscar Peterson.