The launch of Antonina Suhanova’s new CD of the three War sonatas by Prokofiev with a mixed recital that did include the final Eighth Sonata, the least violent of the Trilogy . If the first is full of provocation and menace, the second on the battle field, the last is surely resignation with its final gasps full of ominous doubt. It is the sonata that is more like a song of hope rather than the spiky provocation of the other two.

Antonina played it with a beauty and at times dynamic energy with an architectural shape that led us through this maze of notes that finishes with hope mixed with desolation and doubt.

This short presentation recital had included also three British composers. Britten ,who was a declared pacifist, Antonina chose three very early piano pieces unknown to me :’Three Character Pieces’ from 1930.

I remember Oliver Knussen as the sixteen year old son of the first double bass player of the LSO. André Previn performed his First Symphony during the complete Rachmaninov cycle with Vladimir Ashkenazy. He went on to make a great name for himself and I was sorry to hear that he too died relatively young like Britten.

Sir Stephen Hough is very much alive and the recently announced artistic director of the Leeds.Not only a world renowned virtuoso pianist but also a very distinguished composer and writer. A true Renaissance man of which Antonina played his ‘Sonatina Nostalgica’ from 2019.

By a curious coincidence Britten had been commissioned by Dame Fanny Waterman to compose a set piece for the very first of her Leeds International Piano Competitions. An evocative piece called ‘Notturno’ that together with the ‘Holiday Diary Suite’ I performed all over Italy to celebrate Britten’s 60th birthday, invited by the British Council and AGIMUS whilst studying in Rome with Guido Agosti in 1972, I had no idea that there were any other piano pieces so we filled up the programme with the ‘Michelangelo Sonnets’ and his Folk Song arrangements.

Nice to know fifty years on! Thank you Antonina also for that.

Beginning with three Latvian folk songs by Jāzeps Vītols (1863-1948) considered one of the fathers of Latvian Music and the teacher of Prokofiev and Myaskovsky at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. A fascinating choice of programme from a real thinking musician who is also a considerable artist with a remarkable pedigree.

She brought fresh life to Fou Ts’ong’s own personal Concert Grand that now stands so proudly in the Razumovsky Academy that Oleg Kogan built with his own hands.

A fascinating choice of encores too with a Study in A minor by Sibelius and the second of Prokofiev’s Tales of an old Grandmother op 31 (1918). This was a true voyage of discovery with masterly playing of refined musicianship as she invited us to the comfortably warming foyer upstairs to sup champagne and consider acquiring her brand new recording!

A recording made in Wyastone Leys where Nimbus used to make their historic recordings of artists forgotten by the commercial market. Perlemuter, Cherkassky, Shumsky, Guller and Roberts loved being invited into Count Numa’s ballroom to record their entire repertoire at the end of each season.

Antonina Suhanova thrills with Passion,Power and Poetry

‘New Faces’Piano Festival in Perivale Day 2