Martin making his Wigmore debut with a first half of Bach and Mozart with playing of great character and very personal interpretations . Very robust sounds for Bach’s ‘Wachet Auf’ had me hunting in the programme for an answer to the unexpected rather thick over romanticised sounds with a bass of Philadelphian proportions . Busoni of course! Which Martin played with a kaleidoscope of colour and romantic flair and an undeniable authority which for me did not suit Bach’s magical aria. Passing on to the beautiful transcription by Kempff of the Siciliano from Bach’s Flute Sonata where Martin’s sense of colour and character were able to float the magic theme with disarming simplicity on a bed of sumptuous sounds. Bach’s C minor Toccata, pure and unadulterated , was given a performance of radiance and rhythmic drive. Delving deep into the contrapuntal texture but never loosing sight of the architectural shape and maintaining the improvised nature of these early keyboard works designed to show off the instruments and the invention of the kapellmeisters of their day.
It was Schnabel who famously said Mozart was too easy for children but too difficult for adults and it was here that Martin’s deep love for Mozart and need to imbue it with character sacrificed the jewel like precision which is fundamental to it’s architectural shape and is the very backbone of his genius .Variations that were so varied with ornamentation and fluctuations of tempo that distorted rather than enriched the musical meaning. In Martin’s effort to characterise every phrase he lost the undercurrent of rhythmic drive that Chopin likens to a tree with roots firmly embedded in the ground but with the branches free to move. The ‘Menuetto’ lacked this same jewel like precision with notes thrown off with undoubted intention to illuminate but had the opposite effect. The ‘Trio’ too was far too free and wayward and lost its shape to a refined sense of colour . The Turkish March fared much better and Martin’s idea to play the acciaccaturas in two different ways was a novel idea but not over convincing.
After the interval Martin entered another world that suited him much more and was of fantasy and showmanship. Liszt’s ‘Vallée d’Obermann’ was give a poetic and heroic performance and if some of the detail in the tempestuous central episodes were covered by enormous sounds from the bass it was always of great effect. The final bars suffered from some clipped rhythms but the passion and romantic abandon that Martin imbued was of great effect and brought this great tone poem to a triumphant ending. ‘El Amor y la muerte’ from Goyescas was perhaps the highlight of the evening, as the improvised nature and showmanship found in Martin an ideal partner. Streams of notes flowed from his agile fingers with ravishing sounds and half lights illuminating every note. It was a fitting title for the ending of Granados and his wife in the English Channel with their boat torpedoed by a German submarine after the triumphant success of Goyescas in America. Martin chose to finish his recital with the Fourth Sonata of Scriabin. This is a Sonata that Gilels made his own and Martin played the first movement with the same glistening beauty and kaleidoscope of sounds, with a sensitivity and refined tonal palette that was of ravishing beauty.The dynamic drive and rhythmic precision of the Prestissimo, second movement, was played with passionate drive and like in his Liszt building up giant sonorities in the bass that obscured the Mozartian precision of Scriabin’s volando indication.
Greeted with an ovation by a very warm and generous public, Martin who loves his public and is ever ready to please and charm them, chose a paraphrase of Die Fledermaus by Grunfeld to appease their greed for more. Of course the famous melodies were played with beguiling charm and seduced his public as only Martin knows how.The refined technical finesse and superhuman subtlety of the pianists of the golden age of piano playing and the very raison d’être for these showpieces belongs to a bygone age though.
Martins charm and showmanship are beyond reproach and earned him a well deserved ovation from a packed hall on this the coldest night of the year.
The tenth day of Christmas when ’10 Lords are Leaping’ and ‘Pipers are Piping.’ Ashley Fripp with his aristocratic demeanour is certainly a piped piper with twenty five recitals in Perivale to his credit over the past twenty years. I remember Eliso Virsaladze telling me about this remarkable young ‘English’ man that she had in her class that she held for many years in the little hillside town of Sermoneta, halfway from Rome or Naples and just a stones throw from my home in Sabaudia. Later I was to meet Ashley again in Fiesole on the hills above Florence where Eliso now gives five classes a year to master students. It was Ashley who gave one of the first recitals in the Harold Acton Library in a ‘Room with a View’ overlooking the Ponte Vecchio. Inspired by his performance I was invited by the director of the British Institute, Simon Gammell, to fill this beautiful space with music and aspiring young musicians eager to find an eclectic audience to share their music with. Ashley is now a distinguished member of the music profession but is still happy to continue playing in places run by friends who share the same passion that he has for music.
Beginning this recital, on what must be the coldest day of the year, with Rachmaninov’s Prelude – ‘The Bells of Moscow’ . Written when only 19 and bought for a pittance, it became so popular that it was referred to as “The Prelude”, and audiences would demand it as an encore, shouting: “C-sharp!” Because of this, Rachmaninoff grew very tired of it and once said: “Many, many times I wish I had never written it.” He called it his “Frankenstein” (alluding to a creation that got out of control) . It is a rarity now in the concert hall where we hear more often his two sets of Preludes op 23 and op 32 ,and so it was refreshing to hear the three mighty chimes ringing out with such authority today. It was played with great majesty , but also delicacy, as the bells are allowed to reverberate with pianississimi comments suspended in mid air. The central ‘agitato’ was played with great weight and the melodic line clearly played in what is usually a gabbled haze from lesser hands. Ashley’s masterly musicianship could steer its way with clarity and architectural shaping as this central episode gradually built in tension to a cadenza of alternating chords before the final triumphant outpouring of the opening theme, this time written orchestrally on four staves. After such a tumultuous outpouring the final few bars and the whispered glistening final notes were full of poetic imagination and startling beauty.
Ashley is a great scholar, as one can hear from his playing, but he is also a very fine orator and it was good to be reminded of Liszt’s description of the second movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata as being ‘a rose between two chasms’. Also that this was one of two sonatas ‘quasi una fantasia’ whereas the Dante Sonata that was to close the programme was ‘una fantasia quasi una sonata’! The first movement was played with great fluidity with the accompanying triplets played in groups of six as the melodic line was allowed to float from treble to bass with aristocratic poise and poetic sensibility. The ‘Allegretto’ was played at a sprightly gait as the ‘Trio’ loomed over the proceedings with sombre resonance. The ‘Presto’ was played with dynamic drive and remarkable clarity bearing in mind the arctic temperature that surrounded this charming redundant church today. A crystalline brilliance and a real orchestral Beethoven sound of solidity and inevitability as Ashley drove his forces forward to the final cadenza. A moment of reflection before the final tumultuous outpouring of irascible Beethovenian impatience.
As Ashley pointed out the bells of Rachmaninov are of the Russian Orthodox Church whereas the bells of Liszt in ‘Sposalizio’ are those of a devout Catholic. This beautiful tone poem was inspired by Liszt’s visit to the Brera Gallery in Milan, where Raffaello’s ‘The Marriage of the Virgin’ sits and can still be seen to this very day. A sumptuous outpouring of sounds that even with the octave accompaniment Ashley’s superb musicianship and mastery never covered the ‘Virgin’ in glitzy mud but always allowed her to shine on high with radiance and heartfelt beauty.
As Ashley said on introducing the Dante Sonata :’now from heaven we get a glimpse of hell!’. A masterly performance where musicianship and architectural understanding were accompanied by playing of technical mastery and poetic sensibility. Ashley showed us that in music there is no such thing as difficulty but more of misunderstanding. A powerful performance with moments of passionate abandon but also of searing beauty and poignant significance and above all music that spoke so eloquently.
Ashley amongst friends knew he would not get away without an encore! He had prepared especially for his friendsElgar’s ‘Salut D’Amour’ which he played exactly as the title suggests. Ashley playing with the refined aristocratic simplicity that I remember well from Aldo Ciccolini for whom it was a favourite and much requested encore.
British pianist Ashley Fripp has performed extensively as recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, Asia, North America, Africa and Australia in many of the world’s most prestigious concert halls. Highlights include the Carnegie Hall (New York), Musikverein (Vienna), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the Philharmonie halls of Cologne, Paris, Luxembourg and Warsaw, the Bozar (Brussels), the Royal Festival, Barbican and Wigmore Halls (London), the Laeiszhalle (Hamburg), Palace of Arts (Budapest), the Megaron (Athens), Konzerthaus Dortmund, the Gulbenkian Auditorium (Lisbon) and the Konserthus (Stockholm).
He has won prizes at more than a dozen national and international competitions, including at the Hamamatsu (Japan), Birmingham and Leeds International Piano Competitions, the Royal Over-Seas League Competition, the Concours Européen de Piano (France) and the coveted Gold Medal from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Ashley was awarded the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ highest award, The Prince’s Prize, and was chosen as a ‘Rising Star’ by the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO). He has also performed in the Chipping Campden, Edinburgh, Brighton, Bath, Buxton, City of London, and St. Magnus International Festivals as well as the Oxford International Piano Festival, the Festival Pontino di Musica (Italy) and the Powsin International Piano Festival (Poland). Ashley also gave an open-air Chopin recital beside the world-famous Chopin monument in Warsaw’s Royal Lazienki Park to an audience of 2,500 people. A frequent guest on broadcasting networks, Ashley has appeared on BBC television and radio, Euroclassical, Eurovision TV and the national radio stations of Hungary, Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Portugal. Commercial recordings include Chopin Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 with the Kammerorchester der Universität Regensburg (Spektral Records, 2013); an album of solo repertoire by J. S. Bach, Thomas Adès and Chopin (Willowhayne Records, 2018); and The Saxophone Craze: Homage to Rudy Wiedoeft with classical saxophonist Jonathan Radford (Champs Hill Records, 2022).
Ashley Fripp studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with Ronan O’Hora and with Eliso Virsaladze at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole (Italy). In 2021 he was awarded a doctorate for his research into the piano music of British composer Thomas Adès. Ashley has subsequently presented at doctoral conferences, given lecture recitals and is in demand to give masterclasses both in the UK and overseas. He holds regular masterclass residencies in the picturesque medieval village of Kallmünz in Germany.
Mao Fujita with ravishing playing of clarity and delicacy. Everything he played was scrupulously observed with microscopic attention to every strand of counterpoint and a sense of balance that could allow many musical lines to live together in perfect harmony. From the very first notes of Beethoven’s first sonata there was a rare sensibility to sound that could create the most astonishing effects. His way of stroking the keys was even more evident in the ‘Adagio’ where his completely relaxed sensibility created a luminosity and fluidity of rare beauty. The final two chords carefully laid to rest but where the silence in-between became as poignant as the sounds. If the ‘Menuetto’ was a shade too fast to accommodate the ‘Trio’, it was in fact Beethoven who had written Allegretto! The ‘Minuet’ played with delicate phrasing allowed the dance element to shine through regardless of tempo indications, but the mellifluous and continuous streams of sound in the ‘Trio’ sounded breathless no matter how sensitively he shaped it. The ‘Prestissimo’ just shot from his fingers with Serkin like dynamism. Even here the mellifluous melodic central episode was floated on a cloud of sound of rare sensibility, contrasting with the driving intensity of the outward episodes in which it was wrapped, with surprising unexpected Schubertian beauty appearing, to calm Beethoven’s irascible, tempestuous impatience.
A true Florestan and Eusebius, where the latter won hands down, because of the rare sensibility to sound of this very delicate looking young man. Dressed in a distinguished silk smock as he painted pictures in sound with his total dedication to the composers he was serving. An intelligence and musicianship that he shares with his mentor Kirill Gerstein with whom he has been playing two piano recitals recently in Japan. Gerstein will be playing at the Wigmore on the 7th and is one of the finest most searching of musicians before the public and will be followed later in the month by Robert Levin a walking encyclopaedia of towering scholarship. Wigmore Academy is a unique school for ‘scandal’ indeed ! Fujita continued his musical journey with Wagner’s little ‘album leaf’ written in 1861 for Princess Pauline von Metternich, who thanks to her intervention with Napoleon III, had organised that year the première of his ‘Tannhauser’ which turned out to be such a fiasco.This short piece is a beautiful outpouring of song which Mao played with a more robust orchestral cantabile full of subtle colours, and it lead without a break into the Brahmsian theme of Berg’s 1908 Variations. It was here, as in the Mendelssohn variations that followed, that Mao’s mastery of colour and refined technical perfection allowed both sets of variations to unfold with searing intensity and ravishing beauty. The Berg was given a golden sheen with the generous use of the pedal giving a sumptuous rich sound to Berg’s practically unknown variations. The Mendelssohn are often heard in the concert hall and are a scintillating showpiece of streams of notes of driving intensity. Mao chose to use very little pedal which gave great clarity but on occasion a dryness to his extraordinary ‘ fingerfertigkeit’ where notes just poured from his sensitive fingers. Streams of golden sounds were shaped with the artistry of a pointillist painter. Allowing himself moments of glorious abandon with a continual forward drive to the final chord that Mendelssohn, like Brahms writes into the score for those few that scrupulously observe what the composer actually bequeathed to us!
a check on the piano where Mao’s beauty of touch could only enhance the instrument but never damage it
After the interval Mao brought the Berlin Philharmonic to play with Brahms’s ‘Veiled symphonic’ First Sonata erupting with dynamic drive and sumptuous rich orchestral sounds. A fearless outpouring of transcendental playing where now Florestan was in command and Eusebius appeared only with heavenly etherial sounds but where Mao managed to keep the architectural shape always in mind. There was the poignant beauty of the ‘Andante’ with its question and answer of ravishing enticement and an ending of quite etherial beauty thanks to Mao’s mastery of the pedal. Bursting into flames with the ‘Allegro molto e con fuoco’ where Mao played with great strength and rhythmic buoyancy. The ‘Presto non troppo ed agitato’ was played with enviable control but with an incisive rhythmic drive that was hypnotic.
A monumental performance from a refined young artist who first and foremost is a scholar and musician.
Isolde’s Liebestod grew out of moments of heart rending silence after the dramatic opening chords. Appearing as if in a Venetian mist ,in the distance were overheard the ravishing sounds of Isolde as she joins Tristan in death ‘blissfully accepting oblivion as the ultimate consummation of their love.’ Ravishing playing from a true poet of the keyboard with whispered sounds of glistening beauty and sumptuous waves of passionate outpourings with the glorious richness of Philadelphian velvet.The final chords spread over the keyboard where with baited breath we waited for the final notes to timelessly unfold as this most beautiful of all love stories came to a gloriously tragic end.
Mao took some persuading to return to the keyboard as he had obviously constructed a musical journey that concluded with Love and Death. However a small souvenir by Ravel was a whispered farewell to a public visibly moved by the artistry of this youthful painter in sound.
Born in Tokyo, Fujita was still studying at the Tokyo College of Music in 2017 when he took First Prize at the prestigious Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland, along with the Audience Award, Prix Modern Times, and the Prix Coup de Coeur, which first brought him to the attention of the international music community. He was also the Silver Medalist at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where his special musical qualities received exceptional attention from a jury of leading musicians. In the 2025/26 season, Fujita continues his run of impressive appearances at major festivals and venues across Europe, America, and Asia, including Salzburg Festival, Vienna, Paris, Rome, Luxembourg, Hamburg, Dortmund, Gstaad, Warsaw, Tenerife, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Lyon, and Aix-en-Provence, as well as a recital tour across North America with performances in New York, Cleveland, Boston, Minnesota, San Francisco, Vancouver, and San Diego. Season highlights also include tours in Asia and Europe with Filarmonica della Scala (Chung), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (Järvi), Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (van Zweden), and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (V. Petrenko). In addition, he debuts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, KBS Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, as well as Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and returns with the Czech Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester, Wiener Symphoniker, Deutsches-Symphonieorchester Berlin, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, and Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI. Fujita has worked with many of the leading conductors of our time, including Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Elim Chan, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniele Gatti, Manfred Honeck, Jakub Hrůša, Marek Janowski, Andris Nelsons, Petr Popelka, Lahav Shani, and Kazuki Yamada. Previous orchestral debuts include the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Münchner Philharmoniker, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, Philharmonia Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Fujita is also a sought-after chamber music partner and has worked with Renaud Capuçon, Leonidas Kavakos, Emanuel Ax, Kirill Gerstein, Antoine Tamestit, Kian Soltani, and the Hagen Quartett, among others. Fujita is an exclusive Sony Classical International artist. In October 2022, his eagerly-anticipated debut album on the Sony Classical label, a studio recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, was released to unanimous acclaim for its transparent sound worlds and vividly-detailed interpretation. He has performed the full sonata cycle at the Verbier Festival, the Wigmore Hall, and across Japan’s major concert halls. His second album on the Sony Classical label, a wide-ranging and ambitious set entitled ’72 Preludes’ that champions the 24 Preludes of Chopin, Scriabin, and Yashiro, was released in the autumn of 2024. Starting piano lessons at the age of three, Fujita won his first international prize in 2010 at the World Classic in Taiwan, and became a laureate of numerous national and international competitions such as the Rosario Marciano International Piano Competition in Vienna (2013), Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians (2015), and the Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition (2016). Fujita is a member of Konzerthaus Dortmund’s series “Junge Wilde” from the 24/25 season.
He is currently studying with Kirill Gerstein at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.
I have followed Thomas’s career since that first time when I heard him at the Joan Chissell Schumann Competition at the RCM. A young man who could produce sounds that were unique amongst his very well prepared colleagues . A fluidity of sound and limpet like precision that delved deep into every key extracting a kaleidoscope of sounds that like Magdalene Ho a few years later was to mark them out as born artists kissed by the Gods. As Curzon rightly said, though, piano playing is ninety per cent hard work and ten per cent talent. It is that ten per cent, though, that is made up of passion and supreme concentration that whilst they are at the keyboard nothing else exists. Of course there is also a world outside of practicalities and order and it is here that Thomas has struggled to come to terms and learn to combine both discipline and order with such a natural God given gift for music.
I listened to this recital in awe as the young teenager of yore has come of age with a confidence and mastery that brought him a standing ovation from an audience not expecting to be electrified by hypnotic performances of such mastery. What the public did not know, and why should they, that Thomas had been rung up the night before to substitute a pianist from Canan Maxton’s Talent Unlimited stable, who had been taken ill. The indomitable Canan Maxton who selflessly offers help and encouragement to many of the most talented musicians in the capital has, quite rightly, a privileged rapport with this most beautiful of churches and also with a less well know but equally beautiful venue in St Pancras Church in Euston Square.
Tom with Canan Maxton
That a young artist could appear in such impeccable style with a smile on his face as he was about to play a programme that would scare the life out of any but the greatest of virtuosi. He is preparing for an important competition in Utrecht where he will be noticed and celebrated in an eclectic repertoire especially chosen by Leslie Howard, that includes many works that have been totally neglected by pianists intent on playing the same pieces over and over again instead of delving deep into the musty archives of a bygone age and finding some neglected gems.
Leslie Howard was revered as a student by Guido Agosti ( a student of Busoni) in Siena and Rome and working together with Noretta Conci (Michelangeli’s assistant for fifteen years) has recorded works that are unique to the overfull recorded library. His complete Liszt recordings for the ever adventurous Hyperion label has earnt him an entry with Olympic athletes and whatever else in the Guinness Book of Records.
I have heard the Weber Konzertstück a few times with orchestra. The very first time was a recording with Joseph Cooper together with an equally unknown work by Turina, Rapsodia Sinfónia (1931). Josph Cooper better remembered as the compère of a television quiz ‘Face the Music ‘ but he was also a distinguished concert pianists having studied with Egon Petri ( also a student of Busoni). But the performance I remember above all was with Claudio Arrau together with Liszt Totentanz in the Royal Albert Hall. Brendel’s ( who we celebrate at the Barbican on Monday ) recording,too, is remarkable and shows with what esteem Weber is held by such great musicians, including Gilels and Richter, whose performances of the second and third Sonatas in London were memorable. It was fascinating to hear this Liszt reworking of the last two movements played with extraordinary clarity and rhythmic precision. The interruption of a glissando to the triumphant glorification of the march startled even the dog sitting with a wagging tail in the front row! Grandeur and aristocratic control with a remarkable sense of style which he had learnt for his much loved teacher and mentor Andrew Ball.
A scintillating ‘Presto Giocoso’ that Tom relished, sometimes cutting corners that he will no doubt polish with the jewel like precision he was to bring to the Weber Rondò from the Sonata n. 1. The ‘Perpetuum Mobile’, that many students have shed tears over, but that Tom played with the refined aristocratic ease of the pianists of the Golden Age of piano playing of Levitski, Lhevine and Rosenthal.And let’s never forget our own Benno Moiseiwitsch!
The last two movements of the ‘Pastoral Symphony’ were remarkable for the character he brought to Beethoven’s terrifying tempest and heavenly resolution as the sun comes shining through and the clouds clear with a Pastoral description in music that is without equal. Tom brought mastery, clarity and precision but above all a radiance and beauty that even had the dog wagging his tail in satisfaction !
Dmitri Alexeev was to take over the reigns from the man that I saw arm in arm together with Tom the very first time I had encountered him at the Schumann Competition.
The Alexeev’s have nurtured and helped Tom’s outrageous talent grow and be ordered allowing his sense of style and sumptuous sounds to be ever more deeply engraved in his music making. Motivated now by Vanessa Latarche, the indomitable head of keyboard at the RCM which she inherited from Andrew Ball. A small world and one big family!
An unexpected and extraordinary transcription by the legendary pianist Ignaz Friedman of the second movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony that Tom played with knife edge brilliance and an extraordinary sense of balance.
This was a prelude to some of the most demonic playing of Liszt’s almost unplayable Réminiscences de Robert Le Diable that “some day Liszt in heaven will be summoned to play his Fantasy on The Devil before the assembled company of angels.’ Exhilarating,exciting,seduc tive and quite overwhelming playing that reminded me of Sir Thomas Beecham when conducting Tchaikowsky for Horowitz to whom he complained that his orchestra could never keep up with such demonic playing.
Even the dog by now was on his feet as were many of the audience to cheer an artist on the crest of a tidal wave that will carry him around the world in a lot more than eighty days !
‘The Valse infernale from Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable was one of Liszt’s successi strepitosi in his years as a travelling virtuoso, and the title belies a more complicated genesis—in addition to the waltz, which is an orchestral firework with chorus in Act III, themes from the ballet music are also woven into this tour de force. The unpublished elaboration of Meyerbeer’s Cavatine dates from 1846, and is a bar-for-bar transcription of the Isabella’s ‘Robert, toi qui j’aime’ from Act IV. The piece ends on a dominant seventh and cannot be played by itself, but since Liszt has transposed the original up a semitone to F sharp major, it seems quite likely that he intended to add this beautifully contrasting piece of pianistic delicacy to the beginning of his famous recital warhorse, the Valse infernale‘. Leslie Howard
Horror show thrills did not originate in Hollywood — in fact, the “dream” or “nightmare factory” of movie production was anticipated in its most lurid artifacts by nineteenth and early twentieth century opera. Pacts with the devil, the undead, demoniac possession, the strutting Devil himself were part and parcel of early Romanticism, from the lofty philosophical heights of Goethe’s Faust (which gave rise to a number of musical works quite apart from the evergreen of Gounod’s Faust, Boïto’s Mefistofele, and Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand”) to Weber’s classic Der Freischütz, premiered in 1821, with its stunning Wolf’s Glen scene, and Marschner’s Der Vampyr in 1828, which influenced the young Wagner. All are possessed by demon-crossed lovers and rife with plot complications turning up again every season in spates of predictable B movies to gorge an apparently inexhaustible appetite. Eugène Scribe, that master of the operatic hot property, cobbled together a libretto potpourri of the genre for the wealthy Meyerbeer who composed the most phenomenally successful operatic spectacle of the century, the first “grand” opera, Robert le diable, premiered at the Opéra on November 22, 1831, to such earth-shaking success that it is credited with making the fortune of that moribund institution. Robert, son of the devil Bertram by a mortal woman, is led into temptation by his father at every turn, though ultimately saved by the love of a good woman (a theme very dear to Wagner). The third act features an epitome of poor taste that thrilled generations of opera-goers as Bertram summons the ghosts of nuns who violated their vows to dance a Valse infernale. Liszt, an avid opera fan, transcribed this waltz in 1841 as Réminiscences de Robert le diable — Valse infernale, which he performed for the first time at a recital in the Salle Erard on March 27, 1841, creating a furor — it sold out the same day it was put on sale by his publisher, Maurice Schlesinger. Schlesinger, at that time, was tossing journalistic assignments and musical hackwork to the obscure Richard Wagner, then in perilous financial straits in Paris. At an all-Beethoven fundraising concert on April 25, with Berlioz in command of the orchestra and Liszt the featured soloist, a clamorous audience refused to allow the program to proceed until Liszt at last consented to perform the Valse infernale. Reviewing the event for the Dresden Abendzeitung, Wagner snarled “Some day Liszt in heaven will be summoned to play his Fantasy on The Devil before the assembled company of angels.”
Salomon Izaak Freudmann. February 13, 1882 Podgórze, Kraków Poland January 26, 1948 (age 65) Sydney ,Australia .
Tempo di Menuetto, Sehr mässig (What The Flowers In The Meadow Tell Me)
As described above, Mahler dedicated the second movement to “the flowers on the meadow”. In contrast to the violent forces of the first movement, it starts as a graceful menuet. Opening with a tranquil oboe solo, the music also features stormier episodes, one of which featuring rapid rolls in the rute.also known as a multi-rod, is a beater for drums. It calms down at its end, however, and the movement ends with a staccato note in the harp and glockenspiel.
Two founder trustees of the Keyboard Trust ……………..Thomas has benefited from the help of the trust in his formative years and by coincidence has just been playing for the first time Brahms Ist Concerto here coupled with Weber.
Admired by Liszt (who published his own version, with variants)
Leslie Howard writes : ‘Liszt prepared the four sonatas and six other works of Weber in practical editions for publication in 1868 and 1870. Corrected reprints were issued in 1883. Liszt’s version for solo piano of the Konzertstück, Op 79, composed for piano and orchestra by Weber in 1821. Liszt incorporates the reduction of the orchestral parts and the original solo part on the same two staves (as it had appeared in earlier editions—the original arranger of the orchestral part is not given). Liszt provides many suggestions of alternative texts and, where necessary, of a combination of the solo part and its orchestral accompaniment playable—even if with difficulty—by two hands. The structure of this single-movement concerto was of great importance to the development of Liszt the composer. Liszt first played the work in 1833, when he was not yet twenty-two, and Weber’s fusion of several sections into one movement was to be a lifelong influence upon him, if not quite such an obsession as the Schubert ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy.’
The F minor Konzertstück was first mentioned in a letter to the critic Rochlitz, dated 14 March 1815. This makes clear that Weber from the outset had some kind of programmatic concerto format in mind, since, as he put it, ‘concertos in the minor without definite, evocative ideas seldom work with the public’ (he refers to parting, lament, profoundest misery, consolation, reunion, jubilation). Subsequently in 1821 (on 18 June, the day of the Berlin premiere of Der Freischütz), he played through a version to his wife, Caroline, and Julius Benedict, explaining (according to Benedict):
The lady sits in her tower: she gazes sadly into the distance. Her knight has been for years in the Holy Land: shall she ever see him again? Battles have been fought; but no news of him who is so dear to her. In vain have been all her prayers. A fearful vision rises to her mind—her knight is lying on the battlefield, deserted and alone; his heart’s blood is ebbing fast away. Could she but be by his side, could she but die with him! She falls exhausted and senseless. But hark! What is that distant sound? What glimmers in the sunlight from the wood? What are those forms approaching? Knights and squires with the cross of the Crusades, banners waving, acclamations of the people; and there!—it is he! She sinks into his arms. Love is triumphant. Happiness without end. The very woods and waves sing the song of love; a thousand voices proclaim its victory.
Thomas Kelly started playing the piano aged 3 and aged 9 performed Mozart’s 24th Concerto with Orchestra. Thomas studied at the Purcell School for Young Musicians and is currently the Benjamin Britten Fellow at the Royal College of Music, (the highest award for any pianist at the RCM) where he is guided by Professors Dmitri Alexeev and Vanessa Latarche. Thomas was a prizewinner at the 2021 Leeds International Piano Competition, enjoying critical recognition and in 2022 won 2nd Prize and the semi-final concerto prize at Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition. He has won numerous international competitions including 1st prizes at the Pianale International Piano Competition (2017), Kharkiv Assemblies (2018), Lucca Virtuoso e Bel Canto Festival (2018), Theodor Leschetizky Competition (2020), and Intercollegiate Sheepdrove Piano Competition (2022). In 2024 Thomas was awarded the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother Rose Bowl upon graduating the RCM, and most recently became a finalist of the International Liszt Competition in Utrecht which will take place in January 2026.
He regularly collaborates with fellow musicians, including stepping in for Nikolai Demidenko alongside Dmitri Alexeev in his transcription of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite for 2 pianos in 2021, and performing Messiaen’s Turangalila-Symphonie with Jac van Steen conducting the RCM Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. Past performances include Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, St John’s Smith Square, Steinway Hall, Leighton House, St James’ Piccadilly, Stoller Hall (Manchester), West Road Concert Hall (Cambridge), Leeds Town Hall, Kammermusiksaal Berlin Philharmonie, Paris Conservatoire, the TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, the Lunel-Viel festival near Montpellier, StreingreaberHaus in Bayreuth, Teatro Del Sale and the British Institute in Florence. Thomas was also recently featured on the BBC Arts In Motion documentary series in a masterclass with Yuja Wang.
Thomas has also been a C. Bechstein Scholar supported by the Kendall-Taylor award, generously supported by the Keyboard Charitable Trust, and is grateful for the generous support of Talent Unlimited . Thomas is currently looking forward to a solo Wigmore appearance and regular concerto appearances among other upcoming performances.
A family celebration appropriately on Valentine’s Day for an extraordinary man, much loved and admired. Celebrated in ‘his’ club with many illustrious guests, family and friends and introduced by his daughter Caroline von Reitzenstein with a celebration in words and music.
The year had begun with the first of three concerts in the collaboration with Stephen Dennison for the Haslemere HHH concerts at St Barthomews, with William Bracken 11th January, Milda Daunoraite 25th January and Emanuil Ivanov 15th March.
Can Arisoy had presented the project to record his piano transcription of Schumann’s Dichterliebe in the Coach House Piano Salon in a recital on his birthday.
A collaboration with Warren Mailly Smith’s City Productions where the KT was invited to present many of it’s Rising Stars in the beautiful church, now in a pedestrian precinct and no longer the centre of a roundabout in the Strand, opposite Somerset House.
Julian Chan gave the first of our Steinway Hall concerts on the 12th February. Seven concerts generously hosted by Wiebke Greinus, Concert manager of Steinway London
Giovanni Bertolazzi played on the 19th February for our old friends Garo Geheyan and Yvonne Georgiadou at their Pharos Arts Foundation on Cyprus. An introduction by Garo with a moving eulogy to his dear friend John Leech.
A Sunday morning recital at the Filarmonica gave Giovanni a chance to visit Noretta at home in Trento at home in London a few years ago
Garo Geheyana shoe factory transformed into a magic place for all the senses
Jeremy Chan and Nikita Lukinov played at the Bechstein Hall both on the same day for the Young Musicians Series and for their regular ‘Roast’ series. An important venue for young musicians that hopefully will be able to continue after some difficult obstacles to overcome in their first season
The ever generous Angela Hewitt had given a very special recital for Stephen Dennison on the 24th May playing the Goldberg Variations in Haslemere which I had helped coordinate.
Milda Daunoraite Sherri Lun Kasparas Mikuzis all KT artists with Melody WuWilliam Bracken with Mike Oldham,the greatest page turner the world has ever known
In Grosseto Vitaly Pisarenko was invited to judge the competition on 6,7,8 June for Recondite Armonie created by KT emeritus Gala Chistiakova with her husband Diego Benocci.
Gala and Diego with their two children whose Godfather is Vitaly PisarenkoThe Jury In the foreground Fausto De Cesare
The Keyboard Trust awards a recital to a top prize winner decided by the jury. Alessio Tonelli will play in Viterbo on the 24th January.
Masterclass of Vitaly Pisarenko Alessio Tonelli KT Prize winner of the Piano Competition chosen by emeritus KT Vitaly Pisarenko
We have a very successful continuing collaboration with Erin Arts centre on the Isle of Man with masterclasses and concerts with William Bracken 18th January, Jeremy Chan on the 22nd March and Julian Chan on the 27th September.
On the 9th August a recital by Apolline Khou who gave a harpsichord recital in St Cecilia’s Hall Edinburgh for our Historic Instruments Series organised by Elena Vorotoko. A programme of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) – English suite in G minor BWV 808 : Prelude; Marin Marais (1656-1728) – Prélude en G minor (Livre V), Le petit badinage, Prélude en D minor (Livre IV) ; Johann Sebastian Bach : French suite in D minor BWV 812: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Menuets, Gigue ; Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750) – Sonata in B flat Major: Prelude, Presto; Marin Marais – Les regrets ; Johann Sebastian Bach – Partita in B flat Major BWV 825: Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Menuets, Gigue.
On the 12 August a recital by Pedro Lopez Sales for the Festival of Simone Tavoni in Spain in Paisajes. A few weeks later he repeated the programme in London at St James’s Piccadilly.
On the 19th August Mark Viner gave another recital on his eclectic voyage of discovery shared in his numerous CD’s received rapturously and voraciously by discerning music critics worldwide.
On 21st and 22nd August Jeremy Chan and Bridget Yee gave two joint recitals in the Lunel Viel Festival near Montpelier Avignon in France
Lina Tufano left with Raffaella Mennella
On the 6th and 7th September I accompanied Shunta Morimoto to Ischia and although he has not yet needed help from the KT, Lina Tufano ever sensible to helping young exceptionally talented musicians, very kindly invited him to their series on Ischia. Winner of the Hastings Competition at 17 now at 20 he is on the threshold of an important career that I have been following for the past five years whilst he has been studying in Rome.
He will be performing for the Keyboard Trust in London as the Career Development Prize established by our founders, who had attended every competition since the first in 1949
Giulia Contaldo played at St Michael and All Angels Adbaston on 7th September.
On the 12th September Mikhail Kambarov played in the Emergences Festival, Aramon Gard near Avignon, Nimes.
Magdalene Ho gave three recitals at Bechstein Halls in Cologne,Düsseldorf and Hamburg dedicated by Moritz von Bredow to the late Alfred Brendel, a founder trustee of the Keyboard Trust :
Ayane Nakajima played in Florence in the Harold Acton Library – British Institute on the 25th September .
On the 13 November Julian Chan played in Cyprus at the Pharos Arts Foundation Ahead of his recital Julian Chang took the opportunity to visit the Music School in Nicosia, to deliver an extremely interesting educational concert. It was a wonderful atmosphere, and the students were fantastic as always!!
On the 16th November Misha Kaploukhii and Magdalene Ho gave a public recital together in Perivale having played in my house with the critic Jed Distler just for the fun of making music together
Two concerts in Italy on 27th and 28th November for Gabrielé Sutkuté. In Florence on the 27th, and on the 28th in a new venue for us in Forlì, created by Nicoló Giuliano Tuccia to celebrate their illustrious citizen Guido Agosti.
I have heard Mikhail a few times since that first encounter in Trapani in 2024 when he was awarded the Gold Medal at the International Piano Competition. There had been some fine playing from well trained pianists in a competition still in its early years. When a young Russian pianist struck up ‘Le Baiser de l’enfant Jesu’ by Messiaen, Oxana Yablonskaja and I looked at each other in disbelief that such emotion could be created by an artist with such poetry in sound.
‘The Messiaen brought tears to my eyes as the stillness and whispered sounds of heart rending significance struck deep and the pungent harmonies, sometimes like broken glass, were of searing intensity.’ Christopher Axworthy Trapani April 2024
A maturity and mastery way beyond his youthful appearance as his performance of the Corelli variations also demonstrated. I did not know him before this but on congratulating him he told me that he was studying in Weimar with an emeritus artist of the Keyboard Trust, Michail Lifits. I know him very well and whose superb recording of Schubert Sonatas have the same magic sense of fantasy and style. In fact at the 30th Anniversary of the Keyboard Trust, Michail Lifits had played Chopin’s much maligned First Ballade in a way that was a recreation of subtle poetic playing, restoring it to it’s rightful place as a supreme masterpiece.
The work of a pianist should always begin with the composer’s indications in the score and it is the start of a search for the sounds that the composer had in his head at the moment of creation. Beethoven when he was completely deaf could leave very precise instructions that miraculously he could still hear in his head and write down for posterity. Debussy too could write the most precise instructions of how he wanted certain notes to be played. Debussy had edited the works of Chopin and so had experience of composer’s notation. But in the end it is up to the interpreter and it can become a personal choice on a voyage of discovery of which the audience too plays an important role. Some interpreters are happy just to reproduce what is on the printed page and others like Mikhail dare to get up onto the high wire and risk all, in the search for the very meaning behind the notes. There is an undercurrent in the bass like a wave on which the sounds are anchored. Chopin likened it to a tree with the roots firmly planted in the ground leaving the branches free to move with the wind. The danger for a ‘stylist’ is that in the search for sound and underlining certain phrases, this wave can be lost or broken and we are left with just some ravishing moments that are not linked to a whole and in the end become disjointed and boring.The musical line is the great arch that holds a work together from the first to the last note and if it is broken a great architectural masterpiece can become merely a series of unrelated sounds. It needs a musician who with intelligence and a sense of architectural understanding can also have the same flexibility and sensitivity as the human voice.
It was with the opening work of this short recital that Mikhail immediately demonstrated his credentials as a supreme stylist and intelligent musician. Schumann’s ‘Arabesque’ can sound very repetitive as the opening theme is repeated each time, interrupted by differing episodes.The term ‘Arabeske’ is used here as a poetic metaphor, not only to describe florid decoration, but also, in Schlegel’s terms, to suggest a fluid, organic system of fragments that transcends artificial Classical forms. Schumann employs modified rondo form to encompass a short ABACA rondo form, with the gently lyrical main section A, two more intense episodes B (Florestan) and C, and a beautifully pensive Epilogue (Eusebius). Each time the rondo theme returned Mikhail managed to imbue it with a different meaning especially coming after the two contrasting episodes. A beguiling sense of style and subtle colouring with an improvised freedom adding beauty not distortion with a refreshing sense of recreation. The underlining of inner harmonies adding a depth and radiance to a work that Mikhail allowed to speak with a voice of poetic beauty. It was like a singer with the same notes but with different words. The reflective epilogue was played with etherial , whispered beauty and radiance . Schumann and Schubert at the end of their song cycles would often conclude with a piano postlude where music reaches places where words are not enough.
Mikhail managed to recreate Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ Sonata where his sensitivity and fantasy were linked inextricably to the great architectural line that Beethoven constructs. A palette of sounds all within the first few bars with the rests speaking louder than the notes. Gradually a dynamic drive of continual contrasts becoming more and more urgent. A beautifully lyrical second subject bursting into a scintillating output of energy where Beethoven’s markings were scrupulously observed and imbued with passionate intensity. The ‘Andante con moto’ was played with full rich sound of string quartet quality as this cortège wound its way inexorably forward. Adding more notes with each of the variations that Mikhail played with great beauty and clarity, until the final whispered chord that was to explode into the ‘Allegro ma non troppo- Finale.’ A movement played with a continual forward drive and masterly control as a continuous web of notes was played with whispered weavings contrasting with explosions of passionate drive. The coda was the culmination of this movement of exhilaration and excitement and as the temperature rose Mikhail managed to keep masterly control but with breathtaking intensity. This was a remarkable performance in which Mikhail managed to combine a classical interpretation with style and imagination that brought this great work vividly to life.
Chopin’s Sonatas have often been criticised as a series of episodes rather than one whole of architectural shape. Mikhail, as with the Beethoven, managed to combine his stylistic fantasy never forgetting the overall shape which gave great strength to the outer movements. Chords were played where the upper notes were allowed to sing in a movement where, under Mikhail’s sensitive hands, there was a radiance and beauty to all he played. A second subject that was of improvised freedom but always moving forward where even in the development there was a palette of sounds that could create such mellifluous beauty even to strands of meandering counterpoints. The ‘Scherzo’ was played with a jeux perlé that were streams of undulating sounds played with fleeting masterly radiance. The ‘Trio’ was allowed to sing with a languid beauty where counterpoints were allowed to weave their way with great freedom and a beguiling sense of colour. After the scintillating return of the ‘Scherzo’ the final chords were immediately picked up by the imperious opening to the ‘Largo.’ A bel canto played with great flexibility and freedom as the changing harmonies of the central episode were played with flowing beauty. The opening agitato of the ‘Finale’ was played with whispered menace as it gradually took flight with outbursts of scintillating brilliance. A ‘tour de force’ of control and mastery with the rondò theme returning ever more intensely until the final explosion of the coda played with brilliance and mastery. Another remarkable performance of a work that can sound very fragmented in lesser hands but that Mikhail could see the architectural shape of a tightly constructed masterwork.
An encore of Chopin’s most famous nocturne, op 9 n. 2 . Mikhail could now let his hair down and indulge in a performance that one might have heard from the Chopin experts of the Golden age of piano playing. Subtle half lights and long drawn out rubati were slightly exaggerated but worked its magic on an audience now totally won over by such poetic mastery.
Composers such as Richard Strauss,Sergei Prokofiev,Ogor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith played and conducted their works in the Laeiszhalle. Vladimir Horowitz gave one of his first international performances in 1926; violinist Yehudi Menuhin gave a guest performance in 1930 at the age of twelve. Following World War II, which it survived intact, the Laeiszhalle experienced an intermezzo when the British occupying forces used the space temporarily as a broadcast studio for their radio station BFN Maria Callas gave concerts in 1959 and 1962
VIRTUOSOS AMONG THEMSELVES
Weimar, where piano virtuoso Franz Liszt once lived and worked, is still one of the most important training centres for young pianists today. No wonder Mikhail Kambarov was drawn to the city: at the age of 16, he came to Weimar to attend the music grammar school, and promptly won the national competition »Jugend musiziert«. Since then, he has garnered many important prizes, a coveted scholarship from the German Music Foundation and a place as a student with Michail Lifits. At the Laeiszhalle, Kambarov devotes himself entirely to the 19th century and its piano stars: Schumann, Beethoven and Chopin composed many works that remain essentials in the concert pianist’s repertoire.
PROGRAMME
Robert Schumann Arabeske in C major, Op. 18
Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata for Piano in F minor, Op. 57 »Appassionata«
Allegro assai – Andante con molto -Allegro ma non troppo
Frédéric Chopin Sonata for Piano in B minor, Op. 58
Allegro maestoso – Scherzo Molto vivace – Largo – Presto,non tanto
Encore:
Frédéric Chopin Nocturne E flat major op. 9/2
‘I would also like to say Thank you for Mikhail’s wonderful concert. His musical maturity, his interpretative range and his natural musicality were very infectious and refreshing. It was truly wonderful to listen to him and it was great that he was part of our Teatime series.’
Laeiszhalle Kleiner Saal The Laeiszhalle Kleiner Saal is a music hall located within Laeiszhalle Hamburg, which proves to be one of the best music venues in the city, and is suitable for a number of musical performances. The hall has a seating capacity of 639, and has seen various kinds of performances ranging from opera and jazz, to theater recitals, children’s shows and a lot more. The 1950s style layout of the hall is also quite striking, and makes for an enhanced setting to enjoy a concert.http://www.johnleechvr.com/. https://youtu.be/gaV72Mp_jDQphoto credit Dinara Klinton https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/03/20/christopher-axworthy-dip-ram-aram/
Mark’s annual Christmas concert arriving in London with the final two performances at St Mary’s Perivale for his dear friend and admirer Dr Mather and in the church of St Michael and All Angels, opposite his home in Bedford Park, where he also is an active member of the congregation.
More extraordinary playing from Mark Viner as his latest CD dedicated to Alkan receives accolades fit only for a Prince of the Keyboard. With typical modesty, dedication and not a little hardship Mark continues his voyage of discovery bringing us performances of mastery and extraordinary scholarship that are being celebrated regularly with every one of his many CD’s as they are issued. His is not the popular repertoire that draws the crowds but for us that think we know all there is of the piano repertoire he puts us to shame with discoveries of works by forgotten masters. Names that adorn the history books with stories of reclusive virtuosi crushed by the Talmud or of duels in Parisian salons between adored favourite virtuosi. Rarely has this music been brought to life by performances of mastery and scholarship such as Mark is showing us, with a continual stream of musical discoveries. But it is not only the forgotten masterpieces that he plays with authority and mastery but he brings the same microscopic seriousness to well worn classics where rhetoric and tradition have taken us far from what the composer actually bequeathed to posterity in the score. Today Mark chose to open and close with two well worn masterpieces by Mozart and Liszt and in-between to show us not the usual Pletnev concert transcription of Tchaikovsky but that of the composer’s friend Taneyev . Together with a series of miniatures ,one by Rebikov that Cherkassky used to play as an encore ( which he would announce to me in the wings of his concerts in Rome ) and some rare miniatures written for Liszt’s granddaughter Daniela von Bulow as a Christmas present. She had accompanied her grandfather to Rome due to his frail condition and the first performance was on Christmas Day 1881 in Daniela’s Rome hotel suite. This was the day on which her mother Cosima always celebrated her birthday, although she was actually born on Christmas Eve.
Mozart K.331 Andante / Menuetto / Rondo Alla turca
Mark’s Mozart is of a crystalline clarity and a chiselled beauty respectful of it’s time and imbued with an attention to detail of phrasing adding pedal only enhancing the beauty and simplicity with which he allowed the music to unfold with jewel like brilliance. There was a beautiful legato to the third of the opening variations with octaves that were allowed to sing with glowing beauty. A ‘joie de vivre’ of exultation as the clarion bells rang out in the fourth before the poignant beauty of the Adagio of the fifth. Charm and radiance rang out in the sixth and final variation with the closing two chords played without any rhetoric but thrown off with a simple ‘that’s all’. A simplicity and beauty with scrupulous attention to Mozart’s indications but that did not exclude the poetic beauty that a true artist could find within the notes themselves. Repeats , too,scrupulously respected and relished. There was a question and answer to the ‘Menuetto’ with it’s pompous opening statement answered with a heartrending reply before the mellifluous outpouring of the ‘Trio’ played with operatic participation.He brought a stately brilliance to the Rondò ‘Alla Turca’ with it’s very discreet echo effect always understated rather than underlined which had so much more effect than the more exaggerated performances that we are usually subjected to. As Mark says in his admirably short but exhaustive notes:’ vivid pageantry, replete with the jangle of the Turkish crescent ,readily evoking the music of janissary bands’.
Mark brought the charm and beauty of the Golden age of piano playing to Rebikov’s Valse from his Christmas Tree Ballet op 21. Playing of another age when Levitski, Moiseiwitch, De Pachmann and of course Cherkassky played with velvet gloves and the love of the sounds they could create https://youtu.be/HtVtqSJdxLc?si=qED3tTWn0vI86Gt2
Tchaikowsky’s Nutcracker Ballet has long been a favourite at Christmas time where Opera houses all over the globe play to full houses full of the festive spirit.
Taneyev, a close friend of Tchaikowsky had made a transcription of the work that the composer considered much too difficult for the average pianist and so wrote his own simplified version for Ballet rehearsals and every day use. Pletnev recently has made a concert suite of many of the pieces which is often played and is full of pianistic fireworks .Mark chose to play the equally testing transcription by Taneyev which is rarely if ever heard but is equally full of pianistic invention and brilliant streams of notes and as Mark says he prefers it to Pletnev . Choosing the ‘Waltz’ and the ‘Pas de Deux’ having decided that this was no place for any ‘Sugar Plum Fairies’ .Playing with a sumptuous outpouring of radiance and passion with a control and sense of balance where the famous melodies could shine above an embroidery of swirling accompaniments.The ‘Pas de Deux’ opening with streams of notes over the entire keyboard firing off glissandi at the top and bottom of the keyboard with the same skill as the étoiles on stage.
After the interval Mark played a rarity even for Liszt where his Weihnachtsbaum S.186 ‘occupies a unique position as there is nothing else quite like it ‘. I remember puzzling over it as a schoolboy who used to look over the few scores that our local library housed in Chiswick. It looked rather sparse and uninviting and I often wondered why it was one of the only works of Liszt in my local library. Today all was made clear as Mark brought those unforgiving pages to life with artistry and conviction. ‘O come, all ye faithfully ‘ suddenly appeared out of strange evocative chords as four of these twelve pieces became ever more radiant and strangely beautiful, with a voice that the Genius of Liszt could see was the sound world of the next century. Mark ,of course, has made a recording of the entire suite that has filled a gap in the CD library. Little could Daniela have known that her birthday present was a crystal ball looking into the future.
Richard Wagner with his family and friends Heinrich von Stein (left) and Paul von Joukowsky (right) in front of Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth . Daniela von Bülow is in the center, standing. Photograph dated August 23, 1881 Baroness Daniela von Bülow (12 October 1860 – 28 July 1940), nicknamed Loulou or Lusch , was a German pianist and costume designer.Daniela von Bülow was the first daughter of the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow, and Cosima Liszt She was named after Cosima’s brother, Daniel Liszt, who “had tragically died of consumption in 1859”. She was the step-daughter of German composer Richard Wagner, and the granddaughter of Franz Liszt. She was a “fine pianist” in her own right, who had been trained primarily by her mother but also coached by Wagner.
Liszt dedicated Weihnachtsbaum to his first grandchild Daniela von Bülow (1860-1940); daughter of Cosima and Hans von Bülow. Daniela had accompanied her grandfather to Rome due to his frail condition and the first performance was on Christmas Day 1881 in Daniela’s Rome hotel suite. This was the day on which her mother Cosima always celebrated her birthday, although she was actually born on Christmas Eve.
The Twelfth and Second of Liszt’s eighteen Hungarian Rhapsodies have become the most played by virtuosi pianists at the end of a recital They are great showpieces full of heartrending emotions and pianistic hi – jinx. The Twelfth was a great favourite of Artur Rubinstein ( who died on 20th December 1982 aged 95 ) and is full of drama and passion as well as teasing Tzigane melodies of ravishing beauty. Mark recognised all this but also played with a rhythmic precision and respect for the score that brought this old showpiece vividly to life with renewed vigour and astonishing beauty.
A standing ovation from a hall full of friends and admirers. Mark,like Arrau usually plays his programmes that have been prepared with scholarship and does not add to it on command. However on this occasion Mark asked for the lights to be dimmed again as he was amongst friends and it was Christmas .He sat at the piano and his left hand struck the first imposing notes of Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu. A ‘fingerfertigkeit’ of extraordinary brilliance and passionate abandon that was overwhelming. The bel canto of the central episode was played with a freedom and beauty which made the return of the opening and the passionate outpouring of the coda even more intoxicating.
Described by International Piano Magazine as “one of the most gifted pianists of his generation”, Mark Viner is steadily gaining a reputation as one of Britain’s leading concert pianists; his unique blend of individual artistry combined with his bold exploration of the byways of the piano literature garnering international renown. He began playing at the age of 11 before being awarded a scholarship two years later to enter the Purcell School of Music where he studied with Tessa Nicholson for the next five years. Another scholarship took him to the Royal College of Music where he studied with the late Niel Immelman for the next six years, graduating with first class honours in a Bachelor of Music degree in 2011 and a distinction in Master of Performance 2013; the same year which afforded him the honour to perform before HM the King. https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/07/14/niel-immelman-by-mark-viner/
After winning 1st prize at the Alkan-Zimmerman International Piano Competition in Athens, Greece in 2012, his career has brought him across much of Europe as well as North and South America. While festival invitations include appearances the Raritäten der Klaviermusik, Husum in Germany, the Cheltenham Music Festival and Harrogate Music Festival in the United Kingdom and the Festival Chopiniana in Argentina, radio broadcasts include recitals and interviews aired on Deutschlandfunk together with frequent appearances on BBC Radio 3. His acclaimed Wigmore Hall début recital in 2018 confirmed his reputation as one of today’s indisputable torchbearers of the Romantic Revival. https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2018/03/03/mark-viner-takes-london-by-storm/
He is particularly renowned for his CD recordings on the Piano Classics label which include music by Alkan, Blumenfeld, Chaminade, Liszt and Thalberg, all of which have garnered exceptional international critical acclaim. His most important project to date is a survey of the complete piano music of Alkan: the first of its kind and which is expected to run to some 18 CDs in length. Aside from a busy schedule of concerts and teaching, he is also a published composer and writer and his advocacy for the music of Alkan led to his election as Chairman the Alkan Society 2014.
Mulled wine made by our host,Glenn, for a Liederabend in the intimate atmosphere of the 1901 Arts Club in Waterloo.
General Manager Glenn Kesby
Jakob Schad and Parvis Hejazi Dreaming of Love with Echoes of Loss. Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Brahms Neun Lieder und Gesänge with a duo united as one, as magical sounds wafted around this beautiful candlelit salon with passionate intensity and poetic poignancy.
Jakob Schad’s superb voice need not fear having the piano lid wide open because not only does he have the power but also his pianist has the sensibility to blend together in the recreation of one of Schumann’s greatest song cycles.It was the equal mastery of both that was able to convey the deeply personal message in Heine’s poetry. Sometimes music can speak louder than words and after the poignant message of the voice it was the piano of Parvis that concluded and had the last ‘word’.
Nowhere more than in the final bars for solo piano with which this song cycle ends. Parvis hardly looking at the score as he was able to continue the poignant beauty of Jakob’s voice and add deeply expressive meaning with playing of ravishing beauty.
Brahms was much more for Jacob’s magnificently expressive voice where Parvis’s was more orchestral than pianistic with sumptuous rich sounds just sustaining Jacob’s powerful voice. After such an intense and refined evening of superb music making the audience that had been listening so attentively managed to persuade these two young artists to sing just one more lied before adjourning upstairs to the bar.
Robert Schumann 8 June 1810 Zwickau Saxony. 29 July 1856 (aged 46). Bonn Germany
Dichterliebe, A Poet’s Love (composed 1840), Robert Schumann op 48). The texts for its 16 songs come from the Lyrisches Intermezzo by Heinrich Heine, written in 1822–23 and published as part of Heine’s Das Buch der Lieder. Though Schumann originally set 20 songs to Heine’s poems, only 16 of the 20 were included in the first edition. Dein Angesicht (Heine no. 5) is one of the omitted items. Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, On Wings of Song (Heine no 9), is best known from a setting by Mendelssohn. The introduction to the first song, Im wunderschönen Monat Mai, is a direct quote from Clara Wieck- Schumann’s piano Concerto in A minor (1835}
Songs
(The synopses here are made from the Heine texts.)
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (Heine, Lyrical Intermezzo no 1). (“In beautiful May, when the buds sprang, love sprang up in my heart: in beautiful May, when the birds all sang, I told you my desire and longing.”)
Aus meinen Tränen sprießen (Heine no 2). (“Many flowers spring up from my tears, and a nightingale choir from my sighs: If you love me, I’ll pick them all for you, and the nightingale will sing at your window.”)
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne (Heine no 3). (“I used to love the rose, lily, dove and sun, joyfully: now I love only the little, the fine, the pure, the One: you yourself are the source of them all.”)
Wenn ich in deine Augen seh (Heine no 4). (“When I look in your eyes all my pain and woe fades: when I kiss your mouth I become whole: when I recline on your breast I am filled with heavenly joy: and when you say, ‘I love you’, I weep bitterly.”)
Ich will meine Seele tauchen (Heine no 7). (“I want to bathe my soul in the chalice of the lily, and the lily, ringing, will breathe a song of my beloved. The song will tremble and quiver, like the kiss of her mouth which in a wondrous moment she gave me.”)
Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome (Heine no 11). (“In the Rhine, in the sacred stream, great holy Cologne with its great cathedral is reflected. In it there is a face painted on golden leather, which has shone into the confusion of my life. Flowers and cherubs float about Our Lady: the eyes, lips and cheeks are just like those of my beloved.”)
Ich grolle nicht (Heine no 18). (“I do not chide you, though my heart breaks, love ever lost to me! Though you shine in a field of diamonds, no ray falls into your heart’s darkness. I have long known it: I saw the night in your heart, I saw the serpent that devours it: I saw, my love, how empty you are.”)
Und wüßten’s die Blumen, die kleinen (Heine no 22). (“If the little flowers only knew how deeply my heart is wounded, they would weep with me to heal my suffering, and the nightingales would sing to cheer me, and even the starlets would drop from the sky to speak consolation to me: but they can’t know, for only One knows, and it is she that has torn my heart asunder.”)
Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen (Heine no 20). (“There is a blaring of flutes and violins and trumpets, for they are dancing the wedding-dance of my best-beloved. There is a thunder and booming of kettle-drums and shawms. In between, you can hear the good cupids sobbing and moaning.”)
Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen (Heine no 40). (“When I hear that song which my love once sang, my breast bursts with wild affliction. Dark longing drives me to the forest hills, where my too-great woe pours out in tears.”)
Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen (Heine no 39). (“A youth loved a maiden who chose another: the other loved another girl, and married her. The maiden married, from spite, the first and best man that she met with: the youth was sickened at it. It’s the old story, and it’s always new: and the one whom she turns aside, she breaks his heart in two.”)
Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen (Heine no 45). (“On a sunny summer morning I went out into the garden: the flowers were talking and whispering, but I was silent. They looked at me with pity, and said, ‘Don’t be cruel to our sister, you sad, death-pale man.'”)
Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet (Heine no 55). (“I wept in my dream, for I dreamt you were in your grave: I woke, and tears ran down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, thinking you had abandoned me: I woke, and cried long and bitterly. I wept in my dream, dreaming you were still good to me: I woke, and even then my floods of tears poured forth.”)
Allnächtlich im Traume (Heine no 56). (“I see you every night in dreams, and see you greet me friendly, and crying out loudly I throw myself at your sweet feet. You look at me sorrowfully and shake your fair head: from your eyes trickle the pearly tear-drops. You say a gentle word to me and give me a sprig of cypress: I awake, and the sprig is gone, and I have forgotten what the word was.”)
Aus alten Märchen winkt es (Heine no 43). “(The old fairy tales tell of a magic land where great flowers shine in the golden evening light, where trees speak and sing like a choir, and springs make music to dance to, and songs of love are sung such as you have never heard, till wondrous sweet longing infatuates you! Oh, could I only go there, and free my heart, and let go of all pain, and be blessed! Ah! I often see that land of joys in dreams: then comes the morning sun, and it vanishes like smoke.”)
Die alten, bösen Lieder (Heine no 65). (“The old bad songs, and the angry, bitter dreams, let us now bury them, bring a large coffin. I shall put very much therein, I shall not yet say what: the coffin must be bigger than the great tun at Heidelberg. And bring a bier of stout, thick planks, they must be longer than the Bridge at Mainz. And bring me too twelve giants, who must be mightier than the Saint Christopher in the cathedral at Cologne. They must carry away the coffin and throw it in the sea, because a coffin that large needs a large grave to put it in. Do you know why the coffin must be so big and heavy? I will put both my love and my suffering into it.”)
Johannes Brahms 7 May 1833 Hamburg 3 April 1897 (aged 63) Vienna
There is a strong case for thinking of Brahms’ Neun Lieder und Gesänge op 32 as a kind of latter-day Dichterliebe, or rather Komponistenliebe. The composer’s self-identification with the nine songs of Op 32, which feature lost love, isolation, nostalgia and amorous self abasement Aand his careful selection and dovetailing of five Platen settings and four Daumer, is very much a personal statement.
A quite extraordinary recital by a pianist who was as a child much admired by Karajan, and since birth has been linked to the piano which is his friend and companion and whose secrets he has unearthed over a lifetime dedicated to a continual research of sound. In 2006 he played in my series in Rome the ‘Goldberg Varatiations’ and during the pandemic he recorded in an empty hall in Genoa,where he lives ,the second book of the Well Tempered Klavier. I was honoured when he asked me to write the notes for the CD that was issued of that performance.
Today in a programme that spanned two centuries he opened with Four Preludes and Fugues from Book 2. He had asked me if the piano in Perivale had three pedals, and neither I ,Dr Hugh Mather or even Michael Lewis the piano tuner understood why he needed to know about a pedal that is almost obsolete for the vast majority of pianists. The reason soon became evident as Michael pointed out in the rehearsal that he was only using the central pedal. Could it be that he had got lost and was confusing the middle pedal for the sustaining pedal? Michael asked me not to mention it in case it was just pre concert nerves! Well I did gently mention it and he said I was quite right to notice, and for classical music he only uses the middle pedal that can fill in some holes in his finger legato. In fact from Bach to Mozart taking in Scarlatti, Cimarosa and surprisingly the unknown Romance of Verdi there was a quite extraordinary clarity of his perfect finger legato without any smudging from the sustaining pedal, creating a purity and radiance to the sound that I have rarely heard before.
The Four Bach were played with crystalline clarity and a range of sound where his finger independence could lead the way with Bach’s knotty twine and make the path forward always so clear. A sense of balance that was quite extraordinary as the gradations of sound seemed to be infinite and never throughout the whole recital was there any ugly or forced sound.
Even the Busoni transcription of ‘Ich ruf zu dir’ was played with shining beauty with a very dry bass accompaniment, very measured and unusually respectful for a work that is usually drowned in pedal. It lost nothing of its beauty as the bass sustained the melodic line with deep majestic sonorities. A remarkably original and ravishingly beautiful performance that in a way mirrors Busoni’s own playing,as much as we can discern from the piano roll recordings that he bequeathed to the world and that were housed by Frank Holland in the Brentford Piano Museum just a stones throw away.
The little Cimarosa Sonata was beautifully shaped with great delicacy with only the use of the central pedal giving a chiselled beauty to this disarming short work.
Scarlatti too was played with a poignant shining beauty where Andrea’s finger legato could bring infinite colour to three of these remarkable jewels of which the composer was to pen over 500 during his lifetime.
What a voyage of discovery this recital was turning out to be, as Andrea opened Mozart’s Little Funeral March with noble majesty and imperious authority.
The Fantasy in D minor that was to followed I have never heard played with such poignant clarity. All the usual rhetoric and over pedalled cadenzas were gone and replaced with sounds of chiselled beauty. A radiance and multitude of sounds where Andrea’s sensitive fingers could dig deep into the notes and extract sounds of quite extraordinary delicacy and significance. Gasping phrases played with discreet sensitivity and long repeated notes played with fearless authority. Very discreet ornamentation to the final episode was just enough to bring a smile for a work that I had never considered to be the miniature tone poem that Andrea showed us today. Around the world in eight minutes ,you might say, with a range of emotions and characters of a piece that I played for grade six, and is certainly too difficult for children and considered much too easy by most budding virtuosi!
Schubert played with both pedals in the traditional manner except that Andrea’s perfect legato was just enhanced by the sustaining pedal adding a radiance and ravishing beauty to one of Schubert’s most beautiful melodies. Just underlining some inner harmonies on the repeat that were like jewels shining in this wonder world of Schubert. Streams of notes in the central episode played with remarkable poignant clarity as this work rose from its companions like a mighty eagle rising out of the depths and showing us the miracle of creation.
The Liszt consolation was bathed in pedal as the deep D flat sustained the glowing beauty of the chiselled melodic line of timeless refined elegance and nostalgic beauty.
The Rota I had not heard before but was played with the same chiselled beauty as Liszt, but with a melodic line of purity and piercing directness.
Debussy’s lonesome Little Shepherd was of haunting beauty as his single long lament rang out with beseeching luminosity. Greeted by the bass of Jumbo’s lullaby with haunting bells ringing out as he trespassed into unknown territory only to return more deeply into the woods with ever more decisive bass meanderings!
There had been a slight change of order so Verdi and Oscar Peterson remained without captions which had no importance when the playing was of such ravishing beauty . The Verdi we actually got to hear twice, as I asked Andrea if he would play it again at the end as an encore, together with one of the four of the preludes and fugues advertised but had realised he only played three at the beginning ! As Hugh said ‘who is counting when playing of such magnificence is unfolding on this cold winter’s day!’
The Verdi was a ‘song without words’ indeed with the fiortiori of Bel Canto played with the same radiance and incredible perfection as Monserrat Caballé. What nostalgia to hear the pieces by Morricone forever linked for me by two of the most evocative films I have ever seen. Moon River was to follow, even more nostalgic as Audrey Hepburn of Breakfast at Tiffany fame was my next door neighbour in Rome. Taking her son, Luca, to school every day as she had split up with his father Dr Dotti but did not intend abandoning their son. She was the refined icon of a period but also one of the most generous and kindest people I have ever known. Even in illness she thought of the poor and suffering and used her fame to create funds to make the world she was about to leave a better place for others.
The last two pieces are rarely played in public but the Doll Suite by Villa Lobos is a collection of beautifully evocative pieces that Joan Chissell, the critic, described in a performance with words that have remained with me ever since : “Mr Rubinstein turned baubles into gems” . It was Rubinstein who was responsible for bringing Villa Lobos to Europe in the thirties having a whole orchestra play his music in his hotel suite to his friendly impresarios . Andrea too turned them into gems and it was a fitting end to a memorable recital of mastery and quite simply pianistic genius.
Andrea Bacchetti was born in Recco (GE) in 1977. A precocious talent, he took inspiration from Karajan, Berio, Horszowsky, and Magaloff at a young age. He earned a Master’s degree from the Imola Piano Academy with Franco Scala. He made his debut at age 11 in Milan with the Solisti Veneti conducted by Scimone. Since then, he has performed at major festivals such as Lucerne, Salzburg, Sapporo, La Coruña, Toulouse, La Roque d’Anthéron, Warsaw, Ravenna, Brescia, and Bergamo. He has performed at international music centers in Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Prague, Madrid, São Paulo, Bern, and Leipzig, and with orchestras such as Festival Strings Lucerne, Camerata Salzburg, PKO Prague, Filarmonica della Scala, OSN Rai Turin, Filarmonica Enescu, Bucharest, Kyoto Symphony, and ORF Vienna, with conductors such as Baumgartner, Gimeno, Lü Jia, Urbanski, Luisi, Venzago, Manacorda, Flor, Chung, and Tjeknavorian.
He records for Sony Classical, and his extensive discography includes the Cherubini Sonatas (Penguin Guide UK Rosette), The Scarlatti Restored Manuscript, for which he won the 2014 ICMA Award, and Bach’s The Inventions and Sinfonias (CD of the Month in BBC Music Magazine). He is passionate about chamber music, collaborating with R. Filippini, the Prazak Quartet, U. Ughi, F. Dego, the Quatour Ysaye, and the Cremona Quartet.
In recent seasons, he has performed with the Milan Symphony Orchestra, the OSI Lugano, the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, the Solisti Aquilani, and in recital at two consecutive editions of the Brescia and Bergamo International Piano Festivals. He performed Book II of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in a single performance in the Aula Magna of Sapienza University for the IUC, at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa for the G.O.G., and at La Fenice in Venice for Musikamera, as well as in a recital for the Friends of Music of Florence. This season, he has performed in South Africa, South America, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and Portugal.
Jaeden Izik- Dzurko making his London debut at the Wigmore Hall as Gold medalist of the ‘Leeds.’
A monumental performance of Bach’s Fourth Partita opened the concert with playing of exemplary clarity and purity, where his remarkable musicianship was of an architectural awareness that gave great shape to all he did. Discreet ornamentation just added to the noble grandeur of the ‘Ouverture’ as the poignant beauty of the ‘Allemande’ was allowed to unfold with great fluidity. A ‘Courante’ that was indeed a flood of sounds played with a rhythmic elan and spritely gait. A breath of fresh ‘Air’ before the plaintive beseeching cry of the ‘Sarabande’. He chose a completely different,much paler,sound for the Minuet before the dynamic drive of the ‘Gigue’. Quite extraordinary clarity and brilliance with polyphonic playing of transcendental mastery even though loosing something of its nobility with such a high notch virtuosity.
It was in the César Franck that suddenly Jaeden opened his Pandora’s box of colours and with ravishing whispered beauty allowed the music to unfold with masterly poetic beauty. A ‘Chorale’ that was of magic sounds of glowing radiance gradually growing in intensity until the glorious declaration of a true believer. A ‘Fugue’ that built to the enormous climax that dissolves so magically into the waves of undulating sounds with which the ‘Prelude’ had opened . This time the theme was floated on this magic cloud as all three themes were joined together. Jaeden’s remarkable sense of balance allowing for a burning intensity without any hardness. A glorious final outpouring and true exultation played with aristocratic control and sumptuous full sounds.
It was after the interval, though, that Jaeden threw off his noble jacket of masterly musicianship that in some way had inhibited his extraordinary poetic fantasy. Now he was to unleash on a public mesmerised by such perfection but not yet hypnotised completely by his poetic imagination.
It was with Scriabin and Rachmaninov that Jaeden could give full reign to his chameleonic palette of colours and allow himself to wallow in the ravishing sounds that he could draw from the piano.
As in Leeds it was not his Brahms that astonished, although of masterly making, but it was his Rachmaninov sonata that was breathtaking and showed his supreme poetic and intellectual mastery for which he was justly covered in Gold.
From the opening whispered radiance of the Scriabin Fantaisie there was magic in the air, as it gradually grew in intensity with a boiling cauldron of sounds ever more turbulent. Suddenly the clouds passed and a melody of glowing radiance appeared out of the dark and illuminated the piano. Light and dark were united with passionate intensity and a mastery of balance, where no matter how many notes unfolded Jaeden could point his way to the ‘stars’ with ever more vehemence and conviction. A range of sounds that had been missing with his more classical approach to the works in the first half of the concert. It was as though his remarkable credentials had been demonstrated to us and now he could open his heart and poetic imagination and be as free as his mastery would allow him.
The ten preludes op 23 by Rachmaninov were more remarkable for their poetic content than for the masterly technical control of the quite considerable hurdles that Rachmaninov, with his giant hands, could throw in the path of lesser pianists !
The first prelude immediately created an aura of magic as its whispered glowing utterances drew us in, to share the ravishing beauty that poured from Jaeden delicate hands with such simplicity and elasticity. Of course this was immediately dispelled by the startling nobility and agility of the second. A stream of sumptuous sounds on which Rachmaninov places a heroic exclamative melody . Sumptuous sounds that fade into the distance as a ravishing melody can be heard in its midst. A masterly sense of balance and transcendental technical control allowed Jaeden to shape the melodic line whilst creating an aura of Philadelphian sumptuousness . This was an oasis of radiance and beauty before unleashing the turbulent crescendo of emotions that heralds the return of the main theme, ever more triumphant and heroic, both technically and poetically speaking. It was in fact Jaeden’s technical mastery that paled into insignificance as the poetry and imagination completely consumed him. A capricious third prelude with a rare sense of balance and subtle almost jeux perlé lightness with the ending played with a beguiling insinuating simplicity like the elusive end of the Paganini rhapsody. A nonchalance that is too easy for children but too difficult for adults here found the perfect balance. There was a simple radiance to the beautiful melodic outpouring of the fourth, and although not as mysterious as Richter was of compelling beauty and masterly poetic content. The fifth in G minor was played at high speed, but of breathtaking brilliance and with a dynamic range and control that was masterly. The central unashamedly romantic outpouring was played with chameleonic colours that were allowed to intertwine with insinuating beauty. Again the nonchalant ending was played with absolute perfection.There was bewitching beauty to one of Rachmaninov’s most romantic outpourings in the sixth prelude that was played with a sense of rubato that held us mesmerised, as the melodic line was stretched to its absolute persuasive limit.The C minor Prelude that followed was played with etherial sounds of swirling energy like a wind on which arose with nobility the long melodic line gradually growing in intensity and sparkling brilliance. After such scintillating exuberance the nobility of the ending was played with aristocratic poise. The eighth prelude of continual shifting harmonies was played with etherial beauty as the bass became the anchor on which the wash of notes was linked. The demonic ‘feux follets’ of the ninth was played with an extraordinary legato as Jaeden turned technical impossibilities into beguiling gems of lightness and beguiling brilliance. The last prelude with it’s beautiful languid melodic line in the bass was played with a ravishing sense of balance as the voices duetted with each other with the poetic intensity that had characterised all ten of this first set of preludes op 23.
Jaeden was now ready to let his hair down with two encores starting with the extraordinarily capricious and masterly ‘fingerfertigkeit ‘ of Medtner’s fairy tale.
Enjoying his mastery and freedom now, Jaeden finally let rip with a quite breathtaking account of one of Kapustin’s most ingenious Jazz etudes. A glissando finishing deep in the bass of the piano was played with relish and was greeted by a public now ready to hear and appreciate even more what this phenomenal pianist had to offer.
Would the real Jaeden Izik- Djorko please stand up !
An extraordinary debut by a master pianist and above all, as Dame Fanny would have underlined , master musician!
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Partita No. 4 in D BWV828 (1729)
I. Ouverture • II. Allemande • III. Courante •
IV. Aria • V. Sarabande • VI. Menuet • VII. Gigue
César Franck (1822-1890),
Prélude choral et fugue (1884)
I. Prélude. Moderato • II. Choral. Poco più lento •
III. Fugue. Tempo I
Interval
Aleksandr Skryabin (1872-1915)
Fantasie Op. 28 (1900)
Sergey Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
10 Preludes Op. 23 (1901-3)
No. 1 in F sharp minor • No. 2 in B flat •
No. 3 in D minor • No. 4 in D •
No. 5 in G minor • No. 6 in E flat •
No. 7 in C minor • No. 8 in A flat •
No. 9 in E flat minor • No. 10 in G flat
Canadian pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko is a current recipient of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and the 2024 winner of the Dame Fanny Waterman Gold Medal at the Leeds International Piano Competition. He also recently became the first Canadian instrumentalist to be awarded the Grand Prize Laureate at the Concours Musical International de Montréal. The 2025/26 season features high profile debut performances at London’s Wigmore Hall, San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, the Leipzig Gewandhaus (Mendelssohn-Saal), and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie. Jaeden will also make his debut as soloist with both the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and makes returns to the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra. His repertoire this season includes works by Chopin, Brahms, Grieg, and Rachmaninoff, with collaborations alongside conductors Jessica Cottis, Gemma New and Alexander Shelley. Jaeden has also made debuts at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Salle Cortot, Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Illinois, Vancouver Recital Society, Münchner Künstlerhaus and Sociedad Filarmónica de Bilbao. In concerto he has performed with Edmonton Symphony, Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, Oviedo Filarmonía, Oxford Philharmonic and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra. Recent conductor collaborations include with Domingo Hindoyan, John Storgårds and Joseph Swensen. Other awards include first prize of the Hilton Head, Maria Canals, and Paloma O’Shea Santander International Piano Competitions where he also won the Canon Audience Prize and Chamber Music Award.Born in British Columbia with Hungarian-Ukrainian heritage, Jaeden formerly attended the Juilliard School and now studies with Jacob Leuschner at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and Benedetto Lupo at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Ahead of his recital Julian Chang took the opportunity to visit the Music School in Nicosia, to deliver an extremely interesting educational concert. It was a wonderful atmosphere, and the students were fantastic as always!!
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 