MARCO BORGGREVE
CONCERTS • REVIEWS
i tuosity and efined ud ement ancesco iemontesi
UK
LONDON Wigmore Hall Francesco Piemontesi 3 November Royal Festival Hall Daniil Trifonov 31October; Steven Osborne 6 November
S
teven Osborne has long made Messaien’s Vingt regards his calling card, but his performance of it at the QEH was transcendent: playing the whole 127-minute work without a break, he held a full house spellbound. Checking up afterwards on how his approach differed from that of the other top contender, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, I found the contrast stark: the French pianist’s account seemed clinical in comparison with Osborne’s mighty conjuring-up of emotional soundworlds. He himself talks about his ‘almost childish pleasure in playing both extremely quietly and crashingly loud’, but his artistry went infinitely further than that. The way the ‘God theme’ emerged from pastel shades of pianissimo at the start was magical in itself, but the journey
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he then took us on encompassed ecstatic realms which no words could describe. The giant fugue, the awestruck evocations of the divine, the intense silences, the explosions of volcanic energy, the chirpy Gershwin insertions – everything was flawlessly delivered, with Osborne like a priest supervising a rite, the conduit for heavenly mysteries. Daniil Trifonov’s recitals are always unpredictable events, and his International Piano Series recital ran true to form. He added a couple of Borodin pieces at the last moment, made the most unlikely segue, and – as he has done so often – bored us rigid with a rambling Rachmaninov encore which seemed to go on for ever. But he exhibited an astonishingly relaxed virtuosity in a series of Scriabin Études followed by the Black Mass Sonata, ringing the changes between hurtling tempestuousness and bated-breath poetry. As Trifonov explained to me in an interview for IP last October, he uses his whole body when he plays, an approach vividly demonstrated here by his various physical contortions, sometimes standing to hammer the keyboard with his fists. But his segue from the Black Mass to Beethoven’s Opus 110 in effect diminished both works. His interpretation of
Opus 110 was novel: most pianists present its progression towards serenity via ariosos and fugues as the gradual lifting of an emotional burden, but in Trifonov’s hands it became light as a feather – not, one suspects, what Beethoven intended. Having just released a superb recording of Schubert’s last three piano sonatas (see review on page 78), Francesco Piemontesi brought other Schubert works to Wigmore Hall – the D899 Impromptus and the Gasteiner Sonata D850. Even the opening chord of the first impromptu brought us up short, being huge and lingeringly resonant. As was the rest of the piece – I’ve never heard it so spaciously conceived. The turbulent excitement of the second movement, the muted tenderness of the third, and the disarming simplicity of the fourth were all small revelations. As was the sonata: after an opening Allegro vivace, which impetuously smashed its way through the modulations, came a sweetly singing Con moto, an exuberant Scherzo and a whimsical finale whose ticking-clock theme expanded gloriously like a great oak from an acorn. This unassuming Swiss pianist possesses a winning combination of virtuosity and instinctively refined judgment. IP
International Piano January 2020
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