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(photo: K Miura)

In a concert celebrating 25 years since his Wigmore Hall debut, Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski presented a programme of music with which he is most at home – works by Bach, Schumann and Szymanowski, with an encore by Janáček. By his own admission, Anderszewski “cannot play just anything” and chooses to perform only those composers he feels a strong urge to play. By the standards of most pianists active today his repertoire might be regarded as “narrow”, but it is this limited focus which results in playing which is both fastidious (without fussiness) and spontaneous, and such spontaneity is clearly the result of a long association with the music coupled with a patient, thoughtful study of it.
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John Foulds – Three Mantras

Olivier Messiaen – TurangalÎla-symphonie

BBC Philharmonic

Juanjo Mena, conductor

A guiding thread of Hindu philosophy ran through Prom 38 which brought together music by one of the greatest composers of the 20th century with one of its neglected non-comformists to create one of the most exciting and uplifting concerts I have attended for some time. Works by Olivier Messiaen and John Foulds combined in a programme of ecstasy and excitement. The piano soloist in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie was Steven Osborne, acclaimed for his performances and recordings of Messiaen’s piano music. He was joined by Valérie Hartmann-Claverie on the Ondes Martenot, a curious electronic keyboard instrument much used by Messiaen in his music.

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Jean-Efflam-Bavouzet-Fran-007

Hot on the heels of the release of their new disc of works by Bartók, Debussy and Stravinsky for two pianos, French pianists François-Fréderic Guy and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet returned to London’s Wigmore Hall to present a programme of music featuring these composers. Three 20th century orchestral scores written within just four years of one another – Bartok’s Two Pictures, Debussy’s Jeux and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – were brought to life in a concert replete in colour, rhythmic vitality, sensuality and split-second precision.

I first heard Guy and Bavouzet perform Jeux and The Rite of Spring in 2012 in a concert which brought fire, daring and vertiginous virtuosity to a weekday lunchtime at the Wigmore. To hear the same pianists in the same repertoire three years later was revelatory, for it seems as if the music has matured, like a good wine. This second performance was slicker, yet full of even greater spontaneity and vibrancy.

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The London concert scene is alive with pianists and piano-talk at the moment. Hard on the heels of Daniel Barenboim’s acclaimed survey of Schubert’s completed piano sonatas, performed on a brand new bespoke piano with his name emblazoned across on the fall board, comes Murray Perahia, who like Barenboim is afforded the status of a demi-god, though more for purely musical reasons.

I’ve always admired Perahia. My parents took me to hear him in concert when he was a young man and I was a little girl. His discs of Chopin, Bach and Schubert are my go-to recordings for their musical insight, pianistic prowess and lack of ego. Perahia has worked with some of the finest musicians of the 20th century – Vladimir Horowitz, Pablo Casals, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Clifford Curzon – yet he wears his accolades lightly and one has the sense, when hearing him live or on disc, that he always puts the music first. He is the very model of a modest virtuoso.

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