These concerts will have to
remain simply as diary items, I am afraid. (I flatter myself that someone else
might care!) Having been very busy during the past week or so of March, as well
as – well, you know that little thing Theresa May did and how it might have affected
me, I simply ran out of time to review these two piano recitals. I hasten to
add that that should not in any sense be taken as a comment on the performances.
Had I had time, I should have greeted more fully excellent pianism from Amir
Katz and indeed the wonderful opportunity to hear all twelve of the Transcendental Etudes in concert. (I do
not think I have had it before.) I mean no disrespect to a pianist I certainly
hope to hear again by saying that the memory of Grigory Sokolov’s performances
of KV 545, 475/457 and Beethoven’s final piano sonata (as well as no fewer than
seven encores, one of them as substantial as Schumann’s C major Arabeske) will, I hope, remain with me
forever. What Sokolov can do with the instrument… But I should stop there,
before this turns into an ersatz
review.
In the meantime, I have also been
taking in more spoken drama (very good, I hope, for my German): which I almost
always keep as a treat to myself: something on which I shall not have to write.
Normal service will be resumed shortly; this evening, I shall be going to the
Komische Oper for the first night of Barrie Kosky’s new production of a
Mussorgsky opera. No, unless you know, it is almost certainly not the one you
were thinking of: it is The Sorochintsy
Fair. More soon…
24 March: Amir Katz (piano), ‘Hommage
an Liszt’ (Konzerthaus)
Nocturne in A-flat major, ‘Liebestraum’
no.3, S 541/3
Three Concert Studies, S 144Two Concert Studies, S 145
Transcendental Studies, S 139
29 March: Grigory Sokolov
(piano) (Philharmonie)
Mozart – Sonata in C major, KV
545
Mozart – Fantasia in C minor,
KV 475Mozart – Sonata in C minor, KV 457
Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.27 in E minor, op.90
Beethoven – Piano Sonata no.32 in C minor, op.111
