This was much the same recital programme that I heard a
couple of weeks ago at the International Piano Festival
of Discovery in Miami, but the playing was of such a scintillating
and absorbing order that it could be heard a hundred times
over without palling.
Piotr Anderszewski is unquestionably one
of the outstanding and most fascinating pianists of our day.
He has very pronounced and personal ideas on the repertoire
he plays, and the results are so utterly musical that verbal
descriptions tend to detract from the sheer poetry and dynamism
that he so potently fuses.
But there is something about his Bach and
Chopin that is both highly individual and alive with insights
that throw new light on the composers' creative temperaments.
His recitals are special events, because there is always a
sense that he has something of import to say, and that he
will say it through playing of the utmost eloquence.
Indeed, it was in Miami that somebody perceptively
commented that it was not so much that Anderszewski was playing
the piano so wonderfully, but that we were also hearing his
mind working. This is the very quality that raises pianism
from the merely brilliant to the breathtaking. But there is
more.
It is all very well to formulate ideas on
how you want to project a piece of music, but having the power
to communicate them persuasively takes an extra dimension
of artistry. This is what Anderszewski has in abundance. There
is no hint of playing to the crowd: on stage his stance is
of intense concentration. But he has an exceptional ability
to draw you ineluctably into his own world of interpretative
imagination.
He framed this recital with Bach, playing
the whole of the A minor Partita BWV827 as an encore. He began
with an hour-long sequence of eight preludes and fugues from
Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier. The performances were
riveting. In Bach, Anderszewski acknowledges the music's baroque
origins, but also illuminates its subjective expression, identifying
those elements that give each piece a distinctive character
with discreet tonal colouring and subtle nuances.
In Chopin - he played the Mazurkas Opp 59
and 63 and the A flat major Polonaise Op 53 - he suggests
the dance rhythms of the titles but at the same time stimulates
both fantasy and underlying layers that tell of something
much more complex in the music's sensibility. It was revelatory.
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