LONDON

Wigmore Hall

Roman Rabinovich 17 November

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet 27 November

Nikolai Lugansky 8 December

Kit Armstrong 22 December

Danny Driver 2 January

Alim Beisembayev 9 January

Imogen Cooper 16 January

Barbican

Stephen Hough 4 December

Royal Festival Hall

Mitsuko Uchida 1 February

The pianist standing tallest in this round-up of recent London performances was Sir Stephen Hough, who delighted a packed Barbican audience with a box of surprises that only he could have devised. First, he presented three short pieces by Cécile Chaminade, challenging the usual pigeonholing of this French composer as a purveyor of unimportant salon music. One sensed the ghosts of Chopin, Schumann and Tchaikovsky as Hough teased out the qualities of these finely wrought little pieces, yet this is a composer with a voice of her own. Then came Schumann’s C major Fantasie, its outer movements testifying to the composer’s ardently beating heart and its middle movement going at one hell of a lick. After the interval Hough swivelled on his bench to address us: his next piece would be the London premiere of his latest composition, Sonatina nostalgica. This reflected his affectionate memories of the corner of Cheshire where he grew up, and its musical language bore more than a little resemblance to Chaminade’s.

Sandwiched between the Schumann and Chopin’s equally white-hot Third Sonata, the contrast was welcome. Hough’s account of the Chopin was predictably impressive: whatever he plays from his huge repertoire emerges technically immaculate and perfectly idiomatic. His final surprise came in the second encore, Hough’s dizzying arrangement of the Sherman Brothers’ signature tune in Mary Poppins, ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, where centuries of musical culture were put through a blender, with fleeting appearances by the Waldstein Sonata and the Diabelli Variations.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has recorded much Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, so a recital devoted to Schumann, Debussy and Stockhausen might, I thought, reveal different strengths. His programme interwove Schumann’s Kinderszenen and C major Arabeske with Debussy’s Rêverie, Arabesque No 2, Berceuse héroïque, Children’s Corner and Book 2 of his Études; Stockhausen was represented by his Klavierstück IX. Debussy’s Études emerged spring-heeled and flexible, and Children’s Corner came with some delightful effects, but Bavouzet’s account of Kinderszenen was so perfunctory and devoid of character or poetry that I wondered why he’d bothered to play it.

As for the Stockhausen … well, I’ve never been able to take that piece seriously, and despite a passionate impromptu lecture by Bavouzet, plus some special pleading in the programme note, I still can’t do so. Two hundred repetitions of a long-held single chord that gradually changes colour? ‘A masterpiece,’ purred Bavouzet. Never mind: his encore – the Toccata from Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin – had real sparkle.

Born to piano-teacher parents 40 years ago in Soviet Tashkent, Roman Rabinovich progressed from the Uspensky School of Music in Tashkent to the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv, and then to the Curtis Institute; he won the Rubinstein Competition aged 23. In 2018 the first volume of his recording of Haydn sonatas was widely praised. This album’s cover was proof that he is also an accomplished graphic artist; and as he’s revealed in recital, he is also an interesting composer.

So I went to his Wigmore recital in November with high hopes. The Haydn sonata with which he began was fine, if sometimes a bit strident, and his playing in Debussy’s Estampes had elegant and original touches; Schumann’s Études symphoniques came over rather splashily and were occasionally punctuated by absurdly theatrical pauses. But the programme’s intended centre of gravity was a rendition of Beethoven’s Op 110 that was – I do not exaggerate – like finding a black spider in one’s soup. The ruminative opening phrases were delivered in an angry metallic fortissimo. And Rabinovich had clearly started as he meant to go on, dispatching the first movement painfully loudly and with a hard metronomic beat, and without a hint of the poetry required of this sublime music. He clearly didn’t know what to do with the recitativo passages and the first Fugue was too loud too soon, as was the final triumphant lap. I was at a loss; what had got into him?

I first encountered the Taiwanese-British pianist Kit Armstrong when he played Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto at the age of 12 at the Royal Academy of Music, by which time he had already completed a high-flying undergraduate maths course at the University of California. After his performance, it emerged that he was also a whizz at five-ball juggling and at creating ultra-complex origami. Since then – he is now 32 – he has created an artists’ colony in rural France, while forging a parallel career in AI research; his discography includes an outstanding collection of pieces by William Byrd and John Bull, both of whom he argues are of seminal music-historical importance.

But his recent Wigmore recital was a disappointment. It was prefaced by a quasi-philosophical programme essay he had written on the history of music, which seemed half-digested. The nearest it came to stating his intention in this recital was this gnomic aperçu: ‘Creating a link between the past and the present … Taking old music sheets and inventing something based on them which evokes an amazing vision of a timeless world.’ He promised a verbal commentary on the works as he went along, but he was unmiked and evidently audible only to those in the first few rows.

All most of us heard was the music, which made good sense in the first half, which followed a line from Tallis to Handel in which harmonic complexity developed incrementally. But although it was well played it was difficult to discern any logic to his second half, a grab-bag of Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Godowsky, Sorabji, Pärt and Armstrong himself. If he wants to convey an idea behind his programming that is not readily discernible in the music itself, he either needs a microphone or an intelligible programme note.

After all of this, it was a relief to hear two established pianists with a clear game plan. Nikolai Lugansky was the first, playing the same programme he had played in Verbier last summer (which I reviewed enthusiastically in the Autumn issue). So we got six of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words; two Ballades and a Nocturne by Chopin; Lugansky’s own transcription of four scenes from Götterdämmerung and finally Liszt’s version of Isolde’s Liebestod. I always mistrust my memory when comparing performances many months apart. This time it seemed to me that Lugansky’s touch was too rough in Chopin’s Fourth Ballade, and that his own Wagner transcriptions lacked adequate signposts and went on far too long.

Danny Driver’s recital, on the other hand, was pure pleasure. Beginning with two Chopin Nocturnes, he went on to play Ligeti’s provocative Musica ricercata as a series of highly atmospheric impressions, suggesting an exhilarating journey of exploration. And for his centrepiece he gave the world premiere of a work by Thomas Simaku entitled Catena IV, ideally placed in this recital in that its fourth section is a homage to Chopin (built on the exact notes of the start of Chopin’s First Ballade), its fifth section a homage to Ligeti and its eighth section bears the subtitle ‘Ligeti Meets Chopin’. It all felt like an improvisation, sometimes monosyllabic, sometimes garrulous and sometimes with crystalline high notes that contrasted with manually plucked strings in the bass. Driver rounded things off with a sequence of pieces by Chopin and Fauré that came from the heart. There was no encore – and why should there have been one, with a programme so perfectly shaped?

One could say the same of Alim Beisembayev’s programme of Haydn, Beethoven, Scarlatti, Schumann and Brahms, though he gave three encores. He brought freshness to Kinderszenen and a magisterial gravity to Haydn’s F minor Variations; three rarely played Scarlatti sonatas cast delicate spells at opposite ends of the tempo spectrum, and Brahms’s Paganini Variations were infused with regal splendour.

But for me the revelation was his performance of Beethoven’s D major Sonata, Op 10 No 3, whose opening swept through the auditorium like an electric current. I had never heard this work sound so dramatic, as Beisembayev found effects that most pianists unheedingly gloss over, with the Largo e mesto acquiring a dark and deathly magnificence. Every bar of this recital compelled rapt attention, as this 27-year-old Kazakh brought to bear his fastidious sound control and fertile imagination. He could become one of the all-time greats. This recital was streamed and is still available to watch until 9 April.

As Leif Ove Andsnes grows older, he becomes ever keener to promote the music of his native land. The main pleasure of his latest recital may have been his glorious account of Chopin’s Preludes, but the central focus lay in his performances of Grieg’s early Piano Sonata in E minor and in Geirr Tveitt’s Sonata Etere. The Grieg possessed the seeds of that composer’s mature music although it was a prentice effort. The now almost completely forgotten Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981), however, deserves to be remembered for more than the heroic nationalism and nobly endured hardships of his life. Two thirds of his compositions were destroyed in a fire at his remote family farm, with the Etere (‘Ether’) Sonata, premiered in 1947, being the only solo sonata to survive. The Wigmore’s programme note by Mark Rogers was a valiant attempt to explain the structure and intention of this work – involving unusual pedal effects and much manual plucking and damping of the strings – with the total effect varying from the ethereal to the forbiddingly austere. With a work as hermetic as this, one hearing is not enough.

When Imogen Cooper plays Beethoven, people pay attention, particularly when the programme is the last three sonatas. One knows there will never be anything tricksy or meretricious in her playing; any departure from the norm in these works will have been deeply pondered. And so it was with this recital. The first movement of Op 109 was blissfully accurate, so how come its simple closing chord felt so pregnant with meaning? The answer was a matter of infinitesimally delicate timing and volume. The arpeggiations in the opening movement of Op 110 went at an unusually gentle pace, while its Allegro molto had an aggressive roughness; the opening page of Op 111 was darkly savage. The finale of Op 110 gave a strong sense of embracing the future, while the murmuring close of Op 111 left us joyfully transported.

The season’s other unalloyed pleasure was a visit to the Royal Festival Hall by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with two Mozart concertos directed from the piano by Mitsuko Uchida. Now 76, she is still performing tirelessly around the world and prefacing her performances with bows so athletically low that her face almost touches the floor. Her authority was unobtrusive and her pianism exquisite, bringing a confidential tone to the B flat major Concerto No 18, K456, and furnishing a highly idiosyncratic cadenza to the C major Concerto No 21, K467. Her encore was a tiny miniature – ‘Aveu’from Schumann’s Carnaval – which came and went like a breath of perfumed air. Michael Church

NEW YORK

Carnegie Hall

Daniil Trifonov 17 October

Mao Fujita 10 November

Lincoln Center

Stephen Hough 24 November

Yunchan Lim 27 November

One of the most anticipated concerts of the early 2024/25 season was Daniil Trifonov’s Carnegie Hall recital on 17 October. He opened with Tchaikovsky’s rarely performed Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, Op 80. In the Allegro con fuoco first movement, Trifonov certainly played with fire, though at times his virtuosity was so aggressive it risked reducing the work to ashes. The six Chopin Waltzes that followed were rather perplexing. In each, Trifonov established a mood at the outset, but then adhered to it rigidly, disregarding essential elements such as contrasting middle sections, shifts between major and minor, and unexpected modulations. The F minor Waltz, Op 70 No 2, for example, opened with an exquisite, lyrical pianissimo, but it remained fixed in that sound even as the music transitioned into a yearning major key. Similarly, the middle section of the Op posth Waltz in E minor maintained the exact same tempo and character as the work’s outer sections, despite its completely different musical tone. Rachmaninov’s Corelli Variations also disappointed, with many variations lacking definition and character. The Tchaikovsky/Pletnev Sleeping Beauty Suite displayed characterful, expressive and nuanced playing, and the encores, particularly an Art Tatum arrangement, showcased Trifonov’s dazzling fingerwork. Sadly, these highlights were insufficient to overcome the overall disappointment.

Mao Fujita’s Carnegie Hall recital revealed a pianist of immense talent, perfectly suited to certain styles but still finding his voice in others. The beauty of his non-percussive touch, particularly in soft passages, was immediately noticeable. Scriabin’s Fantasy, Op 28, came off especially well, full of contrast and vivid colours. Liszt’s ‘Sonetto del Petrarca 104’ and Dante Sonata highlighted both his strengths and limitations – his mesmerising lyrical touch excelled in moments of tenderness, but was ill-suited to passages of intense passion or darker emotional depths. Beethoven’s Appassionata emerged as the evening’s highlight, its dramatic nature drawing Fujita out of his comfort zone of velvety, soft playing to deliver a performance of remarkable intensity.

Stephen Hough’s recital at Lincoln Center’s Geffen Hall found the pianist in exceptional form. He began with two of Chopin’s Nocturnes and the famous Second Scherzo. These were rendered with tasteful elegance though no new ground was broken. After the world premiere of his Piano Quintet came an unforgettable second half. Three gems by Chaminade were played with delightful tenderness, lyrical grace and a rubato evocative of a bygone era. The recital concluded with a towering interpretation of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, which was highly original and completely convincing. Hough pushed the drama to the limits while imbuing the lyrical sections with extraordinary tenderness.

Yunchan Lim appeared with the New York Philharmonic to perform Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto. As in his solo Carnegie Hall recital last season, Lim continued to demonstrate how much he has grown as a musician since his Cliburn victory. He played the Concerto’s more introverted passages with breathtaking delicacy and freedom, drawing the audience into the music’s most intimate moments, while the more brilliant passagework shimmered with clarity and radiance. His rubato, more expansive than that of most pianists today, added a sense of spontaneity and individuality while still remaining logical enough for the orchestra to follow.

Farhan Malik

LUCERNE

Le Piano Symphonique

KKL Luzern Konzertsaal

Yunchan Lim 16 January

Martha Argerich 16 & 18 January

Beatrice Rana 17 January

Evgeny Kissin 18 January

Kunstmuseum

Kiveli Dörken 17 January

Yunchan Lim barely moves on the piano stool; in profile he is still, his expression inscrutable. But the sound that emerged from the Steinway on stage at the KKL Luzern concert hall was vivid and fully formed. There are no inefficiencies: all input is committed to one purposeful output – beautiful, shapely pianism. In other hands, such an approach might sound robotic, yet Lim’s technique is sensitive in its purity. His recording of Chopin’s Études (Decca) stood out, winning a Gramophone Award, revealing the ongoing development of this 2022 Van Cliburn gold medallist. And here, at Lucerne’s Le Piano Symphonique, his rendition of Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto, with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under Michael Sanderling, sang and sparkled. The piano world is no stranger to prodigies, yet Lim – still only 20 – has that elusive star quality. The Tchaikovsky Seasons that followed was tender and thoughtful, and the pianist’s fans clamoured to offer their thanks (and stuffed animals).

Lim is not the only pianist with devoted fans in Lucerne. The piano festival boasts Martha Argerich as its ‘associate pianist’. She was scheduled to play across multiple concerts throughout the six-day winter event. Her smiling face is plastered across large advertisements on bus stops around the lakeside town and her name adorns flags strewn across roads. There was the inevitable will-she-won’t-she hum around the recital due to take place with Janine Jansen and Mischa Maisky, following Lim’s performance. Argerich arrived on stage clutching a tissue, which was stored inside the piano and used to dab a moist nose at intervals. This was the only indication that she felt poorly, as naturally the playing was flawless: Haydn’s Piano Trio No 39 fizzed, Mendelssohn’s First Piano Trio shivered and the Largo from Chopin’s Cello Sonata wept. Argerich, now 83, had forced herself on stage for the sake of her colleagues, especially Maisky, 76, who had also been recuperating following illness.

Sadly, that concert clearly took its toll. There were murmurings of cancellation as we gathered in the KKL’s art gallery the next morning. Kiveli Dörken was the pianist in Brahms’s Four Ballades, Op 10; every musical expression etched into her movement, in stark contrast to Yunchan Lim. Soloists from the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra were Dörken’s collaborators in Suk’s scintillating Piano Quintet and Mahler’s Piano Quartet, causing our brains to pulse pleasingly, like Maya Dunietz’s gelatinous kinetic sculpture Brain on a Plate (2022) on display in the adjacent space.

It was written in the stars – at least in the spotlights that sparkle from the night-sky ceiling in the KKL concert hall – that Argerich would not make all her scheduled appearances. Indeed, she did not attend or perform in the penultimate concert, which was a shame because she missed Beatrice Rana’s superb Mendelssohn extravaganza. Rana is a pianist I have followed since witnessing her win at the Montreal International Piano Competition in 2011 and her playing continues to delight and inspire. Mendelssohn’s Concerto No 1 was both spirited and lyrical, and the various Songs without Words revealed Rana’s poetic touch. It would have been fun to hear Argerich in The Carnival of the Animals (she performed this particular version – with narration by daughter Annie Dutoit-Argerich – at Herbstgold in Austria last year, and it was by all accounts very special). Lilya Zilberstein, Anton Gerzenberg and Daniel Gerzenberg leaned into the humour, pretending to fall asleep at the end of ‘Tortoises’ and taking a bow for their terrible scales in ‘Pianists’.

With so many world-class musicians on the bill, this round-up was at risk of becoming monotonous in its praise. Luckily there was a disrupter: Evgeny Kissin, whose Shostakovich project was a mixed bag. It started off well, with Gautier Capuçon playing the Cello Sonata, but the Violin Sonata with Gidon Kremer was a clunky, chunky affair that agitated for all the wrong reasons. That was sandwiched with the Viola Sonata, where, with Maxim Rysanov, Kissin found a much more variegated sound.

For the grand finale, Argerich returned to the stage – tissue firmly in hand – to remind us why she is so revered: melodies in Beethoven’s First Concerto glided into life like Alpine walkers down Lucerne’s Mount Pilatus. Such was the level of collective concentration there was an audible gasp when someone’s phone rang. For a micro-moment it looked like our pianist might falter, but, with music leader Gregory Ahss, the show went on, culminating in a playful, almost childlike finale. Further proof, in case we needed it, why the octogenarian Argerich remains among the most miraculous pianists in the world. Claire Jackson

This feature originally appeared in the SPRING 2025 issue of International Piano