Two-Piano Marathon, Kings Place review - dazzling duos, deep waters

Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy make a transcendental start to an epic evening

You get a lot of notes for your money in a two-piano recital - especially when seven pianists share the honours for two and a half hours' worth of playing time. Well, they did call it a marathon, crowning the London Piano Festival so shiningly planned by Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen, and the baton passed seamlessly from two pairs of hands to the next.

Anderson & Roe, RLPO, Tali, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool review - measured fire

★★★★ ANDERSON & ROE, RLPO, TALI, PHILHARMONIC HALL, LIVERPOOL Estonian conductor makes a powerful impression

 

An Estonian arrives in the UK to make a strong impression

There must be something of a beauty parade going on in Liverpool now that Vasily Petrenko has called time on his tenure at Philharmonic Hall.  After all, someone will need to step into his shoes from 2021 after he departs for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was refreshing, therefore, to welcome Anu Tali to conduct the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, making her debut with the orchestra.

Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier - Book 2, Hewitt, Wigmore Hall review – high drama in 24 short acts

★★★★★ BACH: THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER - BOOK 2, HEWITT, WIGMORE HALL High drama in 24 short acts

The Canadian pianist brings colour and spectacle to Bach's evergreen cycle

Bach specialists like to explain that the second book of preludes and fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier, composed around 1740 and thus almost two decades after the first, draws on more of the fancy and daring “modern” music of its time than its more traditional predecessor. Yes, but there’s modern and there’s modern. I don’t think the scholars have yet argued that, among the ear-stretching range of moods and effects encompassed across these 24 pieces, comes a spooky anticipation of Seattle grunge.

Katya Apekisheva, Charles Owen, Kings Place review - one plus one equals a hundred

★★★★ KATYA APEKISHEVA, CHARLES OWEN, KINGS PLACE Magic at the London Piano Festival

The London Piano Festival opens with a magical two-piano concert from its founders

We could probably spend all day pondering what makes a great musical partnership. Is it long experience, special sensitivity, a shared sense of humour? We’d get nowhere, though because there is, genuinely, something about it that can't be explained. It’s like a good marriage: it just works, and if you could analyse precisely why, there’d likely be something wrong.

Uchida, Connolly, Skelton, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review – songs of farewell

★★★★ UCHIDA, CONNOLLY, SKELTON, LPO, JUROWSKI Last words from Mozart and Mahler

Last words from Mozart and Mahler, played and sung with dignity and insight

Not all composers require the finger of mortality pointing at them to develop what becomes a late style. Charges of detachment and even indifference have been levelled at the B flat major Piano Concerto K595 which Mozart completed early in the year of his death, but Mitsuko Uchida’s playing of it on Saturday night was as refined, as weightless and translucent as her trademark silk tops.

CD: Prince - Piano and a Microphone 1983

Is this a glimmer of hope that treatment of the Paisley Park archives is going to be respectful?

Knowing a deceased artist's archives are available for re-release is a double-edged sword. Will there be a shoddy flood of any and every old bit of tat a la Jimi Hendrix? Will there be half-arsed, half-finished and even fake songs bodged together by trashy but popular modern dance remixers like Michael Jackson? Will the vaults just stay infuriatingly locked? With the impossibly prolific, but often self-indulgent Prince, it is doubly worrying: who has the rights? What will the quality control filter be like?

theartsdesk at the Suoni dal Golfo Festival - romantics shine in the Bay of Poets

THE ARTS DESK AT THE SUONI DAL GOLFO FESTIVAL Romantics shine in the Bay of Poets

A Liszt novelty proves worth revealing, while a fine pianist takes a castle by storm

If only Liszt had started at the end of his Byron-inspired opera Sardanapalo. The mass immolation of Assyrian concubines might have been something to compare with the end of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Instead he only sketched out the first act, complete until nearly the end, and the inevitable comparisons with the Wagner of the late 1840s are not unfavourable by any means.