The golden age of piano playing shines brightly at St Mary’s
Some phenomenal playing from Thomas Kelly not only of transcendental piano playing but of sublime beauty. A fluidity of sound and sense of colour of another age.
Four Scherzi by Chopin where each one was given such character that they became four tone poems each with their own extraordinary sense of discovery and daring.
The same daring that he brought to two war horses of another era .The Balakirev Toccata was an astonishing perpetuum mobile of feather light sounds with an irresistible rhythmic drive .But it was the Glazunov Waltz in the transcendental arrangement of Blumenfeld – who was Horowitz’s first teacher before he left Russia – that was played with ravishing style and colour as I imagine only Horowitz could have played it .Thomas threw it off with the nonchalance and old world style that we have only heard from the great virtuosi of the past on piano rolls or the very early recordings of pianists like Rosenthal,Levitski,Lhevine or Moiseiwitch. And if we were reminded of Horowitz with this waltz we were certainly reminded also of Moiseiwitch’s historic recording of Mendelssohn’s Scherzo in the arrangement by his friend Rachmaninov. This was every bit as phenomenal and even more so for being a live performance and thrown off as an encore with the same ease and charm of sparkling jewels that Moiseiwitch threw off in desperation at the end of a recording session.
