Sparks flying with refined piano playing of elegance and simplicity
Some superb playing from the young Lithuanian pianist Milda Daunoraitė from the school of Tessa Nicholson. The Lithuanians seem to be born with an ingenuous ‘joie de vivre’ that is reflected in their wonderful relaxed style of playing.
Perlemuter, born in Kaunas ,was a prime example and it was to his first teacher Moszkowski that Milda turned today to close her scintillating recital with sparks that crackled and shone with such fun as they spun from her fingers with the ravishing style of a bygone age.
The sheer enjoyment and exhilaration that she shared with us was of that was the same refreshing simplicity that was mirrored in the short conversation with Elena Vorotko at the conclusion of another memorable concert in the En Blanc et Noir series dedicated to the memory of the late Robert Turnbull.
This had come after one of the finest performances of Chopin’s elusive fourth Scherzo I have ever heard. It was full of jewel like colours and pungent emotions all thrown off with a mastery that revealed the true depth of feeling behind the seamless web of golden notes.
Debussy’s haunting bells were heard with a purity and a luminosity as they became ever more insistent followed by the ravishing vision of moonlight that in turn gave way to the fleeting high jinx of Golden Fish.
Schumann’s monumental first sonata bravely opened the recital and is an early work where the continual conflict of Floristan and Eusebius is never truly resolved .It was given an at times heroic performance of deeply felt emotions from the intense to the frivolous. Living every minute but where a greater architectural awareness would have united her emotions into one great outpouring of monumental shape.
