Iyad Sughayer at Washington’s Decatur House Museum
’Mastery and musicianship combine on a wondrous voyage of discovery’
It was nice to hear Iyad live from Washington yesterday, the last stop of his USA tour. Some years have passed since his student days in London when I was already very impressed by his intelligent well prepared programmes and the professional calm he was able to transmit from a very early age. He has long been an advocate of the works of Mozart of which he was already a remarkably mature interpreter but it was his brilliance and total dedication to Khachaturian that captured the imagination. Listening to Iyad today I was impressed not only with his professional stance with playing of authority but above all of the poetic colouring and imagination he brought to all he played. Sometimes old instruments can still have sounds hidden away inside them that even they no longer know they possess. Richter would often enjoy the discovery of an unknown instrument and the challenge to find the soul that was hidden to all but the musicians who were also magicians.
Already with the opening work by Helen Ottaway, although we could not hear the introduction, as a headless Iyad spoke out of range of camera and microphone. It was obvious that this was a work that uses the piano not as a percussive instrument but as the Pandora’s Box it can be in a true artist’s hands. A lot of it reminded me of the hypnotic repetitive sound world of Steve Reich, as there were magical sounds resonating through this ‘historic’ instrument with a mellifluous flow of flowering intensity.
