Misha Kaploukhii at St James’s Piccadilly
A star shining brightly with the poetic mastery of a great artist
Opening with Clementi he made us all fall in love instantly with this much neglected composer so often used as torture for aspiring young pianists. Clementi was not only a superb technician with playing and constructing pianos, but he was also a master composer as Misha revealed today. He unraveled the secrets behind the notes with an Allegro that was truly ‘con espressione’ From the first notes, lovingly shaped with a refined tonal palette that could reveal a sense of longing and nostalgia within the very sounds that resounded around this most beautiful of churches. Subtle phrasing of great delicacy and poignant beauty. It was the same beauty that he brought to the haunting ‘Lento e patetico’ with a cantabile of weight where the searing intensity of the melodic line was shared with the extraordinary web of accompaniment. An expressiveness that was of sublime simplicity and that from Misha’s sensitive hands could speak with rare beauty and intensity. There was a scintillating brilliance to the ‘Presto’ ,but even here he brought an extraordinary shape and colour to the Mendelssohnian streams of notes. There were ornaments that sprang from his well oiled fingers like springs glistening in this perpetuum mobile of silvery sounds. A beguiling ‘joie de vivre’ of infectious rhythmic elan but always of such rich fantasy and expressive intensity.
