Nikita Burzanitsa at St Mary’s Perivale – with refound authority and mastery
Some very fine playing from a pianist I have heard many times over the past years during his studies with Dmitri Alexeev at the R.C.M. A young man trained superbly from a very early age yet seemed to have lost his way in a period when every young person has to find his own direction and the path that he wants to follow. I had heard from my colleague Elena Vorotoko who was on the jury of the Sheepdrove competition in Newbury recently in which Nikita won first prize, as he had evidently now found the direction and reignited a passion for music that has always been deep inside him. Today I heard a young man with something to say and a means to say it with burning intensity and conviction. It was so refreshing to see how the physical movements related so beautifully with the sounds he was making – like a painter in front of his canvas . This was a programme that needs a master pianist to do it justice, with Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit written especially as a test for pianists. Followed by Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata – the second of his trilogy of war sonatas – and where the last movement is a ‘Precipitato’ of relentless dynamic drive. In between was one of Liszt’s Paganini Studies , a true test for any pianist.
