Mark Viner’s Christmas Concert 2025
Intelligence, scholarship and mastery
A scintillating cocktail – shaken not stirred
Mark’s annual Christmas concert arriving in London with the final two performances at St Mary’s Perivale for his dear friend and admirer Dr Mather and in the church of St Michael and All Angels, opposite his home in Bedford Park, where he also is an active member of the congregation.
More extraordinary playing from Mark Viner as his latest CD dedicated to Alkan receives accolades fit only for a Prince of the Keyboard. With typical modesty, dedication and not a little hardship Mark continues his voyage of discovery bringing us performances of mastery and extraordinary scholarship that are being celebrated regularly with every one of his many CD’s as they are issued. His is not the popular repertoire that draws the crowds but for us that think we know all there is of the piano repertoire he puts us to shame with discoveries of works by forgotten masters. Names that adorn the history books with stories of reclusive virtuosi crushed by the Talmud or of duels in Parisian salons between adored favourite virtuosi. Rarely has this music been brought to life by performances of mastery and scholarship such as Mark is showing us, with a continual stream of musical discoveries. But it is not only the forgotten masterpieces that he plays with authority and mastery but he brings the same microscopic seriousness to well worn classics where rhetoric and tradition have taken us far from what the composer actually bequeathed to posterity in the score. Today Mark chose to open and close with two well worn masterpieces by Mozart and Liszt and in-between to show us not the usual Pletnev concert transcription of Tchaikovsky but that of the composer’s friend Taneyev . Together with a series of miniatures ,one by Rebikov that Cherkassky used to play as an encore ( which he would announce to me in the wings of his concerts in Rome ) and some rare miniatures written for Liszt’s granddaughter Daniela von Bulow as a Christmas present. She had accompanied her grandfather to Rome due to his frail condition and the first performance was on Christmas Day 1881 in Daniela’s Rome hotel suite. This was the day on which her mother Cosima always celebrated her birthday, although she was actually born on Christmas Eve.
