ALEXANDER KANCHAVELI

SATURDAY 19th MARCH 2011

Two Piano Treat at Music Nairn

What could be better than one piano? Answer: two pianos - and the audience at Music Nairn on Saturday March 19th literally roared its approval after Alexander Kanchaveli performed the Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto with A|asdair Macaskill playing the orchestral transcription on a second piano.  This was exciting playing indeed - particularly when the duo chose to play the last few pages even more riskily as a jaw-dropping encore - but the performance, interestingly, brought out several aspects of this well-known concerto which are not apparent in the orchestral version.  Indeed, in the duo’s hands, this novel presentation of an old favourite almost became a new work.

But Kanchaveli’s performance in the first half of the concert showed his mastery of different styles, and was reward enough in itself.  His playing of the Mozart sonata K330 showed all the clarity, delicacy and variety of tone required to play Mozart ("too easy for amateurs, too difficult for professionals" (Schnabel)).  After Debussy’s "Reflets dans l’Eau", where unfortunately this very clarity was not quite appropriate for this impressionist masterpiece, the audience was again stunned by Prokoviev’s Seventh Sonata - one of his 'war sonatas" – which Kanchaveli introduced as his own protest against Russian actions in his native Georgia.  The clangorous first movement was followed by a moving slow movement quoting Schumann, and then by a relentless and dazzling finale ending with what can be described only as Prokoviev’s musical statement of 'up yours, Stalin!".

PZM