United Kingdom Mozart, Beethoven, R. Schumann: Luka Okros (piano). Turner Sims, Southampton, 2.2.2023. (CK)
Mozart – Piano Sonata No.8 in A minor, Okay.310
Beethoven – Piano Sonata No.8 in C minor, Op.13 Pathétique
R. Schumann – Fantasie in C main, Op.17
The participating Georgian pianist Luka Okros – born in Tbilisi, based mostly in London – introduced three youthful masterpieces to Southampton’s Turner Sims, every of them written within the composer’s twenties (Okros himself is barely out of them).
The first, Mozart’s A minor Sonata Okay.310, written shortly after the loss of life of his mom, is probably essentially the most astonishing of the three. Sitting between two completely innocuous sonatas (Okay.309 and Okay.311), it’s a work, within the phrases of Nicholas Kenyon, ‘for which nothing prepares us.’ For Charles Rosen, extra prosaically, it’s ‘the first of Mozart’s essays within the tragic vein.’ We don’t typically go to Mozart’s piano sonatas for his profoundest utterances, and even to hint the event of his genius; but right here we’re confounded. Or, to place it one other method, it’s the job of the pianist to confound us.
Okros was equal to the duty. The first motion has passages of nice brilliance, however the music can’t escape the repeated minor-key falling determine – like a dejected sigh – with which it opens. Okros’s taking part in made this completely clear. He phrased the light opening of the Andante cantabile with nice tenderness; the turbulence that regularly (and disturbingly) invades the music acquired virtually Beethovenian power, making the opening a fragile reminiscence. Okros’s Presto finale was unrelentingly quick, giving the music a febrile, hunted high quality, till the ultimate abrupt descending chords slammed the sonata shut.
If there was a reservation, it was about scale and lightness of contact. It is troublesome to know whether or not this was to do with the pianist, the piano itself, or the acoustic of a sparsely populated corridor. It can be attention-grabbing to listen to the sonata on the kind of early piano Mozart was used to – Kenyon writes of Mozart’s enthusiasm on the time of its composition for the pianos of Andreas Stein, which had been famend particularly for his or her lightness of contact. There may very well be no such quibbles about Beethoven’s Pathetique – the earliest of his sonatas to amass a nickname – which Okros dispatched with nice dexterity and an unfailing sense of drama. His taking part in of the well-known gradual motion – one other Andante cantabile – was considerate and unexaggerated.
On the face of it, Schumann’s magnificent Fantasie in C appears to share the type of the 2 previous works – that of a three-movement sonata: however it’s nothing of the sort. Schumann, full-blooded Romantic that he was, invented his personal varieties for expressing his emotions and fantasies, and right here he created a heroically prolonged construction into which to pour his pent-up ardour for Clara Wieck, forbidden by her father to marry him. Its opening is just like the breaking of a dam: the pianist has to throw warning to the winds, and Okros did simply that. He conveyed the music’s ebb and stream, its quiet and tender episodes and its nice surges of emotion, inside a powerfully maintained onward momentum; we had been by no means for a second becalmed. At its greatest, as right here, Okros’s taking part in has appreciable panache. Ironically, maybe, he reserved his most delicate taking part in for his encores, Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor and Schumann’s Der Dichter spricht – The Poet Speaks – the hushed, magical chords that lull his Kinderszenen to silence and to sleep.
In May, Paul Lewis and Angela Hewitt shall be giving recitals on the Turner Sims: likely each will play to packed homes, and rightly so. It was a disgrace that the warmly appreciative viewers for Okros was not bigger. He already has eight first prizes beneath his belt in worldwide piano competitions: I for one shall be looking for his identify, and wishing him a vibrant future.
Chris Kettle