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Beethoven, Bax, Brahms (Ashley Wass piano) Ashley Wass has been a Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and has given increasingly reliable satisfaction in his appearances since winning the first World Piano Competition in 1997. He is very serious-minded and had totally absorbed the contrasting idioms of the music in his lunch-time recital, which he played without scores. I have recommended his two CDs for Naxos, in unhackneyed repertoire by Franck and Bax. The latter was represented by the poignant Dream in Exile of 1916, and I was sorry that the CD didn't sell like hot cakes afterwards. The hall was full but a different audience from Wigmore Hall's; many there probably were not evening concertgoers, and some were in indecent haste to depart about their business (shopping and theatre matinées?) before the Messiaen encore. Heard live again, what was particularly pleasing was his control of the quietest pianissimos, helped no doubt by the excellent preparation of the Steinway on this occasion. The Pathetique was as strong and carefully nuanced as you'd ever need to hear, and the high point was the Brahms Opus 116, 7 Fantasien which really do make a balanced and satisfying cycle in performance, more so, according to Wass, than any of the other sets. I was conscious of how he had absorbed the pieces deeply in his consciousness, not just in the fingers, and in his preparation had seemingly eliminated the bar lines which so regularly contradict the underlying rhythms; the performance sent me straight back to the scores to play them through and rethink several points. |
Beethoven Piano Sonata in C minor, Op.13 (Pathétique)