Moving from Schubert through Chopin to Liszt, this recital by Alim Beisembayev – the Kazakh-born winner of 2021’s Leeds international piano competition – described an arc delineating the passionate surge of Romanticism over the span of 30 or so years from the 1820s to 1853.
Beisembayev’s approach to Schubert’s Moments Musicaux, D780, was calm and understated, perhaps as a way of underlining the vast contrast with the Liszt yet to come. Using the fine acoustic of the Dora Stoutzker hall to his advantage, he created an intimacy where Schubert’s characteristic slipping in and out of major and minor modes was quietly evocative. Tellingly, the two Moments in F minor – No 3 where sadness and insouciance dance together and No 5 with its more dramatic outbursts – presaged the key of Chopin’s Fantaisie, Op49.
Here, Beisembayev’s instinct for shaping the long arching melodies and capturing their particular melancholy suggested a strong affinity with the composer, the chromatic harmonies carefully placed, mercurial passagework glistening. With a keyboard manner both composed and contained – any air of austerity countered by the bling of a lapel brooch – he nevertheless fired volleys of notes with a fierce conviction. It was as though he had taken to heart Schumann’s observation that Chopin’s works were “cannon buried in flowers”.
If the key of F minor had given a coherence to the first half of the programme, it also, together with Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, pointed up the interval of a diminished 5th, perceived as the Diabolus in Musica. The sonata’s diabolical element, emerging in the clouded mystery of the hushed opening and the percussive force of its answering phrase, was always apparent, most powerfully in the general bombardment of the virtuosic episodes.
But it was Beisembayev’s precise managing of Liszt’s transitions from apocalyptic maelstrom to serene spinning of melody, moments of silence held in air, which indicated that the technical assurance already evident when he won the Leeds at just 23 is now allied to far deeper interpretative insights. This was further borne out when his Debussy encore tipped over into the 20th century – liquid balm, beautifully delivered.
