Steven Osborne is artist-in-residence at this year’s Bath international music festival, and his concert at the Guildhall was the first of a series of three, which will culminate in Messiaen’s Vingt Regards. This opener of Russian music confirmed his ever-increasing stature as one of the very finest of pianists.
Vast technical command is balanced by penetrating insight and an expressivity that seems to derive from a more than usually empathetic instinct for the nature of the composers in question. The relaxed atmosphere of a morning recital found him introducing Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky with a warmth and gentle self-deprecation that endeared him doubly to his audience.
The piece Osborne played by way of prelude to the fireworks to come, Schubert’s Moment Musical, the Andantino in A flat, D780, had a meditative quality, poised between philosophical resignation and a more searching angst, beautifully realised. It guided the ear to listen beyond the pyrotechnics, brilliant as they were, of his selection of Rachmaninov’s Etudes Tableaux, Ops. 33 and 39. Osborne described arcs of melody with a quiet intensity that matched Schubert, while appearing to make light of the colossal virtuosity where passion and despair rage away.
Most satisfyingly, the sequence of studies had been assembled in such a way as to form an audible parallel with Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the single work of the second half. In this, Osborne’s exploration of resonating sonorities again revealed his instinct for colour and crystalline texture, but also for the dark harmonies that make Catacombs so chilling. At the time, Bydlo felt a bit too much of a steamroller but, by the end, it stood as the wholly logical counterbalance to the final movements and the Great Gate of Kiev’s glorious explosion of bells.
• The Bath festival continues until 26 May. Box office: 01225 463362.
