MUSIC REVIEW: Public Concerts as part of the 22nd International Piano Summer School at Chetham's School of Music, Manchester. - Week 2 #2

Chetham's School Of Music in Manchester have been running International Piano Summer Schools for the past 22 years, and this year they have opened many of the concerts given by the working professionals tutoring the courses up to the public. What a lovely idea; during a month of when traditionally, the theatre and music worlds estivate for the month, music-lovers are now given the opportunity of seeing world-class artistes performing short concerts at a world-class venue for a fraction of the cost of a standard concert.

Today I watched two more concerts. The first, at 1:45pm, was given by 18 year-old Ukrainian Khrystyna Mykhailichenko. She performed Rachmaninov's Sonata no1 for the piano, and let me tell you, dear reader, I have heard this piece many times, and have never heard it played better! Mykhailichenko has seen and experienced much in her short life... leaving her home in the Crimea in 2014, when the Russians occupied the area, moving to a town close to Kiev. Unfortunately, the Russians did not stop at Crimea, and once war broke out in 2022, her mother and her fled Ukraine to Poland, before coming over to the UK., leaving her father and brother behind in her war-torn homeland. All these experiences, and all that emotion has to find an outlet somewhere, and I believe that it was found this afternoon in her piano-playing. Performing a piece of music from one of Russia's greatest piano exponents surely touched a nerve, and we were lucky, nay privileged, to have witnessed it. I don't mind admitting that during the final movement I had tears streaming down my face. This was a powerful, and highly emotional performance, and was played with passion, incredible skill, and a connection to the music that one rarely sees. I read that Mykhailichenko is now studying with Graham Scott at the RNCM and so hopefully I will be able to watch more of her now she is resident in the UK.

At 7pm, it was time for something a little more Romantic!  Welcoming the aforementioned Graham Scott himself to the stage, we were treated to his wonderful renditions of Rachmaninov {Variations On A Theme Of Corelli}, Chopin {Ballade No 4}, and Liszt {Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen}. Scott's interpretations were simply dreamy, bringing out much of his own emotion behind his playing but not letting this override the melody and thought processes behind the works themselves. The dynamics were handled with precision, although there were a couple of times, for me at least, where he tended to hold down the resonator pedal just a little too long, which had the effect of obfuscating the following melody. In between these highly Romantic works, he also performed a new work by contemporary composer Adam Gorb. Gorb was in attendance for this, the world premiere performance, and he told us that the piece had been inspired both by Chopin, and the death of his mother earlier this year who had a great love of Beethoven. The piece was modern but backward-looking - even in the close-harmony jazz chords, which belonged to a bygone era. Tuneful and enjoyable. 

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 21.8.23