Max Pemberton in Chichester

 Max Pemberton, Chichester Cathedral, March 25

The piano is generally an instrument played with two hands, and one or two feet. Except for this week. Max Pemberton has a condition in his right hand that- hopefully temporarily- means he can only use the other one and so compiled a programme of pieces all 'for the left hand' without the most famous of them by Ravel.

I'm sure that a competent musician would have been able to tell by sound alone that only one hand was in use but it would have fooled me. In the first two pieces it was something of a distraction to see how it worked, the thumb often picking out the melodic line in Leopold Godowsky's Étude no. 13, as per the Chopin, over what I might risk calling arpeggios played by the fingers. Luise Adolpha Le Beau's Improvisation was then lyrical and not dissimilar.

The Toccata and Fugue by Jenő Takács was next very dissimilar, discomfiting and uneasy in its broken-down Bach way and Robert Saxton's Chacony continued in an edgy, unsettled mood that we could call 'sinister' to make use of our memory of distant Latin classes.

But having gone from C19th Romanticism to C20th Modernism, and become more accustomed to the novelty of left-hand only, the masterstroke was an arrangement by Brahms of Bach's Chaconne, BWV 1004, as also taken up by Busoni. This immense performance of such grand sanity transcended any consideration of how many hands were playing. You can't miss with a piece like that although, of course, the pianist needs all the technique and virtuosity in the quickening middle section and Max is clearly some talent to produce such a performance with, as it were, one hand tied behind his back.

I hadn't been entirely convinced I'd make the trip to Chichester today towards the end of what has been a heavy schedule of pleasure just recently- not that I'm complaining- but I'm very glad I did. You never can tell what is going to surprise you next. On Thursday in Portsmouth Cathedral we are due one piano with four hands. Suddenly it seems that two is an odd number of them to apply to a keyboard.