Angelina Kopyrina in Havant

 Angelina Kopyrina, St. Faith's, Havant, Oct 18

A lunchtime concert can be a substantial meal but a two-part evening recital is a banquet. Two Beethoven sonatas in the first half made one wonder where there was to go from there in the second. While having a printed programme is in many ways preferable, waiting and seeing builds some suspense. 

Sonata no. 18, op. 31 no.3, opening with its playful, Mozartian trilling might have been ahead of tempi we've had before and that suspicion was upheld by the Allegretto vivace and its entrancing left hand. It didn't make it sound hurried, it showed what can be done with such music in the unlikely event of the requisite dexterity. The Menuetto was necessarily more pensive before the rollicking romp of the Presto. Hearing, and seeing, the same artist five times in a year with some of the same repertoire doesn't have to be more of the same. Slightly different for however many reasons each time, it will take much longer than that to tire of Beethoven and Angelina Kopyrina.

The Appassionata is rightly famous, if not quite as famous as the Fifth Symphony with which it shares the 'fate motif'. Not one to underplay a good idea, it recurs throughout the Allegro in among the surges of power and tumbling scales. The sobriety of the Andante, as was a feature of all four of the evening's pieces, provided gorgeous contrast before the thrilling helter-skelter of further Presto. The point always needs to be made that if Angelina is most readily remembered for her exceptional bravura, it's not all full blast and the tenderness is an essential part of her art.

 

It's ever a good sign when you know you've had more than your money's worth by half-time. I remember Angelina saying (something like) she would happily play Liszt all the time. I'm glad she doesn't because we wouldn't get all the other things then but 'everything in moderation' doesn't sound right with reference to Liszt. Après une lecture du Dante is more fully entitled with Fantasia quasi sonata. The programmatic unleashing of the inferno is punctuated by passages of rare beauty, the stormiest moments of the evening ratcheted up each time in one of the high peaks of the Himalayan heights of Romanticism, flirting with madness as they did before the movement actually went mad in the person of his son-in-law.

One of the outstanding experiences of the concert-going year so far was Angelina's Prokofiev Sonata no. 7, op. 83, in Portsmouth Cathedral and there's nothing quite like the first time. I immediately availed myself of the Complete Piano Sonatas then and was grateful for the introduction. It's not just the relentless thrill of the drive to the finish, it's the unsettled, off-kilter first movement, the anticipation of Halloween and the urgent chiming in the second. It can't be expected to come with quite the same shock value when one has become familiar with what's going to happen but it was still great to witness it in the flesh again.

It's not all the time that a whole evening is one musician and their instrument and even when it is, it's not always at such a level of intensity. That was not only art and a performance of a deeply impressive calibre but an accomplishment of both physical and mental stamina. It's too easy to forget what it's like in between gigs and it could be too easy to in due course take it all for granted. That hasn't happened yet. I don't think it ever will.

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Portsmouth Menuhin Room, Sat November 29, 12.30. You won't regret it. Let's see how many seats Andrew can fit in there.