Angelina Kopyrina

 Angelina Kopyrina, Lunchtime Live! Portsmouth Cathedral, Thurs Sept 24th.

It's a long time since I looked forward to anything as much as this. Lockdown doesn't affect me as much as many others but live concerts are something I've been missing. Finding out just in time that Lunchtime Live was back and then seeing the programme, it couldn't come soon enough.

Due to some old, misplaced purist principle, I'd never taken much notice of the Busoni transcriptions of Bach or anybody else, it not being proper Bach but, to paraphrase The Monkees, then I heard it on the wireless recently, now I'm a believer.

It's not that Bach is diluted but one has the best of both worlds, with both The Well-Tempered Klavier and something like Liszt in one piece. One might think the same about the Brahms variations on Handel but that soon becomes Brahms with not much Handel whereas the Busoni-Bach Chaconne is more faithful to the Violin Partita it comes from. It retains the authentic Bach walking bass, the chiming effect of the celebratory passages and adds in some Liszt extravagance to make a remarkable piece that Angelina delivers with an assured flourish and great conviction. That was what I walked three miles each way for, the 7 or 8 miles I walked on Tuesday still stiff in my legs, like Bach himself walking all that way to hear Buxtehude, but I'd have gone anyway, it's just that the programme was exactly what I wanted.

But I was betting without the Rachmanninov Sonata no. 2. Being such a devotee of such things as Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, I enjoy Rachmanninov without collecting too many records of his music. That might change. The programme told us that Angelina's Ph. D. is research into 'author's editions and problems of interpretation' in the Rachmanninov Sonatas 1 and 2, so one could hardly be in better hands and nor, apparently, could the music. A piano player needs pianist's hands and Elton John didn't have them which is why Crocodile Rock was about his limit but I was early enough and thus well placed to be able to watch her hands which was an education in itself. The Sonata has its dreamy passages and even achieves moments of stillness, which Angelina captures without exploiting but her performance is always likely to be most memorable for the climactic runs they build back into. Nobody, not even Beethoven, does a crescendo quite like these and once Rachmanninov has given her licence to detonate the explosives it sounds to me as if 'Allegro molto' is an understatement. I hope the cathedral piano is enjoying some well-earned rest this afternoon after being put through such rigorous exercise. It was thrilling and both expressed one's wildest dreams while seemingly beyond them. I've seen standing ovations given for less than either of these performances and it was a shame the small, socially distanced audience weren't ideally situated to be prompted into doing so. 

It's great to see that Angelina will be back twice more in the next two months to provide more of her repertoire and it is devoutly to be hoped that no lockdown rules curtail the Lunchtime Live series, for which all gratitude is due to Sachin at the cathedral and all those performers doing them. I can't remember anything being quite so welcome.