Angelina Kopyrina

Angelina Kopyrina continues to save the music year in Portsmouth, almost single-handedly. Her appearances in Portsmouth's Lunchtime Live! would be a high point of any year but are particularly welcome in our current circumstances.

Beethoven's 'Appassionata' Sonata is one among many of his piano sonatas that I spent a lot of time with in the Complete Stephen Kovacevich edition, which is a world in itself. Had Beethoven provided two or three such, he would be great but the fact there are 32 of them is one of the things that make him a towering genius.

The unsettled weather of the first movement moves through storm, the triumphant main theme and ripples of contentment at the top end of the keyboard and slightly more foreboding at the other. He quotes himself, the familiar opening bar of the fifth symphony, surely, in between flourishes.

The Andante is, in comparison, a model of restraint in its hymn-like tune before moving into the exhilarating headlong dash to the finish. Angelina is always likely to be most memorable for the power of her performance in the forte to fortissimo passages but one needs respite from the high-octane material, too, and she delivers that coolly. Getting there early enough to find an optimum seat to see the keyboard adds considerably to one's appreciation of what is going on. Never mind the memory to hold it, a pianist playing this repertoire also needs the hands to scatter the patterns across the keys in presto markings and, especially after the Liszt, I began to wonder how many notes we had heard in about 40 minutes.

Liszt was about 16 when Beethoven died and ideally placed to pick up certain aspects of his music and take it further. It was the Romantic, most flamboyant aspect he chose, of course. The Mephisto Waltz no. 1  begins in a gear not much below where the Appassionata finished. One might have thought the Beethoven was a piece to programme last but not when Liszt is going to take it to more outrageous lengths, or heights. It is the devil's dance, making Portsmouth Cathedral's Bosendorfer chime, thunder and resonate all at the same time. It performed very well, possibly not being accustomed to playing the devil's music very often. But it's not all rapid and wild, with the run up the keyboard thrown in just in case it wasn't energetic enough, because in the quieter middle part, one imagines one might be hearing where Rachmanninov found an expansive, rhapsodic mood to use as the template for his Greatest Hits.

The piece ends more suddenly than one expects if one doesn't know it and I think Angelina had to stand up from the stool before I, or many of the rest of the audience, were sure it was all over. It's a shame that a small, distanced audience can't provide the reaction that such a performance is worthy of but Angelina and all at Portsmouth Cathedral ought to know that it is all very much appreciated. 

There's one more to come from her, on November 5th, and it is likely to be where the best fireworks will be heard. I hope you can go and support it without getting to my favourite seat before I do.