June 13th, 2011
Denis Kozhukhin will appear at the Klavierfest Ruhr on June 25 in a programme including Haydn, Brahms and Liszt. This will follow appearances at the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano on June 17, where he will perform Rachmaninov Sonata No.1 and Trio No.2 (with Renaud Capuçon and Yan Levionnois), and at the newly established Klavierfieber Festival in Berlin, on June 21 and 22.
Brahms: Fantasies No. 1 in D minor
“In Beethoven anniversary year, there will probably be many more “Moonlight”s, meaning the Sonata, than the real thing (though we’ve been lucky to see the crescent in close conjunction with Venus these past two nights). Not many pianists would dare to place it at the beginning of a programme. Denis Kozhukhin’s paradoxically no-nonsense poetry meant that a constant sense of motion culminated in the whirlwind of the finale, a steady move towards implosion mirrored in the piano transcription of Ravel’s La Valse at the end of the programme. In between came perfection in the form of pure song from Schubert and Grieg.”
