May 25th, 2014
On Saturday 31 May, Denis Kozhukhin will make his concerto debut at London’s Royal Festival Hall, when he will perform Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov. The concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 as part of their Live in Concert series.
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.”
