Denis Kozhukhin

“Kozhukhin uses an immaculate technique to keep it all within bounds, only busting out with impressive tirades of double octaves. He’s a pianist who tunes in to what’s going on around him – that was even more evident in a fabulous performance of Prokofiev’s concertante-style Fifth Piano Concerto with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the Ciy of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Basingstoke a month ago. To hear him build Brahms’s elaborate piano treatment of the first movement’s lovely lyrical counter-subject second time around was a masterclass in subtle musicianship. Uniquely crystalline in the Adagio’s more troubled meditation, Kozhukhin was underpinned by silky-strong cellos and basses full of presence. Petrenko knows how to manipulate atmosphere, even if the orchestral introduction nearly fell through sinkholes in its craggy landscape. What a flawless masterpiece this is, though, its endless thematic inventiveness seeming to flow from a pure spring. Kozhukhin took us right back to the source in the ineffable vanishing act of his tiny encore, Grieg’s “Arietta”, announcement of which brought a shriek of approval from what I presume was a Norwegian in the audience.”
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