Town House, Inverness, 14 February 2008

Alexander Kanchavely

THE SERIES of lunchtime concerts at the Town House launched by Adrian Clark while he was Arts Officer in Inverness (and now being looked after by a trio of volunteers under the aegis of the Inverness Arts Forum) was triggered by the acquisition of the Bosendorfer piano at the venue in 2006.

Since its installation, we have heard some impressive performances on the instrument, and young Georgian pianist Alexander Kanchavely indubitably added to that list. The invitation to come and play was extended after James Munro, one of the team now promoting the recitals, heard him perform a Sonata by Prokofiev at the RSAMD last year (the pianist is completing a post-graduate degree there, and has already won several prizes), and was bowled over by the performance.

After a disappointing turnout for a fine concert from the locally-based Merlewood Ensemble in January (admittedly on a dreadful day of weather, in stark contrast to this one), it was good to see a much more substantial audience for the pianist. He rewarded the gathering with some incandescent playing in a programme that featured music by Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninov.

He began with Beethoven’s ‘Piano Sonata No. 3 in C, Op. 2, No. 3′, an early but substantial contribution to Beethoven’s landmark corpus of work for solo piano. The pianist’s expressive handling of the music was not simply impressive in its technical surety and fluency, but also communicated a deeper understanding and engagement with the music, while bringing its range of harmonic colour and dynamic variation in vivid fashion.

Chopin’s ‘Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52′ was no less impressive. The pianist was entirely in command of the virtuoso pianism which the work requires, and was equally sure-footed in his judgement of phrasing, dynamics and touch. That exhausted the printed programme, but he added another short but scintillating performance of one of Rachmaninov’s demanding ‘Etudes-Tableaux’ to round out a memorable recital.

The next concert in this series features Allan Grant (viola and piano) and Steven Cordiner (violin) on 3 March 2008.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2008