Yahoo News Paul Lewis review – thoughtful and refined pianist saves the best for last
Paul Lewis is currently immersed in a long-term project: a series of recitals that juxtapose a selection of Haydn’s piano sonatas with miniatures by Brahms, and with Beethoven’s bagatelles providing a historical and stylistic connection between them. Tonight’s concert included two of the best known of Haydn’s sonatas, the C minor No 20 and the E flat No 52, with the contrast provided by Brahms’s Fantasies Op116 and the earliest set of Beethoven’s bagatelles, Op 33.
There is never any doubting the musicality and sheer accomplishment of Lewis’s playing. But this programme never provided the piquancy or sense of discovery one might have expected. Starting the evening with the Brahms set seemed odd, as these endlessly fascinating pieces – a mix of capriccios and intermezzos – demand a blend of intimacy and extrovert bravura that is always difficult to nail. Lewis’s performances never really suggested he had got the balance right.
In fact, it set the tone for much of the evening. Lewis’s uniform, one-size-fits-all approach was applied to music that spanned more than a century of rapid musical change, and in which he made disappointingly little of colouristic and textural contrasts. There were certainly moments of gruff quirkiness in the Beethoven bagatelles, but the best was left until the end of the published programme, when the finale of Haydn’s E flat Sonata had exuberance and flair. Then in the encore – the sublime fifth bagatelle from Beethoven’s final Op 126 set – everything fell into place, and Lewis could finally remind the audience of what an intensely thoughtful and refined pianist he can be.
