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The set of ‘Variations’ that opened the concert were nothing short of a revelation, composed by Schnittke in 1955 when he was little over 20 years old, making it all the more astounding that this was in fact their UK premiere. Opening with a tragic lullaby, it was as if the music was thereafter let loose, each aspect of the theme dismantled and used as a musical springboard for the most touching romanticism, ebbing and flowing in washes of expression. Simon Smith imparted the work with grace and finesse that gave way to stunning virtuosic grandeur when it was required.
We were then led boldly into the electronic-influenced realm of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstuck IX, composed only six years after Schnittke’s work but inhabiting a very different sound-world. The piece possessed a volatile and unpredictable nature in Smith’s hands; the impending opening figure sank gradually away only to return with renewed venom soon after, and remarkable tension was captured in the final section with sustained trills cut short by violent, stabbing chords.
Parallels could certainly be drawn between the Stockhausen and the work that followed, Alasdair Spratt’s Fantasy and Fugue, written in 2007. The slowly transfiguring chords of the opening were interceded by explosive outbursts in the extreme registers of the instrument. Smith brilliantly rendered each individual musical figure before eloquently highlighting how they intertwine and engulf one another in the resulting fugue, rhythms steadily gaining strength and purpose to culminate in the work’s hammering climax.
A selection from the first book of Gyorgy Ligeti’s Piano Etudes provided a fitting end to a wonderfully judged concert. Here, Simon Smith showed Ligeti to be a master of colour; while punctuating rhythms leapt forth from the first etude’s wall of sound, the calmer hypnotic flow of the second and fourth paved the way perfectly for the more lyrical complexion of the fifth. Finally, the hovering octaves of the sixth etude radiated an almost Damoclesian tension, rounding off a stunning performance, both musically and technically, from a pianist everyone should go out of their way to hear.
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