Pianist Mariam Batashvili is one of the world’s living treasures and I now realise why everyone wants a piece. Originally slated to visit Shrewsbury two years ago, one baby and 43 international flights later this diminutive dynamo of the keyboard finally landed at St Chad’s with an unforgettable programme of Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Liszt that combined piercing, crystalline beauty with red-blooded gypsy fire and charm.
As the last notes of her encore Petit Caprice in the style of Offenbach by Rossini – her second, just as rapturously demanded and received as her first (more Liszt) – subsumed wondrously into the circular grandeur of the round church, I pondered what it was about the Austro-Hungarian empire and Vienna that produced such fine music. So I asked the new AI oracle DeepSeek. And answer came there none. Maybe it was something to do with my prompt. Or perhaps Trump’s cyber boffins had already struck back to hobble the Chinese upstart competition? In any case, all the terror-bite of artificial intelligence cannot hold an old-fashioned candle to the clarity and sincerity of Batsashvili’s musical intelligence that brought to life here some of the greatest hits of composers who were lucky enough to fetch up in the Viennese whirl at the centre of Austro-Hungarian hegemonic control. Of course, patronage, education, the advances of tech (as it wasn’t called back then) played a part in cultivating writers who composed work of enduring genius, but it was the quality of cultural exchange that saw classicism encounter a wide, differing range of influences that produced such fertile and imaginative music, and it was particularly here that Batsashvili performed as a marvellously articulate and sensitive guide. This was a piano masterclass IRL.
The former BBC New Generation artist astonished from the off with Haydn’s Piano Sonata in D Major. The opening Allegro, founded on the barest, chirruping glimpse of a gypsy dance in its main theme, unfurled the first thread that eventually became the grand canvas of hot, demonic flame and swirling octaves in the two Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies (2 and 13) with which she concluded the recital. But in this classical opening her playing was all light and sparkle. She executed the chorale-like slow movement with an exquisite ear for the suspensions that seemed to conjure the ache of some ruined, deserted temple only to become enveloped by the tendrils of a returning Spring in the cascading final Presto.
A torrent of rambunctious yet nimble fingerwork continued in Beethoven’s Rondo a capriccio aka ‘Rage Over a Lost Penny’ – alla ingharese: roughly translated as ‘like that Hungarian/Gypsy type stuff’ – the rage here performative only, finely poised in an ironic and admirably dextrous stage-whisper. The first half finished with Brahms’ Klavierstucke Op.118 that were lithe and alert explorations of introspective inner forces, a tour de force of concentration and articulation that illuminated still yet stormy waters, and the depths that ran beneath.
Batsashvili opened the second half with numbers 2 and 4 from Schubert Impromptus – refreshingly from Op.142 rather than Op.90 – with great lyricism and attention to musical detail before moving on to the contrasting blast and whirl of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies, number 13, then 2. Her standing ovation from the large and hugely appreciative audience was no surprise at all – or the fact that her next stop would be the Wigmore Hall. Brava!
James Fraser-Andrews
You can listen to Mariam playing the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody number 2 and the Rossini on BBC Sounds at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0026x4j after her interview with Katie Derham on Radio 3's In Tune on 22nd January. Available until about 20th February. Start at 38 minutes into the programme. She was very happy with the concert as you'll hear!