Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Piano Sonata no. 2 in B flat minor, Op.36

Rachmaninov as composer is still on his reputational journey, which proceeds at different rates for different works and genres. 

“I have no idea what will happen," Montero admitted as she launched into an improvised performance to accompany Charlie Chaplin's film, The Immigrant.

Had the piece been much longer, pianist, instrument, audience and hall would surely have been consumed by some Pentecostal fire. Which is more or less what the composer had in mind.

Francesco Piemontesi delivered with enthusiasm a programme of intensely warm Bach, colourful Debussy and turbulent Rachmaninov. 

A daring programme, with more than enough technical challenges which produced exciting, if uneven performances.  

The young Greek pianist recently showed himself a true powerhouse at the Kleine Tonhalle in Zürich. 

Acclaimed Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky opened the 2014 International Piano Series concerts at Southbank Centre with an impressive and absorbing recital of music by Debussy, Ravel and Rachmaninov.

Anyone who knows the name Marc-André Hamelin will know him foremost for his technique. It is, to use a crude expression, what his brand is built upon.

Yuja Wang is all about rhythm. It would be easy to write about how her playing doesn’t have the profundity or architectural sense of more mature artists, but that would be to miss her considerable achievements – and with a young artist, it’s what’s achieved that should count.

The virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin played a program of works by Bach, Fauré, Ravel and Rachmaninov, bracketed by his own Variations on a theme by Paganini. Last March in Toronto, when Hamelin snuck this piece into the program as an encore, I wrote that it was “ten minutes of the most fun you’ll ever have crowding around a piano at the end of party.