Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Préludes: Book 2

In Chicago, the French pianist used the full toolbox in an impressive traversal of the character-filled pieces, some of his oldest friends.

What a great composer, and what a great advocate for his genius.

A four-hour concert featuring piano music by Debussy might seem like an excessive ask, but the Perth Festival filled the venue for this stunning and highly entertaining concert by French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.

Alexander Melnikov's recital, surveying both books of Préludes, was highly individual, the Russian pianist twisting and pulling Debussy's scores as a child plays with plasticine. 

Traditional August Bank Holiday weather – steady rain – was reflected in the melancholy programme for this lunchtime Chamber Prom.

Occasionally one comes across an artist who seems so at one with the music, that one can almost hear the composer at the artist’s shoulder saying ”yes, that is what I meant”.

Any solo recital from Radu Lupu comes with the baggage of a cult, and this Carnegie Hall concert was no exception. Lavish praise from the weeklies aside, there really is something to the aura that surrounds this exquisite pianist. He has a unique sound, seeming to breathe with the concert hall's very air.

Having only heard Pierre-Laurent Aimard on disc for the last few years it was curious to experience something rather different in the flesh, by way perhaps of that phenomenon, so often invoked as to be meaningless, of the artist for whom two concerts are never the same.

When I first settled into my red velvet seat at Carnegie Hall, my excitement was overtaken by a grim foreboding. The hall’s internationally celebrated acoustics were offering an all-too-dazzling earful of sneezes and sniffles – a fact I observed in a germaphobic panic.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a pianist who really likes to get inside the music he performs, whether Liszt, Boulez, Messiaen, or, as in the case of his Chamber Prom at Cadogan Hall (the last of the 2012 season), Debussy.

To perform so many of Debussy’s works in one sitting requires a certain amount of skill and understanding. The charismatic pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet opened our eyes to the impressionistic world of Claude Debussy in this special three-part concert for the Cheltenham Music Festival.