In his barnstorming piano recital at Wigmore Hall, Inon Barnatan hit the ground running with the resounding opening chords of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales. His firmness of tone made a strong impact and in the rest of his recital, there was much more of that strength to come. His interpretation of the Ravel struck one as lacking coloristic nuance at first, but as it progressed his emotional directness and unfussy phrasing began to make sense. When he came to the dreamlike epilogue, this approach arrived at a satisfying and touching conclusion.
Thomas Adès' Blanca Variations that followed were originally written as a test piece for a competition, utilising a folksong theme he used in his opera The Exterminating Angel. Adopting a style of lucid piano writing not a million miles away from Ravel, it is a short work of atmospheric shifting moods. Barnatan revelled in its technical challenges, its layers of chords, arpeggios and trills dancing around each other with freedom and power, delivered with effortless aplomb.
The first half of the concert came to a grand conclusion with Guido Agosti transcriptions of three movements from Stravinsky’s ballet, The Firebird. Agosti was a pupil of Busoni and his arrangements, dedicated to Busoni, have the extreme virtuosity of his teacher’s own transcriptions. Barnatan was equal to the challenge of the Dance infernale, demonstrating the true measure of the power that he can produce from the piano. Yet this power didn’t feel relentless or hectoring, as he managed, even at extreme volumes, to find a gradation in his touch. The Berceuse was delicious and, in the Finale, he somehow succeeded in creating a sense of the vast orchestral grandeur.
The second half consisted of a single work, Barnatan’s own reduction for solo piano of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances. Inspired by a recording of the composer demonstrating the score to the conductor Eugene Ormandy, Barnatan has miraculously recreated this lush orchestration for just two hands, giving himself technical challenges at the limit of physical possibilities. What struck one when listening to this version was how pianistic Rachmaninov’s orchestral music is. You could picture the composer working on his score at the keyboard and then solving how to orchestrate it.
The first dance, with its lively outer sections, was impressively presented, a sense of restraint in the rhythmic sections. The beautiful never-ending melody at the heart of the movement was delivered with shifting textures that reflected the orchestral colours. The central waltz was likewise superbly varied in texture and rhythmic phrasing, building to a rousing climax near. The real tour de force though was the final dance, with it strident outer passages which cry out for an army of brass. Barnatan had saved another dynamic level for this dance of death, incorporating as it does the Dies irae, and there was even a sense of the tam-tam in the final chord.
After this energetic triumph, a calming encore of Rachmaninov's Vocalise, also arranged by Barnatan, was beautifully played.
