Star rating **** Steven Osborne did more than save the day yesterday when he stepped in to give a festival recital at short notice, replacing an ill Ivan Moravec.
He comprehensively stole his own show and made the day his own when, after an exciting, edge-of-the-seat set of performances of music by Debussy, Beethoven and Messiaen, he addressed his audience.
"It is the centenary of Messiaen's birth," he said, "but it's also the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin's 10th birthday." As the crowd laughed, Osborne eased gently into one of his improvisations, a warm and softly swinging mood piece based on a Bill Evans transcription of I Love you Porgy, in a fluid, characteristically chord-rich and musing exploration of the tune and its harmonies. Lovely stuff, and they loved him for it.
In the formal recital, Osborne was in fantasy and buccaneering modes respectively in the first half, liberating Debussy's Children's Corner from the barline and weaving a thrilling drama out of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, with headlong impetus in the occasionally splashy first movement, and a beguiling finale whose accumulation of bell-like sonorities suggested he was improvising with the sustaining pedal.
In the second half, absolute stillness and concentration were the order of the day as Osborne played five movements from Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'enfant Jesus, variously glittering and deeply calm playing, all demonstrating Osborne's mastery of space, sonority and silence, and exemplifying just why he is regarded internationally as one of the great Messiaen pianists of the era.
At generating the vast spaces and silences of the opening movement, he is unequalled, and the sheer exultant power of his finale remains awesome. Supported by Lean Scully EIF Fund
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