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Gifted pianist has Newbury in the palm of his hand




NSF: Vadym Kholodenko

at the Corn Exchange, Newbury,

on Sunday, May 12

Review by FIONA BENNETT

Vadym Kholodenko (c) Jean-Baptiste Millot
Vadym Kholodenko (c) Jean-Baptiste Millot

HAVING trained as a pianist, I am always keen to attend the solo piano recital which usually takes place at the Corn Exchange on the first Sunday of the Newbury Spring Festival and I have had the great good fortune to hear world class performances by Stephen Hough, Peter Donohoe and Benjamin Grosvenor.

Last Sunday saw the return of Vadym Kholodenko and it was clear, from Mark Eynon’s introduction, that he was thrilled to have this gifted musician grace our festival once again.

In a nicely planned chronological programme, Vadym had us in the palm of his hand from the first bars of Handel’s Chaconne (HWV 435). Keyboard players of the Baroque period played harpsichord or organ (or both) and although Handel is well known for his operas and oratorios, he never neglected his keyboard skills, once having been declared the winner in a harpsichord and organ playing competition, by none other than his competitor Domenico Scarlatti.

The variations on the opening triple-time Chaconne gave us great insight into the need for highly ornamented keyboard music – there was no sustain pedal back in the day and each section demonstrated Vadym’s ‘iron-clad technique, capable of moments of crystalline delicacy’.

Vadym Kholodenko
Vadym Kholodenko

Beethoven’s 32nd and final piano sonata is a very different kettle of fish from his earlier keyboard compositions. Two, rather than the traditional three, movements make up this work and as the delighted recipient of an English Broadwood piano in 1818, Beethoven used his new, more modern and robust instrument to push both pianist and instrument as hard and as far as he possibly could.

Not for the faint hearted, Vadym took us on a journey of high and low, loud and soft, sometimes hammering out fistfuls of angry sounding notes and yet, always in complete control. We were mesmerised.

The young tonality frontier pushing Russian student Sergei Prokofiev performed his own first piano concerto as his graduation performance at the St Petersburg Conservatory and this pretty much set the standard for his future career. He seemingly thrived on hostile criticism and it only served to push him even harder to prove his critics wrong.

Personally, I adore his music and am always thrilled by the way he moves through the keys, inventing scales as he goes and then, ends up exactly where he needs to be, tonally speaking. Vadym thrilled us with a virtuosic performance of Sonata No. 8. It was in turn, complex, exciting, gentle, dissonant and yet, hugely accessible.

They say things come in threes, let’s hope the letter’s in the post, inviting this exciting pianist back to Newbury for a third concert, very soon.



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