Page 283 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

Like Vietnamese Khanh Nhi Luong, though, Trevelyan didn’t conjure sufficient tonal magic from the keyboard.
With Luong, every element of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto was perfectly in place, but the work needs a
fizzing, occasionally reflective personality to match the composer's. The pianists who followed these two
immediately showed more possibilities, Taiwanese-Chinese Kai-Minh Chang is a poet, allowing for total silence
before the calm opening chords of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. The work struck me afresh – too often,
it’s fine but routine – and that was as much the work of Hindoyan and the RLPO, sounding so natural in the first
orchestral tutti.

Luong’s successor, Canadian Jaeden Izik-Dzurko (pictured below in performance with the RLPO), found an
upper-register brightness she’d missed. And he ran the total gamut of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, which
if judged rightly shows ever facet of a pianist’s art – lyrical reflection, something of the thunder of the First
Concerto and, in the finale, sparkling wit. Some would argue that Izik-Dzurko was too cool, but surely only in
presentation; the actual results gave us both balance and excitement in a performance you’d be happy to hear in
any concert hall in the world, complemented by the sheen and sweep of the RLPO, and consummate solos from
principal horn and cello (sadly the players weren’t listed in the programme).