Page 380 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

Pianist Kirill Gerstein with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Nikolaj Szeps-
Znaider. LPO

Gerstein was, deservedly, cheered. In the transcription of Rachmaninov’s song In the
Silent Night, his musicianship was at once liberated and liberating. Szeps-Znaider, who
is better known as a fine violinist, found more detail in movements from Smetana’s Má
Vlast. By the end, he began to loosen up, dancing on the stage. It made, belatedly, all the
difference.

Few pianists can sell out a solo recital at the Barbican. The young South Korean Seong-
Jin Cho (b.1994), supported by the Korean Cultural Centre UK and cheered on by le
tout Korea in London, packed the hall for a technically faultless programme drawing on
his new album, The Handel Project, with Robert Schumann’s Études symphoniques the
bumper finale. This last Cho played with all the youthful zest of a virtuoso delighting in
pianistic wizardry. There are many more secrets to discover in this complex work, and
no doubt he will. The revelation was the encore: the minuet from Handel’s Suite in B
flat major, HWV 434 (arr. Kempff). A once stately baroque dance dissolved, as if by
magic, into a featherweight arabesque.