Page 78 - FULL BOOK Isata Kanneh-Mason Childhood Tales

Colin’s Column

8 May 2023
RELEASED TODAY, May 26: Isata

Kanneh-Mason records “Childhood

Tales” for Decca.

Outstanding [category w.e.f. January 2021], Recording Reviews | 0 comments

Previously published on May 8
Based on my previous experience of her playing, a Beethoven Third Piano Concerto with the
Hallé and Mark Elder, together with this Childhood-centric release, it may be that Isata turns
out to be the most talented, certainly the most communicative, of the Kanneh-Mason clan.
Her opening Mozart, K265, Variations on a twinkling tune, sparkles spontaneously, and the
same starry number feeds Ernö Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song, an inventive and
witty work that the composer recorded in the late-fifties with
Boult, https://www.discogs.com/master/982342-Ernst-von-Dohn%C3%A1nyiRoyal-
Philharmonic-Orchestra-Sir-Adrian-Boult-Variations-On-A-Nursery-TunePiano-
C?image=15890615.SW1hZ2U6NDg2NjM4MzM%3D, and which I got to know from Béla Siki’s
Vox/Turnabout version, https://www.discogs.com/master/1417863-Dohnanyi-Seattle-
Symphony-Orchestra-Milton-Katims-Bela-Siki-Variations-On-A-Nursery-Song-For-Piano-
A/image/SW1hZ2U6MTIxMjkwMTM=. It’s hugely enjoyable music that opens dramatically,
almost operatically, before settling into an ingenious sequence of colourful and contrasting
commentaries that Isata, the Liverpool Philharmonic and Domingo Hindoyan, make a
marvellous job of. Philip Siney’s recorded sound, November-December last year, is first-