Review Details
Petra Paskova
Alan Cooper
19 February 2009
Cowdray Hall
Petra Paskova currently a graduate student in music at Aberdeen University is last year’s winner of the Ogston Music Prize. Her performance at the Lunchbreak Concert on Thursday certainly confirmed that the judges’ decision was truly well founded. Time after time in my notes I find the word “expressive”. The sheer graphic vividness of her playing was a consistent thread that ran through her entire performance. The common trait of all the very finest keyboard players is their ability to push the lines of continuity in the composer’s writing to the very forefront of their playing making the listener aware as never before of exactly what it was that the composer was trying to put across. With this sort of playing, it is as if the performer blows away all the mists of uncertainty and makes the music come shining through with dazzling clarity. Petra Paskova has this ability in shed loads.
The three pieces in her programme were very different but she captured the true essence of each one of them. In Franz Paul Reigler’s Sonata in D Major, the expressiveness of the playing was delivered with supreme neatness and delicacy. The central minuet and trio were wonderfully poised and elegant with a light and resilient left hand and the finale with its hint of military music was played with splendidly contrasting forcefulness of touch as much as dynamic variation.
Schubert’s Sonata in A Major, op.164 was a real treat. The opening movement was played with an amazing range of tonal colour while in the second movement, (for me the highlight of the entire programme) the buoyant pizzicato left hand supported wonderfully smooth streams of melody in the right hand. This was a splendidly teasing and seductive performance. The drama in the finale was all there too but never overdone.
Bursting with colour and excitement, Smetana’s La Fête des paysans bohemians one of the six pieces in Rêves was unleashed on us by Petra in a wonderful display of keyboard fireworks and virtuosity. Here her playing was free and unfettered yet it never lost its special sense of refinement and delicacy.