Wednesday 9 October 2024 7:30pm

Schubert  –  Sonata in A minor, D784
Byrd  –  Prelude and Fantasia in A minor
Mendelssohn  –  Variations sérieuses, op 54
Janáček –  On an Overgrown Path, Book 1 (selection)
Schubert  – Fantasie in C major, D760

Described as ‘one of the most thoughtful and sensitive of British pianists’,Mishka Rushdie Momen is a pupil of Imogen Cooper and has been mentored by Sir András Schiff. Her debut album – Variations – won praise for her ‘tonal command and wide-ranging technique’. From that disc she offers us the Variations sérieuses, Mendelssohn’s tribute to Beethoven, a work of plaintive but enchanting beauty but deliberately eschewing bravura. Her recent study of Tudor keyboard music – described as ‘encountering a palace of riches’ – contributes the Byrd Prelude and Fantasia to our programme.

Schubert is at the heart of Mishka’s repertoire and she brings to Ilkley both the darkly tragic final sonata in A minor and the four-movement ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy, based on the earlier song, and almost a sonata in itself. The constant questioning of the reliability of memory in the song is echoed in Janáček’s cycle On an overgrown path which combines recollections of childhood with the regrets of a bereaved father.