REVIEWS
MISHKA RUSHDIE MOMEN piano
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.
REVIEW BY Chris Skidmore
Virtuosity combined with luminous intensity
Ilkley Concert Club started its 78th season at the King’s Hall last Wednesday with a stunning display of pianistic virtuosity from the talented Mishka Rushdie Momen. Her programme began and ended with Schubert, the Sonata in A major, D784 and the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasie, D760. These two pieces from 1822-23, in which Schubert is challenging the capabilities of the pianos of his day, were both given performances full of dynamic extremes, with thundering chords echoing late Beethoven and expressing Schubert’s frustrations with his instrument. These were contrasted with limpid legato playing, dizzyingly rapid passagework and hushed pianos highlighting the important musical details. Rushdie Momen is not only technically brilliant but her virtuosity is always at the service of the music.
The still centre of the programme was shared by William Byrd’s Prelude and Fantasia in A minor and three pieces from the first book of Leoš Janáček’s ‘On an overgrown path’. To play Byrd on a modern concert grand seems an extraordinary decision but it was here carried off with great aplomb. Mishka has a spectacular lightness of touch which allowed all the complex decoration to stand out as crisply as on a modern harpsichord. The simple lyricism of the Janáček in contrast was given a luminous quality which evoked the mournful intensity of these deeply-felt pieces and kept the audience spellbound.
The highlight for this reviewer was Rushdie Momen’s performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses, which despite its classical form is full of romantic intensity. Written in part in celebration of Beethoven and his use of variation it is among the most virtuosic piano pieces that Mendelssohn ever wrote. Mishka Rushdie Momen of course delivered this virtuosity with all the energy at her command but she also excelled in the two crucial variations where the increasing elaboration of the theme pauses to allow new versions of the theme to emerge – the pathos of the Adagio variation was almost too great to bear – before the piece rolls on towards the exhilaration of the Presto finale. It was a magnificent climax to a truly remarkable concert!
