Kissin up a storm

Sonata in D minor Op 31 No 2 - Beethoven

Carnaval - Schumann

Sonata in F minor Op 5 - Brahms

If the point of piano performance is the display of virtuosity calculated to keep you on the edge of your seat, then Evgeny Kissin is just the man to provide it.

You could say he quite simply sailed through Schumann's Carnaval at the National Concert Hall on Sunday, though it would be truer to say that he stormed through it. But though both "sailing" and "storming" are words that accurately reflect particular aspects of his playing, neither really gets to the heart of the matter.

What makes Kissin so special as a performer is the apparent ease with which he is able to realise his musical conceptions. Think of a dangerous tempo? It can be handled. Think of an absurdly unobtrusive accompaniment? It can be arranged. If he can think it, Kissin persuades you through his playing he can do it. In Carnaval, he clearly conceives matters of pacing in a way that's utterly unbridled, and he delivers what other people might regard as impossible speeds with the sense of reserve of a Ferrari staying within the law on an Irish motorway.

Brahms's F minor Sonata, revealing the young composer at his most tigerish, is a vehicle far more responsive to the Kissin approach than Schumann's Carnaval. There's an inner warmth to the Schumann that Kissin, even at his most cosseting, hardly hints at. His sonorous power, whiplash energy, and unsentimental reverie proved on Sunday a truer match for Brahms's early compositional muscle-flexing.

The D minor Sonata from Beethoven's Op. 31 showed both the best and worst sides of Kissin's work. The best was to be found in the opening movement, where the extremes of recitative-like calm and tempestuous agitation were finely enough balanced to keep the audience in bated breath. The excesses came in the two movements which followed, blown out of all proportion as the performer strove vainly for effects of drama and dynamism in a way that this music simply cannot yield.

For my money, though, Kissin at his absolute best was heard in the last of the three encores, Brahms's G minor Hungarian Dance, where although the rubato was tightly-reined, the spirit was free, and the virtuosity commanding.