The Island beyond the World -Philip Hammond
Sonata Op 10 No 2 in F- Beethoven
Sonata Op 31 No 2 in D minor -Beethoven
24 Preludes Op 28 - Chopin
Halfway through his tour of Ireland for Music Network/ESB Nikolai Demidenko electrified the audience in the old church of St Werburgh in Dublin.
Last Wednesday's recital opened with a specially commissioned piece by Philip Hammond which the composer accurately describes as "very slow and intense, almost static, but with very careful, subtle expression".
It was, as can be imagined, hard to listen to, and hard to play, but Demidenko's playing held it together and conveyed the mystical feeling that was intended. In lesser hands it might not be so effective.
The move from Hammond to Beethoven was a jolt, but Demidenko's mastery of touch in the sonatas made the more familiar idiom seem just as intense and subtle as Hammond's The Island beyond the World.
The sonatas, of course, offer the interpreter greater scope for variety of expression, and Demidenko met all the demands of the music with vivifying attention. It was as if he was saying: "Listen, this music is not notes in my head, it is alive and I am showing it to you."
The range of his response is impressive and this was particularly so in the 24 preludes of Chopin's Op 28.
The programme notes discouraged one from relating the music to Chopin's life, to relate it to one's own life was hardly possible, for in Demidenko's performance it was plain that in music Chopin transcended life as we know it.
The Preludes are probably not meant to be played one after the other, but Demidenko varied the pauses between each piece, sometimes omitting the pause altogether, which helped to give an illusion of continuity.
Each Prelude had its own character, forcefully expressed when necessary, more subtly suggested when appropriate, and one's attention never flagged, not even during the most familiar of them.