Generous offering by U.S. pianist

The noted young American pianist, John Browning, launched the second season of the Bulawayo Celebrity Concerts with an unusually generous programme last night at Bulawayo City Hall.


His start was deceptive. His unruffled urbanity in Mozart’s F major Andante KV616 (written for mechanical organ) and D major Rondo KV485 was surely over-cautious. Mozart’s emotional refinement is axiomatic, and the executant can – I think – explore some of the undertones without disturbing the music’s essential composure.

Authentic

We did, though, hear and unreservedly admire Mr. Browning’s creamy cantabile playing – in itself almost totally pleasurable. It was in Schubert’s A minor Sonata Op. 143 that the expressive authenticity of his playing was suddenly apparent. Nobody plays the opening movement as an allegro giusto and at the slightly slow pace Mr. Browning’s sense of Schubert’s withdrawn, protesting grief was maintained with compelling consistency.

This mood prevailed. Even the three contrasted episodes of the finale were extraordinarily unanimous in their import, and by the end I found myself involuntarily in tears.

I guess in years to come Mr. Browning will delineate the polarities of mood in Chopin’s B flat minor Sonata with less insistence. Yet it was a marvelously affecting account. The quality of personal grief – stripped of rhetorical posturing – was carried over from the Funeral March into the finale. This sounded quietly stricken and was superbly played.

Topicality

Ignoring a broken piano string, Mr. Browning played Aaron Copland’s Variations with enthusiasm and loads of technique. The uncompromisingly blocked texture and masses of open chords have a strong topicality that Copland’s desire to please and to reach his audience sometimes denies him.

If – reluctantly – I should mention some highlights from his brilliant performance of the Schumann Etudes Symphoniques, I should chose the restrained urgency of the fugato first variation, the light impetuous das of Etude IX and the stunning sonority of the finale.

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