Pianist suffers a double misfortune

THERE was a double recurrence of misfortune at Vladimir Ashkenazy's Limerick concert on Saturday night.

The pianist's last scheduled Irish appearance, at the National Concert Hall in February, had to be rescheduled due to ill health. In Limerick, he found himself having to curtail his advertised programme due to arthritis related pain in the joints of two of the fingers of his left hand.

The concert's promoters, the Limerick Music Association, found themselves for the second time on the stage of the University Concert Hall explaining departures from the printed programme.

The previous occasion was when the St Petersburg State Capella Symphony Orchestra made international headlines by managing to substitute a pianist of their own choice for the artist they were booked to play with.

Ashkenazy's Limerick programme opened with Mozart's Fantasia and Sonata in C minor in carefully voiced readings which were disturbed by some rubato of unexpected angularity and a number of tempo changes which didn't sit easily within the overall framework of the performance.

An early interval followed, then the public announcement of the performer's problems. Mozart's Sonata in D, K311, was dropped, but the all Chopin second half was bravely given as advertised, in performances of a fluidity and point which had never materialised in the Mozart.

A single encore was offered, Chopin's Nocturne in D flat, with a beautifully burnished tone and warmth of expression which both capped a most unusual evening and were vividly suggestive of the evening that might have been.