Yevgeny Sudbin, Wigmore Hall, concert review: 'The fastest and most furious performance'

Yevgeny Sudbin (Peter Rigaud)

It’s always good when a recitalist bucks convention, and so it was with the Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin at the Wigmore. Not only did he write his own (illuminating) programme notes, he also included an arrangement he had made of the unfinished “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem. And this – short though it was – might have been arranged by the great Busoni, so majestic was its tone and texture.

Moreover, Sudbin placed Beethoven’s valedictory Opus 111 sonata in the middle of his programme, rather than letting it have the last word as usual, and his way with it was bracingly fresh. The first movement exuded the imperious impatience one imagines the deaf Beethoven must have felt as he wrote it, but it was very deftly turned. The variations emerged with their structure rigorously preserved intact, their inner voices coming through with tenderness, and their dotted-rhythm sections demonic; the last 10 minutes had breathtaking emotional power. Sudbin’s formidable technique then allowed him to deliver a memorable Gaspard de la nuit (Ravel), climaxing in a “Scarbo” by turns transparent and thunderous.

Scarlatti sonatas – vividly characterised – book-ended the evening, with the fastest and most furious performance of that composer’s celebrated finger-twister I have ever heard.