Nelly Akopian-Tamarina performs Brahms: Handel Variations Opus 24; Ballades Opus 10 – review

This fine Russian pianist spent a long time in the shadows after her brilliant early success

Nelly Akopian-Tamarina (Press image)

One of the musical disappointments of 2019 was Nelly Akopian-Tamarina’s cancellation due to injury of her long-awaited comeback recital at the Southbank Centre.

This fine Russian pianist had spent a long time in the shadows after her brilliant early success – winning the gold medal in the Zwickau Robert Schumann competition at 19 and becoming one of the brightest hopes of Soviet pianism.

What did for her career was her sister marrying a Jewish man and emigrating to the West. As a result, Akopian-Tamarina’s career was blocked by the censors, who prevented her performing at all; silenced in her prime, she turned to painting instead.

Moving to the West herself, Akopian-Tamarina carved out a niche as a recitalist and won a devoted following, but her discography has remained very small.

This recording of her Brahms was made at Snape Maltings in 1996, and it’s a revelation: I’ve never heard Brahms’s Handel Variations played like this.

The music seems to come from a distant place and time, but it draws us in with the most heart-warming immediacy. It’s partly the singing line and the pearlised glow she puts on the notes, and partly the fact that she lets each variation unfold in a natural and unhurried way, as though she and we have all the time in the world.

When the score calls for lyricism she finds a caressing tone, and when it demands assertiveness she’s absolutely there, but the drama is largely internalised until the towering fugue at the close.

Her playing of the Ballades, with their reflection of Schumann’s influence writ large, is intensely poetic, amply justifying the analogy with the seasons which she draws in her liner-note.