Our 2024/25 season got off to a stunning start on 26th November 2024 with a superb recital by the internationally acclaimed pianist Leon McCawley, playing to a highly appreciative capacity audience. Showcasing composers from Bach (arranged Liszt) to Rachmaninov, this was a wide-ranging tour de force. The early Beethoven A major sonata Op 2 No 2 sparkled with Haydnesque wit and clear articulation, in complete contrast to Rachmaninov’s brooding Etude-Tableau in A minor Op 39 which followed it. Before the interval there was a remarkable transcription by Liszt of Bach’s Organ Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV543, with fortissimo left hand octaves mimicking the organ pedals, and drawing on the full resonant resources of the Royal Over-Seas League’s Steinway Model D. After the interval, we had another complete change of mood, with Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso Op 14, followed by his Six Songs Without Words Op 19b, including the well-known Venetian Gondola song. To finish, there was the impassioned and highly virtuosic G minor sonata by Robert Schumann. As Leon McCawley reminded us in his introduction, the first movement is marked “as fast as possible”, but this does not prevent Schumann from adding “faster” and “still faster” as instructions to the pianist later in the same movement! Finally, we had more Schumann in an atmospheric encore: the Prophet Bird from Waldszenen (Forest Scenes) Op 82.

This was playing of the very highest calibre, by a pianist at the peak of his artistic powers, and completely at home and able to inhabit the very different sound worlds of a wide range of different composers.