Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason’s profound performance of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto was “the undoubted highlight” (The Arts Desk) of the wildly acclaimed First Night of the Proms concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
The Arts Desk’s Rachel Halliburton raves, “From her first dramatic entry in the Allegro maestoso she imbued it with a force and gravitas that gave it just as much of an impact as works by Clara’s contemporaries, including Chopin and her own husband Robert. …
“After the thunderous opening chords, Kanneh-Mason took us into a passage that shimmered like evening sunlight on still water before progressing to a more elaborate virtuoso sequence that introduced an increasing sense of urgency. Golden hailstorms of notes were succeeded by more descending sequences of chords that seemed to foreshadow Grieg’s Piano Concerto.
“I have heard many piano concertos in this hall and this performance, not least for the way in which Kanneh-Mason so completely inhabited the music, surpassed all of them. In the second, Romanze movement, the extreme weather systems of the Allegro maestoso were supplanted by a bewitching lyrical simplicity, subtly ornamented by Chopinesque flourishes. After a beguiling duet with a cello, she brought the same apparently effortless authority and brilliance to the Finale movement as she had to the first, not least in the dramatic ascending and descending chromaticised passages that brought it to its earth-shaking finish.”
The i’s Jessica Duchen writes, “With a packed house, was a joyous celebration of fresh voices and new perspectives – and if you wanted to overturn all the false assumptions about classical music at a stroke, this surprising, inspiring concert was the way to do it. … Kanneh-Mason brought the solo part steely flair and a tender intimacy in which she seemed to treat the Royal Albert Hall as her own living room; instead of projecting out, she drew everyone in towards her. Her sumptuous, elegant encore was Gershwin’s ‘The Man I Love’.”
Barry Creasy, writing in musicOHM, says, “Kanneh-Mason and the orchestra brought a subtle delicacy to the performance, that nonetheless spotlit its quiet theatricality. From the lengthy piano opening onwards, Kanneh-Mason demonstrated a relaxed but intense brilliance to her playing, which took in all the nuances of the rubato of the period, and approached the fistfuls of notes and rapid runs of the final polonaise with insouciance and an impressive technique. The central romance was simply five minutes of utter deliciousness.”
The Telegraph’s Ivan Hewett notes that “Isata Kanneh-Mason caught the dreamy reflectiveness beautifully, and gave a ball-room elegance to the finger-twisting virtuosity of the final movement;” with The Guardian’s Flora Willson adding that, “with Isata Kanneh-Mason at the keyboard, its moments of Mozartian grace came paired with serious muscle.” Willson continues, “Kanneh-Mason’s virtuosity was relentless – notes pouring out like so much liquid – but it’s the tender lilt of her fleeting duet with the principal cello that stays with me, quiet but intensely communicative.”
Pianist Isata offers eclectic and interesting recital programmes with repertoire encompassing Haydn and Mozart, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, Chopin and Brahms to Gershwin and beyond. In concerto, she is equally at home in Felix Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann as in Prokofiev and Dohnányi.
She is in high demand from concert halls and orchestras worldwide. Isata’s further summer 2024 performances include appearances with the European Union Youth Orchestra and Iván Fischer performing Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Tune at Carnegie Hall, New York, the Grafenegg Festival, and Bolzano Festival Bozen.
Highlights of the 2024/25 season include Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto at the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie’s FREISPIEL festival and at the Ulster Orchestra’s season opening concert; and Prokofiev’s Third Concerto with the Chineke! Orchestra on tour at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Berliner Philharmonie, Brussels’s BOZAR and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Solo recital appearances include the Lucerne Festival, Piano aux Jacobins Toulouse, the Schumann-Haus Düsseldorf, PHIL Haarlem, and on tour across the USA. In concerto performance, Isata appears with the London, Bergen, Bremen, and Duisburg philharmonics, the North Carolina Symphony, and on tour with the Staatskapelle Weimar, and the Residentie Orkest.
LISTEN to Isata Kanneh-Mason’s sublime performance of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto on BBC Sounds
WATCH in The UK on BBC iPLAYER
Photo: Karolina Wielocha
