Elisabeth Leonskaja, Grande Dame of the international pianist scene, who was honored as “Priestess of Art” in Georgia in 2016, delighted the audience at the Mondsee Music Days on Friday with a balanced program that focused on the focus of this year’s concert series – Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
Mendelssohn was himself an excellent pianist and shows this in his Variations sérieuses op. 54. Here he wanted to stand out from the then usual variation cycles, which were purely dedicated to virtuosity, and to compose no less virtuoso gems, but above all the musical statement and emotionality owed. Elisabeth Leonskaja took up this pictorial musical language and told vivid stories with crystal clear articulation in finely conceived poetry.
After Mozart’s C major Sonata K. 330 and Anton Webern’s Variations Op. 27, the great F minor Sonata Op. 5 by Johannes Brahms was certainly the highlight. At the sight of the powerful and stormy implementation, one was reminded of the image of Clara Schumann, who played parts of this work for the first time in 1854 and thus lifted Brahms onto the big stage of the musical world. Here, too, Elisabeth Leonskaja – just like a priestess – knew how to passionately create music, merge sounds into stories, let the audience participate in her stories and thus completely inspire her, despite all the technical challenges, which she was far above.
Source: Nachrichten
