Romantic Pianist Set To Play For JMS

Vassily Primakov will play for the Johannesburg Musical Society on Sunday 2 June at in the Linder Auditorium, St Andrews Road, Parktown.

Russian pianist Vassily Primakov , who plays the June 2 concert for the JMS in the Linder Auditorium, is recognised as a Chopin specialist and as a romantic player par excellence.

By age 15 he was already a seasoned performer, playing concerts in his native Russia, Switzerland, France, Romania and Germany and in 1999, while still a student at the famed Juilliard School of Music in New York, he won 2nd Prize at the prestigious Cleveland International Piano Competition. By 2002 he had won the important Young Concert Artists International Auditions (YCAT) and when he made his concerto debut in New York, his performance brought the entire audience to its feet.

Since then he has received the Young Artist of the Year Award from the Classical Recording Foundation and his recording of the Chopin concertos has been called ‘one of the great Chopin recordings of recent times’. Gramophone Magazine noted that ‘Primakov’s empathy with the spirit of Chopin could hardly be more complete’ and BBC Music Magazine has praised the refined, multi-coloured, elegance of his phrasing, his immaculate balance and his subtlety.

His recital on Sunday 2 June will start at 17.00 and will be an all-romantic outpouring, featuring two of Chopin’s polonaises and a selection of his mazurkas. He will also perform works by Chopin’s great contemporary Franz Liszt, in works that display Mr Primakov’s prodigious technique. He will play Liszt’s wonderfully atmospheric Funerailles and the concert will end with a pinnacle of musical composition – the composer’s virtuosic Sonata in B Minor which remains, to this day, a musical and technical challenge for any pianist.