Jayson Gillham, Piano, Lakeside, Nottingham, 02 November, 2023.

5*****: William Ruff.

The musical world has been celebrating this year the 150th anniversary of the great Russian composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Rachmaninov. Concert programmes around the world have featured even more of his music than usual but I can’t say I have encountered any that surpass the tribute constructed by Australian pianist Jayson Gillham and performed by him on Thursday night at Lakeside. Here were not only Rachmaninov’s own compositions and transcriptions but also the music of his beloved Chopin: all music which Rachmaninov used to perform on the concert tours which occupied so much of his life after he escaped from Russia in 1918.

Jayson began with a selection of the Études-tableaux, short pieces which fuse technical and musical challenges with a highly evocative poetic vision. The first (in C minor) nailed Jayson’s colours firmly to the mast and brought spontaneous applause from the audience. Those lucky enough to have a clear view of his hands would have seen the most extraordinary manual gymnastics as he coped with fistfuls of notes with apparent ease. Although each of these pieces explores specific piano techniques, they are also vivid pictures, at least in the composer’s imagination. The audience isn’t actually let into the secret of what they depict but that doesn’t matter. Their narrative scope is more suggestive than literal – but I the music’s emotional force has no less impact for that. Jayson Gillham never erred on the side of caution: here was fire-breathing drama and intensity delivered with jaw-dropping technical skill.

He followed these with yet more wizardry: a selection of Chopin Études, again ‘studies’ of a sort but much more than this dry academic term suggests. Chopin’s Études are again works which combine technical challenges with musical ones, as compelling to listen to as they must be to play. Each demands meticulous attention to detail; every phrase has to be carefully moulded; every nuance has to be observed if these works are to dazzle and delight. Jayson Gillham’s love for this repertoire was obvious throughout his playing, whether in the feverishly tense Op. 25 No 6, the dazzling No 8 or the explosion of sound that is No 11.

After an interval (necessary for both pianist and audience to recover from all this high-octane intensity) Jayson played a series of Rachmaninov transcriptions, the sort of pieces which the Russian would perform as encores at his own recitals. Here were piano versions of Rachmaninov’s own songs, some delightful Bach, Kreisler’s Liebeslied and Rimsky’s Bumblebee. And if you like watching a pianist’s fingers performing ballet and gymnastics at the same time, you couldn’t do better than watch Jayson Gillham perform the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

His whole recital was a satisfying blend of technical bravura, poetic insight and a deep understanding of Rachmaninov’s musical imagination.

Jayson Gillham, piano