Given that his more usual venues include the Royal Festival Hall, London, Alice Tully and Carnegie Hall, New York, and the Musikverein Vienna, it was quite a coup for the Peak Music Society to entice the celebrated pianist, Paul Lewis CBE, to perform at the Cavendish Hall, Edensor, on 11th October. In fact, he was flying off to Belgium for an international tour with the Orchestra National de Belgique, with visits to Florence, Barcelona and Oslo in the next six weeks.
A packed hall enjoyed a dazzling performance of three Schubert sonatas, delighted to have the opportunity to hear such a renowned musician at close quarters. Peak Music Society members Roger and Susie Greenwood were thrilled to meet Paul afterwards, as they first heard him play ages 12 at the Crosby Festival, when they said to each other that he was one to watch go far in the future. Paul was lucky to have Alfred Brendel as his mentor, and has kept in touch ever since, and plans to visit the 92 year old soon to play him his current Schubert Sonata programme.
His performance at Edensor, can only be described as “imperious”. The physicality, of his playing and his obvious command of the repertoire, showed why he is recognised as one of the outstanding musicians of his generation. His final piece, Sonata No.17 in D major, particularly brought out his feeling for the differing moods of the music. The first movement was joyful and ebullient, the second largely thoughtful, while the third varied between sonorous and airy and the fourth was almost playful before its understated close. The virtuosity of the playing was astonishing, but never threatened to take precedence over the expressiveness of the music.
Paul Lewis, whose first international achievement was second place at the 1994 World Piano Competition in London, has gone on to produce numerous recordings – particularly of Schubert and Beethoven – and to collect a variety of awards and honours along the way. In 2010 at the BBC Proms he became the first person to play a complete Beethoven piano concerto cycle in a single season. As the son of a Liverpool Docks worker and a local council worker, whose first instrument was the cello, he has, at the age of 50, carved out an outstanding career. He was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2016.
The event was an outstanding example of one of the Peak Music Society’s key aims – that of bringing live music of the highest quality to local audiences.