Review: Aleksandar Madzar*****

This season's chamber series at The Venue, under the title Transfigured Night, places the Viennese masters Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert alongside composers working in Vienna 100 years later.

The second concert of six – the series comes to a close next March – was given by the Serbian pianist Aleksandar Madzar, a thoughtful and musically rather well-mannered player, with a sonorous left hand. He did not so much start Beethoven's Op. 109 Sonata as conjure it from some other-worldly dimension. He perfectly captured the essence of both this and the Op. 110 Sonata – transcendence, perhaps the unity of the universe and all things in it.

Madzar continued to rise above the world's conventional perceptions in Berg's single movement Sonata. He made it sound as though it were in more than one key at a time – a sublime performance.

In Madzar's hands Schubert's "Gasteiner" Sonata D850 continued the mystical theme.

From its genial opening movement to its finale constructed from deceptively simply materials Madzar wrought profundity.

He ended the concert the way it began – creating a feeling that the Schubert had no conclusion, and he was returning it to the dimension from which he had summoned the opening Beethoven.