Review: Dutchman ****

lready awarded Europe’s Young Talent Revelation 2010, the French pianist, David Kadouch, is a rare and precious addition to today’s plethora of outstanding keyboard exponents.

He was certainly not born to play Haydn – his bouncy account of the short Variations in F minor, which opened his Harrogate International Festival recital, made that abundantly clear.

But then moving to Liszt’s transcription of the Spinning Chorus from Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, we could settle back to hear joyful playing that shaped the music purely in lyric terms.

A huge shift in mood for the emotional turmoil of Liszt in his Variations on a Theme of Bach, Kadouch capturing the agony of death in the central climatic passage before the work ends in the composer’s resignation to the loss of his children.

Kadouch has small hands whose accuracy bring an unusual degree of clarity, and he avoids membership of those piano-thumping youngsters competition juries now elevate far beyond their musicianship.

That was evidenced in his realisation of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the Tuileries and Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks bringing such a wide spectrum of delicate colours. Yet when he had to turn up the volume for the final Great Gate of Kiev, we could equally enjoy the full range of dynamic contrasts.