For keyboard aficionados the joint recitals given in recent years at the Wigmore Hall in London by the pianists Stephen Kovacevich and Martha Argerich were unmissable events. Celebrating milestone birthdays of Kovacevich, who has died aged 86, they provided timely reminders that his questing spirit never ceased in its search for inner truth.
Early in his career he forged a style characterised by the interaction of titanic energy and hard-won serenity. Nowhere was this more in evidence than in his second recording of Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, made for Onyx in 2008 (he had previously made a fine recording for Philips in 1968). There he traverses the whole spectrum of human experience. One minute the listener is battered with thunderous eruptions of terrifying power, the next beguiled by inward-looking meditation, charm or humour.
