Pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja will shortly be playing at the Beethoven festival in Bonn, the composer’s birthplace, so it was something of a coup for the Machynlleth festival to have secured her for the same programme, namely the last three of his 32 sonatas, the triptych that constitutes a pinnacle of the repertoire. Machynlleth can claim to have been the ancient capital of Wales and, such was the calibre of this particular evening, the town certainly felt like a cultural capital.
Leonskaja’s opening gesture was an indication of her seriousness of purpose, lifting the redundant music desk away from the instrument, placing it on the floor, disdaining the flutter of amused applause and, without further ado, launching into the E major sonata Op 109, immediately capturing its idiosyncratic balance between light pastoral flow and slow declamatory passion. The minor mode Prestissimo was almost martial in its fierceness, the perfect foil for the warm serenity of the theme and variations finale, albeit laced with fugal feist.
