On reflection, I am absolutely convinced that the decision by Svend Brown, former creative director of Perth Concert Hall, to give pianist Alasdair Beatson, inset, four-concert residency will be seen as one of the most shrewd artistic decisions of his tenure.
On Monday, playing a set of piano trios with violinist Jonathan Morton and cellist Alison Lawrance, Beatson laid out a deeply impressive set of credentials through his performance that lead me to suggest, without hesitation, that we have here a major Scottish musical figure.
I first heard Beatson when he was very young, and he was moderately impressive. Something, apart from natural maturation and accumulated experience, has happened to this young man, now 29.
An extraordinary set of performances, with Morton and Lawrance in their familiar concentrated and probing form, revealed Alasdair Beatson to be a pianist possessed of very unusual clarity, lightness and profundity of musical interpretation.
The sheer character of his playing, to say nothing of his pristine pianism, delivered Haydn’s Gipsy Rondo with a completely fresh sense of exhilaration and some outrageous wit in the bubbling finale.
The three players, as one, then moved into the amazing stillness and soulfulness of Schubert’s Trio Notturno, with Beatson’s softly murmured chords sustaining the music gently in a state of calm, before Schumann’s D minor Trio opened the door on to the febrile world of the composer’s poetic imagination. And here Beatson’s skill at restraint and balance, never overwhelming the strings, was musicianship of the highest order. Next concert February 15, with Pekka Kuusisto.
Star rating: ****
