Elegantly constructed and intimate, this debut solo recital album by London-based Kazakh pianist Samson Tsoy has the music of Johannes Brahms at its centre. The fascination here is Tsoy’s exploration of Brahms’s passion for music of the past, specifically for his towering predecessors, JS Bach and Handel. Brahms transcribed works of theirs for piano, forging his own distinctive voice with theirs in an act of homage and discovery.
The magnificent Handel Variations, Op 24 spins an unexciting little baroque theme into 25 variations of brilliant variety and ingenuity. Brahms set himself a particular challenge with the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita No 2 in D minor. Attempting to reflect the immeasurable yet compressed range of a work written for solo violin, he restricted his arrangement to piano left hand only. This gives a shadowy poignancy to Bach’s work, which Brahms described as one of the “most wonderful and incomprehensible” pieces of music.
Tsoy brings his heartfelt and subtle recital full circle with arrangements of Brahms (Four Serious Songs, Op 121 and Chorale Preludes, Op 122) by later composers Max Reger and Ferruccio Busoni. Think of this as a probing meditation on creativity, or just enjoy listening.
