Chipping Campden music festival regularly boasts a lineup of soloists that would put many of its better-known counterparts to shame. Outstanding pianists are a feature of its programmes: Emanuel Ax has become an almost annual visitor to the Cotswold town, and the two weeks of concerts this year, the last to be planned by Charlie Bennett who founded the festival in 2002, also include recitals by Paul Lewis (the festival’s president), András Schiff and Piotr Anderszewski, as well as Christine Rice and Kate Royal, the Academy of Ancient Music and the Takács and Škampa Quartets.
Ax’s recital was devoted to Schubert and Liszt. His wonderfully straightforward, unfussy approach to piano playing is perfectly matched to Schubert’s sonatas, and his performances of the two that framed this programme, the early A major sonata D664, and the last of all, the B flat major D960, were models of intelligence and good musical sense. The account of the A major seemed relaxed but never indulgent; every phrase was perfectly weighted and individually coloured and given its own expressive space.
