It’s a bold gesture to devote a piano recital exclusively to preludes, but as Jan Lisiecki asked in a preface to doing just that at the Wigmore Hall, “Can a recital be composed entirely of such introductions, one leading directly to the next, and still be profound?” To answer his own question, in the first half of his programme Lisiecki played a seamless sequence of such pieces by composers ranging from JS Bach to Górecki, via Chopin, Rachmaninov, Szymanowski and Messiaen, while after the interval came a complete performance of Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op 28.
The Canadian Lisiecki is less well-known in Britain than he deserves to be. Aged 29, he has given relatively few recitals here, and the reputation that ensured a capacity audience for his Wigmore appearance must have been partly acquired through his series of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. His playing has an arresting immediacy: until a slightly splashy account of the D minor piece that closes Chopin’s Op 28, his technique had been faultless. On this evidence, he’d never be described as a “poet of the keyboard”, even if one suspects he has more of an instinct for lyricism than he allowed himself here.
The most striking parts of Lisiecki’s recital were the louder, more dramatic moments, such as the climax to which he built Chopin’s famous “Raindrop Prelude” Op 28 No 15, with which he had opened his recital “to demonstrate its different function as a worthy stand-alone piece”, and the titanic account of Rachmaninov’s G minor Prelude from his Op 23 that ended his opening sequence, while his abrupt segue from Górecki’s torrential Op 1 Molto Allegro into the C major Prelude from the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier was a delightful musical coup. Elsewhere the fierceness was sometimes misplaced, and the lack of any real pianissimo playing eventually made the performances seem two-dimensional. For all the moments of brilliance, Lisiecki’s attempt at emancipating the prelude was only partly successful.
