Evgeny Kissin's sensational recital at 2021's summer Salzburg Festival. The Salzburg Recital builds dramatic tension across a compelling programme of music by Berg, Chopin, Gershwin and Khrennikov. An adventurously idiosyncratic concert program, the first half of the recital uniting three early 20th-century composers from wholly contrary musical traditions: Austria, Russia and the United States. The second half of the recital is devoted entirely to the music of Frederic Chopin on whom Kissin noted, 'the longer I live, the more I feel that his music is closest to my heart'. After Alban Berg's incredibly expressive Piano sonata, the rhythmic vitality and light-footedness of Gershwin's Three Preludes for Piano with their vibes of Charleston, blues and foxtrot are standing next to the meditative nature of three of Chopin's Impromptus and a brooding Nocturne. Kissin combined them most intriguingly with pieces of Russian composer Tikhon Khrennikov, showing the surprisingly modernist nature of his early compositions. A most memorable programme culminates in three encores containing Debussy's 'Clair de lun', a composition of Kissin himself and one of Mendelssohn's 'Lieder ohne Worte'.
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