Commanding performances

Valerie Tryon at the Chopin Society
on VE Day Anniversary,
appreciated by MALCOLM MILLER

The piano recital by Valerie Tryon for the Chopin Society concert on Sunday 8 May 2005 was both an exhilarating musical experience and an aptly symbolic gesture for the VE Day Anniversary: her second half of the programme devoted to Chopin and culminating in a thrilling account of the A flat Polonaise symbolized the spirit of Polish resistance that remained steadfast throughout World War II. As depicted in the film (and book) The Pianist, Chopin was apparently the last classical music broadcast in free Poland before the Nazi occupation. And there in the Sikorski Museum on Hyde Park, the regular venue for Chopin Society events, surrounded by military mementos, paintings, medals and costume, the performances heightened the sense of Chopin's dual artistic personality, both a private inner life and one engaged in world events.

Valerie Tryon is particularly renowned for her interpretations of the Romantics: each year she stars in Alan Walker's Great Romantics Festival held at Hamilton Ontario, in Canada, where she is artist in residence at McMaster University. Her pianistic career began with a BBC broadcast at the tender age of twelve, and following her studies with Jacques Fevrier in Paris, she carved out a glittering international career with many awards and honours, and a growing list of outstanding recordings to her name: most recently it includes the complete works of Debussy, Ravel, and major releases of Liszt and Busoni (on CBC, Naxos, Appian, Paradisum labels). She frequently tours the USA and Europe, and her UK recitals and concerto appearances are always special events. Audiences admire her wonderfully relaxed demeanour, there is hardly any detectable movement during leonine technical demands of virtuoso works, yet the electricity, and clarity is uncanny. Modest and un-egoistic, there is nothing between the listener and the music, so graceful and easy is her performance.

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