MAJESTIC PERFORMANCE

Martino Tirimo's final 2006 Mozart recital
reviewed by BILL NEWMAN

The final 2006 Martino Tirimo Mozart event at Cadogan Hall, London UK on 1 December was, in its way, a glorious summation and extension of musical highlights from previous recitals. The varied moods of 'London Chelsea Notebook' pieces 34-39 by the eight-year-old covered a range of valuable attributes: Elaborate notation, songlike, gentle and caressing, accented offbeats, full of charm, childlike. This was followed by the eighteen-year-old Mozart's treatment of a rather ordinary Minuet in C by the German oboist Johann Christian Fischer, who eventually settled in London and became the son-in-law of the painter Gainsborough. The new title is 12 Variations in C on a Menuett by Fischer K179. A variegated right hand is controlled by a pulsating left, and the music becomes more pictorial and imaginitive as it progresses. Imitation starts to take place until a legato variation breaks the mould. There are no accidentals, but passages of sheer virtuosity, with brilliance, hand crossing, ornamentation and trills reflecting an operatic training. They impart their visionary genius on the attentive listener and set the scene for what follows.

Despite doubts and questions of authenticity, the Allegro moderato and Menuetto in B flat K498a (K Anh 136) is a superb piece to listen to with its continual stretch of imaginative 'vocal' style writing in the right hand over an arpeggio-like left. During the development, the left hand 'joins in' alongside a fascinating succession of other ideas, adding to and imitating the musical thread and concourse. The Menuetto struts and swaggers, the F major Trio gently throwing off alternative 'suggestions'. It all ends rather abruptly but the pianist obviously enjoyed the inventiveness and originality, thoroughly!

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