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Katya Apekisheva review – balletic grace and formidable technical prowess

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff
The Russian-born pianist’s solo recital took in Russian and French music; she is a persuasive advocate of Mel Bonis’s keyboard works

She is perhaps best known as a chamber musician, but Katya Apekisheva’s recital in the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama’s Steinway Series was ample demonstration of her credentials as a soloist of formidable technical prowess in the Russian style of her earliest training.

Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition demands weighty, powerhouse sound and finely executed details of the programmatic descriptions and, across the span of 10 movements, Apekisheva’s use of the extremes of dynamic range made these contrasts all the more urgent. Perhaps it’s inevitable that the final Great Gate of Kiev, always a triumphant climax, should now seem to carry with it a sense of tragic bombardment.

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