ELISO VIRSALADZE Piano Recital / Review

 

ELISO VIRSALADZE Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Tuesday (18 November 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 20 November 2025 with the title "Legendary pianist Elisa Virsaladze plays Chopin with heart and ebullience".

All thanks to the buzz created by the Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition which concluded in Warsaw about a month ago, music lovers are still debating what constitutes ideal Chopin playing versus what actually wins competitions. Reality lies somewhere in between, no better illustrated by the 83-year-old Georgian pianist Eliso Virsaladze.

Belonging to the venerable generation of pianists that includes Martha Argerich (who no longer performs solo recitals), Vladimir Ashkenazy (now retired) and Daniel Barenboim (diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease), Virsaladze appears unimpeded by age. Belying a slow walk from wing to keyboard, she unleashed torrents of sound and passion on the C.Bechstein grand once she got started.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

Opening an all-Chopin recital with the Polonaise-Fantasy in A flat major (Op.61) was a most daunting task. There was virtually no warm up, with its declamatory opening statement setting the tone for the evening. Her swift and unsentimental take, eschewing rubato for its own sake, meant there was to be no posturing or virtue-signalling with this music.

She played it straight, and once she had the throbbing polonaise rhythm (based on dances of nobility) going, the constant pulse never flagged. All the accompanying filigree was just that, merely the means to an end as the fantasy elements gradually took over, all the way to the work’s ambiguously heroic and tragic end.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

Also from Chopin’s late period was his Third Sonata in B minor (Op.58), for which pacing through its four movements was paramount. Virsaladze got it right by not including the first movement’s exposition repeat, instead going headlong into the development’s conflict between martial ideas and pure lyricism.

The mercurial Scherzo was well contrasted with the Largo slow movement’s languorous musings, before the strident octaves and exertions of the imperious Finale. Here, Virsaladze could have momentarily come undone but she held on tenaciously for a heady build-up and thrilling close.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

Chopin, the creator of exquisite miniatures, occupied the recital’s second half. The pair of Nocturnes (Op.27) are in harmonically related keys of C sharp minor and D flat major respectively. This gave her a chance to showcase the pieces’ varied moods, the former’s smouldering with tension before rapturous release and the latter’s unbroken cantabile spell.

Beautiful as the nocturnes were, a well-selected suite of six Mazurkas (from Op.30, 33 and 59) displaying Chopin’s patriotism and aching nostalgia also showcased Virsaladze’s disarming empathy with this idiom. Poles and Georgians shared similar struggles and tribulations in their centuries-long histories. The trio of late Mazurkas from Op.59 was particularly poignant.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

The enthralling recital closed with two vastly contrasting Waltzes, the diminutive but graceful G flat major (Op.70 No.1) and the vertiginously swirling A flat major (Op.42) which brought down the house. Virsaladze’s encores were a loving reprise of the earlier dance tandem, the melancholic Mazurka in A minor (Op.68 No.2) followed by the brilliant Waltz in A flat major (Op.34 No.1). Performed with heart, warmth and an ebullience unafraid to take risks, that was what Chopin was all about.

Photo: Tang Yaoyu

ELISO VIRSALADZE & FRIENDS CHAMBER RECITAL / Review

 

ELISO VIRSALADZE & 

FRIENDS CHAMBER RECITAL 

Conservatory Concert Hall 

Thursday (13 March 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 15 March 2025 with the title "Grand dame of Russian piano school Eliso Virsaladze leads cohesive chamber recital".

If one were a conservatory student, imagine what a honour it is to perform at a masterclass by some of classical music’s most venerated artists. An even greater privilege is to actually to perform in concert with someone like Georgian pianist Eliso Virsaladze, whom at 82 is the Grand Dame of the Russian piano school. 

That was the fortunate lot of four string students selected to play in two piano quintets alongside Virsaladze and members of faculty. The concert began with Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major (Op.44), when violinist Zou Meng and his twin brother violist Zou Zhang were joined by violinist Qian Zhou (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory’s head of strings) and cellist Jamshid Saidikarimov (Singapore Symphony Orchestra musician). 

Photo: Ong Shu Chen

Straight off in the opening bars, the five players established a cohesiveness that would endure through the work’s half hour. Virsaladze took the lead, her clarity of articulation projected well from the Fazioli grand piano with its lid on half-stick. This was never a case of overwhelming the strings but working closely in tandem as equals. 

The passion of Romanticism shone through in the first movement’s development as well as the slow movement’s stormy central section where the tempo and temperature were upped. Even the Scherzo’s play of ascending and descending scales were made to sound fun rather than the tedium of exercises. 

It was the finale’s busy counterpoint, reliving the grand fugue a la Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, which sealed this impressive performance. A wrong step would have spelt disaster but the performers had a gripping chokehold on the proceedings which drove to a glorious close. 

The second half had a more expansive work in Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor (Op.34), where Virsaladze was partnered with violinists Ng Yu Ying and Ang Chek Meng (founding members of T’ang Quartet), and students - violist Huang Yi and cellist Cao Huiying. 

Conceived like a four-movement symphony, the transparent unison opening belied an inner tension that gradually built up as the first movement progressed. As with the previous quintet, this group also harnessed an energy that sustained itself through the music’s plentiful upheavals. 

Respite came in the slow second movement, where a congenial conversational tone between piano and strings provided an oasis of calm. Cao’s cello pizzicatos then picked up the pulse for the Scherzo’s inexorable march, where an obstinately repetitive (hence the term ostinato) rhythm predominated, with an excitement level ratcheted to the edge of one’s seat. 

The work’s most dissonant moments were in the finale’s opening, almost painful in intensity, but as the smoke cleared, an obvious pattern was emerging. This gradual revelation of its memorable main theme would later be repeated in Brahms’ First Symphony in years to come, but the five players were now clearly living the moment. 

Virsaladze’s frequent glances to her younger colleagues ensured everyone was on the same bar together, and together they completed this masterpiece with stunning unity. Such concerts are what excellent chamber music-making - creativity in a single mind - is all about.