If the Romantic piano repertoire’s central obsessions tend toward the morbid and the virtuosic, in H?lène Grimaud’s welcome South Bank recital the two came together in one explosive package.
Her carefully devised programme was dominated by the Second Sonatas of Chopin and Rachmaninov, whose symmetries go far: both these works show their composers meditating on the mysteries of death, both are in the dark key of B flat minor, and Chopin and Rachmaninov were quintessential composers of exile.
Grimaud, who can also be heard playing these works on her new Deutsche Grammophon disc, has described sonatas as “masses for the dead, recited by love itself for all who love”.
She stamped her most personal mark on the Rachmaninov, which may have occasionally sounded less overtly