Russian pianist Ilona Timchenko is one of the two winners of the Abstract Securities Landor Competition 2007, impressing the panel with her virtuoso technique and the stunning beauty of her playing.
The recital combines works from three closely aligned figures in German 19th Century composition, Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann and his wife Clara.
On the recording, Clara Schumann’s intricately worked 3 Preludes and Fugues opus 16 separate two of the most formidably virtuosic and acutely emotional works in the Romantic canon, Robert Schumann’s passionate and impulsive Kreisleriana opus 16, dedicated to Clara, and Brahms’ Paganini Variations Books 1 and 2.
Although a rare visitor to the UK, Ilona Timchenko, who is on a long-term contract with Landor Records, is a regular guest at many of the world’s leading concert halls, including Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire.
2010
“Cradling Clara Schumann's three Preludes andFugues between two outsize challenges, Ilona Timchenko links three composers closely entwined both personally and professionally. More importantly, her warmth in Clara's Men- delssohnian B flat Prelude and Fugue, where a much-neglected composer doffs her hat to academe, is complemented by an astonishing sense of Robert's ominously schizophrenic fantasy in his Kreisleriana. Clara herself feared for her husband with his sudden dive into the darkest regions of Romantic poetry (Intermezzo 2 from section 2) and it is here that Timchenko, with her superb sense of the outgoing and interior sides of Schumann's teeming imagination, reveals herself in total accord with such richness and complexity. Her stealthy view of the final gnomic march, alive with eerie voicing and cross-accentuation, has rarely been equalled; again it is her formidable command and poetic commitment that make such a musical rather than merely athletic experience of Brahms's Paganini Variations. Romantically free, even in the theme, she takes nothing on face value. Potton Hall's sound is rich and full, if a trifle bass-heavy, but this is among the most commanding and musically fascinating of all new and recent piano issues.”
March 2009
“…performances characterised by immense musical and technical resource. ..her warmth in Clara's Mendelssohnian B flat Prelude and Fugue, where… is complemented by an astonishing sense of Robert's ominously schizophrenic fantasy in his Kreisleriana. …it is her formidable command and poetic commitment that make such a musical rather than merely athletic experience of Brahms's Paganini Variations. ...this is among the most commanding and musically fascinating of all new and recent piano issues.”
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