Piano recital by David Brain

Not at all rare in themselves, this is an infrequent opportunity to hear Chopin’s last three epic Polonaises played in one sitting by Birmingham-born pianist, David Brain: the F sharp minor, Op.44, the ever-popular A flat major, Op.53 with its strong military overtones and that otherworldly tone poem from the composer’s final years, the Polonaise-fantaisie, Op.61.

Interspersed are Schubert’s vivdly drawn mood pictures, Moments Musicaux, D.780 from his later maturity and the much less often heard Second Sonata, Op.61 of Shostakovitch, a magnificent work written right in the middle of the Second World War and evidently sharing something of the contemporaneous Eighth Symphony’s bleak foreboding.

Brain breaks the mould of the modern virtuoso pianist, having perfected his piano technique relatively late in life and away from the glare of the concert platform. He owes much to the great British pianist, John Bingham, with whom he studied as a postgraduate in London in the late 1980s, although the fruits of this instruction would only fully emerge later.

His 2013 recording of Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin’s 24 Preludes Op.53 and Sonata No.1, Op.39 was described by critics as “dazzling” and “persuasive”, with Andrew McGregor, in his CD Review programme on Radio 3, noting that his playing “really taps well into the complexity and inventive joy of the music”.