Maria João Pires @ Proms

Fabuloso, fantástico, adorei! E para quem tem acesso ao BBC iPlayer aqui fica o link. Acabei por conseguir ir cedo o suficiente para apanhar bilhetes baratuchos (£5) nas Galerias para o Prom 6. Foi bonzito, mas nada comparável à interpretação de Maria João Pires. Quanto ao Prom 7 já tinha bilhete sentadinha bem perto do palco, com uma vista excelente das mãos dela! "Chopin: The Nocturnes" foi o primeiro CD de música clássica que comprei na altura em que foi lançado. O perigo era estudar a ouvi-lo! Ainda os sei quase todos de cor apesar de já não os ouvir há bastante tempo. Acabei por passar a estudar ao som de Smashing Pumpkins que me distraía muito menos... Weird, eu sei....
Agora as reviews:

Telegraph
"The Royal Albert Hall is a wonderful and inspiring place to be, but acoustically it can very strange. Loud sounds bounce around that vast space like balls on a pin-ball machine. Yet for quiet music it can be magical. The sounds go straight from source to ear, so they have a lovely miniaturised clarity like the distant figures in a Van Eyck painting.
That unexpected intimacy accounts for some of the intensity of Maria Joao Pires’s recital of Chopin Nocturnes on Wednesday. But it would have counted for nothing without her special poetry. She’s a tiny, almost bird-like figure, and she seemed even smaller in that huge space, which was packed with more people than I’ve ever seen for a late-night Prom. It must be daunting for a pianist, but Pires seemed perfectly at ease, as if she was playing for a few friends at home.
That gives her performances an air of total sincerity. Usually in Chopin performance you can tell that expressivity is being mingled with sheer sensuous pleasure in playing the piano, and a relish for the delicious sparkly sounds that result. There’s nothing wrong with that – Chopin performance doesn’t have to be purist. But there is something compelling about a pianist who just doesn’t care about those things. Pires wants to get at the poetic heart of the music, and here she did that time after time.

The word Nocturne implies something dreamy and indistinct, but Pires’ performances reminded us that the expressive range of Chopin’s pieces is much bigger than that. There was the total rapt stillness of the early Bb minor Nocturne, uncannily clear, like a moonlit landscape. There was the fascinating uncertainty of the G major Nocturne Op. 15, which she poised so perfectly on the cusp between hesitancy and impetuous ardour. The late Nocturne in E major suddenly becomes stormy at its mid-point, but Pires managed to project this while suggesting it was only a momentary flurry – maybe only a dream – while the night-time stillness was still continuing, somewhere beyond our hearing. That is artistry of a very special order."

Guardian
"Paul Lewis's traversal of all five of Beethoven's piano concertos during the Proms season – apparently the first by a single artist – began with a double dose: the First and Fourth Concertos, with the BBC Symphony and conductor Jirí Belohlávek supplying the orchestral forces, as they did on a recent recording of the complete set.
As it turned out, the combination did not gel on this occasion until the second of the two. The First Concerto, in which Beethoven imbues the Mozartian model with distinctive touches of his own, needed more character, humour and flow. Nevertheless, Lewis's fingerwork was immaculate and Belohlávek's accompanying as well defined as the orchestra's tone was warm.

The more intimate and uniquely individual Fourth Concerto was on another level. There was total unanimity of purpose and gesture between conductor and soloist, and the subtle, varied character of Beethoven's inimitable ideas was presented with absolute authority. Interestingly, the second half began with a neat and spirited account of the Prometheus overture, whereas the Egmont overture, which opened the concert, was no more than respectable, with some unfortunate woodwind mishaps.

The evening turned out to be a special one for piano fans. The Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires made a rare appearance with a generous selection of Chopin's nocturnes as the late-night event. Received wisdom suggests the Albert Hall is too big for such music, but in this case the sonic unpredictability of the venue conspired with the pianist herself to refute it.

Pires's playing was unostentatious but commanding, controlled yet free-flying in its sensitivity to the fluidity of Chopin's lines, and in its responsiveness to the scope of pieces still sometimes marked down as delicate miniatures."