Classical review: Francesco Piemontesi, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

THE first thing that the engaging young Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi did upon leaping to his feet after each of his pieces, before acknowledging the audience’s applause, was to fasten a jacket button that he’d had undone while playing.

Francesco Piemontesi

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Star rating: * * * *

It might seem unfair to focus in on such a trivial, non-musical detail, but for this listener at least, that seemed to encapsulate the neat, tidy and, well, rather buttoned-up approach that he took to the music in his nonetheless incisive Queen’s Hall recital.

It was an approach that paid off marvellously in the Webern Variations with which he started his second half, in a cool yet focused performance, entirely captivating, that managed to conjure great paragraphs out of the composer’s aphoristic melodic fragments. And in Piemontesi’s opening Mozart Sonata in D K284, the joy was in the detail – in his nimble scales, his beautifully weighted chords and his impeccable phrasing.

It’s one of Mozart’s earliest keyboard works, and accordingly Piemontesi didn’t try to find any great profundity that wasn’t there, but the result was nevertheless slightly limited in its dynamic range and tone colours.

The recital’s two longer works called for a wider emotional and interpretative scope. In Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien (literally “Viennese carnival pranks”), Piemontesi was immediately more lively and energetic, drawing a wonderfully sonorous tone from his instrument yet somehow stopping short of the mischievous wit that the piece surely demands. But the final Schubert Sonata in A minor D845, with its mixture of introspection and exuberance, felt like the ideal match for Piemontesi’s precise yet likeable musical personality.