Llyr Williams

Pianist Llyr Williams is part of this select touring group, too, and before the Messiaen he partnered Kim and Fröst in a brilliantly incisive account of Bartók's Contrasts, which more than made up in spiky precision what it occasionally lacked in rustic abandon. Williams had preceded that with the two versions of Liszt's extraordinary La Lugubre Gondola, perfectly focusing their raw-edged intensity, and maintaining seamless continuity even when the music collapsed into a bare, haunted melody.

Llyr Williams played Liszt’s La Lugubre Gondola in its first and second versions. The title reflects the circumstances of its composition, as Liszt contemplated Wagner’s death in Venice while brooding on his own. Williams’s touch was firm in the rocking undertow of the first version; in the second, he emerged as a fastidious painter in sound.

One high point came in the small, white, sturdily beautiful Crail church, perched right above a rocky beach. Here pianist Llyr Williams, violinist Alexander Janiczek and cellist David Watkin gave a performance of Mendelssohn's D minor Trio that was almost ideal in its lightness and lyric grace. Williams was the festival's "pianist in residence", and over five days we discovered just how capaciously musical this shy and somewhat awkward young Welshman is. In the same church, he made the nostalgically sad piano miniatures of Janácek's On an Overgrown Path seem especially heart-breaking, smiling to himself as he moulded each stammering phrase as if it contained a special message for him alone.

For many, this will have been the year of the Welsh pianist with wizardry at his fingertips, Llyr Williams. Solo, his Janácek (On an Overgrown Path) brimmed with tears and anguish, while his Schubert (the terrifying Sonata in A Minor, D784) was ferociously compelling. But he was as affecting with Alexander Janiczek and David Watkin for a warmly vigorous rendition of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D Minor.

In this tough coupling of Debussy’s three Estampes and Chopin’s Four Ballades – part of the festival’s Romantic Dream series – there was nothing surprising about his technical accomplishment, elemental in its steely precision. More noticeable, though, was a new-found warmth, a fresh dimension to the previously intense and introverted Williams. The intensity was still there – the crunching extremes of mood and pace in the Chopin, the tonal dexterity in drawing out the mercurial textures of the Debussy. But what of those smiles sweeping across Williams’ usually clenched jaw, translating into repeated moments of ravishing passion and insight?

…though I missed pianist Llyr Williams playing Chopin Ballades and Schubert's A minor Sonata (a programme that many singled out as their highlight of the festival), it was still possible to hear him later in the weekend. In a real curiosity programme - the sort of thing that can only happen in a festival - Williams had collaborated with Richard Holloway on a programme of words and music: seascapes from Virginia Woolf's novel, The Sea, interspersed with Debussy Preludes. The seascapes trace the passing of the hours of the day, and with them perhaps life; around them Williams wove his own atmospheric journey through the Preludes, from the grandeur of La Cathedrale Engloutie to the mischievous La danse de Puck and the mysterious Ondine. The result was something of an extended meditation, low key but imbued with a dream-like quality through the combination of Williams's delicately precise playing and Holloway's distinctive, charismatic voice.

Williams opened with a solo rendition of Liszt’s late work ‘La Lugubre Gondola’, S.200. By this point in his career, Liszt was writing less key-oriented compositions and more pieces that sounded atonal, and Williams emphasized that directionless quality. Williams moved from pianissimos to grand fortes with ease – along with ornate gestures of the hand and fingers.

Williams opened with the somber piano solo Liszt began in 1882, the year before he died. La Lugubre Gondola is atypical, spare, with harmonic and melodic dislocations. Some joked that La Lugubre was lugubrious, but young Williams – tall, lean and jacketless with 1950s specs – played with a bright, earnest, penetrating tone. As he played, one could imagine the composer dissolving the boundaries between sharps and flats, and maybe between life and what comes after.

Mr Williams produced a stately performance, holding individual notes poetically and grandiosely, allowing time for the thoughtful and the cathartic. Even the spaces between the notes breathed the air of profundity.

Williams … is a thoroughly mercurial pianist; an original who has the ability to present familiar works in a new yet convincing light. …The opening movement of the D major Piano Sonata, Op.10 No.3, was another study in exuberance. Here, though, the slow movement carries most weight, and Williams held the attention with playing of the utmost simplicity.

One of the zaniest-titled concert series in Scotland might just prove one of the most illuminating. Featuring violinist Alexander Janiczek and pianist Llyr Williams, the series is founded on an intriguing hypothesis: if Beethoven had died by his 30th birthday, in 1800, what would his legacy have been? … Janiczek and Williams played two of the violin sonatas, the A major op12 no2 and the A minor op23, underlining as they did so the phenomenal originality and variety of Beethoven’s invention, even at an early stage of his career… Wit, playfulness, extroversion, introspection, energy, attack, exuberance, vital drama and streams of melodious lyricism paraded across Perth’s fine auditorium. …In between the violin sonatas, the extraordinary Williams played the Op10 C minor Piano Sonata, a warhorse for capable students who like to flex muscle and strut their athleticism. The super-intelligent Williams went the other way in a statesman-like interpretation with a second movement that, one realised, was years ahead of its time. Fascinating.

The first concert of the "Beethoven before he was 30" series included the first and third piano and violin sonatas of the composer's opus 12, works in which the violinist has the opportunity to display considerable brilliance even if it is the pianist that leads. Williams and [Alexander] Janiczek make an excellent pairing in this repertoire, the former providing the support while at the same time weaving silvery, mercurial lines around the latter's muscular, solidly Viennese playing. … Between the two Op 12 sonatas, Williams played Beethoven's early piano Op 10, No 2 in F major, written to showcase the composer's talents, and here showcasing Williams's in a joyous combination of virtuosity and delicacy.

Technical brilliance was there in abundance in Williams’s performance, as you would expect from such an accomplished young pianist, but more impressive still was the sheer range of expression and the individuality of the performance, particularly visible in the hymn-like tranquility of the slow movement.

…one of the truly great musicians of our time. … Those with ears to hear will have followed Williams’s playing as it has grown ever more secure and expansive. The hallmark of his Schumann Fantasy was its rare ability to take us deep into a very private world of dream, while at the same time creating a generously projected and truly virtuoso performance.

He has a beguilingly casual, almost conspiratorial approach to giving a recital, but from the moment he delivered the stunning opening chord of this supreme sonata he commanded the most serious and strenuous attention. The slow movement, delivered with great breadth and flexibility, had that hypnotic quality which only Gilels, Richter, Pollini have previously given me in live performances. The Fugue was demonic to the point of lunacy, as it should be. This was Beethoven at the end of his tether.

From the magisterial opening, Williams was off on his own course. It was more poetic than rhetorical, more persuasive than assertive, more reasoned than polemical. And everywhere there was Schubert, in the clarity of line, in the lightness of rhythm and in the colouristic sensitivity to harmonic changes. … In his vast performance of the slow movement, and the racking-up of tension, there was remorseless focus.

…pianist Llyr Williams … gave a thrillingly life-enhancing performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. With the [Minnesota] orchestra halfway through recording all the Beethoven symphonies, they were in fine fettle to respond to Williams’s characteristically beautifully shaped and articulated playing.