Rising star plays with CSO

Emmanuel Despax will be guest soloist with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor. 8pm, Saturday May 2 in the Christchurch Town Hall. Tom Woods conducts..

His musicianship is described as prodigious, his career meteoric and, even at a young age, his reputation formidable.

Emmanuel Despax, this week's guest soloist with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, is one of the world's most acclaimed pianists of his generation. While the young French¬man's performances have sent critics into verbal tailspins ("his playing augurs well for a stellar career", one wrote recendy), his passion and commitment to works ranging from Mozart to Ravel has won him something of a cult following among younger concert goers.

While Despax has made his home in England, his career takes him around the world. He embraces the cultural opportunities London offers but what chiefly draws him to Britain is his teacher, Ruth Nye, who first heard him when he auditioned for the Yehudi Menuhin School.

Emmanuel Despax was born in France and had his first piano lessons at the age of nine before passing the entrance exam to the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud in Aix-en-Provence. From the age of 13, he continued his studies in the United Kingdom, where he gained a place at the Menuhin School. During five years at the school, Despax appeared in concerts, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician at the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Wigmore Hall.

In 2002 he was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he continued his piano studies with Ruth Nye. In his second year, as winner of the RCM concerto trials, he performed the Brahms Piano Concerto No 1. In his third year, he won a clutch of major awards, including the RCM's most prestigious prize, the Tagore gold medal.

Despax continues to give recitals throughout Europe.
Recent engagements include concert performances of Tchaikovsky's Concerto for Piano No 1 with the RCM Sinfonietta and Chopin's Piano Concerto No 1 with the London Festival Orchestra.

Despax playing brilliant

Mid-Winter Gala Eroica. Christchurch Symphony with Emmanuel Despax (piano), conductor Sir William Southgate. Town Hall Auditorium, July 7. Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd.

"The Christchurch Symphony continued its season programming the old with the new, juxtaposing three monumental works by Webern, Beethoven and Mozart.

The new also came in the form of young French pianist Emmanuel Despax, an already accomplished student from the Menuhin School and Royal College of Music, whose playing shows maturity way beyond his years and a command of his instrument that augurs well for a stellar career.

... Mozart's D minor concerto K. 466 is probably his finest concerto in any genre. Despax brought energy and a brilliant technique to bear in a sensitive and well-considered performance.

On occasion I felt he wanted to push the tempo more, particularly in the finale, but cohesion and balance with the orchestra was generally good.

The first movement was an excellent blend of gloom and fire and Despax created a nice sense of space in the Romanze. His encore was dazzling, taken at breakneck speed with a wonderfully clearly defined chorale in the inner voice ..."

Emmanuel Despax
Wigmore Hall Recital CD

J. S. Bach Partita in D minor, BWV1004
- Chaconne (arr. Busoni).
Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 31
in A flat Op. 110.
Haydn Keyboard Sonata No. 47
in B minor, Hob. XVI/32.
Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor, S178.

Emmanuel Despax (piano).
Jaques Samuel Recordings JSR007 (full price,
1 hour 19 minutes). Website www.jspianos.com.
Producer James Shannon. Date 2005.

The mellower timbre characteristic of a Fazioli piano, Frenchman Emmanuel Despax's choice of make, has to be considered when commenting on the sound quality of this live recording. The somewhat desiccated tone may well be representative of the instrument, but the slight distancing of perspective is not quite true of the Wigmore Hall's immediacy and focus, something fully experienced even at the back of the Hall.

The recording - once the volume has been significantly gained to acquire the required immediacy (preferable to having to turn it down because of too loud a transfer) - is certainly good enough to convey an impressive opening. Busoni's tumultuous arrangement of the Chaconne that closes Bach's D minor Partita for unaccompanied violin is played by Despax with a wide dynamic range (well captured) and also power, poise and incision, the pianist bringing a wide-eyed enthusiasm to Busoni's transcendental re-creation.

Despax, currently studying at the Royal College of Music in London following five years at the Yehudi Menuhin School (and, before that, from the age of nine, four years at Conservatoire Darius Milhaud), continues this challenging recital with an honest, luminous account of Beethoven's penultimate sonata. Despax, while considered, is seemingly content at present to let the music speak for itself, which it does, of course, with depth and eloquence. He has the measure of the notes and is well able to convey serenity and loftiness, but the tension needed to justify the summit-reaching conclusion isn't always apparent. (A curious 'extra' note is heard in echo to the final chord.)

The Haydn is delightfully done in Despax's choice of unhurried tempos, lightness of touch and in his moving seamlessly and convincingly between the three movements. As ever, Haydn is full of surprises, and it's good to find Despax appreciating his whimsy and giving this particular sonata its full due.

Understandably, given its magnificence and import, Liszt's Sonata in B minor attracts almost every pianist of promise. This release's annotation omits movement timings (but includes concise background on the pieces by Gerald Larner - and a succinct biography of Despax). This is a 31-minute B minor Sonata, somewhat on the bountiful side in terms of duration and sustained by Despax's command of structure and his being consistently expressive and modulated, if sometimes a little curt and too glittering. There are numerous thrilling and heart-touching moments that, if not quite adding to an inevitable whole, testify to this being a young man's performance, one mixing devilish abandon with stimulating maturity. (By now, the piano seems a little more fulsome-sounding and immediate.) Four tracks are provided; Alfred Brendel, in his deep analysis of this astonishing; masterpiece, would argue that there should be six.

This filled-to-capacitv CD, which includes minimal applause and well-tailored 'silence' between each work, is a release that seems to preserve the recital as it happened (that is, no editing is apparent during the renditions themselves, which means coughs and noise — hardly any and 'wrong' notes remarkably few are allowed to remain). Given the calling-card nature of this issue, a record of but one night in Despax's career, the summoning of comparisons seems superfluous.

This disc is about Despax - he impresses -and he is all about the music. That's very encouraging.

Colin Anderson