The comparativist

T o an audience of about eighty, Christ Church received two of Chetham’s School of Music’s finest pianists earlier today: Isaac, who played Bach’s «Partita N.º 6 in E minor» (BWV 830), and Thomas, who, from memory, played Rachmaninoff’s «Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 36 (1931 revision)». Bach’s performative and technical dance-inspired music was, today, at its best in its liveliest forms, namely the Corrente, the Tempo di Gavotta and the Gigue. And if with Bach we were treated to an exercise in restrained formal intricacy, with the Rachmaninoff Sonata we witnessed an explosion– an explosion of the sort that bring down edifices –a controlled explosion– almost brought down the house, through an intense and somehow tenderly restrained display of talent that seemed raw and yet refined, and widely recognised by the auditorium’s final applause.