The comparativist

Ida Pelliccioli delivered yet another great piano concert at Christ Church, where an audience of around 130 received a performance themed around «introspection». I last saw her here in 2024, when Ms Pelliccioli based her presentation on the Spanish Baroque. Today she performed pieces by Jean Sibelius, Ferruccio Busoni, Maurice Ravel, and Leoš Janáček. Through each, Ms Pelliccioli wove a story of how every composition represented a facet or an important moment of its creator's life, and how each work offered a very personal «introspection». To me, the standout piece was Janáček's «In the mists», particularly the fourth part, which forms the powerful summit of the first three movements. It is a work that is fast, deep, and ranges across every register of the piano—demanding two qualities of the performer that are difficult to achieve individually, and immensely challenging to combine: speedy hands and a heartfelt dramatism. Ms Pelliccioli, however, maintained both the dramatic t...