Remarkable precision and power of expression
Pianist Gil Sullivan convinces with his guest performance
His piano playing is stamped with expressive power, a touch which displays remarkable precision. The Australian concert pianist Gil Sullivan – one of the greats in his homeland – appeared as guest at the invitation of the International F Chopin Music Academy – Germany.
Gil Sullivan has seen the great concert halls and played in the New York Carnegie Hall, in the Berlin and Vienna Konzerthauses, and in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, plus the Art Center of Chicago. Now he has also found the path to Lahr and thankfully performed for a sold out audience of 1,500. Bozena Ficht-Maciejowska, the founder and director of the International F Chopin Music Academy had invited him in the previous year, having met him in Seoul in Sth Korea. In 2006, for Mozart’s 250th birthday, Sullivan, who by the way speaks excellent German, includes all that composer’s piano works in his repertoire. To begin his concert he played Mozart’s sonata K332 in F. Light-footed and elegant, in the middle part, full of sensibility, Sullivan kindled the fervour and ardour of the 22yr old Mozart at the time of its composition. Following immediately were 3 works by the Australian composer Miriam Hyde. Gil Sullivan dived into a pictorial, poetic – though still expressive – tonal world in which Australian and English landscapes manifested themselves, including a raging thunderstorm.
The excursion in the spirit of late romantic tonal language provided scope for Beethoven’s sonata no.29, the famous and notoriously labelled as ‘unplayable’ “Hammerklavier”, which was performed for the first time decades after Beethoven’s death, by Liszt. Especially the last 2 movements demand technical brilliance and the highest degree of concentration. Sullivan made an indelible and truly unforgetable impression with his astonishing accuracy, enticing from the keys of the grand piano, an almost blinding fireworks display of technical and musical brilliance!