Grigory Sokolov

Last night I heard some piano pieces I'd never heard before: Chopin's Piano Sonata N°3 and a dozen mazurkas. OK, I'd heard them played before, but not by Grigory Sokolov, which amounts to not really having heard them at all. For those unaware of this extraordinary artist who never makes studio recordings and limits his travel radius, he's possibly the greatest pianist alive. A bold claim, I know, but not easy to refute…

Piano fans all over the world beg him to to appear in their countries. Here in Toulouse we get him every year. He lives in Madrid, you see, and the trip here is easy and visa-free. He stopped playing in London when Bliar & Co. insisted he get a visa. He'd been appearing there for twenty years and decided the new hassle was not worth it.

Despite the incredible Chopin - lucid, limpid, transparent and imaginative - maybe the most remarkable part of the evening was the encore section. Sokolov treated us to not one, not two, but six encores (Schubert Impromptus, more Chopin Mazurkas and a ten-minute Mendelssohnian-type creation I'd really never heard before), adding a good thirty minutes of music to the advertised  programme. No show, no fireworks, just brilliantly-performed music from one of the world's greatest artists. One of the world's most generous artists…