Midsummer maestro Florian Mitrea
This midsummer maestro brilliantly exceeded my already very high expectations. I thought I knew the Mozart sonata, and I certainly recognised plenty of the themes but it came across as new, so fresh and exciting – the magic of live performance. Florian Mitrea embodied all the passionate energy of the 28 year-old Mozart, bursting with invention and subtlety, with his greatest works yet before him. It was strong stuff, full of Sturm und Drang, but also relieved with some beautifully delicate Rococo detail – Mozart stretching the limits of the Classical tradition.
Before the Beethoven, Mitrea shared some thoughts on its composition and innovations, which added to the very helpful programme notes. The ‘Waldstein’ Sonata was composed about twenty years after the Mozart and Mitrea drew a radically different palette of sounds from the piano. Beethoven was all of thirty-three and entering his prime. One wonders what Wolfgang would have produced had he lived as long as Ludwig – perhaps something just as exciting.
Florian Mitrea
Another twenty years had to pass before Schubert wrote his final, monumental Sonata, D. 960. This beautiful masterpiece too is loaded with the melancholy of what-might-have-been, as Schubert died so soon after completing this work. Mitrea delivered all the romantic ambiguity of Schubert, his angst and his delicacy. It’s a substantial work for a hot evening and at times the piano seemed to be a furnace. It was a splendid performance and somehow, astonishingly, there was strength for an encore – not the usual lollipop, however, but a blast, an explosion! Chopin’s C minor Etude, the ‘Revolutionary’ crashed through the lingering applause. Composed only three years after the Schubert, these three minutes of full-blooded Romantic bravura represented a whole new era!
St George’s Church,
21 June 2025
Rating:
Andrew Connal
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Mozart – Sonata in C minor, KV457
Beethoven – Sonata in C major, Op. 53 ‘Waldstein’
Schubert – Sonata in B-flat major, D 960
Chopin – C minor Etude, Op. 10 No. 12
