The London Piano Festival returned to Kings Place, launching its opening night with a brave programme of contemporary compositions by George Benjamin and austere piano works by Olivier Messiaen, as seenandheard-international.com reported.
Kings Place Welcomes a Daring Opening Night
- Pianists Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva curated the festival alongside co-director and chair Philip Jones, presenting an opening concert featuring music with the ink metaphorically still wet.
- The programme paired George Benjamin’s recent compositions with Olivier Messiaen’s monumental two-piano cycle Visions de l’Amen, utilizing synchronized lighting to reflect the composer’s synaesthesia.
- Festival organizers placed a Steinway exhibition in the foyer to host upcoming Young Artist Platform performances over the weekend, leading into the Saturday night all-Mozart gala.
George Benjamin and the Modernist Flow of Two or Four
Co-directors Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva opened the evening with Benjamin’s Two or Four, written in 2010. The piece exists in two near-identical halves, with the first scored for two hands and the second for four. Benjamin joined broadcaster Donald McLeod on stage for a conversation exploring his formative time studying with Olivier Messiaen in Paris. During the discussion, the composer noted that contemporary writers rarely compose for piano duet configurations anymore. Following the conversation, Owen took the Primo seat and Apekisheva took Secondo for the quarter-hour work Divisions, which received its world premiere in May 2025 in Paris by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the composer. The performance evoked gamelan textures through mild dissonance and a sharp contrast between Primo’s martellato strikes and the rich low-end register of Apekisheva’s Secondo keyboard.
Seven Movements Interpret Theological 'Amen' with Lighting
The second half of the evening turned to Messiaen’s 1943 masterpiece Visions de l’Amen, an intricate work originally written for the composer to perform alongside his student and eventual second wife, Yvonne Loriod. Across its seven movements, the piece interprets different theological definitions of the word ‘Amen’, ranging from the Creator to the eternal consummation. In homage to Messiaen’s known synaesthesia, specific coloured lighting cues accompanied each movement across the Kings Place stage. Apekisheva anchored the lower register during the stellar second movement, while the third movement brought forth bell-like tones from the ultra-low bass keys. Despite a slightly relaxed tension in the judgment movement, the concluding consummation movement built an unstoppable momentum, resolving in a powerful, bell-encrusted final statement.
| Work | Composer | Year | Performers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two or Four | George Benjamin | 2010 | Charles Owen, Katya Apekisheva |
| Divisions | George Benjamin | 2024/5 | Charles Owen (Primo), Katya Apekisheva (Secondo) |
| Visions de l’Amen | Olivier Messiaen | 1943 | Charles Owen, Katya Apekisheva |
Whether the remaining weekend performances can match the specific intensity of this opening is uncertain as the festival moves toward its Saturday night Gala.
