Brighton Year-Round 2026

John Bruzon Piano Recital St Nicholas Church, Brighton

John Bruzon

Genre: Live Music, Music

Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Last week was cancelled and this week’s artist was also indisposed. Stepping in here yet again (as he did in March) at least is the magnificent, indefatigable John Bruzon; who’s already played a version of this concert earlier in the year.

It’s built around Bruzon championing Liszt’s six Consolations S.172 this year. He promised to include these enchanting lyrical and ultimately devotional pieces in every concert he plays this year (quite a few). And he makes good that promise at the same venue.

The more religious Consolations from 1849-50 number six. It’s difficult sometimes to note where in ends and the other begins. The first two and last two are all in E major, a radiant often innocent key. And the middle two in the more esoteric key of D flat major recall their use once with Schubert and more familiarly with Chopin; and later with Faure and later Khachaturian in his Piano Concerto; and then Shostakovich.

Though two are in that great Chopin discovery of D flat major hey’re clumped together. Of the Four in E major, that key of innocence and balm, the first certainly is. It’s a kind of song without words. The second in E major sings out in a rapture of distress but is a true consolation, one of Liszt’s most exquisite inspirations. The third in D flat is more rhapsodic and aspirational. The next is long-breathed, its D flat somehow exploratory with low repeated chords chewing over mortality.

The fifth in E major returns to the higher register and is another song without words with a singing line accompanied by a middle register: it’s really a lullaby The sixth in E major again is the longest and more virtuosic than any. Here is Liszt not able to hold back proof of his Harmonies du Soir credentials. Huge arcing melodies sweep up and come to some provisional conclusion. An amen of sorts.

Bruzon plays them with ever greater lyricism and ease. By now he breathes them and must be their most consummate interpreter. There’s obviously specialists like Leslie Howard and virtuosi like Stephen Hough, Marc Andre Hamelin and a few others like Steven Osborne. But few have devoted such time to these works at such an interpretive level. There’s a fullness of time Bruzon extracts from the piano, even more so this time than last.

Bruzon is on a mission here. Making good his intention to perform the slightly lesser-known Consolations in every recital this year, including the all-Liszt one he plans, he becomes the go-to interpreter.

Bruzon then moved to Liszt’s contemporary Chopin, particularly selecting two dance genres. Bruzon frames two Waltzes with two Promises. He decided to insert a Nocturne before the final Polonaise.

The Op 26/1 Polonaise in C # minor has like several of the seven been given a nickname. “Dramatique” which in fact likes it more with the four Ballades with their half-suppressed programmes.  It’s the first mature Polnaise of the seven, a stormy yet ruminant piece with the aristocratic dance moves suggesting some kind of class catastrophe. Bruzon underlines the rhythms yet intensifies the drama.

Bruzon addresses this both lyrically – no overtly stormy interpretation – yet dramatically when required. It brings out the aristocratic nature of this dance (as opposed to the more experimental peasant or country Mazurkas). Something Rubinstein brought out supremely. Bruzon way with this Mazurka is to allow some rubato to inflect the overall prance and twirl if the Polonaise itself; its strut, stride and release. The return of the turbulent opening notes is like a sudden recall to a world elsewhere.

The C # minor Waltz Op 64/2 is one of the finest and the last solo piano piece Chopin published in his lifetime, just before the Cello Sonata. Everything else was posthumous..

This Waltz builds in a consolatory opening to a sudden spinning away down the keyboard almost in a glissandi, but not. It’s superbly melancholy material sways yet holds the waltz measure. And Bruzon repeats it!

The posthumous though early E major Waltz following straight after is remarkable for its unclouded nature at first. Remember the innocence of this key.  The second subject is a little shaded but not significantly. A small cloud on a summers day.

Its simplicity recalls the Mazurkas though not the increasingly experimental pressures to which Chopin subjected them, constituting his most advanced ed and often most exciting writing.

The early and Chopin-rejected Nocturne in E minor Op 72/1 is no sudden break in tempo to a relaxed or slow genre. This Nocturne is fledged to sing and moves swiftly, like rapid shadows on a castle wall. It’s minor keyed secret seems keyed to some shrouded even darkness of its own, unsettled and never attaining rest. Chopin was wrong to reject it.

The final A flat Polonaise Op 40/1 the “Militaire” is not only the most overtly patriotic piece Chopin wrote (his Ballade No 2 was a more covert indictment of Russian massacre). It was used as that in broadcasts by Polish radio under Nazi occupation.

Its strut and swagger are superbly brought out by Bruzon, who doesn’t hesitate to round off his concert with such a crowd-pleaser as this. Its remarkable this is his first public performance of the pieve.

Bruzon takes time to articulate the inner detail and doesn’t rush this. It has no need. It’s an arrival in itself. And his final ritornello slows up majestically as a horse might prance.

Begged for a small encore. Bach’s Arioso arranged by the great French pianist Alfred Cortot from Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 5 in F minor BWV1056. Basking in a tonal afterglow Bruzon deploys a different palate. This is Bach playing aware of but not at all subject to period performance practice and furnished an ideal finale. He returns in September. We’re more blessed than we realise.

Published June 10, 2026 by Simon Jenner