Eliso Virsaladze 艾莉索·薇莎拉茲
Concert Hall, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts /Hong Kong /Mar 2, 2025 /Ernest Wan / The great Georgian pianist Eliso Virsaladze made her Hong Kong debut in 2017 at the age of 74, playing both solo and chamber music, and returned two years later for a concerto performance. Now 82, she was back at this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival for a solo recital, one in which her powers proved largely undiminished. The recital began with Schubert’s Moments musicaux, the middle four of which were played in a straightforward fashion. In the C-major opening piece, Virsaladze’s left and right hands at times went slightly out of sync so as to clarify the interaction of two imitative voices, a rare practice among today’s pianists. In the outer sections of the sixth and last piece, in A-flat major, such was the extreme flexibility of her tempo – it changed almost every bar and the music slowed down massively upon settling into F-flat major (notated as E major) – that the triple metre was often difficult to …
