Olga Pashchenko

Late in the evening, the Russian keyboard wonder Olga Pashchenko conjures up the world of Mendelssohn, a great fan of Bach. It was very early on, through his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, that he had learnt about all the complexities of the Thomas cantor’s music, which by then was already old. One can clearly hear just how much it affected Mendelssohn in his Preludes and Fugues, although the fourth is also reminiscent of Beethoven’s Sonata, opus 10. Pashchenko combines Beethoven’s Variations in C minor with Mendelssohn’s piano masterpiece, the Variations sérieuses. This recital, played on a superb copy of an 1825 Graf forte piano built by Chris Maene, is topped off with a Fantasy and Fugue by Dussek.