To describe pianist Llyr Williams as talented seems barely adequate: his gifts are clearly exceptional. At 26, he possesses a formidable technique that makes light of the most fiendish demands; he also has acute sensibilities and the kind of intellectual rigour that marks him as an outstanding prospect for the future. But he is already a considerable artist, as this final concert of the Lower Machen festival showed. Unassuming to the point of reticence, Williams has a maturity and vision beyond his years; he is a performer for whom music is the prime instinct, his natural mode of being.
He has an affinity with Schubert and, in the A minor Sonata D845, a wonderfully lyrical shaping of the phrasing was a constant. This work was the first of the grand sonatas of Schubert's last years and Williams controlled the broad span of its structure so as to bring to it an almost symphonic grandeur, while the ever more complex intricacies of the slow-movement variations were managed with finesse. Though his demeanour was solemn, Williams could make playful moments sing through, creating the fine balance of light with dark that is Schubert's hallmark. In Schumann's Faschingsschwank aus Wien, too, Williams's capacity for subtle characterisation seemed infinite, the carnival exuberance contrasting brilliantly with the romantic tenderness.
Stephanie Power could have had no more eloquent an interpreter for the premiere of her tri-partite Inner Sanctum. However, the work's gradual movement from abrasive harshness to final resolution on to a major chord was an uneasy and not entirely convincing journey, despite the intensity of Williams's playing.
The budgets of small festivals do not run to superior concert grands, so the exquisite colouring that he displayed at the recent BBC Singer of the World Rosenblatt song prize was slightly less in evidence here.
Nevertheless, Williams could still beguile the ear with a rhythmic precision leavened with mischievous flexibility, with the sureness of the placing and weighting of chords, and his implicit understanding of the relationship between chromatic colour and architectural form. The three pieces by Liszt that made up the rest of his programme were all given virtuosic but highly expressive performances, with the Hungarian Rhapsody No 12 in C sharp minor, in particular, simply dazzling. Everything suggests that Williams's recital at next month's Edinburgh festival will launch a major career.
