Anna Tsybuleva plays Ravel and Chopin, Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, 22 March 2026 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review: William Ruff
Photo credit: Royal Centre
Anna Tsybuleva plays Ravel and Chopin
Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham | 22 March 2026
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review: William Ruff
“Extraordinary command of keyboard colour and texture.”
On Sunday in Nottingham City Centre there were two distinct time zones. Whereas most people were enjoying a taste of spring morning sunshine, for those in the Royal Concert Hall the sun had gone to bed and it was well past midnight. That is the power of classical music.
Russian pianist Anna Tsybuleva (Leeds Piano Competition winner in 2015) had chosen a night-themed programme for her second appearance in the Sunday Morning Piano Series. And she was dressed for the part, floating onto the stage in a black dress with long mesh overlay, instantly setting the mood, even before she embarked on her rather dreamy introductory chat to the audience.
She started with Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, whose three movements plunge the listener into the night as a place where all things fantastical, grotesque and terrifying live. Taken together they form one of the most difficult pieces ever written for piano. The first ‘Ondine’ is about a water spirit who seduces men into her watery kingdom. Ravel creates a shimmering world through cascading repeated notes and luminous harmonies, as well as a highly seductive melody. Anna Tsybuleva has an extraordinary command over the colours and textures emanating from the piano. And the way she looks at her hands on the keyboard reminds you of a sculptor creating a 3-dimensional image.
The second movement (‘Le Gibet’) is a musical evocation of a corpse hanging on a gibbet against a desolate landscape. The music remains slowly quiet throughout, a distant bell tolling throughout, against which a bleak, chant-like melody unfolds. Anna’s control of the minutest musical details made this chillingly atmospheric from beginning to end. The final movement depicts the goblin Scarbo, a terrifying creature that shrinks, grows, leaps and scratches his way into the nightmares of his victims. Again, it was Anna’s complete control over the fiendishly difficult music that was so impressive. All those notes have to sound relentless, bursting with neurotic energy, exploding like cluster bombs. And they did.
Anna Tsybuleva continued the night theme with a selection of six Chopin Nocturnes: no hint of the supernatural here but rather a set of canvases depicting romantic introspection. They all share qualities in common: singing right-hand melodies, often reminding us of tunes from operatic arias, set against a left hand that makes the musical texture sound much more complex, intricate and restless. Anna played some of the best-known, including the intense, often dark drama of the Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op 27, No 1 and the serene, song-like beauty of the Nocturne in D flat, Op 27, No 2. By contrast the Nocturne in C minor, Op 48 No 1 became a miniature tragedy: a night of mortality, of solitary struggle and of defiance in the face of despair.
Anna Tsybuleva reached deep inside this music, revealing Chopin’s mastery of the piano’s expressive capabilities in music of profound emotional depth, drama and breathtaking lyricism. Before the audience emerged back into Nottingham’s spring sunshine they had experienced the night as never before: a space for solitude, passion, exquisite consolation…and just a little bit of terror.
Anna Tsybuleva playing in Nottingham’s Sunday Morning Piano Series at the Royal Concert Hall.