Isata Kanneh-Mason, Lakeside, Nottingham, 25 April 2026 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Ruff
Photo credit: Lakeside
Isata Kanneh-Mason (piano)
Lakeside, Nottingham | 25 April 2026
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Ruff
“Lyrical grace, fearless technical precision and deeply personal commitment.”
This is only the second time that Isata Kanneh-Mason has played at Lakeside. For those lucky enough to remember her first appearance it may have brought a lump to the throat to see this elegant woman in stunning white evening gown walk to the piano. And that’s because last time she was just 11 years old, also wearing a white dress, and winning her way to become Nottingham’s Young Musician of the Year. That was 18 years ago; now you have to be quick off the mark to secure a ticket to hear her, one of the world’s most sought-after and admired pianists.
Her programme started and ended with Beethoven, beginning at night with the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata and ending with dawn as (possibly) expressed by the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. Isata takes time to enter the world that each composer has created. Everything has to feel right before that first note is sounded. And that’s so important in the ’Moonlight’, the most famous of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Her choice of tempo in the opening movement was ideal for the slow, mournful melody which unfolds, making it a brooding, ghostly meditation. The second movement, a delicate minuet in disguise, brought relief from all that intensity whilst the finale erupted with explosive fury and technical virtuosity. The smooth, hypnotic delicacy which Isata created at the sonata’s opening was here transformed into something jagged and unpredictable, full of rhythmic drive and sudden, even shocking, dynamic shifts, exploiting the almost orchestral range of the piano. Isata’s gloves-off approach underlined throughout the physicality of this most stormy of finales.
Then came Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, one of the Mount Everest’s of the piano repertoire, staggeringly difficult to play in its depiction of sinister nocturnal worlds. In the opening ‘Ondine’ Ravel creates an exquisitely textured world, with Isata’s playing hinting at the darkness and danger which lurks beneath its shimmering surface. The second movement (‘The Gallows’) must be one of the creepiest things ever written for piano, depicting as it does the swinging of a corpse dangling from a rope in music of unsettling quiet and insistence. In the final ‘Scarbo’ Isata seemed to relish every one of Ravel’s virtuoso demands: the repeated notes that evoke the wicked dwarf’s evil cackling; the sudden, ominous silences followed by malevolent explosions of supernatural power.
After the interval came two pieces by Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova. Nocturne is a highly atmospheric piece, inviting the listener into an intimate, almost vulnerable space, Isata’s performance emphasising its melodic clarity, emotional directness and sense of stillness. She followed this with Halo, starting in darkness, growing into full brilliance, settling into a mature and settled glow. Few in Lakeside’s audience will ever have seen a piano played in quite this way before, with all sorts of techniques used for achieving strange harmonics which seemed to float above the played notes, mimicking the optical illusion of a halo.
Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata was a splendidly heroic way for Isata to end her recital, with its relentless rhythmic energy, its sudden retreats and volcanic outbursts. The ending was spectacular: all those shimmering, rapidly repeated chords suggesting the glittering light of dawn, so ending this musical journey out of darkness.
However, huge audience cheers meant there just had to be an encore. And it was something you can find on Isata’s new Prokofiev CD: his Prélude in C major, a piece which reveals its composer’s tender, lyrical side. It ended a programme which demonstrated Isata’s extraordinary artistry: her poised, lyrical grace, fearless technical precision and deeply personal commitment to musical story-telling.
Isata Kenneh-Mason (piano)