On the fourth day of the festival, Annecy’s residents and visitors were able to enjoy two impressive programmes of chamber music in the concert hall of the Bonlieu Theatre.

An impeccable sensitivity to the requirements of ensemble playing, a vivid blend of the individual musicians and emotional power are the keys to the success of Boris Brovtsyn, Yulia Deyneka, Boris Andrianov, Valeriy Sokolov and Denis Matsuev. They played together to bring us Sergei Taneyev’s Piano Quintet — a work not often to be heard in the world’s concert halls, even those of Russia. This had been preceded by Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in Memory of a Great Artist for piano violin and cello, performed by Philipp Kopachevsky, Valeriy Sokolov and Boris Andrianov.

The piano recital that evening gave audiences the chance to experience the artistic talents of the young French pianist, Alexandre Tarot, who won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1989.

Tarot performed fragments from J.S. Bach’s French Suite No. 5, Mozart’s Sonata in A major (K.331), Chopin’s Fantasia and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 3 — the Appassionata. It was unusually moving to watch the emotional intensity of this musician, particularly when he was playing the beautiful Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. In his own arrangement of this work for piano it is possible to hear Tarot’s romantic passion and intoxication with the music of this Austrian master of the symphony. This musician’s playing was particularly profound and expressive.

The audience was loath to bid Alexandre Tarot farewell and it was rewarded with an encore consisting of excellent renderings of J.S. Bach’s Prelude (arr. A. Siloti), Scarlatti’s Sonata in C minor and a poetic mazurka by Chopin.

Victor Alexandrov, the AVC Charity Foundation music reviewer