Royal Festival Hall
BRITISH SOLO RECITAL DEBUT OF DIMITRIS SGOUROS - NOVEMBER 1983
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Royal Festival Hall |
Dimitris Sgouros made his British solo recital debut on the 29th November 1983 at the Royal Festival Hall, with the following programme: Scarlatti Sonata in F, Chopin Ballade No 1 in G minor, Chopin Ballade No 4 in F minor, Liszt Mephisto Waltz, Brahms Variations on a theme of Paganini Op. 35, Balakirev Islamey.
| The Times (of London) | |
| Saturday 19th November 1983 | |
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The Times (of London) |
| Thursday 1st December 1983 |
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Review of Dimitris Sgouros' British solo recital debut from The Times (of London), Thursday 1
st December 1983| Dimitris Sgouros |
| Festival Hall |
On Tuesday night the 14-year-old Greek piano professor Dimitris Sgouros, with 35 piano concertos at his fingertips, gave his United Kingdom recital debut and half an hour's worth of encores to a packed Festival Hall.
His choice of Liszt's "Mephisto Waltz" was significant. Sgouros as pianist, just like Liszt as composer, is a deceptive virtuoso: the light of his technical mastery is blinding, his inventive energy self-regenerating to the point, almost, of self-intoxication. Yet that is not all. There is, driving the nerve and the muscle, a daemon that dares, a Faustian voraciousness for not only accomplishment but discovery, that bears up and substantiates his virtuosity.
For the moment though, the dominance of this spirit, a rare and rather startling quality in itself, means that one tends to learn rather more about Sgouros than about the composer in hand. Except, that is, when the two suddenly fuse, and then the sparks fly. This happened in the Liszt, and it happened most remarkably in the Brahms Paganini Variations, the most gripping performance I have ever heard.
Hilary Finch
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Original programme book |
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London Philharmonic Orchestra 50th Anniversary Season - British debut of Dimitris Sgouros in the Rachmaninov 3rd Piano Concerto with Mstislav Rostropovich |
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Patron: His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent |
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The London Symphony Orchestra |
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Patron: H er Majesty The Queen |
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| July 1984 From left to right: |
| John Pattrick, Vice President of Angel Records L.A.; Erick Friedman ; Jean-Philippe Collard ; Dimitris Sgouros ; |
| Dr. Mark P. Malkovich, III, Director Newport Festival, Rhode Island ; Anthony Caronia, Angel Records New York |
| [special thanks to Mark Malkovich IV for this photograph, drawn from the personal collection of Dr Mark P. Malkovich III] |
Gramophone (January 1984)
EMI SGOUROS EXCLUSIVE
Sgouros concerts in Oxford University (where he pursued studies in post-graduate mathematics)
"This was a Mozartian reading: relaxed, urbane and conversational"
Dimitris Sgouros performs Beethoven 3rd Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (April 2009)
Routine programme, exceptional results
"The BBC Orchestra's precision is ideally matched with pianist Dimitris Sgouros' skilful delivery"
A review by Keith Moore (Columbia University)
[click on image to enlarge]
"In his Lisztian encore Sgouros was able to shine in a rhapsodic composition of enormous technical challenge. The work was designed to astonish and Sgouros did just that, easily transforming difficult finger work into aural opulence."
[VIEW THIS ARTICLE IN PDF FORMAT]
BBC Radio 3 broadcast (February 2011) - Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony under Jiri Belohlavek
In homage of the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt in 2011, EMI Classics proudly announces a new double-CD set entitled "Essential Liszt" with landmark recordings by Dimitris Sgouros and other featured Liszt exponents of the modern era
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"Essential Liszt" - the much-anticipated new EMI Classics album (worldwide release July 2011) |
