A genius makes amends - in style

Anderszewski is known as an idiosyncratic performer, but he began with an account of Bach's Partita No 2 in C minor that was uningratiating, uncommunicative and plain dull.

He continued with an unengaging performance of Szymanowski's rarely heard Masques and began the second half with what promised to be a brutal, dispiriting reading of Schumann's Humoreske.

Then the miracle occurred. Completely out of the blue, Anderszewski hit form and produced some of the most magical Schumann playing you could wish to hear.

He ended the scheduled programme with more Bach (Partita No 1 in B flat), so different from the C minor, and so vastly better, you could almost hear the sighs of relief.

The grim, unyielding exterior gave way to a smiling, relaxed stage persona. Anderszewski then announced that he had been unhappy with the C minor Partita and was proposing to play it again as an encore, warning that it lasted 20 minutes should anyone wish to leave.

This time around everything worked: mannered eccentricity was transformed into flights of poetry. Where previously the semiquavers had been metronomic, machine-like, now they flowed like quicksilver.

Where previously there was no sense of Baroque dance rhythm in any of the movements, now the Courante hopped and skipped, while the Sarabande had a wonderfully elegiac lilt.

Both those two Partitas and the Schumann, from the epiphany onwards, were music-making of the highest order: free, spontaneous, on the wing. Players who take risks of this magnitude sometimes come a cropper. All credit to Anderszewski for acknowledging the debacle and making such handsome amends.

Piotr Anderszewski
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre
The South Bank Centre,Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX