Evgeny Kissin in recital

Evgeny Kissin reaffirms his credentials as one of the greatest pianists of our time in a programme that contrasts Chopin’s romantic miniatures with three very different 20th-century masters.

Kissin has come a long way since his teenage debut in the 1980s, but he’s never lost that youthful electricity. He’s peerless in Chopin, but today he explores some strikingly different directions, with music by Gershwin, Soviet master Tikhon Khrennikov, and the epic, expressionist Sonata by Alban Berg.

‘He is still astounding’ wrote the Financial Times, ‘his imagination is strong’; and Kissin’s recitals here are red-letter days for fans of the great Russian school (or anyone who loves phenomenal piano playing). Berg’s tempestuous sonata is one of the founding masterpieces of 20th-century modernism, but it’s the prospect of Kissin playing Gershwin that makes this a real date for the diary.