Tamar Makharashvili

FRANK CLIFF

This year's Norfolk and Norwich Festival lunchtime concerts at the Assembly House in Norwich have provided some exciting music-making. They are a marvellous platform for young artists and Wednesday's piano recital introduced us to Tamar Makharashvili, a talented young lady from Tbilisi in Georgia who performed an ambitious programme ranging from Bach to Britten.

I suspect, as yet, she has not had much experience of a concert platform. Nerves showed with a few fluffs which did not really matter at all and were in fact more in evidence than her self-deprecatory platform manner – hardly allowing herself to take a bow. This is a pity as she has a charming presence and the audience obviously took to her at once.

She can certainly play, demonstrating a real virtuosity to greatest effect in the final Tarantella by Liszt.

Beethoven, the Variations Op 34, a Bach suite and Haydn's Sonata No 31 in E showed a sensitive response to different styles, from late baroque to late classical. There are some muddied textures in the Beethoven which began the programme, but stylish Bach and some really sparkling playing in Haydn and a couple of oddities, two waltzes by Britten and an amusing virtuosi impromptu by Machavariani were despatched. The great Chopin Fantasie Impromptu was maybe a little lightweight, perhaps confirming one's feeling that Miss Makharashvili really has a much greater potential than we heard, a potential which will undoubtedly develop with greater experience.