Monday, September 21, 2026
Wigmore Hall, London
Barry Douglas served up a lunchtime feast of music and performance, opening with three of Brahms’s seven Fantasies, Opus 116, impassioned accounts of the bookends – each a ‘Capriccio’ in D-minor (the first with a few finger slips, the second transcendentally virtuosic) – separated by the pivotal E-major ‘Intermezzo’, intimate and touching. Two of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons followed, a collection divided into months, Douglas choosing ‘October’ and ‘December’, both shapely and sensitive. Finally Mussorgsky’s Pictures, given an absorbing outing, Douglas powerful, passionate and poetic, each Hartmann artefact perfectly tailored and vividly communicative, culminating in a rapacious ‘Hut on fowl’s legs’ and a majestic ‘Great Gate of Kiev’ of awed solemnity. As an encore, the D-flat fifth of Rachmaninov’s six Moments musicaux, Opus 16. Quite lovely. First-class broadcast sound.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0031l7j
Barry Douglas has recorded this repertoire for Chandos…
https://www.chandos.net/search?zoom_query=barry+douglas&zoom_per_page=24