Reviews

Town punching above its musical weight…

Cordelia Williams gave delightful and informative spoken introductions to the music she had chosen. In Beethoven’s late Opus 109 Sonata she progressed impeccably to the magical ending of the final theme and variations. Liszt’s Leggierezza Study displayed her dexterity, never losing the musical impetus; and she then brought his view of Swiss Lake Wallenstadt into a magical, misty focus. To complete the first half, Liszt’s Benediction was a superbly judged re-creation of the composer’s religious conviction.

After the interval Cordelia showed she could grasp the complexities of one of the keyboard’s greatest, and most extended, love-poems: Schumann’s Fantasie in C. The composer’s desperate passion for Clara rang in our ears: only a superb performance of every movement can achieve this. We had poetry, vigour and desperation, but always supreme pianistic control.

Perhaps Cordelia is herself in love: but certainly, as she took her deserved applause, the entire audience was in love with her.

Eastbourne Herald, November 2011

Beethoven’s 4th Concerto with the CBSO

Cordelia Williams brought both elasticity and poetry to Beethoven’s inward Piano Concerto no.4, so searchingly demanding of a musicianship which Williams conveyed with conviction and inner strength.

Christopher Morley, Birmingham Post, October 2011

And Cordelia thrilled us…

Concert soloists give their interpretation of a composer’s music but they seldom, if ever, tell you how they do this. Not so Cordelia Williams at St. Mary’s Church on 19th March. She came on, sat at the piano and, before playing a note, read snatches of poems that had been published alongside Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons: twelve pieces composed for a monthly music magazine. She had drawn her interpretation of the music from these poems, having regard to the Russian climate, and she wanted to share them with her audience before she played this rarely performed work. She then treated us to an extraordinary 45 minutes of Tchaikovsky’s creative genius with a succession of wonderfully constructed song-like melodies that had the audience in raptures. So much so they set a precedent by calling her back by acclamation at the end of the first half.

Her second half started with Shostakovich… the young Cordelia showed her mature technique and mastery of the keyboard in a flowing display of great power and delicate sensitivity. This was followed by Schubert’s sublime Impromptus Nos. 2 and 3. The contrast here between the aggressive dynamics of No. 2 and his soul searing No. 3 was wonderfully realised as Schubert at his very best, alas, only a year before his death. Cordelia Williams’ last item was Liszt’s Après une Lecture du Dante. Again, Cordelia first described her exploration of the poet’s verse as her starting approach to the music. She then gave a ‘barnstorming’ account of this epic (and most demanding, or even terrifying) piece of music that was spellbinding (if not stupefying) by the brilliance of her playing. It was a magnificent tour de force… This was a concert and a half.

Painswick Beacon, April 2011

Elgar’s Piano Quintet, a late and very grand work…. It was given a terrific, rhapsodic performance, one fully alive to the piece stretching the boundaries of chamber music. (Cordelia Williams with Bartosz Woroch & Pablo Hernan Benedi (violins), Evgenia Vynogradska (viola), Michael Petrov (cello) at Barbican Hall)

Peter Reed, www.classicalsource.com, January 2011

Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall is launching a new venture this season — a series of piano recitals comprising a mixture of Sunday mornings and weekday evenings. First up was Cordelia Williams… She adroitly mapped the shifting moods of Beethoven’s Op 126 Bagatelles, from the left-hand/right-hand dialogue of No 2, through the stillness and concentration of No 3, to No 4’s brusque dynamism. In Chopin Four Mazurkas Op 17 there was a fine sense of how they work together as a group. Amid the polished alertness and clarity of the playing there were moments when the underlying wildness was allowed to show through, leading to the haunting, almost exotic, introspection of No 4. Williams’ liquid finger-work in the first four of Skryabin’s Op 15 Preludes was not only deeply expressive in itself but also paved the way for an engrossing account of Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. Her lucid textures in Ondine allowed the music to shimmer, the spooky stillness of Le Gibet was mesmerising, while Scarbo was genuinely creepy, athletic and sinister in equal measure.

Music & Vision Magazine, October 2010

Basingstoke Concert Club’s first recital of the new season was a memorable event. It was given by the greatly talented young pianist Cordelia Williams. The programme which she presented demonstrated her formidable technique, which ranged from the quiet and delicate to the strong and forceful…

The final item in the programme was Fantasie in C op. 17 by Schumann. Before she played it, Cordelia set out her own interpretation of what lay behind the music, explaining the influence upon it of Beethoven’s music and of Schumann’s future wife, Clara Wieck, with whom he was not allowed to communicate at this time because of her father’s objections to their intended marriage. It was a very thoughtful and intriguing exposition, which she followed up with a marvellous musical interpretation of this difficult and profound work… It was a splendid concert, given by a pianist who was not only a virtuoso, but a scholarly and thoughtful one too.

Basingstoke Gazette, October 2010

Cordelia Williams’ inspiring piano recital at Emmanuel URC on Wednesday… the overall impression she gave in her recital was of elegance and charm rather than virtuosity. Of course technical prowess was there in abundance or she could never have tackled the works on her fiendishly difficult programme. But Cordelia’s mastery in this area is actually so great that it’s just not an issue.

Far more important is her obvious pleasure in playing which communicates itself instantly to her audience. Her technique is floaty and her approach lyrical, so much so that you simply can’t imagine her playing anything harsh or even unduly emphatic. Wedded to this is Cordelia’s transcending interest in the music she’s performing. Classical concertising can be overly formal and off-putting at times, so that it came as a breath of fresh air when Cordelia sat down at the piano and chatted conversationally about the three works on her programme.

The Cambridge Tab, April 2010

I cannot imagine a more perfect performance of the Liszt and Chopin – superb!

Antony Hopkins, July 2008

Cordelia Williams’ Wigmore lunchtime debut yesterday demonstrated fine tonal gradations, a gorgeous singing sound even when pianissimo, and unerring sense of phrase-shape – rare qualities in today’s barn-storming young pianists. But where necessary she could drive the music to an enormously exciting finish as she did in the finale of the Chopin B minor sonata. Her aural imagination must have been the young composer Hugh Brunt’s dream in his evocative Absentia and Sphere. The early Schubert A major sonata was played with spell-binding simplicity and natural understated eloquence in the slow movement. This was memorable playing in its limpidity and expressiveness.

Thisislondon.co.uk, September 2006

Grieg’s glorious Piano Concerto always steals the show, but this was an especially expressive, yet never under-powered performance from soloist, Cordelia Williams

whatsonsouthwest.co.uk, October 2009

In a programme encompassing sonatas by Mozart and Schubert, together with more romantic works of Chopin, Glinka and Rachmaninov, she showed remarkable empathy with these composers and always kept her astonishing technical ability subservient to the music with effortless ease. Judging by the exquisite rendering of three Chopin Mazurkas, her stated ambition to study this genre in depth is very understandable. In the highly competitive world of the concert pianist, hers is certainly a name to remember.

Surrey advertiser, October 2007

Ms. Williams played the Beethoven concerto with a refreshing compound of power, polish and wit. She demonstrated her technical skill and maturity in the first movement and produced a lyrical depth and ‘Innigkeit’ that belied her youth in the second. I have never before heard such a sparkling and witty performance of the finale.

Cambridgeshire Pride, June 2007

Cordelia’s stunning performance of Shostakovich’s Concerto no. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and Strings proved she really is an amazing talent. Seemingly possessing a lightness of touch one minute, to effusive passion the next, Shostakovich’s dynamic concerto was made to look effortless.

Salisbury Journal, January 2008

Schubert’s final sonata … a performance that balanced care and conviction. Ms. Williams proved herself a natural Schubertian, with a flowing, singing style. The Kiss of the Infant Jesus by French composer Messiaen had a unifying sense of mysticism in both birdsong and dissonance. You could almost smell the incense. In Liszt’s Danté Sonata, flair for shaping big romantic melodies was equalled by skill in balancing powerful chordal passages.

Portsmouth Evening News, January 2008