Alfred Brendel's master call was a late-breaking extra event at the Verbier festival this year. Kit Armstrong played Mozart's sonata in D K586. Brendel described Mozart's late piano sonatas as like the Hancock building in Chicago: it looks really close when you set off walking towards it but seems to get further and further away.
This young pianist has already a formidable technique and his performance was very listenable-to from the start. But he is the most amazingly teachable young man too. For example, when Brendel recommended he think about the character of a phrase or a voice this transformed some of his phrasing.
The master also encouraged him to free his style a little - always with humour - telling him he was very very good at playing hands together but that sometimes this was not always strictly necessary. He also recommended something I will take away and work on myself, which was always to perfectly finish a phrases in its own distinct style, and then perfectly to start the new one too, getting the tone, articulation and character exactly right from the very first sound to the last. It sounds very simple and obvious. But without an ear really attuned to the detail of every sound being produced as well as understanding line and structure, totally impossible to achieve.
