Llŷr Williams review – Welsh pianist of an infinite range of colours

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff
Williams more than rose to the challenge of Schumann’s Kreisleriana and the Op 11 Sonata with playing of clarity and rigour

The Welsh pianist Llŷr Williams, so modest of demeanour, is not averse to setting himself Herculean keyboard tasks. In this recital he tackled two of the biggest challenges of the Schumann repertoire, rarely programmed together: Kreisleriana Op 16 and the notoriously testing Sonata in F sharp minor, Op 11.

Each afforded a display of boundless virtuosity, but also vivid characterisation of Schumann’s abundance of musical ideas, whether exuberantly energetic or poetic reverie, serious or playful, with Op 16’s portrayal of the fluctuating moods of ETA Hoffman’s Johannes Kreisler mirroring Schumann’s own, much as the earlier sonata already intimates.