Standing ovations should not perhaps be given too easily, but the one accorded to pianist Victor Maslov for his recital at Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor on Friday, 12 January was fully deserved.

As victory bells rang out from the keyboard evoking a procession through the Great Gate of Kiev, the final ‘promenade’ in Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition, listeners found it hard not to rise in accolade, grateful not just for the soloist’s great virtuosity but also for the sheer imaginative power of his performance.

A much gentler piece began the programme, the 3 Bagatelles Op. 1 by Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (born in Kiev in 1937, Silvestrov fled Ukraine in 2022 for Berlin where he now lives).

Experiencing these pieces has been compared to ‘walking through a forest, light shining through the boughs’; although only a few minutes in length, they helped settle the mind ahead of the much more assertive textures of Rachmaninov’s 1911 Études-tableaux Op. 33.

Famously, Rachmaninov had a hand-span four or five notes beyond your average octave, just one factor contributing to this piano music’s many technical challenges.

From the martial opening of the first of the eight Études-tableaux Victor established his authority and never looked back, creating vivid contrasts between the most powerful passages and those requiring delicacy.

The whirl of notes in the fifth study-picture, known in Russia as ‘The Snowstorm’, was tossed off with seeming ease.

Especially beautiful was the pensive opening of the seventh in the set, which formed a subtle bridge with Silvestrov’s Bagatelles.

The ‘thunder & lightning’ of the final number were breathtaking.

Contrast also plays a large part in the magic of Mussorgsky’s 1874 Pictures, with sonorities ranging from the heavy wagon-wheels in ‘Bydlo’ and those climactic Kiev bells, to the scampering quarrels of Paris children in ‘Tuileries’ and the skittish fantasy dance of ‘Ballet of the Unhatched Chickens’.

Victor’s playing was such that one could lose oneself completely in the whole panoply of images, romantic in the sad troubadour’s song of ‘The Old Castle’, gothic in the resounding ‘Catacombs’, terrifying in the forest-evocation of the child-eating witch Baba Yaga.

Far from exhausted by all this, Victor thanked the audience in his own way with a stunning encore in the form of Manuel de Falla’s electric ‘Fire Dance’.

Dolgellau Music Club would like to thank the Countess of Munster Musical Trust for its sponsorship of this exhilarating recital.