Review by Simon Jenner, February 26th 2025
Ronojit Bhuyan arrives at St Nicholas with a powerful emphatic style reminding one of pianists like Barenboim in Bach and Beethoven.
An exciting pianist who’s won prizes for improvisation, Bhuyan’s also a PhD student at Trinity Laban where he’s won prizes and plaudits over the last four years. During lockdown Bhuyan and his mother violinist Sunita Bhuyan played 85 concerts between March 2020 to October 2021, featuring a remarkable array of well-known platforms.
He offers Bach’s final B minor Prelude and Fugue No.24 from Book 2 of the 48. This in truth No.48. Bhuyan delivers a clear-sighted pianistic and full, unapologetic tonal richness to this ambiguously majestic prelude and fugue. The Fugue truly arrives as a conclusion of a hidden journey.
Photo Credit Luca Luciano
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major Op 28 the ‘Pastoral,’ and opens with an ebullient Allegro that suits Bhuyan perfectly. It’s sallies and feints ripple over the keyboard.
The darker Andante Bhuyan takes at a direct statement of doubt and shadow in a kind of subdued alla marcia that moves too like a ticking clock.and fairly launches at the major section exuberantly.
When back in the minor there’s greater variety and a complex working out if motifs against the metronomic pulse Beethoven lays out like a kind of extra musical accompaniment. One thinks of Ligeti’s wonderfully suave 100 Metronomes. Beethoven was there first with one. But if course it’s a study in melancholy and (seemingly) obsession. It ends unsettled in some remarkable chords
Banishing this is the tripping Scherzo: Allegro vivace. This it’s not very different from the first movement. A loping theme bubbles and plays like leapfrog over itself. Bhuyan takes this steadily and refuses the invitation to gambol.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
The Rondo: Allegro non troppo is a far more suave affair; but here too the pulse is a little like the hurdy-gurdy effect Haydn wrought in his Symphony 82 ‘The Bear’. Beethoven indeed learned a lot from Haydn the composer even if he didn’t acknowledge his teaching helped.
The central section is more exploratory in its fugato effects and enharmonics that gathered to a strange intensity that makes you realise the Tempest Sonata Op 32/2 isn’t that far off. The hurdy-gurdy returns to reassure and the work ends on some reassurance of pastoral. It’s been an elusive thing though. It’s very good to have Bhuyan’s clear-eyed Beethoven.
His Debussy the Images Book 2 is a glinting different thing. Written in 1907 they reflect Debussy’s preoccupation with the east.
‘Cloches a travers les feuilles’ or bells across leaves is a remarkable sweep and skitter of a piece that both involves rustles and the majestic bells with a kind of glittering keyboard splintering the light through the leaves, if indeed one wants to take such invocations literally. Bhuyan controls the line here and though cheerfully decorating as r goes along Debussy’s palette, never loses that direction.
‘Et la lune descend sur le temple quiz fut’ (And the moon descends on the temple that was) by is the adagio piece here. A befitting moonlight it allows pools of sound to eddy in opalescent shivers of chords, where a descending right hand strikes through a gentle chime of a theme. Bhuyan is particularly fine at enriching his sonorities and letting the melodies and harmonies state themselves. He also enjoys the pared down starkly sumptuous conclusion and makes it strange again.
Poissions d’Or or Golden Fish follows without a break headlong in its glitter and allegro-like panache. Even in the trio section Debussy is unquiet. There’s thematic shifts, with jumps and a jokey sonority presaging his Children’s Corner of a year later.Yet it ends as it must mysteriously.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Shostakovich is famed for his great 1951 Preludes and Fugues written for Tatiana Nikolayeva. But in 1934 he wrote a sparky and terrific set of Preludes Op 34:for himself. The last 24 in D minor is an ironic twist of a minute camping profundity in a twist and wearing it’s ominous sense lightly. There’s a tea-for-two-step feel about this that’s positively sinister. Bhuyan plays this is a pontillistic way, more unhurried than say Oli Mustonen on his famed recording but pointing up that this is a far more ironic than simply devilish piece and he brings far more character to it.
A superbly probing recital. Bhuyan has immense promise. Very highly recommended.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Photo Credit Simon Jenner