Review by Simon Jenner, February 4 2026
★ ★ ★ ★ (★)
Elise Jasmine Hills startled by arriving for a piano recital when originally flagged as a guitarist. Happily the programme reflected that and the repertoire would have sat oddly. Handel, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt. Core composers but not wholly predictable choices.
Hills was entirely self-taught from 6-17 and has gone on to study at “one of the most esteemed music schools in London”: where she was taught by Mikhail Kazakevivch. She has though garnered a list of international, national and regional prizes; and was a finalist with her singing partner Johannes Georges in the Elizabeth Schumann Lieder Competition – as prestigious as Cardiff’s. She now studies under Grigory Gruzman in Frankfurt. Hills recently performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 12 in A K414.
Indeed Hills has been told by her professors she will excel as a Mozart interpretation. Though Hills hasn’t chosen Mozart today. She started with Handel’s Chaconne in G major HWV435. It’s a virtuoso piece without the tragic importance of some chaconnes, involving fiendish runs on the piano transposed from the harpsichord. It’s exhilarating and I hope Hills investigates this baroque repertoire more. She has something fresh to say in it.
The Schubert Moments Musicaux D780 (the old Op 94) comprise six pieces – the last dwarfing the rest and comprising a recital in themselves. Hills plays the first three. The first Is a pre-echo of the last and prefigures those moments of acceptance in the last three sonatas. A C major Moderato here almost at an Adagio tempo its pricks of sunshine irradiate the melancholy behind it. The second an Andantino in A flat hardly shifts the tempo (often 1, 3 and 4 are performed, or 1, 3 and 6 in concerts); it forms an almost seamless transition.
The popular third though, an Allegro moderato in F minor ending in the major arrives as a kind of quick-march with a second subject more contemplative, and again smiles through its tears. On her performance of these three, Hills is a radiant Schubertian
Chopin’s Mazurkas are his great experimental ground, where his most modern-sounding work resides. Both looking forward to even bolder folk music but also taking chromatic moments if expression in these peasant dances (so-called) Chopin produced nearly 60.
The Op 24 are from his early maturity coming after his groundbreaking Op 17 set. The first Lento in G minor is a strong opening piece full of inflections and melancholy bravura. Hills delights in the second, an Allegro non troppo in C major, a perky light-tempered rondo of a piece that sounds much later than it is. It enjoys a wistful coda.
The third, an unusually-marked Moderato con anima in A♭ major is sunnier still, slower in tempo but still with that kick if mazurka rhythm about it. The fourth a Moderato in B♭ minor is boldest if all. echoing the fourth in the Op 17 set in A flat which sounds as if written by Poulenc in a 1920s cafe. It’s notable that the then-unusual B♭ minor became the key of Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 a little later.
A cascade of extraordinary chromatic notes cascades out – not unlike the Ballade No 1 in G minor Op 23 finale which just preceded this set. Though it recovers poise as a mazurka, there’s this statement and refrain like the pull of something strange against the more harmonically certain mazurka rhythm. It ends though in a remote tenebrous sunlight, infinitely slower, heavier with the weight of where it’s been. Hills draws this out to a rapt pause and fall. This might be a hint of the matured Hills and could be astonishing.
The Liszt Tarantella from the Supplement to Annees de Pelerinage S 162 is a firecracker piece and unlike anything else in the programme. Primarily in a minor it shifts significantly from key harmonically, and alternates fiery Lisztian passages with his trademark intense, even sentimental lyricism: not much of the latter here though. Gone are the half shades Hills revels in. Here she thrills to something else: bravura, aplomb, devilry and speed. Hills’ velocity is exhilarating. She can though show in contrasting lyrical sections why she chose this piece. Clearly Hills enjoys a ding-like core in her repertoire choices, however brief.
Hills also observed the terraced sound Liszt deploys, so his bravura like some tectonic plate seethes under and erupts through more contemplative material. The glittering top notes and clangorous octaves here chime as Hills also brings out the multi-levelled dynamics. A flurry of top right hand notes interiors a whole pool of slow measures. The tarantella rhythm – literally dancing out the poison bite if the Tarantula – is taken in a phantasmagorical gleam of the future: Liszt heralded much of it. It ends in a triumphant romp of octaves.
Hills is already in total control of many of these pieces, including the Liszt. We’re seeing what looks to be a major pianistic talent in the ascendant. Like the Liszt, a triumph.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
