Review by Simon Jenner, 9th July 2025
St Nicholas continues to showcase quite extraordinary new talent. In this case new-ish but still understood despite the competition wins and string if recordings Ukraine-born Ivan Hovorun came on a scholarship to the Royal Northern College and graduated MA in 2011.
Hovorun’s an exciting player – he has to be with this programmed. But individual too whilst playing the music straight.
Hovorun is also a communicator. First up is the piece he takes time out to explain between movement.
Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit from 1908 was designed to out-Islamay Bakakirev’s legendary piece, the most difficult in the repertoire since its composition in 1869. Gaspard though is a kind of programme piano sonata based on the early proto-symbolist prose-poems of Aloysius Bertram (1807-41) from the 1830s. Bertram’s a shadowy figure but he actually invented the prose-poem.
‘Ondine’ is a quirk of malevolence skinning over the waves and enticing men to their death. In Allegro form it’s also breaking new ground. Hovorun is a precise and rapturous colourist here
‘Le Gibet’ a slow nightmarish vision of a handed man swaying in the wild is chimed through with a mournful parody of a bell, almost a funeral toll informs the slow changes in decay, nightmarish and hallucinatory.
‘Scarbo’ the sprite or hobgoblin apparatus and vanished scorching windows and frightening the world. Here Rachel reversal to his favourite Spanish-inflected rhythms and melodies as the Scherzo helters its way through the development. It builds to two climaxes held in check by thrilling menacing ostinato and accelerandos that slow down then build up a shattering climax.
Hovorun is absolutely master of this music but interpretively is happily mastered or inside this work. His glittering runs his immersive glissandi that sjim almost from inside the keyboard and his volcanic climaxes are outstanding.
Ravel’s teacher Gabriel Faure is up next though in an arrangement from his Suite Pélleas et Mélisande Op 78 from 1893. It’s a lyrical pool if calm after the previous storms. Hovorun is a passionate and unabashed Faurean and it would be particularly satisfying to see him tackle Faure’s marvellous Nocturnes, Barcarolles and Impromptus.
Camille Saint-Saens was Faure’s teacher but also admired by Ravel. Hovorun alluded earlier to a meeting between Horowitz and a man who critiqued him affably. It was Ravel. Horowitz arranged this orchestral piece from 1875 the famous Dance Macabre Op 49. In its orchestral guide it caused such a scandal Saint-Saens’ mother fainted. It’s also been arranged recently for organ!
Hovorun delights in what Horowitz transforms from the full orchestral texture. Above all the two of them prove its tricky percussive nature as the bones dance and gyrate in the churchyard. The fugal textures emerge shining like a mineral revealed, and the rare earth of Saint-Saens’ colouristic imaginings get flayed open here. Yet all fines down to a frisson of banishment as the skeletons are forced back into their coffins, and daylight heralds the return of light against the diablerie.
It’s an exceptionally musical as well as virtuosic climax to a recital alerting is to another world-class pianist.
