Jonathan Powell Memorial Concerts - 3 May 2026, Oxford
Composer Michael Finnissy played Jonathan Powell's piano work Reminiscenza (1997)
The great musician, pianist and composer, Jonathan Powell, died in late 2025. Further to this terrible loss, Martyn Harry organised two memorial concerts in swift succession on the afternoon of Sunday 3 May, at the Jacqueline DuPre music building in Oxford where, according to Martyn, Jonathan regularly performed and made recordings, in recent years. Martyn Harry and pianist Nicolas Hodges are working to produce an archive of Jonathan Powell's compositions, performances and recordings.
The afternoon proved to be a mesmerising and ultimately uplifting event. One of the most fascinating aspects was insight into diverse and rich influences upon Jonathan Powell's musicianship and compositional development. An array of extraordinary performers and composers paid tribute through generous, sensitive and passionate readings of sparkling and rarely heard masterpieces.
Leonid Sabaneyev's Piano Sonata, op 15, 'in memory of A. Scriabin' (1915), opened in a vibrant performance by Abel Sánchez-Aguilera, unleashing lush tendrils of searching counterpoint. Julian Jacobson performed Evocacion, Book 1 no. 1 from Iberia (1905-9) by Isaac Albéniz, with beautiful sensitivity and tender voicing. Two movements from Hans Winterberg's Piano Sonata no. 4 (1948) in a performance by Andreas Skouras yielded breathtaking sworls of sound and an extraordinary conception. Ian Pace performed three movements from Michael Finnissy's devastating portrait of England's turbulence, complexity and beauty, English Country Tunes (1977), with apparently effortless expressive power and a wonderful range of colours. In the video interview that was played between the concerts Jonathan Powell acknowledged the formative influence of Finnissy's work and mentioned that he and Scottish pianist James Clapperton were among the few pianists to take it on in the late 1980s and early 1990s - at the time the conversation was about complexity but the power of this music to simply cut through and communicate seems its true and vital legacy.
In the second concert Boris Lyatoshinsky's Piano Trio no. 1 op 7 (1925), brilliantly performed by Anna de Bruin, Joseph Spooner and Julian Chan, provided distinctive and glorious high romantic intensities, and Szymanowski's Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess sung expressively by Betty Makharinsky with Julian Jacobson (piano) were poignant and touching. And Abel Sánchez-Aguilera returned to play Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji's Gulistan - Nocture for Piano (1940) - an epic journey through vast and sometimes chaotic landscapes, occasionally shot through with moments of calm lucidity - the final page a single tolling bell of melancholy.
A number of works either written for, or in tribute to, Jonathan Powell, were performed. Julian Chan's marvellous performances of Powell's own works were enlightening, including Powell's Sonata number 7 which disclosed a masterly sense of discourse and flow. Gregory Rose's portrait of Jonathan 'Vale, mi amice' was a passionate, searching, virtuoso surge of energy. Martyn Harry's work for piano quintet SWF Baden-Baden (Powell) (2003) featured the tonal arabesques beloved by Powell of early 20th century European and Russian piano literature, and successions of haunting and enigmatic string chords and cross-rhythms. Ian Pace's own Tren: Zostal nam odebrany zbyt wczesnie referenced Jonathan Powell's love for Poland in a brief but intriguing and affecting tribute. Morgan Hayes played his own compositional set, Elemental, written in 2013-18 for Jonathan Powell - finely wrought and elegant compositions which Powell himself much admired, and a further composition of lyricism and refreshing lightness 'Through the Looking Glass' (2011) by Geoff Hannan. Michael Finnissy played Jonathan Powell's Reminiscenza (1997) in music and performance that were matched in their beauty and tenderness, and the nearest thing to a Feldman-like, yet individual, sense of meditation and repose that I can recall in Jonathan's work.
The event was searching, questionning and an undoubtedly acute and communal recognition of loss, yet ultimately an uplifting portrait of an extraordinary, critical, yet giving musician and composer.