Nicolas Namoradze, Piano

Winner of the 2018 Honens International Piano Competition, Nicolas Namoradze, whose performances have been hailed as “sparkling…sensitive and coloristic” by the New York Times, makes his 92Y debut in a program of studies for piano — works designed to test the technique and endurance of the performer.

York Bowen’s fiendish Twelve Studies, testing such pianistic qualities as “forearm rotation” and “lateral freedom of hand and arm,” give way to Alexander Scriabin’s Eight Études, with their restless rhythmic invention and occasional moments of Brahmsian lyricism. Finally, Namoradze performs some of his own Études, a set of relentlessly inventive works which prompted pianist Emanuel Ax to declare Namoradze “extraordinary.”