Under her stage name of Caroline Haffner, artistic director and Gstaad festival founder Caroline Murat brought the 29th annual edition of the Bach Festival in London to a close.

“A Bach journey with excursions to the Preludes of the 19th and 20th centuries” included JS Bach’s first Partita and two Preludes, three of Chopin’s Preludes and one Nocturne, two of Debussy’s Preludes from Book One and Alexander Scriabin’s Prelude et Nocturne for the Left Hand.

In fact, Caroline rearranged the running order, as she explained: “I am a pianist, so I will rearrange things – to make more musical sense.”

The concert was also in a sense rearranged in recognition of the conditions: not only was the National Musicians’ Church in need of serious roof repairs but also the ancient Steinway which first saw light of day in 1895 was in dire straits.

Masterful technique

Alfredo, the Italian piano tuner did a valiant job of critical repair but the bottom D key had gone and he would not risk taking off the board in case the whole piano mechanism collapsed. So Caroline had only 87 of the usually available 88 notes – a bit like asking Eric Clapton to play a 5-string guitar.

Caroline’s masterful technique brought wonderful music – beyond the sound of notes – to her audience’s ears. Scriabin’s Left Hand was visually dramatic too.

Rearrangements

Caroline accepted the concert proposition of the morning to rearrange and play just for an invited audience of three people in the front row: Elizabeth Nash and Peter Popham, former international correspondents for the Independent when it was a printed newspaper and Roger Davies, CEO of RDWM. However, the rest of the 200 people in the church listened closely and applauded enthusiastically.

Caroline next plays in New York on 11.11. and then in Paris before a planned residency in Las Vegas in December 2026.

Copyright image: Jane Mc.Intosh

ps to musicians in their London church expected to play on a 130-year-old Steinway with a D missing that has seen two World Wars and London financial crashes and collapses : take courage.

One of Caroline’s extraordinary skills is to create music out of pianos beyond their time. For this piano, Bach was just about achievable but for Chopin and Debussy, impossible. So young musicians, go stratospheric in your musical ambitions and learning.