★★★★½ Aussie piano wunderkind’s chronological, conventional programme is a winner.

Concert Hall, QPAC
October 9, 2016

Australian classical music lovers have followed Queenslander Jayson Gillham’s steady rise to international acclaim with interest. And, due to his following, Gillham’s recital was in the QPAC Concert Hall rather than the more intimate Conservatorium Theatre. A long way from Dalby, where he grew up, Gillham is based in London and is a burgeoning force on the global circuit. In 2014, he won the Montreal International Music Competition.

Understandably, Gillham may have had an anticipatory and contradictory mix of pleasure and pressure before playing for supportive locals with giant-sized expectations. But if he did, nothing was visible on his friendly, unflustered face as he stood on the stage and acknowledged the audience. His stage presence is notably of the low-key, no-need-to-fuss variety. The programme, chronological and conventional, did not boycott major challenge. Baroque gems and Beethoven’s legendary Waldstein Sonata were programmed before interval, and, a tantalising crowd-pleasing selection by Liszt and Chopin, the unsurpassable Romantic champions of keyboard literature, in the second.

Gillham began with an astonishingly fluid and remarkably controlled account of Bach’s Toccata in C Minor, which springs a fantasia-inclined beginning, draws breath in...