The 2023 InClassica International Music Festival comes to an end on Friday 10th March with a Grand Piano Finale featuring celebrated pianist Ashley Wass. Wass opens with Beethoven’s 1820 Piano Sonata No. 30, which is more intimate than the famous Sonata No. 29. The work is characterised by a free approach to the traditional sonata form, especially in its third movement, which features a set of variations that interpret its theme in a variety of individual ways. Next comes Composer-in-Residence Alexey Shor and Mikhail Pletnev’s Piano Sonata No. 1, an inspiring collaboration between one of the most highly regarded composers working today and a living legend of our time, with a stunning combination of elegant tonality and technical brilliance. After an interval, the pianist returns with Bach’s Partita No.1, the first of a group of six keyboard suites which were each published individually before being released together under the title of Clavier-Übung I in 1731. The partita is based on the traditional Baroque dance suite, and has a more unorthodox structure than that of the more popular sonata. Wass concludes with Franck’s Prélude, Choral and Fugue, an 1884 work in three movements that exhibits an unorthodox degree of interconnectedness and thematic bridging between its separate segments, making the piece an excellent example of Franck’s distinctive use of cyclic form.