Reformation: Mishka Rushdie Momen on mixing Renaissance piano music with later periods at the London Piano Festival

Mishka Rushdie Momen (Photo: Benjamin Ealovega)

Pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen will be making her debut at the 10th anniversary edition of the London Piano Festival, which runs at Kings Place from 9 to 14 October 2025. Her solo recital features music from her recent disc, Reformation. There will be keyboard pieces by Byrd, Gibbons, Bull and Sweelinck alongside her own arrangement of Dowland's In Darkness Let Me Dwell and Thomas Adès' Darknesse Visible. Mishka will also be taking part in the Two Piano Gala, joining other pianists for works by Elena Langer and Brahms.

Unusually, perhaps, Mishka has not won a major competition. But she counts amongst her mentors Richard Goode and András Schiff, who presented her as one of his ‘Building Bridges’ artists (a series of international recitals for three chosen young musicians). She studied at the Purcell School and her later teachers included Imogen Cooper and, at the Guildhall School, Joan Havill. Her disc Reformation was released on Hyperion earlier this year and was her first solo recording on the label. Her exploration of Renaissance repertoire arose as a COVID lockdown project. First discovering Byrd's Fantasia in A minor, she then delved into the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and the collection of John Bull’s keyboard music published in Musica Britannica.

Mishka Rushdie Momen playing Mozart with Angela Hewitt at the Trasimeno Music Festival, July 2023 (Photo: Adriano Scognamillo 

Mishka sees the music of such composers as Byrd and Gibbons as being part of the canon. We have also become used to hearing Renaissance and Baroque music on the piano; both Glenn Gould and Alfred Brendel played music from this period, it is an important part of our heritage. Composers of the period wrote and played music on a variety of instruments (Gibbons wrote pieces for virginals or organ). They would have expected a variety of different sound worlds and she finds that it suits the piano. The sonorous, singing sound of the modern piano works with music that was often based on popular songs. Some of the pieces she is playing were originally for organ, and these work well on the piano. There are running passages in Walsingham, dazzling scales that sound thrilling on the modern piano.

Thomas Adès' 1992 piece, Darknesse Visible, speaks well as a response to the Renaissance music. Adès based the work on John Dowland's In Darkness Let Me Dwell which he splits into musical cells and puts them under the microscope. For Mishka, Adès has a genius for the different sound possibilities of the piano, using the resonances of the different registers. A lot of the piece is quiet, mezzo-piano at the most, but there are explosive moments. She points out that timings of performances (including Ades' own) can vary from seven to eleven minutes, which means the performer has some leeway and is allowed some spontaneity. As part of the recital, Mishka will be talking to Ella Lee. She finds that she is doing this more and more; it is important that if the audience is less familiar with the works, they should learn the background motivations.

Mishka found the pieces in her recital immediately accessible with a directness that people warm to. She calls it honest music.

The piano teamwork gala at the festival is something different. She does so many solo recitals that she really loves being able to work with other pianists. She will be playing Elena Langer's RedMare, which was commissioned for the 2017 London Piano Festival. Mishka describes as an extrovert, rather physical piece. She will also be playing Brahms with Ronan O'Hora, who was her professor at the Guildhall School.

Though Mishka's main concentration is on music from Mozart through to Schumann, her recitals include repertoire stretching back to the Renaissance and reaching forward to the present day. She comments that pianists have the luxury of selecting repertoire from over such a long period of time that they are spoiled for choice. This means that you have a great deal of liberty with selecting works for concert programmes, and she enjoys constructing narratives and putting together works that speak to each other. Last year, she gave recitals pairing Schubert with Renaissance pieces. For Mishka, the intimacy and fluidity of Schubert's writing goes well with the Renaissance works.

She plays a fair bit of contemporary music, and she sees it as important to be in touch with the music of our time. It is also important to consider the way the present engages with the past, and she mentions in this regard not only Thomas Adès but George Benjamin, whose music she has also been playing recently. At the Aldeburgh Festival in June 2025, she played Renaissance music from her Reformation disc alongside music by Thomas Adès, Daniel Kidane and Héloïse Werner, plus with George Benjamin's Shadowlines. 

Her concert repertoire varies between solo recitals, chamber music and concerto appearances. The exact mix varies from season to season, and she admits that she finds it hard to say no. But this means that she does take on a wide variety of projects, which is something she enjoys. 

She likes the intensity and intimacy of solo recitals, but she would be bereft if she were not able to play chamber music, and she feels that the one informs the other. Also, at their best, concerto performances can be large-scale chamber music.

As a child, she learned both the piano and violin, but at a certain point, it was clear that the piano was going to be dominant. The piano seemed to come naturally to her. She loves the self-sufficiency of the instrument. She fell into piano playing by accident as she was simply copying her sister. Her sister was learning at school, and the young Mishka was copying her sister a lot at the time. But having taken up the instrument, she found it compelling and was obsessed.

In addition to her teachers, she counts the great pianists of the past, such as Alfred Cortot and Radu Lupu, as influences, commenting that the internet means we have access to the great recordings of the past.

On 9 October 2025, Mishka opens the Hatfield House Music Festival with a programme that pairs Renaissance English keyboard music with Couperin and Ravel. 

Coming up, she has a recital with cellist Tim Posner in an all-Beethoven programme, which they present at Mill Hill Music Club on 26 October. She will be joining pianist Alistair Beatson for piano four-hands. Later in the season, she will be touring the USA and Japan. This will be her first visit to Japan, and she will be giving a Beethoven recital as well as performing Vaughan Williams' Piano Concerto, a work that is new to her.

Further information from Mishka Rushdie Momen's website.

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