Bravo, Reinis Zariņš, for an outstanding rendition of Messiaen's cosmic Vingt Regards tonight @wigmore_hall. (And by memory, no less: we pianists well know what a herculean effort this entails.)
— Ignat Solzhenitsyn (@isolzh) February 23, 2022
The very next night after my Shostakovich concert at Wigmore Hall, I went back to hear a young Latvian colleague, Reinis Zariņš, perform Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus in its entirety, by memory, a feat I hope someday to accomplish myself. It was a deeply compelling performance, presented with aplomb and a tremendous sense of time and drama, yet without a hint of showiness or show-off-ishness. The whole evening was emblematic of the axiom that music is at its most powerful when performed with utter conviction. Hats off.