International Piano #17

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NO.17 JAN/FEB 2013 £5.50 � US$10.99 � CAN$11.99www.international-piano.com

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SHEETMUSIC FROM 7 INTERVAL STUDIESNO 4: FOURTHSBY JOHN RAMSDEN WILLIAMSON

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ContentsInternatIonal PIano No 17 jaNuary/february 2013

30

Subscribe to International Piano See page 86 for our special offer

5 lettersYour thoughts and comments

6 newsThe latest news and events from the piano world

10 letter from UsFrom Russia, with talent

13 CommentFifty shades of pianism

15 one to watCh Jean Muller

17 DIary of an aCComPanIstIn which Michael Round meets

a star, and a Planet

32 rePertoIreClélia Iruzun discovers Mompou

35 take fIveThe music of John Lewis

40 masterClassThings that go bump in the night

43 helPIng hanDs Building staccato technique

45 sheet mUsICFrom 7 Interval studies: No 4 – ‘Fourths’By John Ramsden Williamson

58 ComPetItIon rePortThe Honens International Piano Competition

61 PIano makersThe domestic piano market

74 revIewsThe latest CDs, books, DVDs and sheet music, plus international

concerts

88 mUsIC of my lIfeAlice Sara Ott

18 Cover storySteven Osborne and his thirst for life

23 Wagner bicentenaryThe history of operatic piano transcriptions

26 In retrospectAlexander Brailowsky (1896-1976): a reassessment

30 Pierre BoulezThe modern master on his pianistic training

36 Poulenc’s legacyMarking 50 years after the French composer’s death

53 SymposiumThe modern-day ‘woman pianist’

64 ProfileFrédéric Meinders and the art of arrangement

69 Summer schoolsTop residential courses to attend in 2013

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January/February 2013 International Piano 3

On a recent wintry night in London, two pianists gave seminal recitals. Twenty-two-year-old Behzod Abduraimov made his hotly anticipated Southbank debut, while across town, Evgeny Kissin showed a packed

Barbican crowd that his will always be a truly special talent. Kissin, the former wunderkind, gave a sublime account of Beethoven’s Sonata in C minor, Op 111 and his Hungarian Rhapsody No 12 channelled Liszt in a way this writer has never seen done before. Abduraimov’s playing was reportedly a magnifi cent concoction of fi re and poetry. We know – painfully so – that the arts world is in fl ux, but this double booking of stupendous artists on one night is not untypical in the capital – nor, indeed, in many international cities. The best way we can show how greatly we value the arts is to vote with our feet – and both these events were sell-out a� airs. But what about the pianists who aren’t (yet) household names? These are the ones who need our support if the next generation is to grow. So, make it your New Year’s resolution to go to an unknown artist’s recital; you might be surprised – and, hopefully, delighted.

As we sing Auld Lang Syne, we usher in the next batch of musical anniversaries. In 2013, Richard Wagner’s bicentenary looms large, and in this issue, not wishing to be le� out of the operatic celebrations, IP dons a party hat and highlights the plethora of piano transcriptions within his oeuvre (pp23-25). We also mark 50 years since the death of Francis Poulenc with a timely reassessment of the French composer’s piano legacy (pp36-39).

May I take this opportunity to wish all our readers, contributors and advertisers a prosperous 2013.

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Editor Claire Jackson

Sub Editor Femke Colborne

Designer Beck Ward Murphy

CONTRIBUTORSColin Anderson, Michael Church, Colin Clarke, Jessica Duchen, Leandro Ferraccioli, David Hackston, Benjamin Ivry, John Joswick, Graham Lock, Murray McLachlan, Risto-Matti Marin, Jeremy Nicholas, Guy Rickards, Michael Round, Jeremy Siepmann, Harriet Smith, Stephen Wigler

Head of Design & ProductionBeck Ward Murphy

Production Designer Joanne Roberts

Head of Advertising Myles Lester

Advertising Sales Louise [email protected]

Marketing Executive Frances Innes-Hopkins

Managing Editor Keith Clarke

Managing Director Mark Owens

Publisher Derek B Smith

NUMBER 17

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IP is now available for your iPad, iPhone and online from pocketmags.com and the iTunes app store. Buy the app for only £1.99 and receive your fi rst issue FREE!

November/December 2012 International Piano 3

WelcomeThe UK’s cultural landscape has shi ed uneasily during the recession, so it

was with pleasure we observed its recent international success. Millions watched and participated in London 2012, as sports and arts collided in all manner of weird and wonderful ways. From Shakespeare to shot put to Stockhausen, the country was awash with courageous artistic endeavour. Nearly 20 million people attended concerts, exhibitions and events across the country as part of the London 2012 Festival, curated alongside the Olympics, and around 300,000 tickets were sold for this year’s Proms.

As leaves turn rainbow colours and fall, a new season is upon us. While others may be mourning the loss of sport from their screens, piano fans, rejoice: the BBC is dedicating six weeks of programming to the instrument. Running until 6 November, the collection of television and radio shows will cover a range of pianistic subjects, from the ‘A to Z of the piano’ on Radio 3, to footage from the Leeds International Piano Competition (see our report on pp31, 33, and sheet music from Dame Fanny Waterman’s new book, Piano Treasury, on pp47-52) with contributions from Peter Donohoe, Ashley Wass and the Labèque Sisters, as well as a special documentary by Alan Yentob to mark Lang Lang’s 30th birthday.

While piano music receives welcome attention in the mainstream media, we dedicate our pages to some neglected topics. Composers, arrangers and conductors have been orchestrating piano music for generations; IP examines the good, the bad and the ugly over on p23. Elsewhere, we delve into the archives for part one of our series on historical women pianists (pp36-39) and explore the heady world of piano competitions on p27.

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CONTRIBUTORSZsolt Bognár, Michael Church, Colin Clarke, Jessica Duchen, Benjamin Ivry, Joe Laredo, Graham Lock, Murray McLachlan, Malcolm Miller, Jeremy Nicholas, Geoffrey Norris, Michael Round, Jeremy Siepmann, Michael Stembridge-Montavont, Stephen Wigler









NUMBER 16International Piano is published in January, March, May, July, September and November









Claire Jackson /Editor


03_IP1112 signed off by Claire.indd 3 03/10/2012 11:43:56


WelcomeThe UK’s cultural landscape has shi ed uneasily during the recession, so it

was with pleasure we observed its recent international success. Millions watched and participated in London 2012, as sports and arts collided in all manner of weird and wonderful ways. From Shakespeare to shot put to Stockhausen, the country was awash with courageous artistic endeavour. Nearly 20 million people attended concerts, exhibitions and events across the country as part of the London 2012 Festival, curated alongside the Olympics, and around 300,000 tickets were sold for this year’s Proms.

As leaves turn rainbow colours and fall, a new season is upon us. While others may be mourning the loss of sport from their screens, piano fans, rejoice: the BBC is dedicating six weeks of programming to the instrument. Running until 6 November, the collection of television and radio shows will cover a range of pianistic subjects, from the ‘A to Z of the piano’ on Radio 3, to footage from the Leeds International Piano Competition (see our report on pp31, 33, and sheet music from Dame Fanny Waterman’s new book, Piano Treasury, on pp47-52) with contributions from Peter Donohoe, Ashley Wass and the Labèque Sisters, as well as a special documentary by Alan Yentob to mark Lang Lang’s 30th birthday.

While piano music receives welcome attention in the mainstream media, we dedicate our pages to some neglected topics. Composers, arrangers and conductors have been orchestrating piano music for generations; IP examines the good, the bad and the ugly over on p23. Elsewhere, we delve into the archives for part one of our series on historical women pianists (pp36-39) and explore the heady world of piano competitions on p27.

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CONTRIBUTORSZsolt Bognár, Michael Church, Colin Clarke, Jessica Duchen, Benjamin Ivry, Joe Laredo, Graham Lock, Murray McLachlan, Malcolm Miller, Jeremy Nicholas, Geoffrey Norris, Michael Round, Jeremy Siepmann, Michael Stembridge-Montavont, Stephen Wigler









NUMBER 16International Piano is published in January, March, May, July, September and November









Claire Jackson /Editor


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IMPORTANT CORRECTION Dear IP,It was shocking for me to read the article The Act of Touch by Michael Stembridge-Montavont in the last issue of International Piano [Nov/Dec, issue 16], in which six extended passages were li� ed word for word from my book, French Pianism, without any citation. I refer to portions of my interviews with Magda Tagliaferro, Vlado Perlemuter, Yvonne Lefébure and Pierre Barbizet. These interviews were not only done by me, but also translated by me. Mr Stembridge-Montavont used this material as though he had done all the work himself.

The passages that Mr Stembridge-Montavont plagiarised are from pages 103, 104, 106, 220 and 221 in the latest version of the book, published by Amadeus Press in 1999, and pages 81, 82, 84, 168 and 169 in the fi rst edition (published by Pro/Am and Kahn & Averill in 1992).

Furthermore, in his last two paragraphs, Mr Stembridge-Montavont li� s two sentences from page 63 of the book.Charles Timbrell

The article did indeed li� sections from Charles Timbrell’s book, and the way the quotations were presented would have led most readers to assume that the interviews had been undertaken by Mr Stembridge-Montavont. This is unacceptable and we apologise profusely. The article has since been removed from the digital versions of the magazine. Mr Stembridge-Montavont would like to point out that the published article was an excerpt from a larger piece, due to be published online, which included a bibliography.

FEEDBACK: ISSUE 16 Dear IP,Joe Laredo [Candid Camera, Nov/Dec, issue 16] worries about ladies being promoted on the basis of their looks rather than their pianism. Oh dear – sex

rears its ugly head. But, like it or not, performers are in the entertainment business, and glamour is an inescapable part of it.

Liszt exploited it, with salons full of swooning admirers. Paderewski built a career on a huge female following. Arthur Rubinstein, by his own as

well as others’ accounts, spent as much time playing roving Lothario as he did playing world-class pianist. Jean-Yves Thibaudet has been photographed in a sweetheart pose with Renée Fleming for a CD cover. Raymond Lewenthal swirled his black cape as well as his fi ngers.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s LP sleeves bore fabulous portraits by Fayer. Christian Steiner photographed Beverly Sills in a very slinky black dress for her Vienna album. Elvis Presley wore his jeans distinctly on the tight side and Sir Tom Jones gets knickers thrown at him.

Eileen Joyce changed her frocks from time to time. Hélène Grimaud is very beautiful. Yuja Wang has a great pair of legs. Lang Lang dresses the part and is seen in the right places. Stephen Hough wears funny hats and Valery Gergiev has the best-trimmed stubble in music history. Barbara Strozzi boosted her fame by publishing her works in single-composer volumes. That’s show business.

Finally, I was most interested in Michael Round’s piece on orchestrations of piano music. Some of them were familiar, but the arrangements of Ravel’s own piano pieces by other hands are all new to me. The whole concept of arrangement is most fascinating, and I’m a great fan of piano arrangements from orchestral originals, as well as the other way round, as discussed.Douglass MacDonald

WELL ORCHESTRATEDDear IP,Michael Round’s absorbing round-up of orchestrated piano music could not hope to be complete, but Stokowski’s myriad arrangements surely deserved more attention, ranging from Bach, Beethoven and Chopin to Scriabin, Debussy, Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky.

Of the orchestral arrangements of Debussy, André Caplet’s Children’s Corner Suite (Cala CACD1024) merits a special mention. Incidentally, Weingartner’s 1930 recording of his ‘Hammerklavier’ orchestration is readily available (except in the US) on Naxos 8.110913. Jeremy Nicholas

THE MEANING OF FORTEDear IP,I enjoyed reading Nikolai Demidenko’s perceptive remarks about Rachmaninov’s pedaling [Symposium, July/August, issue 14].

Demidenko’s claim that ‘Rachmaninov could create a huge volume of sound by colouring his tone with an extraordinary darkness and depth, giving the impression of huge power even when the decibel level was still piano’ led me to ponder what the ‘forte’ dynamic actually means.

According to my musical dictionary, forte means loud.

Bach didn’t write any fortes, leaving it to the performer’s discretion; Mozart wrote a single forte in his piano compositions; Beethoven two, Liszt three, Villa-Lobos four, Albeniz fi ve and Tchaikovsky nine. As pianos have become louder and brighter, and actions ever faster, I feel pianists have followed down the same evolutionary path.

My question is this: is it possible to teach pupils to achieve a great volume of sound through sonority and colouring, rather than decibels, or is this just the preserve of geniuses such as Rachmaninov or Ogdon?Robert Warwick

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LettersKEYBOARD POETRY

Dear IP,I recently graduated from Carleton College in Northfi eld, Minnesota, where I had the good fortune to study piano with Ken Huber. When I expressed my frustration at my inability to get the right tone out of the instrument, Ken suggested that maybe pianists can’t control the tone quality of the instrument at all. If you play a single note in isolation, you can play it louder or so� er, but you cannot make the sound richer or more ringing, more delicate or more ethereal. This argument surprised me because I had always been taught that tone quality was infl uenced by the way in which I moved my arms and fi ngers when I played. If variations in tone quality are an illusion, then what does it mean to interpret a piece on the piano? And if the only thing that matters is the velocity of the hammer as it strikes the strings, doesn’t that reduce piano-playing to a mere technical exercise: hitting the right keys with the right velocity at the right time? I wrote the poem, below, in response to these questions.

So, piano, do you do tone quality?Yes, you: impersonable box of strings,A dozen moving parts for every key.To mechanised, well-regulated thingsIn thrall were your devisers; still I thoughtYou felt the way the hand attacked each note,And somewhere in that structure fi nely wrought,By subtle touch through subtle sound emote.There’s only pitch, velocity, sustain,And timing; from these meagre threads we weaveA shared illusion of shared life – we trainOur ears to hear you laugh, and love, and grieve.But if imagined, is it thus less realTo hear in you the things we wish to feel?Ben Hellerstein

Write to International Piano, Rhinegold House, 20 Rugby Street, London, WC1N 3QZ, email [email protected] or tweet @IP_mag. Star letters will receive a free CD

GOODE CORRECTION Dear IP,I read and enjoyed the July/August edition, but was quite puzzled by the following comment in Stephen Wigler’s review of the pianist Richard Goode (Seeing is believing, Letter from US, issue 14). Embedded in the discussion of Goode’s performance of the Mozart Sonata and Fantasy in C minor, Wigler writes the following sentence: ‘The Fantasy died away with an ominous whisper, not only ushering in the sonata but also making it seem inevitable’. Since the Fantasy most defi nitely does not end with a ‘whisper’ in every edition of Mozart Sonatas extant, but in a ‘f’ scale starting from an octave below middle C to two octaves above, thereby enforcing the previous ‘ending’ in ‘p’ thirds leading to the fi rst C, some concerns arise. I am extremely curious about this explanation. Professor Robert Piron

I want to express gratitude to Professor Robert Piron for correcting what I think is my worst error in more than 35 years of music journalism. I can only ask: What was I thinking? Like everyone else familiar with Mozart’s C Minor Fantasy (K 457), I know it ends with one of the composer’s cataclysmic outbursts – powerful minor-key scales, made all the more dramatic by Mozart’s having deliberately misled us to suspect that the piece will end so� ly. I can only relate the events in the process that led to my mistake. Richard Goode’s performance of the Fantasy and C Minor Sonata (K 475) made the case more persuasively than any I’ve ever heard that these pieces can (and deserve) to be heard as a single work. Mr Goode’s launch into the Sonata, with the Fantasy’s conclusion still ringing in my ears, underlined their thematic connections and made them seem as closely related as an operatic recitative and subsequent aria. In writing and editing my review, ‘Mr Goode began the Sonata

, Rhinegold House, 20 Rugby Street,

before the echo of the Fantasy’s conclusion had completely died away’ became – no doubt because of my infatuation with my own writing – ‘died away with an ominous whisper’.

Finally, I want to assure International Piano’s readers that I was indeed at Mr Goode’s concert and heard all of it. In fact, I went backstage a� erwards and talked to Mr Goode for about 30 minutes and have spoken to him since.Stephen Wigler

INSPIRED CHOICE

Dear IP,I went to see Katya Apekisheva at Preston University; it was more packed than usual and she played Schubert’s Sonata in B D575. This was the best classical pianist I have ever heard. The playing was so majestic I wanted to go home and have a go at the pieces, I realised this is how you play Schubert. I already had the pieces at home but never played them until I heard this girl, now I practice them both. I was very glad you talked about her playing in the last magazine (issue 15, Sept/Oct 12).Gerald BurkeMany thanks, Gerald, I am delighted to hear that you enjoyed the article and were inspired by Katya Apekisheva’s musicianship. Ed

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SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATIONTHE MUSIC OF CONLON NANCARROW

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UK The first in a series of three-day piano conferences will take place in London in February. The event will be hosted by the London International Piano Symposium (LIPS), founded by Cristine MacKie, and held in association with Steinway & Sons. IP is the symposium’s media partner.

The LIPS conferences will welcome everyone interested in the performance of piano music: artists, scientists, academics, teachers and fans. There will be opportunities to hear papers, lecture recitals and debates on the art and science of piano performance by distinguished researchers and practitioners.

During the first conference, which takes place from 8 to 10 February at London’s Royal College of Music, leading researchers and practitioners will examine interdisciplinary, evidence-based directives to enhance modern piano performance practice. They will assess research into inspirational performers and teachers, and present scientific models of performance reflecting recent developments in performance science, including neuroscience, psychology and physiology. www.londoninternationalpianosymposium.co.uk

conference launch: london InternatIonal PIano symPosIum

06 International Piano January/February 2013

US The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona, has acquired three rare 18th-century pianos including an 1826 Tischner Grand Fortepiano, one of only three known to exist and believed to have belonged to Tsar Nicholas I.

The instruments have been loaned by Vladimir Pleshakov and his wife Elena Winther. The pair have also provided a 1788 Longman & Broderip and a 1799 John Broadwood.

Pleshakov and his wife have made recordings individually and together for Orion, Dante, Naxos, Marquis, L’Empreinte Digitale, De Plein Vent, Sonpact and Vita. Their discography includes some 85 works recorded for the first time, including compositions by Rachmaninov, Balakirev, Medtner and Shostakovich. The couple gave a performance at the MIM Music Theater to celebrate the loan of the pianos.

tsar PIano loaned to musIcal Instrument museum In arIzona

UK/FRANCE English pianist Julia Cload, recognised as a leading interpreter of Bach and Haydn, has died after a long illness. Those who knew her will remember her great musicality and her delightfully witty humorous side, which often came out in her playing.

Cload was born into a musical family. Her father John, a viola player, was a founder member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) and her mother was a violinist and later a teacher.

As a student at the Royal College of Music in London, Cload won the LPO Concerto Competition. She made her debut with the orchestra playing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto under Sir Adrian Boult. She went on to win a three-year scholarship to the Liszt Academy in Budapest, studying under Lajos Hernádi, a student of Bartók and Schnabel. She continued her studies with Maria Curcio and Hans Keller, soon making her much acclaimed Wigmore Hall debut, which led to her playing with most of the major British orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic and the Hallé.

Based in France, Cload became a regular recitalist at London’s major concert halls and recorded regularly for the BBC as well being invited to play all over the world. One of the highlights of her career was playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the 2001 Besançon Festival. TONY BARLOW

JulIa cload 1946-2012

turkey Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say, 42, has been charged with insulting Islamic religious values in comments he made on Twitter. The pianist denies the charges and faces trial on 18 October.

The case has captured the attention of pianists worldwide, including fellow Turk AyseDeniz Gokcin, who played Say’s piece Alla Turca Jazz on 50 different street pianos in London during July to show her support for the artist.

The pianos were presented by the City of London Festival as part of the ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ project created by British artist Luke Jerram, which has been touring internationally since 2008.

Gokcin says that the project ‘represents my wishes for a more democratic and tolerant Turkey in which artists, writers and intellectuals can think and speak freely.

‘Music represents freedom,’ she continues. ‘It is everywhere just like the air we breathe, and as long as the universe exists, it cannot be destroyed, nor can its freedom be taken away... Because the power of the notes is stronger than anything you can ever imagine. I wish artists, authors and thinkers in Turkey, my home country, could also be as free.’ Gokcin’s video can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG4wPVysgxM&.

Say, who has frequently criticised Turkey’s pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party government over its cultural and social policies, publicly defines himself as an atheist – a controversial admission in the country, which is overwhelmingly Muslim.

Say could face a maximum term of one and a half years in prison if he is convicted.

Fazil Say faces trial over Tweets

GerMANy/ItALy In a somewhat unlikely pairing, electronics manufacturer Loewe has teamed up with Italian piano makers Fazioli to create a swanky new flat-screen TV. The technology specialists said that ‘in Fazioli, Loewe has found a partner who also strives for perfection’, citing the piano makers’ select production and use of premium materials as reasons for the

unusual collaboration. The Loewe Reference ID is said to

boast cutting-edge technology with a refined design featuring a hand-polished wood finish, comparable to that of Fazioli’s instruments.

The first order has come from Prince Alexander of Schaumburg-Lippe, who has requested a Reference ID inscribed with his family coat of arms.

Piano makers think outside the box

6 International Piano November/December 2012

news events

Petrushka and puppets for Wimbledon music festival uk Russian pianist Mikhail Rudy will present a quirky new production of Stravinsky’s Petrushka in November, based on his own transcription and combined with puppetry (pictured). The world premiere is hosted by London’s International Wimbledon Music Festival and the Little Angel Theatre. The annual festival, now in its fourth year, takes place from 10 to 25 November, and also features Christine Brewer, who will perform

Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with pianist Roger Vignoles, and Mark Padmore, who will give two song cycles with pianist Simon Lepper.

Elsewhere, actress Patricia Routledge and pianist Piers Lane tell the story of the National Gallery Concerts during the Second World War that were inspired by Dame Myra Hess, and novelist, journalist and IP contributor Jessica Duchen presents her play, A Walk Through the End of Time.

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In BriefRNCM tuRNs 40To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) is welcoming back some of its most distinguished alumni. Over the past few months, the School of Keyboard Studies has been visited by current cover artist Steven Osborne, Christian Blackshaw, Vovka Ashkenazy and Jin Ju. Stephen Hough was scheduled to work with students on 10 December, and Peter Donohoe, Mark Anderson, Martin Roscoe and Ian Fountain will all participate in recitals, masterclasses and departmental activities in 2013.

Play Me, I’M youRsCambridge University’s Faculty of Music was disappointed to discover that a piano intended for members of the public to play had been dragged across a park and abandoned after the wheels fell off. The instrument was one of 15 that had been decorated by local artists and placed around the city for the university’s Festival of Ideas. The project, called ’Play Me, I’m Yours’, was the concept of the British artist Luke Jerram.

aPPassIoNato exhIbItedStephen Hough has exhibited his ‘Appassionato’ series of paintings at London’s Broadbent Gallery. Hough said he found painting ‘a great release from the tension of practising’. ‘On the keyboard, I love thinking about colour and transparency of texture: how you can hear different lines through the use of the pedal and the tone, and how those different lines each have an independent rubato, an independent life,’ he said. ’It’s similar with paintings: I’m interested in abstract art where you see many different layers, rather than just blocks of colour.’ Examples of Hough’s visual artwork appear on his website www.stephenhough.com.

Turkish pianist Idil Biret’s latest recording, a disc of all five works for piano and orchestra by Hindemith, marks an impressive milestone: the two-CD set, to be released on her own IBA label next year to mark the 50th anniversary of Hindemith’s death, will be her 100th recording.

The five works include his Piano Music with Orchestra Op 29, for left hand alone. This work was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, rejected by him, subsequently hidden in his study and not discovered again until after his widow’s death in 2002.

Of her 99 other recordings, among those she feels closest to are her discs of Schubert songs transcribed by Liszt and the second version of her two recordings of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, again in Liszt’s piano

transcription. She said: ‘Liszt’s Beethoven Symphony transcriptions, which I recorded for EMI in 1985/86, the Chopin Mazurkas, Liszt’s Grandes Etudes, Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata (first version), the three Boulez Sonatas and the Ligeti Etudes are some of my personal favourites among the many professional recordings I have made since 1959.’

Biret recently finished recording two solo piano works by the Turkish composer Ertugrul Oguz Firat. After the Hindemith, she is planning discs of the two books of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Scriabin’s Sonatas and other works, as well as some of Mozart’s piano concertos. A 10-CD box set of all her recordings of 20th-century composers is to be released in 2013.

IdIl BIret records her 100th dIsc

FRANCE Piano maker Pleyel has teamed up with manufacturer Peugeot to create an instrument that aligns cover and keyboard to allow audiences to see the artist perform from any viewing angle.

Working with Pleyel’s engineers, Peugeot Design Lab replaced the traditional piano lid prop with a self-supporting lid mechanism

that can be raised with one hand – an idea borrowed directly from a car’s tailgate. The piano body and soundboard are made of wood, and the lid and leg have been made of carbon fibre.

The piano was launched in Paris over the summer following 18 months of design and development.

pleyel and peugeot unveIl new pIano

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turkey Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say, 42, has been charged with insulting Islamic religious values in comments he made on Twitter. The pianist denies the charges and faces trial on 18 October.

The case has captured the attention of pianists worldwide, including fellow Turk AyseDeniz Gokcin, who played Say’s piece Alla Turca Jazz on 50 different street pianos in London during July to show her support for the artist.

The pianos were presented by the City of London Festival as part of the ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ project created by British artist Luke Jerram, which has been touring internationally since 2008.

Gokcin says that the project ‘represents my wishes for a more democratic and tolerant Turkey in which artists, writers and intellectuals can think and speak freely.

‘Music represents freedom,’ she continues. ‘It is everywhere just like the air we breathe, and as long as the universe exists, it cannot be destroyed, nor can its freedom be taken away... Because the power of the notes is stronger than anything you can ever imagine. I wish artists, authors and thinkers in Turkey, my home country, could also be as free.’ Gokcin’s video can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG4wPVysgxM&.

Say, who has frequently criticised Turkey’s pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party government over its cultural and social policies, publicly defines himself as an atheist – a controversial admission in the country, which is overwhelmingly Muslim.

Say could face a maximum term of one and a half years in prison if he is convicted.

Fazil Say faces trial over Tweets

GerMANy/ItALy In a somewhat unlikely pairing, electronics manufacturer Loewe has teamed up with Italian piano makers Fazioli to create a swanky new flat-screen TV. The technology specialists said that ‘in Fazioli, Loewe has found a partner who also strives for perfection’, citing the piano makers’ select production and use of premium materials as reasons for the

unusual collaboration. The Loewe Reference ID is said to

boast cutting-edge technology with a refined design featuring a hand-polished wood finish, comparable to that of Fazioli’s instruments.

The first order has come from Prince Alexander of Schaumburg-Lippe, who has requested a Reference ID inscribed with his family coat of arms.

Piano makers think outside the box


news events

Petrushka and puppets for Wimbledon music festival uk Russian pianist Mikhail Rudy will present a quirky new production of Stravinsky’s Petrushka in November, based on his own transcription and combined with puppetry (pictured). The world premiere is hosted by London’s International Wimbledon Music Festival and the Little Angel Theatre. The annual festival, now in its fourth year, takes place from 10 to 25 November, and also features Christine Brewer, who will perform

Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with pianist Roger Vignoles, and Mark Padmore, who will give two song cycles with pianist Simon Lepper.

Elsewhere, actress Patricia Routledge and pianist Piers Lane tell the story of the National Gallery Concerts during the Second World War that were inspired by Dame Myra Hess, and novelist, journalist and IP contributor Jessica Duchen presents her play, A Walk Through the End of Time.

06_07_IP1112 signed off by Claire.indd 6 03/10/2012 10:06:14 06_07_IP0113_News signed off by Claire.indd 7 04/12/2012 16:50:40

International Piano May/June 201221www.chandos.net www.theclassicalshop.net (24-bit downloads, lossless, MP3)

STAY IN THE KNOW New releases • Reviews • Special offers • Artist features

Highlights of the Year Debussy Complete Works for PianoCollector’s Edition Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s vivid and personal interpretations of Debussy’s complete works for piano are presented here in a five-volume Collector’s Edition box set. AWARDS: Best Instrumental Recording (Gramophone Awards)Best Instrumental Recording (BBC Music Magazine Awards)Best Instrumental Recording of Standard Repertoire (International Piano)Editor’s Choice (Gramophone)Pianist’s Choice (Pianist)

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CHOPIN: Nocturnes and Ballades

BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 1 RACHMANINOFF: Moments musicaux Études-tableaux

BEETHOVEN: Complete works for piano and orchestra

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the audience prize, young audience prize, the Breguet special prize and the

Air France KLM special prize, which consists of a return ticket to one of the 230 worldwide destinations in the airline’s network. Twenty-eight-year-old Mikhail Sporov from Russia won second prize and Aya Matsushita, also 28, came third. The Georges Leibenson Special Prize, awarded by the jury – which included Dmitri Alexeev, Janina Fialkowska and regular IP Symposium contributor Christopher Elton – went to Rachel Cheung and Chulmin Lee. A full competition report will be published in the next edition of IP.

Plowright records Brahms

British pianist Jonathan Plowright has commenced a recorded cycle of Brahms’s works for solo piano with the BIS label. The first disc, released in December, comprises the monumental Piano Sonata No 3 in F minor, coupled with the celebrated Handel Variations, two of the major landmarks in the 19th-century solo piano literature. ‘I am absolutely thrilled to have established this new relationship with BIS Records to record Brahms, a composer whose music has always been close to my heart, and these two giants of the piano repertoire are a very good place to start,’ said Plowright.

French award for Grosvenor

Benjamin Grosvenor has won the ‘Jeune Talent’ award at the Diapason Awards 2012 for his debut CD on Decca (Chopin, Liszt and Ravel, reviewed in issue 9). The 20-year-old pianist was presented with the prize from the leading French classical music magazine at a ceremony in Paris in November, which was broadcast on Radio France. Earlier in 2012, Grosvenor received two Gramophone Awards: Young Artist of the Year and Instrumental Award for the same recording. He also won the Classic Brits Critics’ Award in the same week. Grosvenor’s latest Decca CD is reviewed on page 80.

Zoe Rahman scoops a MOBO

Pianist Zoe Rahman beat tough competition from other nominees – the Mercury-nominated Roller Trio, cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson, singer Zara McFarlane and guitarist Femi Temowo – to win the prestigious MOBO Jazz Award. Rahman, an occasional contributor to IP, spent 2012 touring her

acclaimed Kindred Spirits album. She is no stranger to high-profile awards: her 2006 album Melting Pot was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.

Sony signs Igor Levit Sony Classical has signed an exclusive recording deal with German-Russian pianist Igor Levit, aged 25. His first recording for the label, to be released in 2012, will feature solo works by Beethoven. A current BBC New Generation Artist and 2012-13

European Concert Hall Association Rising Star, Levit took four prizes at the 2005 International Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition.

Joyce Yang joins 21C Media 21C Media Group has announced that it will be handling public relations for Joyce Yang, silver medallist (and the youngest contestant) at the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Yang was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant – one of classical music’s most prestigious accolades – in 2010 at the age of 24. Her 2012-13 season features debuts with the Toronto and Detroit Symphonies under Peter Oundjian; she also makes her German debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, led by James Conlon, and returns to Australia for a concert with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Soulès triumphs in GenevaFrench pianist Lorenzo Soulès has won first prize at the 2012 Geneva Competition. The 20-year-old also took

New international piano contest for Kingston Jamaican pianist Orrett Rhoden will host the first ever international piano competition in his hometown of Kingston during 8-11 November 2013.

Applicants – who can be of any age, and any nationality – will compete to win a first prize of £50,000.

‘I am looking for an “old fashioned romantic” similar to that of Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein in the world we live in today,’ Rhoden told IP. ‘I thought, there must be such a pianist, as we have become too often hypnotised by mere technicians who are only capable of playing faster and louder and somehow have missed the real meaning of music making. I am looking for an artist, one with real imagination and a sense of individual style and sophistication; one with all the necessary technical tools, of course, but also with something unique, personal and different to say. In other words, a modern day poet!’

Rhoden first came to international attention after appearing in two BBC documentaries on the 1983 visit of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh to Jamaica. The programmes featured Rhoden playing background music while the Royal couple toured Devon House, and also used his recordings throughout the films. Subsequently, Rhoden was booked to give his London debut as the soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 at the Barbican in 1984.www.orrettrhoden.com

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Federico Colli wins Leeds International Competition Italian pianist Federico Colli, 24, (pictured, below) has won the 2012 Leeds International Piano Competition. The first prize includes a £18,000 cash prize, donated by the Liz and Terry Bramall Charitable Trust, and the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Gold Medal, sponsored by Michael J Gee, Rowland J Gee and Nigel Gee of the Cecil Gee Charitable Trust and the Champs Hill Records Award, which enables the winner to record his debut solo CD at the Music Room, Champs Hill.

The finals, broadcast live by BBC Radio 3, saw Colli give an outstanding performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto at Leeds Town Hall with the Hallé Orchestra directed by Sir Mark Elder.

The other prize winners were Louis Schwizgebel, 24, from Switzerland (second prize); Jiayan Sun, 22, from China (third prize), Andrejs Osokins, 27, from Latvia (fourth prize), Andrew Tyson, 25, from the US (fifth prize), and Jayson Gillham, 26, from Australia (sixth prize). www.leedspiano.com

A full competition report can be found on p31

Sasha Grynyuk takes first prize at Grieg Competition

Ukrainian pianist Sasha Grynyuk, 29, (above) has won first prize at the 13th International Edvard Grieg Piano Competition in Bergen, Norway.

Grynyuk scooped €30,000 and won engagements for several high-profile appearances in 2013: solo recitals at the Bergen International Festival and the University Hall of Oslo, and at Troldhaugen, where he will be ‘pianist of the week’.

The Russian pianist Anton Igubnov, 23, won both the audience prize and second prize, while 30-year-old Mamikon Nakhapetov from Georgia took third prize. In the final, the three finalists each gave solo performances with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Grieg’s own orchestra, in the Grieg Hall in Bergen.

The jury comprised Leif Ove Andsnes, Oxana Yablonskaya, Bernd Goetzke, Piotr Paleczny, Jens Harald Bratlie, Einar Steen-Nøkleberg (chairman), and Marc-André Hamelin.

The 14th International Edvard Grieg Piano Competition will be held in Bergen during 2014.www.griegcompetition.com

Marc-André Hamelin is interviewed for ‘Music of my Life’ over on p88

November/December 2012 International Piano 9009_IP1112 signed off by Claire.indd 9 01/10/2012 08:04:51

January/February 2013 International Piano 909_IP0113_News signed off by Claire.indd 9 05/12/2012 11:34:57


l e t t e r f r o m U . S .

the immense pianistic talent from the countries of the former Soviet Union continues unabated, reports US correspondent Stephen Wigler

From Russia with talent

January/February 2013 International Piano 1110 International Piano January/February 2013

l e t t e r f r o m U . S .

the immense pianistic talent from the countries of the former Soviet Union continues unabated, reports US correspondent Stephen Wigler

From Russia with talent

l e t t e r f r o m U . S .that eschewed heart-on-sleeve sentiment. It is also no accident that unlike most of today’s pianists – the exceptions that come to mind are Nelson freire and Horacio Gutierrez – he elects to play (like composer in his recording) the shorter, less showy cadenza, building it to a conclusion of tremendous force and weight without threatening the movement’s architecture, which the longer cadenza can do. the second movement, also taken at a faster than usual tempo, might have – to some tastes – short-changed the music’s brooding emotion, but the mercurial lightness of the contrasting middle section could not have been more persuasive. And the finale, though played at a near phenomenal tempo, never faltered in its steadily accelerating momentum and concluded in a clearly articulated blaze of glory.

Some of the best ‘russian’ pianists are actually Georgian. this is true of such now senior figures as elisso Virsaladze and elisabeth leonskaya, both now in their 70s, and the somewhat younger Alexander toradze (born in 1952). these important pianists, while Georgian-born, however, concluded their studies in moscow. two much younger and much talked-about Georgians, the 25-year-old Khatia Buniatishvilli and the 31-year-old Nina Gvetadze, never left tbilisi for either moscow or St Petersburg; they proceeded straight to careers in the West. Another world-class Georgian pianist, who resisted the pull of the russian cultural centres, is the 47-year-old Alexander Korsantia. He won first prizes in 1988 at the Sydney International Competition and in 1995 at the rubinstein Competition in tel Aviv and is admired by such artists as toraze, Kissin and Vladimir feltsman. A career as a member of the piano faculty at as fine a music school as the New england Conservatory in Boston, where he now makes his home, is nothing to sneeze at, but Korsantia deserves to be better known in this country. His all-Beethoven program at the conservatory (Jordan Hall, 22 october) was well planned (the Sonata in A-flat, op 26 and 15 Variations and fugue in e-flat, op 35, on the first half and the big Sonata in e-flat, op 7, after the interval).

and to a contract with Decca, which recently issued live in Zaragoza, an unedited transcript of the Spanish-latin American programme Prats gave early in 2011 in the new hall in Zaragoza, Spain. Although Prats’s extensive repertory includes most of the major works by Bach, mozart, Beethoven, liszt, Chopin, Schumann, ravel, Debussy and the russians, what I heard in Boston was a ‘Spanish’ programme: Granados’s Goyescas, Guererro’s Suite Havana, Busoni’s Chamber-fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen and three pieces (Corpus Christi en Sevilla, Jerez, and lavapies) from Albeniz’s Iberia. I have never heard any of these pieces played better, not by Alicia de larrocha or even by Nelson freire – the pianist whom Prats seems to resemble most in the ease of his all-encompassing technique, improvisatory freedom, poetic imagination and uncanny and unshakeable sense of rhythm.

A little more than two weeks (18 october) later I returned to Boston to hear Nikolai lugansky perform rachmaninov’s Concerto No 3 with the BSo and conductor Charles Dutoit. two years ago in New York when I heard lugansky in the same composer’s Concerto No 2, I compared him in his olympian detachment to his Norwegian contemporary, leif ove Andsnes. After hearing lugansky on this occasion, I stand by that comparison – except that I now think he’s even cooler than Andsnes. this is not to say that he is a cold pianist – although the knowledgeable friends with whom I attended the concert would disagree me. But if evgeny Kissin (with his trademark warmth of expression, his sonorous and singing lyricism and his relaxed and spacious phrasing) occupies one end of the russian pianistic spectrum, then lugansky (with his lofty objectivity, his whirlwind, motor-like tempos, his lightness of touch and razor-sharp precision) occupies the other. like rachmaninov, lugansky stands at well over six feet and I can’t think of another current pianist who more closely resembles the composer musically – at least in his recorded legacy. With tempos in the first movement that are fleeter than any of his contemporaries, lugansky was able to loft the third concerto’s lyrical themes in a manner

to that on Prats’s soon-to-be out-of-print DG album: late Beethoven (opus 111) and Schumann’s toccata in 1982 and ravel’s Gaspard in 1983. I thought all of these performances, while ‘sensational’ in some respects, much less satisfying than those of Prats. But while Pogorelich enjoyed superstardom for more than 15 years, very little was heard from Prats. Although his biography lists other recordings, all that I was aware of in the almost three decades since his first recording went out of print were some terrific performances, dating from the 1990s, of rachmaninov concertos (Nos 2 and 3 and the rhapsody on a theme of Paganini) recorded with a mexican orchestra conducted by enrique Batiz available only on the small, rather poorly distributed, infrequently reviewed and now discontinued ASV classical label. (All three performances have been reissued on the super-budget regis and Brilliant labels.)

Prats’s problem was partly that, as a resident of Cuba, he travelled on a Cuban passport that made performing impossible in the US and difficult in most of Western europe, thus confining his career largely to latin America. that began to change a few years ago when Prats, along with his family, moved to miami. A recital in the 2007 miami International Piano festival was recorded on video by VAI and its extraordinary performances of the Bach-liszt Prelude in fugue in A minor, Scriabin’s 24 Preludes, op 11, ravel’s Gaspard, in addition to encores by lecuona, Cervantes, moszkowski and Wagner-liszt, resulted in invitations to perform at the Verbier festival, in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Piano Series for four consecutive years

his family – was considered so talented that he had been awarded a scholarship to study in russia at the moscow Conservatory and had recently been awarded the first prize in the prestigious long-thibaud Competition in Paris. I took note of his name – Jorge luis Prats – and hoped that it would not be long before I got a chance to hear him.

I got that chance – on a recording, at least – shortly thereafter. In 1980 the Deutsche Grammophon label in its now long discontinued ‘Concours’ series, which introduced winners of important competitions, released the then 23-year-old Prats’s recorded debut – performances of Beethoven’s Sonata No 28, Schumann’s toccata in C and ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit that I considered comparable to the best on records. Sadly, it was to be Prats’s last easily available Western-made recording for a long time – more than 30 years. It was at about that time that DG also began recording another piano competition veteran, almost exactly Prats’s age. Ironically, he was also a foreign-born pianist who had won a scholarship to study at the moscow Conservatory and he had been Prats’s roommate in Paris 1977 when they competed in the long-thibaud Competition and where the roommate failed to get past the semi-final round. more ironically still, he was the Croatian pianist, whose failure to get past the semi-final round three years later in Warsaw made him one of the most famous pianists on the planet: Ivo Pogorelich.

Pogorelich’s celebrity and his provocatively controversial interpretations helped make his records best-sellers and earned him carte-blanche at DG. Interestingly, Pogorelich’s earliest releases featured repertory rather similar

No piaNistic pleasure is greater than one long delayed and finally gratified – especially

when it surpasses all expectation. Such was the case on 2 october, in Seully Hall at the Boston Conservatory, when I finally got to hear a Cuban pianist whom I had first heard about more than 30 years earlier when I had lunch with Jorge Bolet, during his visit to rochester, NY, to perform and record the two liszt Concertos with David Zinman and the rochester Philharmonic orchestra.

Bolet had been talking about the Cuban piano tradition, when I mentioned my admiration for Horacio Gutierrez, who had left Cuba at the age of 13 in 1961 with his family because of Castro’s accession to power a few years earlier. ‘You know, even Castro hasn’t prevented Cuba from producing talented pianists,’ Bolet told me. ‘there’s another Cuban boy, even younger than Gutierrez, about whom I’ve been hearing great things.’ According to Bolet, this ‘boy’ – who, unlike Gutierrez, had remained in Castro’s Cuba with

I remained in Boston until 8 November so that I could finally hear Daniil trifonov, the biggest prize winner of the 2010-2011 season (third prize in Warsaw and firsts in tel Aviv and moscow). With Giancarlo Guerrero conducting the Boston Symphony (Symphony Hall), he gave the finest performance of tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 that I’ve heard in recent years. more than any russian pianist since the lamentably short-lived Youri egorov, the 21-year-old trifonov’s playing evokes a vocal rather than a purely instrumental model. the variety of his touch and his mastery of tonal shading combine with his improvisatory freedom of expression to suggest a voice in flight of song. this is why he can make bravura passages, such as the tchaikovsky’s avalanches of double octaves which most pianists deliver as if they were studied declamations, sound like bursts of unexpected song.

Despite the flood of talented pianists from the far east, Yuja Wang says that ‘russia’s continues to be the world’s pre-eminent piano school.’ She must be right – for the flow of immense talents from the countries of the former Soviet Union continues unabated and without an end in sight. one week after trifonov, I was in back in Baltimore to hear 26-year-old Denis Kozhukhin (a student of Dmitry Bashkirov who came in third at the 2006 leeds and first at the 2010 Brussels) perform the Brahms Piano Concerto No 2 with the Baltimore Symphony and its music director, marin Alsop. His long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, Kozhukhin seemed completely relaxed

similar to that on Prats’s soon-to-be out-of-print DG album: late Beethoven (opus 111) and Schumann’s toccata in 1982 and ravel’s Gaspard in 1983. I thought all of these performances, while ‘sensational’ in some respects, much less satisfying than those of Prats. But while Pogorelich enjoyed superstardom for more than 15 years, very little was heard from Prats.

Prats’s problem was partly that, as a resident of Cuba, he travelled on a Cuban passport that made performing impossible in the US and difficult in most of Western europe, thus confining his career largely to latin America. that began to change a few years ago when Prats, along with his family, moved to miami. A recital in the 2007 miami International Piano festival was recorded on video by VAI and its extraordinary performances of the Bach-liszt Prelude in fugue in A minor, Scriabin’s 24 Preludes, op 11, ravel’s Gaspard, in addition to encores by lecuona, Cervantes, moszkowski and Wagner-liszt, resulted in invitations to perform at the Verbier festival, in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Piano Series for four consecutive years and to a contract with Decca, which recently issued Live in Zaragoza, an unedited transcript of the Spanish-latin American programme Prats gave early in 2011 in the new hall in Zaragoza, Spain. Although Prats’s extensive repertory includes most of the major works by Bach, mozart, Beethoven, liszt, Chopin, Schumann, ravel, Debussy and the russians, what I heard in Boston was a ‘Spanish’ programme: Granados’s Goyescas, Guererro’s Suite Havana. Busoni’s Chamber-fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen and three pieces (Corpus Christi en Sevilla, Jerez, and Lavapies) from Albéniz’s Iberia.

Castro’s Cuba with his family – was considered so talented that he had been awarded a scholarship to study in russia at the moscow Conservatory and had recently been awarded the first prize in the prestigious long-thibaud Competition in Paris. I took note of his name, Jorge luis Prats, and hoped that it would not be long before I got a chance to hear him.

I got that chance – on a recording, at least – shortly thereafter. In 1980 the Deutsche Grammophon label in its now long discontinued ‘Concours’ series, which introduced winners of important competitions, released the then 23-year-old Prats’s recorded debut – performances of Beethoven’s Sonata No 28, Schumann’s toccata in C and ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit that I considered comparable to the best on records. Sadly, it was to be Prats’s last easily available Western-made recording for a long time – more than 30 years. It was at about that time that DG also began recording another piano competition veteran, almost exactly Prats’s age. Ironically, he was also a foreign-born pianist who had won a scholarship to study at the moscow Conservatory and he had been Prats’s roommate in Paris 1977 when they competed in the long-thibaud Competition and where the roommate failed to get past the semi-final round. more ironically still, he was the Croatian pianist, whose failure to get past the semi-final round three years later in Warsaw made him one of the most famous pianists on the planet: Ivo Pogorelich.

Pogorelich’s celebrity helped make his records bestsellers and earned him carte blanche at DG. Interestingly, Pogorelich’s earliest releases featured repertory rather

No piaNistic pleasure IS greater than one long delayed and finally gratified – especially

when it surpasses all expectation. Such was the case on 2 october, in Seully Hall at the Boston Conservatory, when I finally got to hear a Cuban pianist whom I had first heard about more than 30 years earlier: at a lunch with Jorge Bolet, during his visit to rochester, NY, to perform and record the two liszt Concertos with David Zinman and the rochester Philharmonic orchestra

Bolet had been talking about the Cuban piano tradition, when I mentioned my admiration for Horacio Gutierrez, who had left Cuba at the age of 13 in 1961 with his family because of Castro’s accession to power a few years earlier. ‘You know, even Castro hasn’t prevented Cuba from producing talented pianists,’ Bolet told me. ‘there’s another Cuban boy, even younger than Gutierrez, about whom I’ve been hearing great things.’

According to Bolet, this ‘boy’ – who, unlike Gutierrez, had remained in

10_11_IP0113_Letter from US signed off by Claire.indd 10 04/12/2012 16:59:45


l e t t e r f r o m U . S .never faltered in its steadily accelerating momentum and concluded in a clearly articulated blaze of glory.

Some of the best ‘russian’ pianists are actually from Georgia. this is true of such now senior figures as elisso Virsaladze and elisabeth leonskaya, each of them well over 70, and the somewhat younger Alexander toradze (born in 1952). these important Georgian-born pianists, however, concluded their studies in moscow. two much younger and much talked-about Georgians, the 25-year-old Khatia Buniatishvilli and the 31-year-old Nina Gvetadze, never left tbilisi for either moscow or St Petersburg; they proceeded straight to careers in the West.

Another world-class Georgian pianist, who resisted the pull of the russian cultural centres, is the 47-year-old Alexander Korsantia, who won first prizes in 1988 at the Sydney International Competition and in 1995 at the rubinstein Competition in tel Aviv. A career as a member of the piano faculty at as fine a music school as the New england Conservatory in Boston, where he now makes his home, is nothing to sneer at, but Korsantia deserves to be better known. His all-Beethoven programme at the conservatory (Jordan Hall, 22 october) was well planned and splendidly executed.

I remained in Boston until 8 November so that I could finally hear Daniil trifonov, the biggest prizewinner of the 2010-11 season (third prize in Warsaw and firsts in tel Aviv and moscow). With Giancarlo Guerrero conducting the Boston Symphony (Symphony Hall), he gave the finest performance of tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 that I’ve heard in recent years. more than any russian pianist since the lamentably short-lived Youri egorov, the 21-year-old trifonov’s playing evokes a vocal rather than a purely instrumental model. the variety of his touch and his mastery of tonal shading combine with an improvisatory freedom of expression to suggest a voice in flight. this is why he can make bravura passages, such as the avalanches of double octaves most pianists deliver as if they were studied declamations, sound like bursts of unexpected song.

I have never heard better performances of any of these pieces – not by Alicia de larrocha or even by Nelson freire – the pianist whom Prats seems to resemble most in the ease of his all-encompassing technique, improvisatory freedom, poetic imagination and uncanny and unshakeable sense of rhythm.

A lIttle more tHAN tWo weeks later (18 oct) I returned to Boston to hear Nikolai

lugansky (pictured, right) perform rachmaninov’s Concerto No 3 with the BSo and conductor Charles Dutoit. two years ago in New York when I heard lugansky in the same composer’s Concerto No 2, his olympian detachment made me compare him to his Norwegian contemporary, leif ove Andsnes. After hearing lugansky on this occasion, I stand by that comparison – except that I now think he’s even cooler than Andsnes.

this is not to say that he is a cold pianist – although the knowledgeable friends with whom I attended the concert disagree with me. But if evgeny Kissin (with his trademark warmth of expression, his sonorous and singing lyricism and his relaxed and spacious phrasing) occupies one end of the russian pianistic spectrum, lugansky (with his objectivity, his whirlwind, motor-like tempos, his lightness of touch and razor-sharp precision) occupies the other. I can’t think of another current pianist who more closely resembles rachmaninov himself. With tempos in the first movement fleeter than any of his contemporaries, lugansky was able to lift the third concerto’s lyrical themes aloft in a manner that eschewed heart-on-sleeve sentiment. It is also no accident that unlike most of today’s pianists he elects to play the shorter, less showy cadenza. He built it to a conclusion of tremendous force and weight without threatening the movement’s architecture, which the longer cadenza can do. the second movement, also taken at a faster than usual tempo, might have shortchanged the music’s brooding emotion, but the mercurial lightness of the contrasting middle section could not have been finer. the finale, though played at a near phenomenal tempo,

Despite the flood of talented pianists from the far east, Yuja Wang has said, ‘russia’s continues to be the world’s pre-eminent piano school.’ She must be right – for the flow of immense talents from the countries of the former Soviet Union continues unabated. one week after trifonov, I was in back in Baltimore to hear 26-year-old Denis Kozhukhin (pictured, left), who came in third at the 2006 leeds and first at the 2010 Brussels, perform the Brahms Piano Concerto No 2 with the Baltimore Symphony and music director, marin Alsop. lanky and relaxed, his long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, Kozukhin always seemed to be enjoying himself. And for good reason: he has all the technique in the world. He made Brahms’s gigantic, leaping chords and man-killing trills sound like child’s play. His sound – forceful when necessary, but never harsh or percussive – is beautiful at all dynamic levels. He brought out the Beethoven-like grandeur of the first movement, set a bracing tempo in the demonic scherzo without sacrificing its details and inner voices, made the gentle Andante sing poetically and performed the playful finale with crisp articulation and cheeky grace. He may have missed a few of the larger structural details of the concerto, but this was still an accomplished performance of one of the repertory’s most intimidating behemoths – a remarkable achievement by any pianist, particularly one so young.

10_11_IP0113_Letter from US signed off by Claire.indd 11 04/12/2012 17:00:15


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2012_11_International_Piano:International Piano 20/11/2012 08:07 Page 1

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THE SPLENDID PIANIST AND delightful writer Arthur Loesser (1894-1969) physically resembled a garden

gnome but, as he would tell his students at the Cleveland Institute of Music, whenever he played the piano he was more beautiful than the comeliest damsels in his class. As Arthur Rubinstein’s memoirs state and Harvey Sachs’s rollicking biography (Grove Press) of the keyboard virtuoso confirms, although Rubinstein was no Don Juan either, he enjoyed an exuberant romantic life, with his piano playing proving a seductive force.

In our literal-minded age, artistic beauty is sometimes sidelined in favour of more visually quantifiable gratifications. And thus the novel Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels have sold millions of copies, followed by EMI’s Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album. The CD, itself a bestseller, is heavily weighted with piano music, since the book tells the story of the relationship between Anastasia, a student, and Christian Grey, a billionaire and amateur pianist. Of Grey, readers are assured: ‘He’s not merely good looking – he’s the epitome of male beauty, breathtaking.’ Fifty Shades author EL James somewhat ambiguously informed the Daily Telegraph that Grey was a ‘talented but not particularly gifted pianist’.

Listeners will note that the EMI CD features an odd mix of selections. Two Chopin pieces by the alcoholic, amphetamine-popping Frenchman Samson François sound understandably medicated and distracted, while Rachmaninov is played absently by Cécile Ousset. Bach by Maria Tipo is both trivialising and tubby-sounding.

Two further tracks evoke the character of the sadistic plutocrat Grey, whether consciously or not: Bach played by Alexandre Tharaud in a cool, emotionally distant Gallic way is echoed by the coldly mechanical Alexis Weissenberg. Of all these pianists, Moura Lympany evokes the most sympathy, as a worthy artist captured for eternity in the wrong repertoire: a Debussy rendition which was not her finest moment. Piano lovers can only hope such a compilation will encourage consumers to further investigate the works included; they might discover more rewarding performances of the same works which, in the age of YouTube, are but a few clicks away.

Examples might include Edwin Fischer’s spiritually intense performance of JS Bach’s Concerto No 3, BWV 974, an adaptation of an Adagio from an Alessandro Marcello oboe concerto. Or Chopin’s Prelude No 4 in E minor played with stark emotional impact by Rudolf Serkin on a recent Sony CD reissue. Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2 is well represented in discography by a performance with the composer himself as soloist, while Moura Lympany should be allowed to redeem herself with her admirable rendition of Chopin’s Nocturne No 1 in B flat minor.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations have been recorded by many fine artists, among them Murray Perahia and András Schiff. Debussy’s ever-popular The Girl with the Flaxen Hair has been performed with apt tenderness and innocence by Youri Egorov (on one of the many excellent EMI archival recordings which, mysteriously, were not chosen for the new compilation) and Gaby Casadesus. To fully plumb the grace and exaltation of JS Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring as transcribed by Myra Hess, why not listen to Hess herself, or Dinu Lipatti, yet another EMI artist?

Hearing a variety of different – and perhaps better – performances of these long-appreciated works reminds us of what is primordially important: the music, not the marketing. Consumers who buy erotica are most likely out for instant gratification, yet as any sybarite knows, there are degrees of refinement even in wanton self-indulgence. Sadism and the piano seem inexorably linked in the public’s mind after screen epics such as The Seventh Veil (1945), The Piano (1993) and The Piano Teacher (2001), which all feature sadistic elements. The piano has been saddled with this image perhaps because the notion of a sadistic fiddler or tuba player would be overtly comic even to the most humourless author of erotica.

An ideal answer to such grim and glowering images, domineering and pain-inducing, would be some of the more joyous and loving interpreters who have rightly won audience allegiance over the years – the same audience which has the artistic imagination to reject pianists, even those who are the ‘epitome of male beauty, breathtaking’, if they are merely ‘talented but not particularly gifted’.

Benjamin Ivry offers an antidote

to the piano sadism in the

recent bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey

Fifty shades of pianismc o m m e n t


The EL James trilogy has sold millions of copies; the books were followed by EMI’s Fifty

Shades of Grey: The Classical Album, also a bestseller

13_IP0113_Comment signed off by Claire.indd 13 04/12/2012 17:01:04


Untitled-10 1 19/11/2012 16:38:17

Courtesy of Jean Muller and Fondamenta we are offering International Piano readers the opportunity to download two tracks from Jean Muller’s latest release.

Chopin Recital, 2011 © Fondamenta

Tracks available to International Piano readers:

• Chopin – Ballade No.1• Chopin – Mazurka in C Major

to ClaiM youR FRee download, visit

www.Rhinegold.Co.uk/ipdownload

ip exClusive

© M

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cd ad jean muller.indd 1 05/12/2012 16:50:58

014_IP_0113.indd 14 05/12/2012 17:01:50

JEAN MULLER, BORN IN 1979 IN LUXEMBOURG, has won 12 piano competitions since 1994 and made a number of recordings. His latest,

a terrific Chopin recital (Fondamenta, FON- 1005008) has received wide critical acclaim, with one reviewer declaring that ‘few pianists of any age or nationality have recreated the storming codas of the First and Fourth Ballades [...] with such brilliant fury’.

So why haven’t we heard of him? ‘Well, life is complicated and things don’t always kick off like they should,’ he says. ‘And also, I have to confess that my first priority has always been the quality of my playing and not the development of my career. So maybe that’s why it was long time before I had the confidence to be more known and play in other countries [outside Luxembourg]. I did play in some, but perhaps not with the same energy as I have done in the past few years.’

Muller edits all his recordings himself (‘I feel that, as an artist, one shouldn’t give something one has invested so much time in to another hand’) but has not been tied to a single label. Is that a good idea? ‘That’s probably not a good idea!’ he laughs. ‘Nevertheless, I have to say that the latest, Fondamenta, have been very encouraging since I’ve been with them.’

One of his previous discs was devoted to the music of Stéphane Blet. ‘He is a modern French composer who was a pupil of Byron Janis and also had several lessons from Horowitz in the 1980s,’ Muller says. ‘I think he’s a very interesting figure, maybe not mainstream but more so than you might expect for a modern composer. His music carries some intensity – that’s what interested me in his work.’ It’s not a choice of repertoire that is a strong commercial proposition. Blet, I suggest, is not going to sell many discs. ‘Yes. I have often taken decisions which go against what people advise me. Even when I recorded the Ballades of Chopin. But of course it’s very encouraging when, later on, it transpires to have been the right choice.’

Both of Muller’s parents are musicians. His mother is a viola player in the Philharmonic Orchestra of Luxembourg. His father, Gary Muller, a piano professor at the Conservatoire de Luxembourg, is one of the strongest influences on his playing: ‘I have to say his influence was always not direct, meaning that he was never my formal teacher – which was probably a wise decision. He put me into the class of a colleague at the conservatoire, Marie-José Hengesch.’ Muller was six at the time, and only a year later made his first public appearance, premiering a work by his compatriot Alexander Mullenbach.

He remained at the conservatoire until the age of 15, when he began studies at the Academy of Music in Riga. ‘But during all these years, my father guided me a lot, sometimes encouraging me to do crazy things which my piano teacher would not have,’ he says. ‘For instance, when I was seven years old, I absolutely wanted to play the study in thirds by Chopin. Everybody said I was crazy, which I probably was, but my father gave me the score and wrote down the fingering. I learnt it – of course I didn’t play it very well, but I got round it. Musically and technically, what he says to me is still very important. Now, we are colleagues. I work at the conservatoire with him.’

Muller has been active on the competition circuit for some years but there is, he agrees, a time to stop. ‘Unfortunately, it doesn’t often bring as much as you would dream of. That’s something that younger pianists may not be aware of. It might bring you something but it can be deceptive. Let’s put it that way. It’s certainly not the best way to improve musicianship.’

Although not yet a big name in the profession, Muller is well known in his own country (‘But then, my country is very small!’). In 2007, His Royal Highness Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg made Muller a Chevalier de l’Ordre de Mérite Civil et Militaire d’Adolphe de Nassau. It is something of which the pianist is immensely proud – quite rightly, as it’s an award that is usually only given to much older people. ‘I had been playing at quite a few state visits and somehow they must have liked my performances,’ he says modestly.

The date is set for his next recording: Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes in July 2013. ‘I’ve been working on them for two years,’ he says. ‘I’m still a little nervous but I now know what I want to do with these pieces. I’m also doing a tour of the pieces on my Chopin disc. So there is plenty to do.’

IP readers are invited to download a selection of tracks from Jean Muller’s Chopin disc, courtesy of Fondamenta. Visit www.rhinegold.co.uk/ipdownload and click ‘download now’.


O N E T O W A T C H

Outside his native Luxembourg, Jean

Muller’s profile has been fairly low –

until now. Jeremy Nicholas finds

out why

Onwards and uPwards

15_IP01013_OnetoWatch signed off by Claire.indd 15 05/12/2012 16:07:45


pianostreet.com- the website for pianists, teachers,

students and piano enthusiasts

The newly discoveredpiano piece by Johannes Brahms- download the score at:pianostreet.com/albumblatt

Untitled-8 1 20/04/2012 10:05:11

Untitled-5 1 20/11/2012 14:50:14

016_IP_0113.indd 16 05/12/2012 11:19:57

MONDAY Am to AccompAny tV sitcom, miming for on-screen actor at piano. music already received by motor-cycle courier: thoughtful of tV company to provide same, though scarcely necessary in this case, being simply offenbach can-can theme, scrawled on plain paper with hand-drawn stave.

Reach tV studio, cleverly built to resemble decrepit night-club and crammed with cast plus sound, lighting, electrics, camera, wardrobe, hair, make-up and stage management crews. Locate producer in mêlée, ascertain cue and musical requirements. no hurry: whole company on break, awaiting actor-pianist (star of scene). Wander backstage, locate caterers, learn food and drink all free: cease wandering. producer calls for rehearsal: minion dispatched to locate star. minion returns, reports star currently in dressing-room seeking inspiration in can of Guinness. company waits patiently, at incalculable expense. Star finally lurches into view: am startled to recognise as comedian from several generations ago, long thought dead. costume includes illuminated bow-tie, activated by star himself and intended to revolve as he delivers punchline of scene.

Rehearse. play can-can on cue. producer asks, ‘can music be more Folies-Bergèrish?’ Have never been asked that before. momentarily nonplussed, then restart with tune an octave higher and accompaniment sprightlier. producer adds, ‘…and slower.’ Slow down: tune sounds awful thus but producer pleased so do not argue musical niceties. Rehearsal resumes, ends. Break before first take: wardrobe, hair and make-up crew descend en masse to tidy up cast, like ox-peckers on herd of rhino.

First take goes well, up to punchline: star forgets words and cannot read autocue. Break: minion brings more Guinness, writes punchline in big letters on board to be held in view of star but out of shot; ox-peckers reappear, descend, disappear. Second take: star delivers words but bow-tie fails to revolve. Break: Guinness and ox-peckers re-emerge, plus small crowd of electricians analysing bow-tie. Report all satisfactory, ready for third take. Bow-tie again fails to revolve, electricians puzzled: actor confesses had forgotten to activate on cue. Day proceeds, reaches seventh take before producer satisfied. Job done: submit huge invoice. Go home,

pondering cost per minute of whole project, and being glad was on receiving end of some of it.

WEDNESDAY Am to play celeste in Holst’s Planets: always a joy, however hackneyed the piece. Rehearsal goes well, could finish early: anticipate extended meal-break with friendly colleagues, e.g. beautiful harpists. Start Neptune the Mystic: have always marvelled that off-stage choirs stay so well in tune with pp on-stage orchestra so far away, but current choir proves exception, wincingly flat and way behind the beat. Rehearsal ends: prepare to escape for meal with harpists but am asked to stay behind for emergency choir rehearsal. Am reverently handed dog-eared vocal score, archive rarity dating apparently

from Holst’s time and labelled ‘this music is irreplaceable.’ Beg to differ: contains no piano reduction at all, simply voice parts with few cues. Glad know piece well: jettison item and play piano accompaniment by ear. But choir incurably flat, and late: eager backstage employee, familiar as former violinist, offers to fetch instrument from home and help out by playing among them in performance. conductor desperate: agrees. Hastily depart in search of meal (and harpists) before can be asked to accompany violin rehearsal.

performance. Neptune arrives, choir’s first entrance ditto, plus distant violin, firmly on beat but ahead of choir. conductor winces, more so as chorus parts move, all-too-audible violin now connecting every pair of notes with old-fashioned portamento. Effect decidedly non-mystic: orchestra platform begins to shake with silent laughter. conductor hisses ‘Stop him, somebody.’ Unoccupied percussionist volunteers, leaves platform: retreating backstage footsteps clearly audible in general pp. music proceeds regardless. off-stage violin stops abruptly in mid-phrase; on-stage orchestral merriment spreads to audience. choir fades, music ends – not imperceptibly, as Holst wrote, but with distinct sounds of firmly closed door and dropped off-stage violin. Ironic cheers mingle with applause, possibly a first with this piece.

FRIDAY theatre auditions. See familiar face, join for coffee break. Recall: was extra in monday’s tV filming. chat, marvel afresh at extravagant cost, contemplate possible repeat fees. ‘oh, didn’t you hear?’ says extra. ‘they cut the scene. the director didn’t like it.’


Producer asks, ‘Can music be more

Folies-Bergèrish?’

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In which Michael Round meets a star, and a Planet

MONDAY, WEEK 1 Exciting times. Am to fl y to Gulf state for four weeks’ work playing Edwardian-themed background chamber music in new hotel. Organiser there warns, ‘Bring own tuning-hammer – nearest piano-tuner lives thousands of miles away, charges a fortune, and leaves instrument in worse state than before’. Wish knew more about piano tuning, but sounds as if can’t lose. Discuss potential shortage of female company there during pre-takeo chat with well-wisher. ‘Be sure to get to the camels early,’ he suggests, ‘you’ll want a pretty one, won’t you?’ Coarse fellow.

Take-o , fl ight. Study Arabic phrase-book on journey. Di� cult language. Read, ‘Produce this consonant in back of throat, as if retching.’ Attempt same. Passenger alongside winces, edges away. Passing stewardess look concerned, asks, ‘Do you need some water?’ Resolve to use only vowels in future.

Touchdown. Disembark, sni air (like oven), reach hotel (palatial, air-conditioned, icy), examine performance venue (hotel foyer: ditto, ditto, ditto plus fountain), piano (9-� Steinway grand, brand-new), meet colleagues (acclimatised, sunburned).

TUESDAY Start work. Music salon-orchestra stu , painless: nearby fountain so loud that most bass-notes inaudible. Puzzled by unwritten trills and head-swivellings from other players. Seems trill is uno� cial signal that pretty girl has entered foyer: head-swivelling is other players straining to look. OK if girl expatriate, but am fearful of being caught staring at local women and wonder what equivalent musical warning signal is: March to the Sca� old, possibly.

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY As Tuesday, except for Friday (holy day, no work). Meet local violinist, traditional Arab music specialist. Tunes violin not to G-D-A-E but G-D-G-C. Intriguing.

MONDAY, WEEK 2 Time to tune piano. Nothing wrong with it, but job must be seen to be done. Passing expatriate invites me to tune own piano in town a� erwards, because nearest tuner lives thousands of miles away, etc. Tell him am inexperienced, but this apparently no drawback. Hope does not want piano tuned to match Arab violins. Alternative career beckons.

THURSDAY Excitement. Complete car showroom installed in hotel foyer. About 20 vehicles on display. Tumultuous applause during performance, but can take no credit: applause is for passing sheikh who just bought them all. Linger a� er performance in hope of being given one as tip, but to no avail.

SUNDAY, WEEK 3 Cause confusion by playing printed trill. Heads swivel in vain, automatically looking for pretty girl (in short supply lately). Apologise, promise to ignore printed trills in future.

WEDNESDAY Drama. Piano to be relocated to ballroom for evening.

Laundry workers conscripted en masse for move, possibly welcome change from daily routine. Assemble, push piano at great speed down red-carpeted corridor. Front leg of piano catches in fold of carpet, snaps o , piano nose-dives. Nothing daunted, workers carry remains of piano to ballroom and prop tail on edge of table. Nearly level thus, though challenging to play on. Other players gleefully contemplate forthcoming time o , piano surely unusable a� er this and certainly unsightly.

THURSDAY Business as usual, a� er all. Seems ten spare Steinway grands in hotel basement: one has been hauled up (presumably not by laundry workers), unwrapped and brought into play. Pretend to tune it in readiness (though sounds perfectly OK to me). Again, am booked by passing expatriate to tune another piano in town a� erwards, because nearest tuner lives thousands of miles, etc. Is being used by touring jazz combo. Fear being caught out this time by knowledgeable musician, but accept job regardless. Locate venue, locate piano, raise lid, a� x tuning-hammer, play one note. Door opens, jazz pianist enters. ‘Ah’, is reaction, ‘Sounds much better already’. Glad to be able to oblige so quickly.

SUNDAY-THURSDAY, WEEK 4 General desperation. No pretty girls for days. Have also played every piece of music about ten times. Spend free a� ernoon in town. See camel-train. Fear I may have been here too long: camel at far end looks quite pretty. Wonder if Foreign Legion needs piano-tuner. e


Front leg of piano catches in fold of carpet, snaps off, piano nose-dives

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Diary of an accompanistIn which Michael Round samples the Mysterious East

017_IP1112 signed off by Claire.indd 17 28/09/2012 02:05:5217_IP0113_Diary signed of by Claire.indd 17 04/12/2012 17:03:09

c o v e r s t o r y


a keen intellect

‘I don’t want to sound immodest, but integrity has always been enormously important to me’

scottish pianist Steven OSbOrne has omnivorous repertoire tastes that extend from Beethoven to Britten to free improvisation – just don’t ask him to play chopin. By Jeremy Nicholas

18_21_IP0113_CoverStory signed off by Claire.indd 18 05/12/2012 13:18:56


‘OH, I WAS WRONG. SO WRONG!’ LAUGHS STEVEN Osborne. I’ve just shown him, in the interests of continuity, the fi nal quote from his last interview in IP (Sept/Oct 2007),

when he announced his intention to record Ravel’s complete piano music. ‘I’ve just got Gaspard to learn,’ he had volunteered cheerily before adding, ‘I wish I’d done Gaspard before, but my feeling is that it’s not quite as hard as it’s made out to be...’

What had made him think Gaspard, one of the literature’s most challenging pieces, was a piece of cake? ‘It’s so lucidly written on the page, but what he asks you to do is very, very

taxing physically – I mean simply playing the notes – and I underestimated that,’ he says.

We are sitting in Osborne’s dressing room at the City Halls in Glasgow. Later in the day, he will rehearse Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with Andrew Manze and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for performances here and in Perth. He’s dressed in his trademark T-shirt, casual trousers and trainers. He celebrated his 40th birthday last year but could easily pass for one of the many students who crowd the city centre at lunchtime – though few would be organised enough to have an umbrella and a bottle of water loaded into the back of their rucksack, as Osborne does. With a pepper-and-salt wig, he might be Simon Rattle’s younger brother: the two have an uncannily similar smile. Osborne laughs o� en and generously, but in conversation, he is among the most thoughtful and serious of musicians. You sense he is never happier than when analysing a musical problem.

Since that earlier interview in IP, his career has gathered pace. There have been recordings (all for Hyperion) of Tippett (nominated for BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone awards), Britten (winner of a Gramophone Award), Rachmaninov Preludes (nominated for the Schallplattenpreis and a Gramophone Award), Beethoven Sonatas, Beethoven Bagatelles and Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony. ‘And the Schubert duets with Paul Lewis,’ Osborne reminds me. ‘That was a lovely record to make. So fun. It was quite interesting to see how someone else works in the recording studio. He’s much more relaxed than I am. I tend to be quite obsessed and go for every last detail. He wanted to just do something that felt satisfying. We fi nished in the middle of the a� ernoon on the last day, which has never happened to me, and I really learned a lot from it. I hadn’t played duets for a while, and when you’re used to fi lling the musical space yourself, fi lling only half of it – or maybe not even that – is really, really di� cult.’

His fi rst recordings for Hyperion were of piano concertos by fellow Scots Sir Alexander Mackenzie and Sir Donald Tovey, Kapustin’s Preludes in Jazz Style and – the one which brought the pianist to international attention – Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus. Is there a pattern, a long-term plan behind his eclectic choice of repertoire? ‘I feel I’m very omnivorous. I choose by instinct. There’s a never-ending stream of masterpieces to learn. It depends on what I am aching to do.’

Osborne has a distinctive, transparent sound, one which suits some composers better than others. ‘More and more, I like digging in,’ he says. ‘One of the most important piano lessons I ever had was about three years ago with Alfred Brendel. Ever since I was quite young, I’ve found his playing magnetic and I now realise what it was that drew me to his playing: his ability to characterise. Not just the sound of it, but the rhythm. There was a strong sense of what the music was about and I was curious to know how he did it. So he agreed to let me play for him and it was fascinating.’

While Brendel and Osborne may not be peas in a musical pod, what they do have in common is their love of the intellectual rigour of music. ‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘But not for its own sake. It works in something like Tippett, where certain things are very complex, but where the complexity is part of ⌂

a keen intellect

C O V E R S T O R Y


⌂ the character and the emotion of the piece. It’s the same with Beethoven. Brendel kept talking about getting to the bottom of every key – one of the most basic things, but so easy to forget. That creates a fantastic projecting sound, a way of engaging with the keyboard that really speaks.

‘You also have to have an interest in everything else that’s going on – all the supposedly redundant notes in a chord, for instance. You’re actually engaged with all of it. Normally, at music college, you practice in a shoe box but you have to play with four times the intensity in a concert hall. It’s hard to train yourself to do that because it seems so uncomfortable, so loud. I have quite an average piano at home – deliberately – because it helps so much coping with different pianos. It’s terrible if you have a wonderful piano at home, because then you’re always disappointed when you’re travelling around! I’m fairly unfussy. A piano has got to be really bad before I get upset about it.’

Does he have any sympathy with people like Michelangeli, cancelling concerts because the piano was not to his liking? ‘Well, I think it’s probably a way of transferring your nerves onto something else,’ he says. ‘I’m not completely dismissive of people like that because you’ve got to find some way of dealing with those things – but I think you make your life more unhappy.’ Does he get nervous? ‘I’ve been lucky. I don’t really suffer from them. If I have, then it’s only been for a short period. If I’m feeling nervous on the day of a concert I generally try to take a long bath and quietly mull it over. Nerves are very irrational. They don’t correspond with reality. I play better when I’m not nervous. I don’t agree with people who say you need adrenaline to play well. Playing a concert in conflict, you can’t have a conversation with the audience. The best conversations are when you are really relaxed. Of course it’s difficult in a concert to have the same outlook as you would at two o’clock in the morning talking to one of your best friends, but that’s what you have to aim for.’

Oh dear. That’s the trouble with a good talker like Osborne. We’ve been chatting for half an hour, wandering engagingly up and down the byways, and I’ve forgotten that what I’m here to talk about is his latest recording: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition paired intriguingly with Prokofiev’s Sarcasms and Visions fugitives. ‘Pictures is such an amazing shape and concept for a piece and so incredibly done,’ he says. ‘I played it at college and since then I’ve probably played it more than any other piece. It feels really part of me.

‘On a superficial level, I thought it would be nice to pair Pictures with Visions fugitives, but I really wanted to record the Prokofiev. Not an obvious coupling, but there is something in the first of the Sarcasms which corresponds with Mussorgsky – that kind of light brutality.’ I ask him if he is happy with the results. His reply is admirably honest. ‘You never get everything that you really want. The problem is how you get something really visceral like a concert performance. The first take usually has it, but the longer you keep on, the more difficult it is to retain that initial intensity.’

Raised in Linlithgow, Osborne has a solidly middle-class background. Both his parents played the piano a bit and shared a love of duets. ‘My dad was a civil engineer but he played the organ as a locum in various churches. My mum was a pharmacist.’ He has a brother, a couple of years older, who started out as a cellist. ‘We both went to the Royal Northern College of Music [RNCM] but he got an injury in his arm. He wasn’t sure, anyway, whether he wanted to do music as a profession. He ended up training to be an accountant. He’s now head of finance and administration at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. It’s rather nice. He pays my cheques!’

The moment when a child first shows exceptional musical talent is always memorable. Osborne clearly remembers picking out by ear the tunes of nursery rhymes and playing them with one finger. And then there were his parents’ records. ‘There was a mixture: Oklahoma; the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. If I had to take one disc to my desert island, it would be the ‘Pastoral’. I can’t hear it and not feel happy.

‘When I was about seven, apparently I told my mum that I couldn’t live without the piano. When I was 10, I went to St


C O v e R S T O R Y



c o v e r s t o r y

Mary’s Music school [in edinburgh, attached to the cathedral]. one of the teachers there had heard me in a competition when I was eight or nine and came up to my mother and said: “you should think about music school”. It was an amazing place – only about 40 pupils – with a lot of influential people there, but chiefly Nigel Murray, the head of music, one of the those really inspirational figures. He had such a broad view of music and what music was about. He had this way of making you curious.

‘After that I went to the rNcM, where I had an amazing teacher – richard Beauchamp, a New Zealander, a very musical man and very interested in the physical set-up, physiology, how do you work best with your muscles so you’re not working against them.’ (osborne, by the way, can stretch a 10th ‘or an 11th at a push’). ‘renna Kellaway was my main influence,’ he continues. ‘she was great. she really got down to the nitty-gritty of how you strengthen your fingers and things like that. she gave me more of the tools I needed. If the fingers aren’t strong you have to compensate with your arm – that tightens up and you’re really limited.’

As to osborne’s future recordings, all the stravinsky works for piano and orchestra are already in the can. At the end of the year he’ll be setting down rachmaninov’s second sonata and corelli variations, and Medtner’s B flat minor sonata. Away from the classical repertoire, osborne has always had an interest in jazz. But what he is more passionate about is free improvisation – ‘where you start travelling without knowing what is going to happen’.

‘I’ve done quite a bit of that in concert,’ he says. I actually taught improvisation at the University of connecticut about 10 years ago. We started off just improvising on simple modes, experimenting with different rhythmic and structural approaches. It’s fascinating because you see really transparently what someone’s like when they improvise. And it’s been really important for my classical stuff. I’ve been much more in touch with my musical personality, so to speak, as a result.’

How does he define that personality? He doesn’t, I observe, like frippery or hyphenated composers, and, unusually for a pianist, has no affinity with chopin. ‘I want to get to the essence of something,’ he says. ‘I want to play music that is directly engaged – like Beethoven. As a performer, it might sound pretentious but there are two main pitfalls: one is that you feel horribly on the spot and worried you’re going to make a fool of yourself; and the other is that you just love being looked at and you think you’re fantastic. Both those cut off the possibility of communicating.’

can he tell me what he thinks marks him out from his peers? For once, this fluent talker is flummoxed. He answers hesitantly. ‘I don’t know how much this distinguishes me and I don’t want to sound immodest, but integrity has always been enormously important to me. I’ve almost consciously run away from cheap things, musical gimmicks to score easy points. that’s partly why I’m attracted to complex music.’

Steven Osborne’s Mussorgsky/Prokofiev disc is out now on Hyperion

‘There’s a never-ending stream of masterpieces to learn. It depends on what I am aching to do’



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W A G N E R B I C E N T E N A R Y

Wagner for seasoned pianists and amateur musicians

IN THE 19TH CENTURY, ARRANGEMENTS OF Richard Wagner’s operas and orchestral works were produced for all manner of ensembles. The photograph on

the right, of a catalogue of Wagner arrangements printed on the back cover of a Breitkopf & Härtel publication, serves as an excellent illustration of this. On the le� is a list of the piano scores of entire operas, intended either for practice purposes or as a way of acquainting the user with the works. The catalogue then lists arrangements of individual orchestral works or opera fragments and various potpourri fantasies. There are even some arrangements for pedagogical purposes (Leichte Stücke für den Unterricht). In addition to works for solo piano, there are also arrangements for other standard ensembles, from violin-piano and cello-piano duos to arrangements for wind instruments, organ and larger chamber ensembles. Notably, the catalogue features a wealth of arrangements for the harmonium and for piano-harmonium duos, harking back to the time when the organ harmonium was a standard feature of many homes. The one category missing from this catalogue is that of concert transcriptions, generally produced by the great piano virtuosi. Most signifi cant among these, from Wagner’s perspective, was Franz Liszt.

Franz Liszt and his studentsFranz Liszt (1811-1886) was by far the most signifi cant pianist and piano arranger in Wagner’s social circle. Liszt’s impact on Wagner’s life and career took various forms. They had a personal friendship (albeit, at times, a problematic one) as well as a musical relationship: Liszt organised concerts dedicated to

Wagner’s music and, as one of the most infl uential musicians of the day, did much to further the cause of Wagner’s operas. Indeed, his 15 piano arrangements of Wagner’s operatic music form an integral part of Liszt’s work. In the 1840s-60s, Liszt was a far more renowned musical fi gure than Wagner, and the scores of

January marks the beginning of bicentenary celebrations for RICHARD WAGNER, the pioneering opera composer whose works continue to inspire devoted followers throughout the

globe. Risto-Matti Marin examines the history of piano transcriptions within this oeuvre

Translation by David Hackston

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[pics in, no credit for the scanned image, but portraits are all © Tully Potter Collection. Scanned image needs to appear on fi rst page, quite large if possible, please.]

bicentenaryWagner

23_25_IP0113_Wagner signed off by Claire.indd 23 05/12/2012 11:02:11


his arrangements were widely distributed throughout Europe. Liszt’s arrangements are examples of concert transcriptions, the elite among piano arrangements. They were intended to be performed in public and not to be used merely as practice material or for performance at home like the arrangements listed in the Breitkopf & Härtel catalogue. The idea of piano arrangements as a substitute for sound recordings, a notion prevalent to this day, did not apply to concert transcriptions, which were conceived as independent artistic entities with a status separate from that of the original work, though a link to the original naturally existed. In this category of arrangement, the personality of the arranger is brought to the fore. Wagner’s full-bodied, colourful orchestration presents great challenges to any arranger, who, using the piano’s somewhat more limited means, must aspire to reproduce an expressive palette equal to and as diverse as that of the symphony orchestra.

Liszt’s exceptional command of the keyboard and of the piano’s expressive possibilities is exemplified in his Wagner arrangements. Published in 1849, his arrangement of the overture to Tannhäuser is a towering example of his skill; here, he succeeds in making pianistic fireworks an organic part of the original’s sublime pathos. Liszt’s Wagner arrangements reveal much about his own stylistic development. The 1859 work Phantasiestück über Motive aus Rienzi Santo Spirito cavaliere is closely related to the fantasies that Liszt produced based on Italian and French operas, which he performed regularly at the height of his career. In this work, Liszt incorporates an array of bravura techniques from rapid octave passages to ‘three-hand illusions’ in the manner of Thalberg. If we compare the Rienzi fantasy to Liszt’s final Wagner arrangement, the Feierlicher Marsch zum heiligen Gral aus Parsifal (1882), we can see the illuminated asceticism of Liszt’s later style shining through. In the Parsifal arrangement, there is no longer any trace of pianistic brilliance for brilliance’s sake; rather, Liszt’s whole approach to Wagner’s music now seems more introspective and profoundly intimate. This same simple beauty can be heard in Liszt’s Am Grabe Richard Wagners, written in memory of Wagner in 1883, which can also be seen as a fantasy on motifs from Parsifal. In all of Liszt’s Wagner arrangements, Liszt’s own voice is always present.

Several of Liszt’s pupils also went on to become notable Wagner arrangers. Of his early students, Karl Klindworth

W a g n E r B I c E n T E n a r y(1830-1916) and Hans von Bülow (1830-1894) are perhaps the most closely associated with Wagner. Klindworth prepared the first piano scores of many of Wagner’s operas, while Hans von Bülow’s Wagner catalogue includes both piano scores and concert transcriptions. Klindworth’s arrangements were intended solely for personal study and practice. For this reason, he was unable to deviate from the original scores or add any pianistic decoration. The same asceticism applies to Bülow’s piano scores; even Bülow’s concert transcriptions are a touch too literal and sound rather stuffy in performance.

carl Tausig (1841-1871) acquainted himself with Bülow’s piano score of Tristan and Isolde while visiting Wagner’s home. Tausig was later to prepare his own splendid three-part suite for piano on themes from the same opera. Tausig is often considered to have been Liszt’s most accomplished student, and he was admired not only by Wagner and Liszt but also by Johannes Brahms

and his great patron Eduard Hanslick. Tausig’s Wagner arrangements combine a deep understanding of the original works and the freedom to integrate pianistic figurations into the texture. all the pianistic effects used are in perfect balance with the structural integrity of the music. For instance, in his arrangement of the Ride of the Valkyries, Tausig develops increasingly intricate textures to lend the arrangement a sense of expressive abundance. Though the figurations mark a radical departure from Wagner’s original, they always remain in clear relation to the overall form of the work. The great crescendo towards the end is created simply through the relentless motion of ever-denser textures.

Tausig’s arrangements are technically challenging, but the Wagner arrangements of Liszt’s Bohemian student

august Stradal (1860-1930) are, in places, almost impossible to perform. as well as studying with Liszt, Stradal was also a pupil of another significant piano pedagogue, Theodor Leschetizky, and studied with anton Bruckner. Stradal’s catalogue of arrangements is immense, yet it has been almost entirely forgotten since his death. He produced seven Wagner arrangements in total, ranging from the standard piano-reduction style of his solo piano arrangement of the Wesendonck Lieder to the highly challenging and virtuosic transcription of the Ride of the Valkyries.

⌂

Wagner at the piano



Other notable 19th-century Wagner arrangersThere were notable Wagner arrangers outside Liszt’s immediate circle, too. Of greatest interest is perhaps Louis Brassin (1840-1884), the Belgian student of Beethoven’s student Ignaz Moscheles. Brassin arranged a five-part piano suite from the Ring tetralogy, comprising the movements Walhalla, Sigmund’s Liebesgesang, Feuerzauber, Walkürenritt and Waldweben. Brassin’s arrangements are conceived in more of a ‘salon style’ than those of Liszt or Tausig and do not appear to strive towards an orchestral weight of sound. They display two prevalent features: firstly, they are meticulously constructed as regards the physicality of the keyboard and the hands, making them pleasant to play. Secondly, Brassin highlights the sonic dimensions of Wagner’s music, so much so that at times the music sounds almost like the piano music of the Impressionists, lending his arrangements an exceptional sheen. Brassin’s arrangement of Feuerzauber was the first Wagner arrangement ever to be recorded, when the legendary pianist Josef Hoffmann played it on to a phonographic roll in 1896. Later, in 1923, he also made a studio recording, which ranks among the greatest commercial recordings he ever made.

Like Brassin, Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925) and Ernest Schelling (1876-1939) also strove towards arrangements that explored Wagner’s timbral dimensions while remaining technically ergonomic. Moszkowski’s arrangements of the Venusberg music from Tannhäuser and Isolde’s Liebestod come close to Liszt’s arrangements in the sheer richness of their sound. Schelling’s arrangement of the overture to Tristan and Isolde is like a notated improvisation. Schelling, student of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, makes notable departures from the original score with regard to pianistic figurations, and truly succeeds in making this an independent work for piano. Paderewski’s recording of Schelling’s Tristan arrangement is one of the most towering performances of any Wagner transcription.

Wagner arrangements at the Fin de SiècleTwo of the most significant pianists of the late 19th century, Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) and Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938) also felt the influence of Wagner’s music. Both made Wagner arrangements, though Busoni produced only one.

In his youth, Busoni was something of a Wagnerian, though later in his career he made a clear break with Wagner’s style. Busoni’s arrangement of the funeral march from Götterdämmerung is one of the best Wagner arrangements of all time. Like Liszt and Tausig, Busoni uses the full gamut of pianistic expression in conjuring his own vision of Wagner’s original. Busoni’s fingering solutions, figurations and ‘orchestral’ approach represent the same deep understanding of the piano’s idiosyncrasies that he developed much later in his volumes of Klavierübung.

In addition to ingenious virtuoso arrangements, Leopold Godowsky’s oeuvre encompasses both original works and a wealth of pedagogical material. Godowsky arranged volumes of operatic and orchestral repertoire for his students, and his Wagner arrangements belong to this category. Though their

W a G n E r B I c E n T E n a r y

levels of technical difficulty are deliberately kept to a minimum, these arrangements are well crafted; very subtly, Godowsky makes the piano sound far more fully than his simple notation suggests. Through these arrangements, the student not only has access to excellent music but can deepen his or her understanding of the piano’s sonic possibilities. Godowsky’s Wagner arrangements deserve to re-establish themselves as standard pedagogical material.

From Glenn Gould to the present dayafter the Second World War, arrangements seemed to disappear from musical life. a change in aesthetics notwithstanding, one reason may be the advent of radio and the recording industry. recordings soon replaced sheet music as the primary method of music dissemination, and the practice of ‘domestic music-making’ began to dwindle. The tradition of arranging, however, continued as a performer’s art, albeit one that was considered of less value than compositional art.

However, a number of interesting Wagner arrangements were produced after the Second World War. Perhaps the most important among them are those by Glenn Gould (1932-1982). Gould’s passion for the possibilities of studio technology can be heard in his Wagner arrangements, recorded in 1973. Of these, only his transcription of the Sieg fried Idyll can be played entirely with two hands. The opening of his transcription of the overture to Die Meistersinger is written for two hands, but about halfway through there appears a part for a third hand. Gould originally recorded these separately using multitrack technology. The arrangement of Sieg fried’s Rhine Journey also features a third hand. Gould’s Wagner arrangements divide opinion, partly because of his use of studio technology. Still, they form an integral part of Gould’s artistry. His performances of Wagner – like his Bach recordings – reveal his understanding of polyphony and stern rhythmic structures.

The age of Wagner transcriptions is not over, though plenty of recordings of the original works are available. Successive generations of pianists enthuse over Wagner’s music and wish to share their own visions through arrangements. It would appear that pianists still wish to interpret arrangements by Liszt, Tausig and others in concert. Moreover, the piano scores by Klindworth and others still help musicians acquaint themselves with Wagner’s operas just as much as when they were first published. Using these and, say, Godowsky’s pedagogical arrangements, amateur pianists and young players now have full access to Wagner’s world.

The opening of Gould’s transcription of the overture to Die Meistersinger is written for two hands, but about halfway through there appears a part

for a third hand


i n r e t r o s p e c t

LamentabLy, the pubLication a decade ago of my article on alexander brailowsky’s

prodigious career (Sovereign Command, IP, september/october 2002) does not seem to have bolstered the pianist’s reputation appreciably, for highly diverse and often misconceived opinions about him still abound. For example, a Wikipedia article stating the brailowsky reached his zenith between the two world wars and thus implying that he descended abruptly and irreversibly into eclipse thereafter is a particularly egregious distortion. in contrast, James methuen-campbell presents a more positive assessment of the calibre and durability of brailowsky’s career in the New Grove Dictionary, opining that ‘his warm personality and discernment in presenting effective recital programmes ensured a lasting success’ and lauding his ‘cleanly articulated phrasing and technical panache.’

others have decried brailowsky as a perfunctory musician whose interpretative affinities were ill-suited to the most sublime works of beethoven and schubert. seymour bernstein, despite his esteem for brailowsky, has voiced some dismay over his idol’s seemingly non-intellectual approach to music and unwillingness or inability to offer specific pedagogical advice during the handful of coaching sessions brailowsky was able to accommodate annually.

piano devotees are thus confronted by a bewildering farrago of divergent claims about brailowsky. the resulting confusion warrants an examination

of how these conflicting statements comport with the historical record.

seymour bernstein recounts a rare traumatic session with his maître brailowsky prompted by disagreement over a tempo indication in beethoven’s op 110 sonata that underscores how greatly our urtext-obsessed age diverges from the Leschetizky era in matters of beethoven interpretation and musical scholarship. in defense of brailowsky, it should be noted that he, benno moiseiwitsch, and mark hambourg took particular pride in being able to trace their musical lineage directly to beethoven via Leschetizky’s studies with beethoven’s disciple czerny, who claimed that the titanic composer was capricious in the performance of his piano sonatas. Ferdinand ries, a beethoven pupil, is quoted by anton schindler as observing that beethoven varied his tempi widely to produce subtle emotional colorations. For example, in the execution of a crescendo passage in one of his sonatas he introduced ‘a ritard, which produced a beautiful and highly striking effect.’

if ries’s accounts are reliable, beethoven seems to have emphasised dramatic conception and rhetoric over scrupulous observance of textual minutiae, and the interpretations of many of today’s beethoven specialists would, if the composer were now in our midst, no doubt strike him as arid. brailowsky and his contemporaries, their adherence to long obsolete von buelow editions notwithstanding, thus saw themselves as true exponents of the beethoven tradition

chopin specialist AlexAnder BrAilowsky (1896-1976) remains largely forgotten or misunderstood, despite his notable career. John Joswick sets the historical record straight


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26_29_IP0113_InRetrospect_CJ.indd 26 05/12/2012 13:07:50

January/February 2013 International Piano 27⌂

given their anecdotal knowledge of the composer’s performance practices. The scholarly focus of these pianists was confined largely to exploring a composer’s mind-set and milieu to illuminate the meaning underlying the notes. An obsession with textual matters would have been considered pedantic. Brailowsky’s attitude toward the interpretation of Beethoven and other monumental composers was by no means cavalier. He considered knowledge of the scores of Beethoven’s symphonies and string quartets an essential underpinning for interpreting the piano sonatas. He had also been influenced by hearing Busoni in Beethoven. Bernstein might well be astonished to learn that Brailowsky’s debut in 1919 was not in one of the hackneyed virtuoso vehicles but in Beethoven’s G major concerto under Camille Chevillard. For many years he also pondered including the Hammerklavier sonata in his recital repertoire.

The related misconception that Brailowsky was preoccupied with the virtuosic side of piano playing to the detriment of musical values, which is also Bernstein’s assumption, is a regrettable consequence of the piano legend’s reluctance to speak about his artistic convictions. From the inception of his career, Brailowsky, in various publications, vehemently denied that routine scales and exercises were part of his daily practice regimen. He asserted repeatedly that technique should always be subordinated to musical expression and once loftily described the virtuoso as ‘a missionary of the musical gospel.’ As the following excerpt from The Training of a Pianist (The Etude, February 1949) substantiates, his principles were largely in accord with Bernstein’s:

The pianist who spends half his life training his fingers to feats of strength, speed, and skill does not necessarily make himself a musician. During the average concert season, one is made all too aware, alas, of the number of young aspirants who give the impression of having a splendid technical equipment – a well-developed means of voicing musical utterance – but with nothing to utter in a musically revealing way.

Bernstein, who no doubt regarded Brailowsky as a potential wellspring of

pianistic and musical insight, found his quest for such knowledge thwarted by the veteran performer’s apparent ineffectuality as a teacher. Brailowsky rarely did more than demonstrate his own conceptions of the works Bernstein presented for comment and, when asked for the secret of his so-called dimensional tone, would reply unhelpfully, as if he had been asked to explain something ineffable, ‘What do you mean, how do I produce my tone? It is an expression of my soul!’ Similarly, Arthur Rubinstein once proclaimed to a BBC interviewer who pressed him for the secret of his expressive tone, ‘Quite frankly, I don’t know how I do it!’

What comes to light through Bernstein’s encounters with Brailowsky is the contrast in attitudes toward pedagogy between virtuosos rooted in the 19th century and those of our era. Like his friend Rachmaninov, Brailowsky believed pianistic ability to be innate and thus only minimally improvable through teaching. These sentiments derived from figures such as Leschetizky, Liszt, Busoni, and Anton Rubinstein, who did not espouse specific methods but focused solely on encouraging talented pupils to become self-reliant interpreters.

Although Bernstein was the only pianist Brailowsky, despite his disinclination to teach, was willing to hear a few times each year for two decades, he also counselled or worked intensively for short periods with William Kapell, Joao de Souza Lima, Yara Bernette, Leo Nadelmann, the French resistance fighter Francois Lang, Eve Curie and Raymond Lewenthal among others. He once even discussed an approach to an accord glissando in one of the Brahms Paganini Variations with Rudolf Serkin. During these more limited encounters, Brailowsky, in contrast to Bernstein’s experiences with him, reportedly was willing to impart specific technical and interpretative advice. The personality of each pupil apparently dictated his approach. The Swiss pianist Leo Nadelmann, who sought Brailowsky’s insights into the complete works of Chopin in 1940, recalled spending ‘three unforgettable weeks’ with the renowned Chopin interpreter during which ‘we played Chopin from morning to night,

examining his complex works over and over again.’ In point of fact, Brailowsky presented highly articulate statements on rotational motion, pedalling, and tone production in various interviews. Indeed, in the following excerpt from An Approach to Chopin Playing (The Etude, February 1944), he was less reticent about tone production than he had been with Bernstein:

While it is extremely difficult to offer any general counsels on the way in which to secure tone quality, I may say that the thing to watch for in attacking Chopin’s chords and octaves is the approach. Do not let the attack fall noisily from above, with full body weight concentrated in the shoulders or upper arms. Do concentrate the body weight in the forearms and the wrists and hands, allowing the attack to reach the keys firmly, forcefully, yet with that sense of sinking deep into the keys that precludes all hardness.

In Master Secret of a Great Teacher (The Etude, June 1925), Brailowsky referred to ‘a natural flow of energy to the keyboard, through the arms, from the shoulders’ with the fingers prepared in advance of each attack rather than permitting the ‘hand to jump spasmodically and hysterically toward the keys in a kind of musical epilepsy.’

Seymour Bernstein’s autobiographical Monsters and Angels: Surviving a Career in Music the sequel to this pianist’s major pedagogical work With Your Own Two Hands, is a telling exposition of the often brutal realities confronting those who pursue careers in music – a profession ‘fraught with frustration, deception, and heartache’. Nevertheless, as both books compellingly demonstrate, music has intrinsic values that transcend these mundane considerations. Bernstein’s gallery of monsters and angels is populated by several of the 20th century’s most distinguished performers and pedagogues, including his esteemed mentors Sir Clifford Curzon and Alexander Brailowsky. The observations on Brailowsky are noteworthy because they rescue a particularly generous musical angel from relative obscurity more then 35 years after his death by rightly recalling not only that his popularity rivalled that of Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz but that his amiable personality, in contrast to some of his colleagues, was informed by an unfailing graciousness and selfless concern for others.

I N R E T R o S P E C T


Finally, Bernstein raises the issue of what some perceived as a decline in Brailowsky during the 1960s and speculates about the possibility of senility or some specific malady. Having enjoyed several extended conversations with the pianist in the mid-1970s, I can attest that, aside from the effects of sciatica and osteoporosis of the spine, no debilitating illness or neuropsychiatric impairment was evident, and Brailowsky’s brother-in-law of 40 years, the eminent neuroscientist Alexander G Karczmar, MD, PhD, has confirmed my impression. Indeed, whenever I would have the pleasure of visiting with Brailowsky, he would with great wit and animation regale me for hours nonstop with detailed memories of his career interspersed by demonstrations at the piano.

There was, however, an aspect of Brailowsky’s psychological makeup that may have eluded some observers and may not have been evident to Bernstein given the time limitations imposed by Brailowsky’s frenetic touring schedule. Although invariably congenial, he would often extricate himself from socially awkward or embarrassing situations by becoming aloof or appearing to enter a trancelike state as a defense mechanism. He once described himself as being ‘intriguingly withdrawn’ and spoke of deliberately cultivating such a state. Conductor Massimo Freccia reported that Brailowsky at a luncheon that caused him social discomfort began going through the motions of playing Mozart’s K 488 concerto on a tabletop and became entirely oblivious to the other guests.

What also belies the notion of deterioration is the sheer scope of Brailowsky’s professional activities in the 1960s and beyond, for he continued to concertise extensively throughout Europe and North America during the 1960s, offering substantial recital programmes as well as several abbreviated Chopin cycles for the composer’s sesquicentennial in 1960. He also returned to then Soviet Russia in 1961 for the first time in 50 years for recitals and concerto performances in leading cities and was even offered a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory. His artistic activities extended into the 1970s and included performances, interviews with

Radio Canada, and adjudication at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, where he had previously served on the piano jury in 1956 and 1964, in 1972 at the age of 76 in the company of Gilels, Fleischer and others.

Another contention is that the alleged erosion of Brailowsky’s psychological and physical health was paralleled by a precipitous downturn in pianistic prowess and interpretative insight. In point of fact, Brailowsky’s keyboard

fluency and level of musical inspiration fluctuated perplexingly throughout his career. Bryce Morrison, who has conceded Brailowsky’s ‘immense fame and stature,’ concurs with this view and has characterised the artist as having been ‘wildly inconsistent.’ Some commentators found his playing at times headlong and percussive in the late 1940s through the 1950s, whereas the post-1960 period was perceived as being marked by greater mellowness and renewed artistic commitment recalling the best playing of his earlier years. In March 1959, Harold Schonberg lauded Brailowsky’s ‘dashing account’ in Carnegie Hall of the Liszt B minor sonata and the ‘high degree of nuance with phrases carefully built up and released’ that informed his diverse program. A reviewer in the British Times also extolled a 1958 Brailowsky performance of the Liszt sonata in Festival Hall ‘as a magnificent interpretation … of a richness of keyboard orchestration and pungent phrasing rarely heard on the concert platform,’ although minor reservations were voiced about other portions of the programme.

A few broadcast recordings substantiating that Brailowsky remained

capable of performing at a high level after 1960 can also be cited. For example, a tape of a noteworthy April 1962 collaboration with Louis de Froment and the Luxembourg Radio Orchestra in the Schumann concerto evidences technically secure, emotionally engaged, and expressive playing that surpasses what can be heard from the documentation of a September 1955 traversal of the same concerto with Adrian Boult at the helm. The finale of the concerto in the 1962 version is dispatched with a verve and artistic commitment that would have been unattainable by a pianist on the verge of senility.

On the other hand, the March 1967 Carnegie Hall Chopin recital discussed by Bernstein did not exhibit the more uniform excellence of the New York programmes given in 1962 and 1965. Nevertheless, I still vividly recall his stirring account of the concluding Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise and the thundering ovation it elicited from the capacity audience. The image of his literally sprinting unto the platform and pouncing at the keyboard to repeat the Op 25, No 12 ‘Ocean’ Etude followed by a dozen encores remains indelibly impressed in my mind.

A survey of Brailowsky’s recordings reveals a similar pattern of fluctuation in quality rather than continuous decline. Despite the prevailing opinion that Brailowsky reached the acme of his success as a commercial recording artist in the late 1930s, his much-vaunted 1938 London HMV discs are arguably outstripped by some of his last recordings for RCA in 1957 and 1958 as well as, perhaps, by one or two of his Schumann interpretations and the Saint-Saens and Rachmaninov C minor concertos. A 1958 encores compilation contains, for example, the most convincing of his three recorded versions of Scriabin’s tumultuous D-sharp minor etude, and the purling legato in the passagework of Chopin’s trifling Trois Ecossaises evident in the 1958 recording makes the execution of the same pieces in the 1938 production seem laboured by comparison (some of these recordings from the 1950s were reissued on BMG 09026-68164 and 68165). Interestingly, the rhythmically robust account of

I N R E T R O S P E C T


⌂

‘The pianist who spends half his life training his fingers to feats of strength, speed, and skill does not necessarily make himself a musician’ From The Training oF a PianisT, The eTude, February 1949


Chopin’s Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise from Brailowsky’s final Columbia Masterworks sessions in April 1963 (reissued in France in 1989 on CBS CD MPK 45554) ranks among his best studio efforts. Also notable is the unissued material recorded by French Philips between 1959 and 1961 for Columbia Masterworks that now has fallen into obscurity because most of the master tapes and session information appear to have vanished. On the other hand, some of the mid-1950s RCA recordings intended to display Brailowsky’s affinity for Liszt seem curiously lacklustre and wanting in the pianist’s usual assurance.

What factors may account for the variability that informed Brailowsky’s playing from the inception of his career?

Rumours of Brailowsky’s Russian proclivity for heavy social drinking circulated in the late 1920s and early 1930s during the period of the pianist’s contract with Polydor. Henry Chwast, a Polish friend of the Karczmar family living in Paris, accompanied Brailowsky on a tour of Scandinavia before his 1931 marriage to Ela Karczmar and reported that both he and the pianist had spent many nights ‘drinking mightily’ throughout the tour. It is imperative to emphasise, however, that there is no evidence that Brailowsky, unlike Josef Hofmann, was afflicted by alcoholism. By dint of sheer discipline augmented by stern post-marriage measures imposed by his new wife, the pianist was transformed into a virtual teetotaler and was able to pursue his career without disruption. He is not known to have relapsed, and I perceived no signs of alcohol consumption during my conversations with him. Any lapses, however, would inevitably have had short-term deleterious effects.

Ela Brailowsky once observed to me that her husband possessed such a phenomenal musical facility that he was seemingly able to assimilate reams of music almost instantaneously without always immediately seeking to hone thorny passages to the highest level of Fingerfertigkeit before beginning to experiment with performance possibilities. Brailowsky’s mother would sometimes chide her son for a lack of Sitzfleisch in his practising for fear this tendency might give some observers the

impression of nonchalance. Brailowsky prized virtuosity and could always summon the requisite brilliance when he felt disposed to do so, but his paramount aim was to communicate with his audiences through music – to musizieren rather than to wow his listeners with tawdry pianistic stunts. The quest for achieving perfection in sterile recording studios thus did not always engage his interest. RCA producer Richard Mohr described Brailowsky as once leaving a session in some displeasure and asking the engineer to select the take with the fewest mistakes. Gyorgy Sandor commented that recordings could never convey the highly individualistic approach of a Brailowsky.

As an audience-oriented musician, Brailowsky’s deepening awareness of a major transformation in the nature of performance over the course of his career undoubtedly contributed to the pensiveness and nostalgia he sometimes manifested in his later years. In the early decades of the 20th century, recitalists and audiences interacted directly, and the primitive recordings of that era were regarded as mere momentos of an artist. Brailowsky averred that ‘I have a passion for my art and the taste for communicating through it with others.’ He elaborated on the nature of that communion by noting that ‘There is no such thing as an unresponsive audience; different people respond to different things. The pianist must make them respond! It is up to him to make the audience understand what he is trying to say. If he doesn’t have that “sparkle,” that special ability to communicate, he fails to make contact with his listeners.’

By the 1950s, however, recordings had substantially altered the personal, creative dimension of this interchange by supplanting the concert experience with a medium that invited listeners to analyse and compare the minutest details of interpretations and to place performers in hierarchies accordingly. The ability to edify and uplift through the concert experience came to matter less.

As stated in my 2002 article, Brailowsky had a chameleonic susceptibility to his environment when playing. The presence of receptive listeners could elicit moments of breathtaking brilliance and

spontaneity from him. I still vividly recall his illustrating passages from Chopin’s B-flat minor Nocturne, Schumann’s Humoresque and first Novelette, and the Grieg sonata when he was in his late seventies. I marvelled at his uncontrived rubato and expressivity and mused that he would have felt more constrained and self-conscious in some performing or recording situations. Bernstein aptly described Brailowsky’s demonstrations at the piano as creating the sense ‘that the music was playing him, and not the other way around.’ Brailowsky’s Ampico roll of Chopin’s ubiquitous Op 9, No 2 Nocturne, which features more sensitive, less constrained agogics than are evident from his three commercial versions for the phonograph, gives some sense of his capabilities when he was most inspired and uninhibited.

In a brief interview from the 1972 Queen Elisabeth Competition excerpted for a DVD (A Queen’s Competition, Cypres 1105), Brailowsky, when he was asked if piano playing had ‘evolved’ and young pianists had come to play ‘differently’, replied that he believed this observation to be true but perhaps with a tinge of irony implied that it was technical proficiency that had evolved without commensurate development in musical expression and the cultivation of a strong interpretative personality. He would often lament to me that pianists – particularly highly gifted competition victors – who had no ability to engage the interest of concertgoers were establishing careers solely through recordings.

Whatever else may be said about Brailowsky, he derived as much pleasure from communicating through the piano as his audiences did in hearing him. The aphorism ‘Happy is the man whose vocation is his hobby’ he frequently quoted in relation to himself is especially telling in this context. The piano was so much an extension of his being that he seemed to embody the notion that ‘playing the piano is experienced as a Gestalt, a totality of activity enjoyed from childhood as naturally and unconsiciously as any other form of play’ (Harold Taylor, The Pianist’s Talent, Taplinger, 1982). He admirably embodied Bernstein’s ideal of self-integration. e


I N R E T R O S P E C T



Great musicians today come in many shapes and sizes, to say nothing of ages,

nationalities and stylistic inclinations. nevertheless, there is one man whose artistic stature seems to cast most others into the shade, whether it is for the music he writes, the works he conducts or the influence he has had on generations of younger composers and performers. notorious for his outspoken tendencies in his youth but revered by even the most hard-bitten orchestral players, his star has never dimmed. He is, of course, Pierre Boulez.

i was fortunate enough to meet Boulez at the Lucerne Festival in the summer, where he was giving conducting masterclasses and had hoped to give a concert too, though problems following

an eye operation prevented this at the last moment. at 87, Boulez may no longer have the physical stamina that attended him when he conducted Wagner’s Ring cycle in the now legendary production by Patrice chéreau in 1976. But his mind is as incisive as ever, and still bubbling non-stop with creativity.

Boulez’s first musical training was as a pianist, and that experience has had a lasting effect on his musicianship and the way he approaches his compositions. ‘i write for the piano much more easily than for other instruments, and even more easily than for the orchestra, because it was my instrument when i was young,’ he says. ‘i was never performing in the virtuosity department, but i know what virtuosity is: i tried to be a virtuoso myself and i know the problems. the

questions are not abstract, but practical: if i put the digit like that, it will not sound well. With other instruments i have a less direct sense of the necessary technique than with the piano – therefore i like the piano.’

Boulez’s piano music is not extensive – indeed, his entire output is not especially extensive – but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in concentration and impact. His second Piano sonata, written in 1947/48, remains one of his most famous and uncompromising works, and a landmark in the canon of 20th-century piano music as a whole. so demanding is it that the great French pianist yvonne Loriod – wife of messiaen, who was Boulez’s most important teacher – is rumoured to have burst into tears at the prospect of performing it.

odern masterm

at 87, Pierre Boulez is revered for his complex writing and inspired educational work; musical spheres influenced substantially by his pianistic training. Jessica Duchen meets the conductor-composer in switzerland

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30_31_IP0113_Pierre Boulez signed off by Claire.indd 30 05/12/2012 09:41:46


Perhaps the pianist who is most familiar with Boulez’s working methods and closest to his heritage is Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who was for many years a member of Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain and has a mix of technical wizardry and inside understanding that few can match. That doesn’t mean Boulez’s work comes easily to him, of course. ‘It’s extremely challenging music,’ Aimard comments. ‘Boulez loves complexity, difficulty, virtuosity. It is one of the hardest musics to play because you have every dimension in it: the hypersensibility of a great artist, the superior thought of one of the most marvellous brains in the history of music, and this taste for challenge and virtuosity. So this mix means that the real pieces by him – not pieces like Notations for Piano, which is a youthful piece that he didn’t intend to be printed – are very often among the hardest. And, by the way, they are very little played.’

The Second Piano Sonata, he remarks, is ‘a nightmare’. ‘That’s really one of the hardest pieces ever composed. It has a level of architecture to render, and a length also [around 30 mins] which makes it one of the most demanding of all piano compositions.’

Boulez’s mind, it seems, never stops probing at new pathways, whether they are directly musical or concern music in the practical sense – the ways, means and settings with which and in which to perform it. His electronic works, and the pioneering studio he founded in Paris in the 1960s, IRCAM, broke new ground in the field, opening up a world of sounds that would have been unimaginable to any previous generation. But the piano is not exempt from his explorations and he has intriguing ideas about how the instrument itself could be further developed.

‘I tried to interest Steinway – but they were not interested – to enrich the piano like the harpsichord,’ he says. ‘To have, for instance, stops – a stop that muffles the strings, as the harpsichord has, or to allow some notes to resonate more than others. But as long as the piano does not sell to everybody, they are not interested to do that. This I regret. We can make this modification to the sound with a computer, but it is not a direct sound;

it is a sound through a loudspeaker, which is different. Also, I would like to try to make certain things easier, for example, to transform the tuning of the piano. Again, we can do this through the computer – immediately you can have everything at your disposal. But I would like much more a mutual influence between computer technology and the old instrument technology.’

Boulez has never worked rapidly, and his Third Piano Sonata still remains unfinished. Will he write any more piano music? ‘Maybe,’ he replies. ‘I am not sure. In Sur incises I’ve given an example of what I think the piano can be: virtuoso in the sense that there are a lot of notes per minute, but also in terms of the piano resonance.’ This work (written in

1996-98) is scored for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists and is a powerful example of Boulez’s fascination with timbre and resonance, musical elements that often lead him to choose instrumentation that might never occur to a more earth-bound imagination.

The virtuosity of resonance, he says, is something that ‘I did in my Third Sonata also. And that’s why I did not continue with the Third Sonata, because I looked at what I had written in the other movements and it was too close to what I had written in the two movements which are finished.’ Only two movements and a fragment of the third have been published. He kept working on it up to 1963, but he doesn’t seem to have written off entirely the idea of completing it, some 50 years on. ‘Maybe if I reach 103, like Elliott Carter, then I will do it.’

‘Creators are not always people who constantly speak about how they are creating,’ remarks Aimard. ‘But Boulez has spoken, and taught, and written. It’s not a secret that he always comes back to previous pieces to recompose them. There are ideas for materials that he prepares; he starts to work on them and gives up and comes back to them

years later, sometimes decades later. He may reuse the material in another work, make developments, make experiments, try things, achieve something, or not. Or then take the material and make something else.’

The old image of Boulez as a near-incendiary iconoclast was very much of its time. His most controversial statements – his declaration that opera houses should be burned down even saw him added to a terrorism blacklist – date from the 1950s and 1960s. It is not that Boulez is less of a firebrand today – but he is, of course, older, and also wiser. ‘I was not more radical than now,’ he reflects. ‘But I was, I suppose, more frank than now. Now I see that maybe, sometimes, given the situation, you have to be less direct

and more effective in yourself. But when things are wrong, or insufficient, or not exactly the way they should be, then you have to say so. And I did tell it, sometimes with paradox or provocation – all right, but I did not stay at this point. I am not speaking now of doing or writing the way I was in 1950. People think generally of me as a man of 1950 and not a man of today. I have to accept that.’

‘He’s an adorable person,’ says Aimard. ‘He’s very generous with his time, very dedicated to what he does and a very noble soul – which is not what his image has been.’ Boulez has been phenomenally misjudged, he feels, ‘by people who just look at this in a superficial way. One picks up a couple of sentences of some text from the youth of somebody who is polemical – and that’s all? That makes no sense. I think one should look at the complete picture of what somebody has done – and then the evidence is so high that there is no discussion any more.’

Can such a composer have a successor? Aimard believes not. ‘I think that somebody with this strength and multifaceted constructed world, and with this originality, has certainly no successor. And should not have.’

‘I write for the piano much more easily than for other instruments, and even more easily

than for the orchestra, because it was my instrument when I was young’

30_31_IP0113_Pierre Boulez signed off by Claire.indd 31 05/12/2012 09:41:52


It sounds somethIng of a neat cliché, but as I am welcomed into the charming West London

home of Brazilian pianist Clélia Iruzun and her husband Renato, there is a palpable, infectious south american warmth about the couple. Iruzun leads me to their comfortable music study, which is filled with a brace of steinways. In no time at all, conversation flows as easily as the fine Brazilian coffee, covering everything from formative influences and a fascination for philosophy to her latest recording of mompou for the somm label.

‘I’m fortunate to have met some very interesting musicians,’ she says. ‘When I was 13 I met nelson freire, who has always been a hero of mine. I played for him in his house in Rio and he said many interesting things which immediately

helped me. he then gave me sort of regular lessons, but never charged me. he used to say, “Just play for me. It’s not a lesson, it’s just listening.” sometimes he would set me pieces to learn – horrendous fugues with four or five voices – and I would think, why am I studying this? “It’s good for you,” he would say. another pianist I worked with was Jacques Klein. he’s not very well known outside Brazil, but he was a real pianist’s pianist. they were not my teachers and it was all very informal, but I was extremely lucky to have such great artists help me in the beginning of my development.’

a significant part of Iruzun’s extensive recorded output covers south american composers. ‘as a teenager I just wanted to play all the Romantic works, the big concertos – like every young pianist, I suppose. I had played Villa Lobos and

Clélia iruzun is best known for championing south american repertoire, but for her latest recording she was drawn to Catalan composer frederic mompou. Leandro Ferraccioli finds out why

R e p e R t o I R e

MoMpou

Discovering

32_33_IP0113_Repertoire signed off by Claire.indd 32 05/12/2012 09:38:48


others, but I didn’t realise just how much good music there was. Perhaps I had to leave Brazil in order to look back from another perspective and see what it had to o� er.

‘In London, when people asked me if Brazilian music was any good, my pride was a little dented. I thought I must investigate more and began listening, researching. Now I have a whole library of scores, most of which are out of print. Of course I play lots of standard repertoire in concerts, which I love, but it’s much more useful if I record things which are less well known, especially from my country. I would say it’s almost a mission.’

Iruzun is the dedicatee of a number of works by contemporary South American composer Marlos Nobre and the late Francisco Mignone, with whom she struck up an artistic kinship at the tender age of seven. She smiles fondly at the memory. ‘I met Mignone by total coincidence. He was staying in

the same hotel where I was holidaying with my family. The place was run by priests and they had a church with a little two-pedal harmonium. I was a curious child and wanted to play it, so one of the priests said, “Okay, you can play in the Sunday mass.” I couldn’t even reach the pedals; someone sat beside me and operated them while I played a short piece by Mignone called Japanese Toy. Mignone happened to be there and a� erwards told me he was the composer of the piece I’d just played.

‘Years passed then, and my piano teacher in Rio, Mercês de Silva Telles (a wonderful lady and a pupil of Claudio Arrau who knew Mignone very well), said she would teach me one of his famous waltzes and take me to play it for him. When I did play for him, we had a connection straight away – he was a lovely, gentle man. Months later, his wife called my mother and said that he had written a suite of fi ve children’s pieces for me, which I premiered in Rio. He even came to the concert. Actually, his birthday was one day a� er mine. On my 15th he celebrated his 81st along with me: we blew out the candles on the cake together. I still have the photos.’

Iruzun’s latest recording project is a recital disc of Mompou’s early Impresiones Intimas, the fi rst six Canciones y Danzas,

Pessebres and the Chopin Variations, a canon that is still woefully underplayed. ‘I don’t know why this is,’ she says. ‘His music is so special. I don’t fi nd it at all unapproachable: I hadn’t played it in my young years, but I immediately saw that he has a unique, intimate language; he’s a master of emotions.

‘The atmosphere of Mompou’s music goes beyond even Impressionists like Debussy or Ravel. It’s like there’s a complete stillness sometimes, a directness – he starts to remove bar lines, to break away from any structure that may restrict freedom. But this is di� cult. You have to free yourself completely from all that accumulated orthodox learning: we are told to respect bar lines, not to lose tempo or break lines; suddenly, you have to break with this in order to do justice to the music. It’s challenging: with Mompou it’s a journey of learning.’

I suggest we are very fortunate to have the composer’s own recordings as a reference point. ‘Yes, they are beautiful – a great inspiration and you have to respect that reference. He was a fantastic pianist and really knew how to write for the instrument. He probably had very big hands. I have reasonably big hands for my size, so normally I more or less manage, but his music has large stretches and chords. You have to get your hand loose and the balance right so you can li� some harmonics and try to hear more things coming through. You can lose yourself experimenting with the sound. That’s why, when I listened to my fi rst take of the recording yesterday, I thought, one could go on forever with Mompou – reading between the lines there is so much.’

Between being a mother to two children, giving concert tours, masterclasses and performing with the Warwick-based Coull Quartet, will there be time for more recordings? ‘Yes, there will be at least one more recording of Mompou as I want to complete the second book of dances and some other pieces. I’m also thinking of doing some Ernesto Nazareth and there are many, many other things I want to play. Lots of notes to learn!’

Clélia Iruzun’s disc Federico Mompou, Selected Works Vol 1 will be released on 17 December on the SOMM label

R E P E R T O I R E

‘With Mompou it’s a journey of learning’

32_33_IP0113_Repertoire signed off by Claire.indd 33 04/12/2012 17:08:59


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John Lewis has many cLaims to fame. of course, he’s remembered chiefly for his time with the modern

Jazz Quartet (mJQ), the group he co-led for more than 40 years. yet even before the mJQ formed in 1952, he’d appeared on some notable recordings, including charlie Parker’s Parker’s Mood and miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool, to which he contributed his own Rouge.

a prolific composer, he wrote highly regarded scores for Roger Vadim’s film No Sun in Venice (1957) and Robert wise’s thriller noir Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), and later became a leading figure in the Third stream movement of the early 1960s, which strove to combine elements of jazz and european classical music – a project Lewis had anticipated in pieces such as Vendome and Three Windows, which introduced fugue and counterpoint to the mJQ’s repertoire. Fascinated particularly

by baroque music, in the 1980s he recorded his own versions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier.

Lewis’s first love, however, was jazz; steeped in bebop, blues and swing, he saw himself primarily as an improviser, once confessing to writer Len Lyons that he never wrote out anything he played himself: ‘i invent the piano part each time. For me, improvisation is the main attraction.’ he was never a flamboyant or demonstrative performer; his elegant, concise style, a refinement of count Basie’s adroit functionalism,


IP’s jazz columnist Graham Lock suggests a clutch of recordings by John Lewis

T a k e F i V e

Take Five1. One Never Knows, from No Sun in Venice by the MJQ (Atlantic, 1957)

2. Skating in Central Park, from Odds Against Tomorrow by the MJQ (Blue Note, 1959)

3. Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West, from The Wonderful World of Jazz by John Lewis (Atlantic, 1961)

4. Gemini, from Private Concert by John Lewis (Emarcy, 1991)

5. Django, from Evolution by John Lewis (Atlantic, 1999)

John Lewis recording at the Broadcast Studios in Geneva on 5-6 July 1972 (Photo courtesy

of Jean-Jacques Becciolini/Jazclass)was directed towards the greater cohesion of the music. The members of the mJQ embodied this collective ideal, able to improvise together with the kind of polyphonic intricacy more often associated with classical string quartets. Though criticised by some for its formality and european influences (controversial in a period when black cultural nationalism was on the rise), the mJQ proved extremely popular and its style of chamber jazz was here to stay.

There are several mJQ recordings from the 1950s and 1960s i could recommend, but i’ll limit myself to just two personal favourites. One Never Knows, from No Sun in Venice, tends to be overlooked, perhaps because it doesn’t sound very ‘jazz’-like (it’s a set of improvised variations), although its melancholy theme is hauntingly beautiful: fragments of melody shimmer and float like lights on water as Lewis and vibist milt Jackson take turns to reflect on the tune. Skating in Central Park, a lilting waltz from Odds Against Tomorrow, is (in the words of critic Gunther schuller) ‘a marvel of musical integration and continuity’; Lewis, ‘the perfect inspired accompanist’, both supports Jackson’s solo and engages in elaborate interplay, piano and vibes chiming together to create what schuller calls the ‘almost magical, luminous sonority’ that is the mJQ’s unique signature. There are later live versions too, though for me, the group’s original Blue note recording achieves a matchless poise and rapport.

Lewis enjoyed a similar affinity with guitarist Jim hall, who featured on a handful of the albums the pianist made away from the mJQ, notably Grand Encounter and The Wonderful World of Jazz. Lewis wrote Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West for the former, but i prefer the latter’s more flowing, polished take. he is again the inspired accompanist, in dialogue with hall’s pellucid guitar, and here adds a sparkling solo of his own, its relaxed swing (a Lewis trademark) the ideal tempo for this urbane blues.

when the mJQ broke up in 1974, Lewis began to explore other creative avenues, such as a chamber jazz line-up with violin and flute (kansas city Breaks) and a duo partnership with fellow pianist hank Jones (an evening with Two Grand Pianos); then, in 1981, the mJQ reformed and these albums remain as tantalising signposts to roads not taken. an alternative path Lewis did continue to pursue was the solo recital, and in 1990 he took his steinway into the crystalline acoustic of new york’s church of the ascension to record Private Concert, one highlight being his minor-to-major composition Gemini. Terse, insinuating melody, spacious yet emphatic swing – imagine a synthesis of erik satie and the blues.

his final solo set, Evolution, dates from almost a decade later, just two years before his death in 2001. Lewis revisits several old favourites, though only to dissect and reconfigure them; so Django, his best-known work (a tribute to guitarist Django Reinhardt, first recorded by the mJQ in 1954), becomes an angular, attenuated tango, beset by teasing haydnesque pauses. The reworking feels experimental and valedictory at the same time, a curious blend of the edgy and the crepuscular that is utterly compelling.

Graham Lock has written several books on jazz, including Forces in Motion, Chasing the Vibration and Blutopia

35_IP0113_Take Five signed off by Claire.indd 35 04/12/2012 17:10:05


The fifTieTh anniversary of the quintessentially french composer francis Poulenc’s

death of a heart attack on 30 January 1963 is a good excuse for looking at his paradoxically pleasing piano legacy. a gifted pianist himself, Poulenc wrote a quantity of works for piano solo in addition to concertos and chamber music with piano, but openly disliked many of them. Poulenc’s statements are unambiguous, causing some problems in france, where composers’ oeuvres are either totally idolised or wholly shunned, making the idea of selective achievement difficult for some Gallic piano lovers. There is also the general question of whether a composer is necessarily the best judge of his own creations. a sophisticated author such as Poulenc, who wrote a delightful book – published in english translation in 1982 by Dobson Books but alas long out of print – explaining why he adored the music of emmanuel Chabrier, was a more acute critic of music, including his own, than many another more naïve or guileless composer for piano.

readers of Poulenc’s lucid Journal de mes Mélodies, an english translation of which, Diary of My Songs, was reprinted by Kahn & averill Publishers in 2007, or his voluminously witty letters, published by Les editions fayard as Correspondance, 1910-1963 in 1994, can only admire his self-awareness both as a man and a composer. and Poulenc was quite open and above-board in writing both for publication and in letters to friends

that he felt his solo piano works were disappointments.

This point of view is emphatically not shared by some admiring listeners, and Wilfrid Mellers’ Francis Poulenc (Oxford University Press, 1995) makes a sympathetic, if not entirely convincing, case for liking even those works denigrated by Poulenc. Uncompromisingly, Poulenc wrote: ‘it is paradoxical, but true, that my piano music is the least representative genre in my output.’ The paradox lay in the fact that Poulenc was intimately involved in piano sounds, as a pupil of the gifted virtuoso ricardo viñes, a pioneering performer of works by Debussy, ravel, and others. Poulenc even tried to explain the reasons for what he saw as his failure to compose wholly satisfying solo piano works: ‘Many of my pieces have failed because i know too well how to write for the piano...as soon as i begin writing piano accompaniments for my songs, i begin to be innovative. similarly, my piano writing with orchestra or chamber ensemble is of a different order. it is the solo piano that somehow escapes me. With it i am a victim of false pretences.’

The notion that an overabundance of knowledge or understanding about the piano led Poulenc to write badly for the instrument seems a cop-out at best. yet we can draw from his words the useful thought that he was also aware that some of his most characterful and zesty works include the piano, whether his 1932 Le Bal Masqué, a ‘profane cantata’ for

baritone, piano and chamber ensemble; his 1937 song cycle, Tel jour telle nuit setting poems by Paul Éluard; his 1946 Story of Babar, the Little Elephant (Histoire de Babar, le petit elephant) for narrator and piano; or his 1957 flute sonata. in all of these, the writing for piano is masterfully collaborative and individually expressive at the same time.

The surrealistically willful abruptness of le Bal Masqué – set to wild poems by Max Jacob – is enhanced by the festive atmosphere of the piano part. for Poulenc, an accomplished composer of sacred choral works, the piano seems to have been mostly a profane instrument to express worldly pleasures – as indeed it is in le Bal Masqué. still, in other, loftier works such as Tel jour telle nuit, in which the idealistic Éluard addressed topics from romantic love and nature to brotherly affection, Poulenc achieves a metaphysical density unusual in his piano writing, adding a keyboard postlude which Graham Johnson aptly compares to the postlude that robert schumann wrote for the pianist in his 1840 song cycle Dichterliebe. Poulenc belonged to a generation some of whom – following the example of Jean Cocteau who, despite not being a musician, proffered dictatorial opinions about music – explicitly rejected the German introspective school of piano composition. Beethoven sonatas were scorned by Cocteau as ‘music you have to listen to holding your head in your hands,’ as if the very thought of pensive, inward-

P O U L e n C a n n i v e r s a r y

Were Francis Poulenc’s piano works as bad as he believed them be? as we reach the fiftieth anniversary of the french

composer’s death, Benjamin Ivry calls for reassessment

Poulenc’s Piano legacy

36_39_IP0113_Poulenc signed off by Claire.indd 36 04/12/2012 17:11:20


p o u l e n c a n n i v e r s a r y

‘It is paradoxical, but true, that my piano music is the least representative

genre in my output’



looking keyboard sonatas was inherently ridiculous. Despite such fashionable strictures, Poulenc would create refined and sensitive piano writing for song texts he genuinely adhered to, such as Louis Aragon’s comparably idealistic C, with its allegorical references to the wartime Nazi occupation of France.

Expressing an entirely different emotional spectrum, Babar is particularly rewarding for a pianist with a strong stage presence and a sense of humour. Those fortunate enough to hear the French pianist Billy Eidi, a pupil of Magda Tagliaferro, perform Babar alongside the great Swiss tenor Hugues Cuénod as narrator will never forget the experience. Such works by Poulenc are theatrical without being superficial; indeed, their innate theatricality is profoundly pleasing because of its candidly open-hearted emotional generosity and humour. They share these permanent qualities with Poulenc’s best songs, such as Le Bestiaire (settings from 1918 and 1919 of poems about diverse fauna by Guillaume Apollinaire), not coincidentally also bringing the animal world to life via keyboard characterisations, much like Babar.

This vivacity is also present in Poulenc’s works written for piano, such as his 1953 Sonata for Two Pianos, where a combination of soloists conducts a conversation. Poulenc was surely capable of writing ephemeral music for two pianos, as such Le Voyage en Amérique and L’Embarquement pour Cythère, both from 1951, which only mean to please and succeed well enough in this limited ambition. However this is the exception, rather than the rule, for Poulenc’s work for two pianos.

When he wrote for a single pianist, even if the results were as charming as Les Soirées de Nazelles (Evenings at Nazelles) written from 1930 to 1936, the results can resemble lightweight salon music. Even though Poulenc’s inspiration for Les Soirées de Nazelles was social, as a recollection of pleasant evenings with friends gathered around the piano as he played, the musical monologue framework still prevents any enlivening spark which would turn a placidly pleasant work into a more bitingly pointed one. Poulenc was particularly

harsh about Soirées de Nazelles, feeling the need to ‘condemn [it] without reprieve.’

Given these tendencies, it is understandable that Poulenc’s 1932 Concerto for Two Pianos (Le Concerto pour deux pianos en ré mineur) is a joy to hear and perform, with its sassy mutual undercutting, as well as call and response between the soloists. As a devotee of interchanges as a group musical statement, Poulenc was inspired in part for his Two Piano Concerto after hearing a Balinese gamelan orchestra at the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exhibition. The gamelan, as an ultimate jangly expression of urban group endeavour in Asia, was understandably attractive to Poulenc, the Parisian bon viveur.

This aspect is especially audible in the recording – a performance also filmed for French TV and posted in part on YouTube.com – in which Poulenc is partnered with his old friend and fellow gay denizen of Parisian high society, the champagne-dry pianist Jacques Février. The kind of socially based exchange which is fundamental to this work can be sensed in performances by other artists, and must have been present even in 1945 at London’s Royal Albert Hall, when Poulenc performed his Concerto for Two Pianos with the composer/pianist Benjamin Britten, with whom he was barely acquainted at the time.

Characteristically, Poulenc saw his 1949 Piano Concerto as a disappointment, although it was indubitably fun for him to perform. Poulenc privately referred to his Piano Concerto as the Concerto en casquette, or Concerto While Wearing a Cap. During its amusing passages verging on burlesque, the soloist was meant to impersonate an athletic, naughty working-class humorist such as the young Maurice Chevalier, whom Poulenc admired. Although it is still performed by aspiring soloists, it clearly lacks the depth of Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos.

PouLENC WAS FIRST AND foremost a society composer in the broadest sense of the term.

Born in 1899 to wealth as an heir to what became the Rhône-Poulenc chemicals and pharmaceuticals fortune, Poulenc lived his life in cushy circumstances, although constantly crabbing about

money to his richer friends, and complaining that he had to ‘work for a living.’ I well recall a chat in Paris decades ago with the charming French publisher Gérard Worms, husband of the gifted author Jeannine Worms, who often dined out in the 1950s with Poulenc and Jean Cocteau (on separate evenings). Worms exclaimed, ‘Neither of them [Poulenc or Cocteau] ever picked up a cheque!’

Whether such stinginess ever translated into a lack of emotional generosity in Poulenc’s piano works is a moot point. More pertinent is that beyond the high society setting of Poulenc’s life – aptly enough he dropped dead in his flat in one of Paris’s poshest neighbourhoods, on the rue de Médicis just across the street from the Luxembourg Gardens – Poulenc was, more than a mere social butterfly, a devotee of interpersonal communication. The eminent choral conductor Robert Shaw once told me that Poulenc adored gossip: ‘He was like an old woman!’ Shaw chuckled. Poulenc’s finest works involving piano convey an aura of avid and much-relished discussion, whether spicy discord or mutual emphatic concord among instruments, such as his 1926 Trio for oboe, Bassoon, and Piano; his 1931-32 Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet; and his 1962 Sonata for Clarinet and Piano.

In these works, the piano, as well as solo instruments, seem to speak in human voices. As a great reader of French literature, Poulenc knew that examples of breathless gossip elevated to the rank of

P o u L E N C A N N I V E R S A R Y

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the fine arts distinguished some highly esteemed writers, from Saint-Simon and Tallemant des Réaux to Madame du Deffand. In its intensity and urgency, gossip or ‘bavardage’ to use the French term, could be the basis for permanently admirable artistic statements.

Perhaps because of their orality, wind instruments were particularly attractive to Poulenc, whereas he was less drawn to string instruments. Harsh on his solo piano works, Poulenc felt comparable dislike for his sonatas for violin and cello, with some justification. His 1929 Aubade (subtitled as a ‘Choreographic concerto’) is a hybrid work that succeeds more in its chamber aspects than in solo writing for the piano against an orchestral palette. His earlier 1927-8 Concert champêtre, intended for Wanda Landowska’s built-up Pleyel harpsichord as solo instrument, has often been performed by a solo pianist instead. Even when the piano soloist was Poulenc himself, or a keyboard artist as accomplished as Emil Gilels, the results could sound ungainly. Nor is Concert champêtre among Poulenc’s most communicative works, even when played by a harpsichordist, although it is often performed as one of the few palatable modern works for that instrument.

An effusively oral type, Poulenc always made much of his appreciation of gourmet delights and the wine available in the region of his country estate outside Tours. Reportedly a long-time cruiser at gay pickup sites around Paris, Poulenc further indulged his oral inclinations, as his now-published private letters amply state. All of these tendencies point to a composer who became himself when surrounded by and communicating with others. A social being, he might have concurred with the poem Lauds by Wystan Auden: ‘Men of their neighbours become sensible:/ In solitude, for company.’ In Poulenc’s best works, the piano is acutely sensitive to its neighbouring instruments, and the only solitude that really suits Poulenc is indeed the kind that turns out to be a form of companionship.

One exception is Poulenc’s Mouvement Perpétuel No 1 (1918), a consciously simple effort in the Erik Satie vein by a young Poulenc that gained celebrity by its inclusion on the soundtrack of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 Hollywood thriller Rope. Hitchcock scholars have long noted the director’s intermittent cinematic obsession with the subtext of homosexuality, and for this adaptation

of a 1929 play about two real-life gay child-killers, the notorious Leopold and Loeb, Hitchcock hired gay author Arthur Laurents to write a screenplay for two gay lead actors, John Dall and Farley Granger, as the murderous duo. Granger, who portrayed a pianist in the story – keyboard talent often being a Hollywood screenwriter’s tipoff that something sinister is about to occur – plays Poulenc’s Mouvement Perpétuel No 1. Practising this piece even when interrogated about the murder by a suspicious visitor, Granger at the keyboard speeds up the tempo to indicate his emotional distress, in a typical Hitchcock touch. Despite this dramatic usage, Poulenc made no major claims for his Mouvement perpetual, classing it in Me and My Friends, a 1963 book of conversations with Stéphane Audel, among his ‘modest beginner’s works, fairly infantile.’

Like the benevolent Wilfrid Mellers, we may retain a trifle more affection for Poulenc’s piano compositions than he himself did, while admitting that with his customary acumen, he may well have been correct in his judgment about them. And even if infantile, Poulenc, as composer and man, always played well with others.

P O u L E N C A N N I v E R S A R y

Poulenc: a selective discograPhyCompiled by Benjamin Ivry

Francis Poulenc Plays Poulenc and Satie (1950 recording), CBS Masterworks Portrait reprinted by ArkivCD

Composers In Person, EMI Classics, includes Poulenc’s recordings from the 1920s and 30s of such works as his Nocturnes, Novelettes, Improvisations, and Aubade for Piano and 18 instruments

Pierre Bernac & Francis Poulenc, Preiser Records, includes songs by Poulenc, Chabrier, and Ravel

The Essential Pierre Bernac, Testament Records, reprints the recordings Poulenc made with baritone Pierre Bernac, from the 1930s and 40s, their artistic peak as performing partners

Poulenc: Concertos, EMI Classics, includes the recording by Poulenc and Jacques Février of Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos in D minor conducted by Pierre Dervaux

Walter Gieseking – A Retrospective Vol 1, Pearl Records, includes Gieseking’s 1930s recording of Mouvements perpétuels

Rubinstein Collection Vol 7, RCA Victor

Red Seal, reprints Arthur Rubinstein’s 1938 recording of Poulenc’s Mouvements perpétuels

Rubinstein Collection – Works By Ravel, Poulenc, Faure, Chabrier, RCA Victor Red Seal, reissued on ArkivCD. Contains Poulenc’s Intermezzo No 2 in D flat major and No 3 in A flat major, as well as Mouvements perpétuels as interpreted by a fellow bon vivant

Horowitz – Legendary RCA Recordings, RCA Victor Red Seal, includes Poulenc’s Presto for Piano in B flat major (written in 1934) recorded in 1947 by Vladimir Horowitz

Vladimir Horowitz – The HMV Recordings 1930-1951, EMI Classics Références reissued on ArkivCD. Includes 1932 recordings of Poulenc’s Pastourelle and Toccata

Andor Foldes – Wizard Of The Keyboard, Deutsche Grammophon, includes Poulenc’s Nocturne for Piano No 4 in C minor Bal fantôme

Shura Cherkassky – The Complete HMV Stereo Recordings, First Hand Records, reprints Cherkassky’s 1950s recording of Poulenc’s Toccata

Poulenc: Works for 2 Pianos, Jacques Février, Gabriel Tacchino, EMI Classics reissued on ArkivCD. Includes the Sonata for Two Pianos

and L’embarquement pour Cythère among other works major and minor

Theo Bruins 1929-1993, Globe Records, contains a live 1974 performance of Poulenc’s Pastourelle from a recital at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, by his fellow composer/pianist the Dutchman Bruins

Poulenc: Aubade, Concerto Pour Piano, EMI Classics reissued on ArkivCD. Includes 1960s recordings by the Février student Gabriel Tacchino

Legendary Treasures – Sviatoslav Richter Archives Vol 16, Doremi Records. The great Richter as soloist in Aubade and with Elisabeth Leonskaja in Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos in D minor may be like putting borscht in champagne, but is a must-hear at least once

Kaleidoscope, Marc-André Hamelin, Hyperion Records, includes Poulenc’s Intermezzo No 3 in A flat major

Gilels, BBC Legends, includes Emil Gilel’s performance of Poulenc’s Pastourelle

Poulenc: Le Bal Masqué, Decca Records, features Pascal Rogé’s propulsive performance of the piano part in this vocal work


We all knoW that aWful feeling of powerlessness that can come upon us when we try

to play evenly, but end up accident prone – even in the most simple of passages. accents, bumps, unexpected silences and uneven jolts can be most disconcerting for both player and listener, yet are very rarely discussed in textbooks on technique. It can be really unsettling to find that a well intentioned attempt at pianissimo in a relatively easy piece (such as the opening of Debussy’s Clair de lune or even something as modest as edward MacDowell’s To a Wild Rose) can lead to disaster, with half the notes failing to sound, or at least failing to sound as evenly and carefully as intended. So how can we guarantee that a chord will ‘speak’ when we depress the keys? how can we avoid a jarring accent in the middle of a pianissimo phrase? Being able to control sounds at all times has to be a top priority when building a successful and reliable technique. let’s look at the causes for mishaps – for ‘bumps and blanks’, so to speak – and then try to find some practical solutions so that they can be avoided as much as possible.

lack of control in this sense is chiefly caused by stiffness in the wrists and elbows. It is vital to remain flexible and supple in both, as well as in the shoulders and neck. firm finger work from the knuckles downwards is essential for reliable articulation, but must be co-ordinated and synchronised with relaxation from the rest of the body. of course, wayward instruments with poor regulation can be a law unto themselves,

but the odds of being able to control sounds are made more favourable when the player is able to adopt a few requisite technical principles that are basic to healthy and reliable pianism at all levels.

Begin by preparing notes in advance; never attack the keys from above. this will eliminate percussive sonorities from the tonal palette, ensuring that the arm and body are directly involved in the production of the sound. this technique can be described as a ‘touch and press’ approach, and immediately ensures that sounds are being controlled by much more than mere fingertip brilliance. If you are feeling uncertain about whether or not notes will ‘speak’ when you attempt to depress them, it can be also be helpful to begin the ‘touch and press’ technique with a small upward ‘backswing’ – keeping the fingers stuck on the keys at all times – so that you have more leverage. at the precise moment the note(s) does speak, take special care to ensure that your wrists and forearms are in perfect alignment, forming a straight line. avoid at all costs wrists that stick either upwards or downwards. this is vitally important as it is only through excellent co-ordination between wrists and arms that you can be guaranteed control over your playing.

example one (bars 1-4 of the second movement in Beethoven’s Sonata in D major, op 10 no 3, ‘largo e mesto’) is taken at an exceptionally broad tempo and so requires confident control and excellent co-ordination if ‘bumps and blanks’ are to be avoided. try using concentrated arm movement on every note at first. the ‘touch and press’ technique described above will enable beautiful sounds to emerge, and each one of the six notes in each chord should sound out with appropriate hushed resonance if you try small back swings in your practising as a means towards perfect ensemble playing on each chord. Make sure that your wrists and forearms are in perfect alignment at the point at which the key is depressed fully. use a mirror to examine where your wrists and arms end up after each quaver is struck.

example two (bars 1-2 of Chopin’s ‘aeolian harp’ etude in a flat op 25 no 1) can be notoriously hard for students to realise effectively. too often, notes remain silent


Prolific concert and recording artist Murray McLachlan is head of keyboard at Chetham’s School of Music and a tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music. He is also artistic director of the Chetham’s International Summer School and Festival for Pianists

Even playing is a vital skill for a pianists’ CV. Murray McLachlan outlines some useful techniques

Finding a way to phrase seamlessly, to ‘hold the line’ and unify the melodic contours of a

piece into an organic whole, is clearly of paramount importance in music-making. with advanced students, teachers normally spend a considerable amount of time and energy working towards this essential ideal, as it is only by cultivating convincing phrasing that a pianist can hope to emulate the art of a great singer. But within this unified melodic flow, the music also needs to breathe and have expansive spaciousness. in technical terms, too, it is essential to be aware of the points of repose: of the silences, pauses for consideration and space that exists in virtually every piece. as pianists with so many notes to play, we can all too readily fall into the trap of forgetting that it is the rests and silences that often make an interpretation really convincing. and in down-to-earth, technical terms alone, it is this awareness of musical space – of the ‘gaps’ between the notes – that can mean the difference between reliability and insecurity. Let’s look at some of the ways in which ‘minding the gap’ can make a huge difference.

Firstly, it is important to remember to finish what you are doing before moving on to something else! too often technical problems occur because players are thinking of the next challenge too early. Lack of clarity and control often occurs at the end of a musical sentence or period rather than at the beginning. reduce problematic passages to the smallest musical units you can:

isolate challenges, and celebrate the musical space between each challenge. Being able to ‘live in the present’ and stop worrying about what is about to happen next is the solution to numerous technical issues. take time when practising to radically lengthen space between phrase markings and during rests. Before the gaps, you can experiment by slowing down and getting louder. if you work on small passages, one at a time, with repetition, ritardando and a consistent crescendo in place on each re-playing, then you are much less likely to panic when you come to perform these passages in public. Clarity and control in articulation comes from being aware of what you are doing at all times. exaggeration by augmentation of musical space will help with this, as it helps you to focus on smaller musical units.

But musical space does far more than just enhance technical control: it also enables you to feel, and so show colouristic differences much more easily between phrases that follow each other. it is a historical fact that many of the great political orators knew and exploited via impeccable timing the art of milking a pause. we pianists should always be aware of the acoustical power of exploiting silences, no matter how short.

it is all too simple to forget that the acoustics of a hall, and the distance between the audience and the concert platform, are crucial. notes played take time to ‘register’ in the ears of listeners who may sit hundreds of metres away from a solo pianist in the royal albert or Carnegie halls. young pianists in particular can be overcome by adrenalin and so rush forward in performance, tripping over rests and accelerating from phrase to phrase in a helter-skelter manner that at best makes for a sense of agitation and at worse leads to disasters such as memory lapses or complete technical breakdown.

eXaMpLe one shows the infamous double third opening (bars 1 and 2) of Beethoven’s third piano sonata in C major op 2 no 3 – a ‘horror spot’ that becomes user-friendly when ‘mind the gap’ thinking is applied. players frequently panic about this excerpt,


Prolific concert and recording artist Murray McLachlan is head of keyboard at Chetham’s School of Music and a tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music. He is also artistic director of the Chetham’s International Summer School and Festival for Pianists

Mind the gap

m a s t e r c l a s s

Seamless phrasing is a tricky task, but IP’s resident expert Murray McLachlan has some advice

042_043_IP1112 signed off by Claire.indd 42 21/09/2012 15:13:15

Things that go BUMP in the night

m a s t e r c l a s s

40_41_IP0113_Masterclass signed off by Claire.indd 40 04/12/2012 17:15:05


after they have been played, leaving holes in the texture for the listener and a sense of real bewilderment and frustration for the pianist. It is all too easy to rush over the less vital arpeggiated accompaniment flourishes in the treble and bass parts of this Etude by focusing exclusively on the fifth finger notes in both hands. Of course, fifth finger notes are vitally important here, but in order to play everything in the texture (rather than omitting literally dozens of notes!) it is essential to listen out when practising for everything. Try stopping at the end of each bar and using your ears to detect if there are any notes missing in the beautiful chords that you sustain with the pedal after every beat. If you

notice holes, then you can concentrate your efforts when practising by using a little arm movement on every single semiquaver. When you have finished working in this way and are ready for a performance, try using the momentum of one single arm movement from each fifth finger note as you play through every beat in the study. Try and keep your fingers as close as possible to the keyboard. Ideally, you should also adopt the ‘touch and press’ technique here, along with a subtle rotary movement as the arpeggios gently oscillate.

Example three (bars 1-4 of Sposalizio from Liszt’s Anneés de Pèlerinage, book two) shows a much more Spartan texture than the Chopin Etude – but therein lies

the problem. Often, a shortage of notes means that the player becomes more concerned than ever about mishaps and a lack of control. Bars 1-2 can be mastered by gently swinging from one note to the next with economical but concentrated wrist movements. Use clockwise rotary movements to firmly navigate your accent-free path down the pentatonically flavoured left hand fragment. In contrast, bars 3-4 can perhaps best be viewed as a musical sigh. Take each three-note phrase as a one-movement gesture. Relax and enjoy sinking into these delicious sounds; the other notes will float effortlessly out from the impact you have created via relaxed, co-ordinated arm movements.

exa

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es example 1

example 3

example 2

example one: Beethoven piano sonata in D major, Op 10 No 3, second movement ‘largo e mesto’, bars 1-5

example three: liszt ‘sposalizio’ from annees de pelerinage volume two ‘Italy’, bars 1-4

example two: Chopin etude in a flat Op 25 No 1, bars 1-2

40_41_IP0113_Masterclass signed off by Claire.indd 41 04/12/2012 17:15:42


Ballades Opp. 23, 38, 47, 52 SLB 3833 [Fr]Ballads Opp. 23, 38, 47, 52 SLB 3834 [En]Etudes (12) Op. 10 SLB 3798 [Fr]Studies (12) Op. 10 SLB 3799 [En]Etudes (12) Op. 25 SLB 3821 [Fr]Studies (12) Op. 25 SLB 3822 [En]Impromptus (4) Opp. 9, 36, 51 - Fantaisie-Impromptu

Op. 66 SLB 3830 [Fr]Mazurkas (21) Vol. 1: Opp. 6, 7, 17, 24, 30 SLB 3844 [Fr] Mazurkas (14) Vol. 2: Opp. 33, 41, 50, 56 SLB 3845 [Fr] Mazurkas (15) Vol. 3: Opp. 59, 63, 67, 68 posth.

SLB 3846 [Fr]

FRENCH VERSION ENGLISH VERSION

Nocturnes (10) Vol. 1: Opp. 9, 15, 27, 32 SLB 3838 [Fr] Nocturnes (10) Vol. 1: Opp. 9, 15, 27, 32 SLB 3839 [En]Nocturnes (8) Vol. 2: Opp. 37, 48, 55, 62 SLB 3840 [Fr] Nocturnes (8) Vol. 2: Opp. 37, 48, 55, 62 SLB 3841 [En]Polonaises (7) Opp. 26, 40, 44 - Polonaise héroïque Op.

53 - Polonaise-fantaisie Op. 61 SLB 3828 [Fr] Préludes (24) Op. 28 SLB 3816 [Fr]Preludes (24) Op. 28 SLB 3817 [En]Rondos (3) Opp. 1, 5, 16 SLB 3886 [Fr]

Scherzos (4) Opp. 20, 31, 39, 54 SLB 3836 [Fr]Sonate Op. 35 SLB 3852 [Fr] Sonate Op. 38 SLB 3853 [Fr] Valses (14) Opp. 18, 34, 42, 64, Op. 69 nos 1-2, Op. 70 nos

1-2-3, Op. posthume en mi min. SLB 3831 [Fr] Waltzes (14) Opp. 18, 34, 42, 64, Op. 69 nos. 1-2, Op. 70

nos. 1-2-3, Op. posthume in E min. SLB 3832 [En]Œuvres posthumes SLB 3887 [Fr] Pièces diverses Vol. 1 SLB 3829 [Fr] Pièces diverses Vol. 2 SLB 3885 [Fr] Introduction to the Cortot Editions of Chopin

(selected pieces) SLB 3818 [En][Fr] French Edition / [En] English Edition

MGB HAL LEONARDVia Liguria 4, Sesto Ulteriano

20098 S. Giuliano Milanese (MI)ITALY

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DE HASKE HAL LEONARD17/18 Henrietta Street

Covent GardenLondon WC2E 8QH

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Untitled-3 1 29/11/2012 16:51:38

Untitled-3 1 30/11/2012 09:40:51

042_IP_0113.indd 42 05/12/2012 11:24:15

BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE AND reliable staccato technique takes patience and co-ordination. It

can prove a frustrating process if left for too long – and this is often sadly the case, as many teachers refuse to teach staccato in the earliest stages. From certain viewpoints this is understandable, as examination boards do not require scales to be played with staccato articulation until after Grade 5. Teachers often mention that legato playing is essential in order to make the piano sing, and that staccato playing is in many ways contrary to this, causing stiffness and tension. I would argue that staccato is a basic touch, is required in music from the earliest grades, and is more easily mastered when tackled sooner rather than later. Stiffness and tension can be avoided in staccato playing through good monitoring from the teacher and intelligent awareness from the student. As in most technical work, progress is best made through small sessions of daily practise rather than with irregular marathon stints of work. Economy and concentration of movement are essential in this technique. When you play staccato try not to move your entire arm on every note. Focus on your fingertips.

Before analysing how staccato can be effectively achieved, it is worth mentioning that there are all kinds of different staccato touches in the repertoire, from the most delicate

leggiero sounds in Mozart through to the heavy, detached but resonant sounds in Brahms and later composers. Obviously, we need to adjust our technical set-up in order to cope with stylistic demands, and with this in mind, it is useful to identify and work at three basic staccato touches from the earliest stages of work.

Let’s begin with ‘close staccato’. This can be introduced by placing your 10 fingers over 10 notes on the keyboard. Imagine they are literally held down by superglue and cannot move off the keys. Try and play staccato with each finger in turn. This version of staccato technique is very useful for specific musical effects in performance, as well as for facilitating more technical control.

Next try ‘leggiero staccato’. As in close staccato, work can begin here by again placing your fingers over 10 notes. Keep both hands still and draw each finger towards your body in a scratching movement as you play. This touch can be built up to a fast speed and is extremely effective in baroque music, certain scales in Mozart and ornamental filigree passages in Chopin, to give a few examples.

Finally, there is ‘wrist staccato’, an approach which can perhaps best be described as a vibrato technique. It involves rapid fire, concentrated ricochet movements from the wrist. These work most effectively when the fingers are close to the keyboard. The technique can

be practised on the lid of the piano or on a worktop surface. Stiffness can make wrist staccato challenging, to say the least, and though loosening of the wrists can prove challenging, progress will be possible when work is taken at a calm pace, with a gradual build-up in terms of both quantities of notes and velocity.

The excerpt below comes from the Gavotte in JS Bach’s French Suite No 5 in G major, BWV 816 (bars 16-20). The left-hand quaver runs require concentration and economy of movement if they are to be realised effectively with a delicate leggiero staccato touch in performance. Finger independence and the ability to keep the hand still while adopting lateral arm movements up and down the keyboard are necessary for an accurate realisation of passages like this. It does not matter if you decide to play all of the notes staccato or choose to mix slurred notes with short groups of staccato notes. Whatever you choose to do will require a concentrated non-legato technique. This can be effectively developed through careful and regular staccato scale practice.

Many pianists struggle with articulation, but, as Murray McLachlan explains, it’s never too late to develop detached playing

Building staccato technique


h e l P I n g h a n d s

Visit the RhinegoLd shop foR sheet Music and MoRe

Pianists are often expected to perform herculean intervallic jumps and chords, but there are certain tricks of the trade, suggests Murray McLachlan

Coping with awkward stretchesO NE OF THE MAJOR

di� culties encountered when learning the piano is coping with stretches. Students with smaller hands frequently discover chords and intervallic jumps, to say nothing of octaves that they fi nd extremely challenging to cope with. There is nothing more dispiriting than fi nding passages in the music you long to perform that you fi nd uncomfortable or even impossible to execute. Too o� en negativity and frustration sets in, with complaints and defeatism then a� ecting a player’s overall confi dence. The truth is much more positive: It is always worth remembering that one of the greatest performers of the last century, the late Alicia de Larrocha, had miniscule hands, yet she was able to play Granados, Albéniz and even the Liszt B minor sonata with mastery and authority. So let’s try and fi nd ways to make what appears impossible manageable, and let’s try and bury for good the notion that certain works should never be attempted by pianists with smaller hands.

Many players restrict their fl exibility and range at the keyboard by being too sti� , fi xed and rigid in their elbows and wrists. Old myths about keeping your arms close to your torso in a fi xed position still circulate and cause considerable harm. By using your wrists and elbows as pivots it is possible to extend your ability. Find di� erent angles and positions by using your wrists with relaxation and fl exibility. Playing will become much more comfortable and manageable. Obviously this is a huge subject that requires an experienced teacher for guidance and development through weekly lessons.

If fl exibility with relaxed freedom at the instrument is insu� cient to

overcome a particular technical issue then other pragmatic solutions can be considered. Cunning fi ngering and/or shrewd re-distribution of notes between the two hands can o� en work wonders. Don’t forget that your thumb can play more than one note at a time! This is particularly useful for chords with four or more notes. Re-distribution between two hands of passages designed to be played by only one is a black art that is most successful when it goes unnoticed

by the listener. Provided the composer’s message remains undisturbed, then there is nothing wrong with editing your music to make performance a comfortable possibility.

Doctoring of impossible passages follows the same maxim – if no-one notices what you are doing, then its fi ne to do it! There is nothing wrong with missing out the odd note here and there in a chordal passage if the omissions make performance possible. Of course the skill lies in knowing which notes to miss out. In general in these situations it is best to avoid leaving out the lowest and highest notes. Middle notes in chords and lower notes in octaves tend to work well when it comes to being deleted. Experimentation with balancing dynamics in the texture can make doctored passages more convincing. Avoid playing with an equality of tone through each part.

Omitted middle voices are o� en less noticeable when the top melodic line and supporting bass are played more strongly.

O F COURSE THERE ARE MORE subtle methods of coping

with stretches, as the two examples below from the second movement of Beethoven’s Sonatina in F, Anh 5 show. Example one’s le� hand C major chord requires swi� execution and can prove

awkward unless a ‘split’ realisation in which the lowest note is played fi rst is utilised. Using the pedal here is helpful as it means you can release the lowest note and so avoid discomfort when playing the remainder of the chord.

Example two shows a possible solution to the octaves and chordal stretches in the movement’s fi nal two bars. By omitting the ‘middle’ notes in the texture and projecting the highest and lowest lines, minimum disruption to the composer’s intentions will occur. e


H E L P I N G H A N D S

Visit the Rhinegold Shop for sheet music and more

EXAMPLE 1

EXAMPLE 2


Pianists are often expected to perform herculean intervallic jumps and chords, but there are certain tricks of the trade, suggests Murray McLachlan

Coping with awkward stretchesO NE OF THE MAJOR

di� culties encountered when learning the piano is coping with stretches. Students with smaller hands frequently discover chords and intervallic jumps, to say nothing of octaves that they fi nd extremely challenging to cope with. There is nothing more dispiriting than fi nding passages in the music you long to perform that you fi nd uncomfortable or even impossible to execute. Too o� en negativity and frustration sets in, with complaints and defeatism then a� ecting a player’s overall confi dence. The truth is much more positive: It is always worth remembering that one of the greatest performers of the last century, the late Alicia de Larrocha, had miniscule hands, yet she was able to play Granados, Albéniz and even the Liszt B minor sonata with mastery and authority. So let’s try and fi nd ways to make what appears impossible manageable, and let’s try and bury for good the notion that certain works should never be attempted by pianists with smaller hands.

Many players restrict their fl exibility and range at the keyboard by being too sti� , fi xed and rigid in their elbows and wrists. Old myths about keeping your arms close to your torso in a fi xed position still circulate and cause considerable harm. By using your wrists and elbows as pivots it is possible to extend your ability. Find di� erent angles and positions by using your wrists with relaxation and fl exibility. Playing will become much more comfortable and manageable. Obviously this is a huge subject that requires an experienced teacher for guidance and development through weekly lessons.

If fl exibility with relaxed freedom at the instrument is insu� cient to

overcome a particular technical issue then other pragmatic solutions can be considered. Cunning fi ngering and/or shrewd re-distribution of notes between the two hands can o� en work wonders. Don’t forget that your thumb can play more than one note at a time! This is particularly useful for chords with four or more notes. Re-distribution between two hands of passages designed to be played by only one is a black art that is most successful when it goes unnoticed

by the listener. Provided the composer’s message remains undisturbed, then there is nothing wrong with editing your music to make performance a comfortable possibility.

Doctoring of impossible passages follows the same maxim – if no-one notices what you are doing, then its fi ne to do it! There is nothing wrong with missing out the odd note here and there in a chordal passage if the omissions make performance possible. Of course the skill lies in knowing which notes to miss out. In general in these situations it is best to avoid leaving out the lowest and highest notes. Middle notes in chords and lower notes in octaves tend to work well when it comes to being deleted. Experimentation with balancing dynamics in the texture can make doctored passages more convincing. Avoid playing with an equality of tone through each part.

Omitted middle voices are o� en less noticeable when the top melodic line and supporting bass are played more strongly.

O F COURSE THERE ARE MORE subtle methods of coping

with stretches, as the two examples below from the second movement of Beethoven’s Sonatina in F, Anh 5 show. Example one’s le� hand C major chord requires swi� execution and can prove

awkward unless a ‘split’ realisation in which the lowest note is played fi rst is utilised. Using the pedal here is helpful as it means you can release the lowest note and so avoid discomfort when playing the remainder of the chord.

Example two shows a possible solution to the octaves and chordal stretches in the movement’s fi nal two bars. By omitting the ‘middle’ notes in the texture and projecting the highest and lowest lines, minimum disruption to the composer’s intentions will occur. e


H E L P I N G H A N D S

Visit the Rhinegold Shop for sheet music and more

EXAMPLE 1

EXAMPLE 2


43_IP0113_HHands signed off by Claire.indd 43 04/12/2012 17:17:47


The Piano Music of John Ramsden Williamson www.jrwilliamson.com

The reader may find it unbelievable when I write that all of the musicwhich I have seen is immediately individual, instantly recognisable asJohn R. Williamson rather than any other composer. It is certainlyhighly unusual in contemporary music that such a late, intensely prolificflowering as this can also be regarded, whatever subjective opinionson the quality of the music may be, as unique, extraordinary, but true.

Murray McLachlan ‘Unsung Heroes, Piano’ (Rhinegold Sept/Oct 2004)

Publications:

7 Interval Studies, Sonata no. 5 (www.dacapomusic.co.uk)

Discs: 3 Volumes of Piano Works - Murray McLachlan, piano (Divine Art Label - www.divine-art.co.uk)

Selected Works in Mss: c160 Preludes, 9 Sonatas, 5 Pft Concerti




Publications:







Publications:




11 Preludes, (vols 1 & 2), Sonatina, 2 Part Inventions, 7 Interval Studies, Sonata no. 7 (www.dacapomusic.co.uk)




Publications:







Publications:



Selected Works in Mss: c160 Preludes, 9 Sonatas, 5 Pft ConcertiFor extract or purchase visit DIVERSIONS ddv24144

IP_4_2011_10_(new).indd 1 15/11/2012 09:29:25

Discover NewPiano Repertoire!

For videos, programme notes and details on this unique project, log on to

www.petrushka-project.com

Dances of Our TimeA collection of new pieces for pianoby 75 composers from 26 countries350 pagesISMN: 979-0-001-19144-9 ED 21470 · £ 33,50

For videos, programme notes and details on this unique project, log on to

Dances of Our TimeA collection of new pieces for pianoby 75 composers from 26 countries350 pagesISMN: 979-0-001-19144-9 ED 21470 · £ 33,50

Untitled-8 1 04/12/2012 10:37:03

To purchase, or find out more, please visit:www.soundsketches.co.uk

‘Volumes 1-3 now available, with other volumes following soon’

Sound SketchesAn exciting new series of graded piano

pieces by Graham Lynch that will appeal to pupils of all ages.

‘What is special here is that Lynch succeeds triumphantly in realising his noble ambition of writing relatively easy music

that has substance’ International Piano Vol 3

These ‘sound images’ are evoked through strong melodic ideas which hide their technical challenges within a sense of the delight that can be had from conjuring music from the keyboard. Pieces to be enjoyed, and performed!

Sound sketchesv2.indd 1 24/07/2012 14:27:44

044_IP_0113.indd 44 05/12/2012 13:45:49

SHEET MUSIC

international

Seven Interval Studies, No 4: Fourths By John Ramsden Williamson

T h is study is one of a collection of s e v e n pieces that focus on basic intervals, f r o m o c t a v e s t o s e c o n d s . T h e basis of its harmonic construction is not the major or minor modes, b u t k e y -c e n t r e d modes . T h e k e y -c e n t r ed m o d e s r e l a t e t o pentatonic and palindromic features in chordal and melodic structures.

T h e opening t w o -b a r p h r a s e u s e s b o t h o f t h e s e ideas, with c o n t r a r y motion between t h e h a n d s , showing m o v e m e n t s o f c h o r d s in f o u r t h s t h r o u g h shi� ing progressions . This m e t h o d o f composition m a y appear mechanical , b u t the r e s u l t is o f musical s atisfaction.

The basic chord of these harmonic movements is heard at page one, line four, bar 2; this cadence produces a palindromic chord – CFGC – characteristic of all more complex harmonic structures. In performance, any voice may be expressed at will, be it in the lower or inner parts.

The unresolved fourth, originally a suspension to the third, follows a trend in harmonic evolution: discords were usually derived from suspensions; modulations between keys have found new resolutions. This study in fourths is not modulatory and does not relate to traditional harmonic progressions.

N o t e t h e n e w t r e a t m e n t of the middle section o n p a g e t w o : t h e fourth is a u g m e n t e d , sounding a contrasting mood using antiphonal inversion. Note also the fi nal eight bars, showing palindromic chords sounding the same in rising or falling arpeggio fashion.

Throughout the history of music, composers have used technical devices – canons, inversions, augmentations and so on – as a means to create satisfactory musical expression. In the construction of this study, and many of my other works, every device used has a musical purpose.

My style of composing evolved gradually from imitation of traditional methods and use of traditional harmony. An earlier work – 12 New Preludes – illustrates my fi rst successful attempts to be free from the two traditional modes.

Following the establishment of well-tempered tuning, composers a� er JS Bach have continued to develop the traditional 24-key system as a formal design; so we have the 48 by Bach; the famous 24 Preludes by Chopin; t h e m o r e c o n t e m p o r a r y approach o f S h o s t a k o vich’ s 2 4 Pr e l u d e s a n d Fu g u e s . T h e Debussy E t u d e s g o p a r t o f t h e w a y in numbers two t o fi ve , with pieces exploiting thirds, fourths, sixths a n d o c t a v e s . M y constructions in the Interval Studies s h o w a t o t a l d e v e l o p m e n t o f t h e interval t h r o u g h o u t all parts , again with t h e u s e o f i nverted a n d p alindromic t echniques.

I a m most indebted t o Murray M c L a c h l a n f o r recording this w o r k a s p a r t o f v o l u m e s o n the Divine Art label ; t h e three v o l u m e s c ontain a v aried s election o f m y o t h e r piano w orks .

Visit www.divine-art.com for a sample extract | Diversions DDV24144 Piano Music Vol 2, track 21

About the music

45_50_IP0113_Sheet Music signed off by Claire.indd 47 06/12/2012 10:15:50

© John Ramsden Williamson This music is copyright. Photocopying is ILLEGAL and is THEFT.











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Untitled-8 1 30/11/2012 16:06:12

051_IP_0113.indd 1 05/12/2012 13:50:36

www.rhinegold.co.uk

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Supplements_FP_215x280 - pianonotes.indd 45 05/12/2012 15:59:17052_IP_0113-House ad.indd 21 05/12/2012 16:18:20

JEREMY SIEPMANN: ‘A womAn’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.’ Thus spake one of England’s great misogynists, Dr samuel Johnson. And a woman’s playing? It is not only done well; it is often done supremely well, and we shouldn’t be in the least surprised. But if it be not less in quality than that of men (this 18th-century stuff is catching), wherein lies the explanation of its doers’ comparative neglect in concert series and record catalogues around the world? Exploring this vexed topic below are five of the best in the business, and they begin by going back to basics. Are there, in fact, any differences between the playing of male and female pianists?

IMOGEN COOPER: There must be! Why else, when a woman pianist cancels, do promoters look for another woman?

ANGELA HEWITT: We certainly have more stamina. I was part of a group we had in Canada, called Piano Six – three women, three men – and whenever we rehearsed a work for six pianos, which of course wasn’t all that often, the three women – Janina, Angela Cheng and myself – were all still going strong when the men began to wilt.

JANINA FIALKOWSKA: But one has only to sit on an international jury and listen to hundreds of pianists, one after another, to notice immediately that the vast majority of men have a higher volume level than their female counterparts. There are exceptions, naturally, but on the whole, if a ‘normal’ male pianist attempts a long, fortissimo octave passage, he’ll generally find it easier to do and will achieve it with a louder sound than a ‘normal’ female pianist. Because of this (and for other reasons) most female pianists have gravitated to the works of the classical and baroque composers and the

French Impressionists. I’d like to say that women have a certain delicate sensitivity in their playing that eludes most male pianists, but then my mind immediately conjures up pictures of Radu Lupu or Murray Perahia. I do think, though, that there are certain composers for whom women seem to have a special and unique understanding, which translates itself into their performance – Bach and Schumann being the two biggest examples.

NORIKO OGAWA: I’ve noticed, too, that some male pianists enjoy learning and playing acrobatic and very athletic repertoire – Horowitz transcriptions, for example. This is one field I’ve never been interested in, and I’ve come across very few women pianists who are. As for myself, I never try to excuse or explain anything because of my gender. It never occurs to me. As it happens, I’m physically quite strong. I’m not into weight-lifting, but luckily I’m strongly built.


THE PANEL (left to right): Imogen Cooper, Janina Fialkowska, Angela Hewitt, Noriko Ogawa, Susan Tomes

With distinguished guests, Jeremy Siepmann explores the role, and the experience, of the modern-day ‘woman pianist’

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE!

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53_57_IP0113_Symposium_CJ.indd 53 05/12/2012 18:11:02

‘She shouldn’t play with her hair up’ and ‘She’s been around a while’, and this just made me furious. I mean, they wouldn’t have said that kind of thing about Richard Goode or Alfred Brendel. The whole idea that a female artist should be sexy and have long hair and look like she just came out of the shower or the bedroom is disgusting. And of course it can work against female artists. It makes it harder for women who allow themselves to be portrayed in that way to be taken seriously as artists. OGAWA: And then there’s what you might call the stalker/groupie factor. I’ve received letters and emails from some men with completely misguided, over-the-top feelings towards me. Lots of male pianists probably get similar things from passionate fans too. But when one is a woman, one feels much more vulnerable and scared.

JS: So much for promoters and the public. Have you experienced much in the way of so-called ‘gender discrimination’ among colleagues and agents and so on?

OGAWA: I’ve been lucky to feel very little discrimination in my career. I

come from a more traditional society, where, funnily enough, 90 per cent of active pianists are female. Lots of little boys are discouraged from continuing their musical studies at an early age. To do music isn’t ‘proper’ for a man. But while boys grow up with social pressure like that, girls happily continue practising and make their way to the top. They’re much more imaginative and ambitious. I know Japanese women have a gentle image, but don’t you believe it! We’re a strong and determined species.

FIALKOWSKA: Good managers hide episodes of ‘gender discrimination’ from their clients. But there have been a couple of glaring exceptions in my case, one being a critic in Montreal who truly loathes women. More dangerous to me personally, though, were a couple of powerful orchestral managers who considered the term ‘misogynist’ a compliment! When I was starting my career in the 1970s, many promoters felt that the public preferred to hear male pianists. Nowadays, though, I think this kind of discrimination has virtually disappeared.

COOPER: It seems that a lot of men can’t cope with ‘strong’ women and,

SUSAN TOMES: I really don’t think there’s any direct correlation between physical size, gender and the sound made at the piano. How pianists use their natural forces has much more effect on their sound than whether they’re male or female. We’ve all heard plenty of men with a feeble, indistinct sound and plenty of women with great power and control. However, my family has noticed that when male pianists come for a lesson at our house, on my piano, they do tend to generate a higher volume level than I do.

JS: Are there particular challenges facing women pianists that male pianists don’t experience?

FIALKOWSKA: Wardrobe! COOPER: Oh god, the late-night ironing sessions on eves of departure, the realisation that you’re out of that vital hair product! Grrrrrrr! Mr X or Y or Z doesn’t have to deal with this!

HEWITT: In these days of emphasis on ‘image’, women have a much more complicated time of it than men. When I was looking for a new agent some years ago, my American agent came over to London to talk to some of the big agents over here, and one of them told him,


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often unknowingly, use condescending language that gently keeps us in our place – language they wouldn’t dream of using with men. And it would seem that if you come over too directly or seductively, you’re a nymphomaniac, and if you’re seen as more compliant, you’re patted on the head as if you were a child. I’ve had this experience, intermittently, from every corner of the profession.

HEWITT: When I was a competitor in the Bach Competition in Toronto in 1985, one of the judges marked me down for playing the Brahms F minor Sonata (even before I began to play!) on the grounds that no woman could play Brahms. I know this because one of the other judges told me so. And another time, when I played the complete Chopin Nocturnes in Europe, a very misogynist German declared that women could never understand male romanticism!

JS: Do conductors, who are still mostly male, treat female pianists differently from male pianists?

COOPER: Russian ones, yes! Almost universally.

HEWITT: Isn’t that interesting? The two worst cases of that kind of thing that I’ve known both involved Russian conductors, who were quite clearly trying to intimidate me. Both, by the way, were trying out for positions with the orchestras I was playing with, and I complained very strongly to the management about their attitudes, because I really think that kind of behaviour is inexcusable. Neither of them, I’m happy to say, got the job.


FIALKOWSKA: The younger men tend to tease or to flirt; some of the older ones, in my past, tried to dominate; very few harassed me unpleasantly, but basically it follows the patterns of everyday male-female relationships. Come to think of it, rather a lot of younger male conductors now like to confide in me – I have reached motherly middle age!

TOMES: I’ve never played a concerto under a female conductor, but I’ve certainly had some strange psychological vibes with male ones. The worst was when I felt frustrated with a conductor for not saying all kinds of things to the orchestra that I felt really needed to be said. Time was very short, and I asked his permission to say a few things myself. Very sarcastically, he pretended to hand me his baton with a flourish, and stood back with arms folded, looking at the ceiling while I said my bit. From that moment on he made life as difficult as possible for me, though whether this was because I had crossed a boundary of orchestral etiquette, had insulted his ego or was a woman (or the last two combined), I don’t know. OGAWA: I’ve come across some conductors who wanted to get to know me away from the piano – which I absolutely hate. But usually, these days, they’re straightforward. Once, a fledgling conductor told me that men prefer having lady soloists rather than males, because they look nice on the stage, are more fun to work with and are less problematical or argumentative. So, they’re usually ‘nicer’ to us. JS: But there are some (there used to be very many) whose ‘niceness’ is in fact quite the opposite, and comes into play before rather than at or after the engagement. I have it on the good and disgusted authority of a highly experienced agent that it definitely goes on still. On one occasion, his wife, already a very successful pianist, was actually propositioned by a conductor in his presence. And I know of more than one occasion on which a promised engagement was actually withdrawn when the soloist refused

to go to bed with the conductor. But having brought sex into the discussion, this might be the time to ask whether family life poses special challenges for women pianists.

FIALKOWSKA: For younger women it’s definitely a problem. Until relatively recently, a great many women pianists only began to achieve renown after their 50th birthday or so, once their childbearing and child-raising years were over. In fact, I was told by my first manager, at the venerable Hurok agency in New York (now long gone), that I should expect my career to be a struggle but if I could hang on until I was 50 I’d be a ‘star’.

JS: Which brings us inevitably to the question of children. How difficult is it to combine having and raising them with practising, preparing for concerts and being on the road?

FIALKOWSKA: Only superwomen can manage this one. I can think of no man who has single handedly been able to raise children (not to mention the fact that they avoid the pregnancy part!), practise and tour. A few women have done – I think of Clara Schumann, Teresa Carreño, Martha Argerich, Alicia de Larrocha, Maria João Pires and my extraordinary colleague Angela Cheng, who’s crucially supported by a wonderful husband. But so many of us are childless because it’s just such an impossible combination. I don’t care what anyone says, finding a husband willing to stay home and devote his life to kids, house-cleaning, ironing and cooking is still extremely rare.

OGAWA: This really is the biggest problem every woman pianist has to face. I could never see myself having children. Since I go back to Japan on average 12 times a year, it could only be a disaster. Ever since I made my debut in 1987-88, Japanese people – audiences, fans and promoters – have asked me when was I getting married and having children (it’s perfectly normal for Japanese people to ask such personal, threatening questions, in total innocence). I give away very little of my

S Y M P O S I U M

‘I never try to excuse or explain anything because of my gender. It never occurs to me’ Noriko ogawa



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personal life because there’s no other pianist in Japan (male or female) who travels as much as I do.

COOPER: I know very few women who haven’t agonised over this decision. For some it means functioning in a fog for a few years while they sort out the dilemma, simply being less focused than a man would. Coming to terms with this is a major challenge in itself.

TOMES: I could write a book about this! I was a lone parent for 10 years while trying to stick with my concert commitments, coping throughout with what seemed like an endless series of unsatisfactory au pairs and childcare arrangements, and the stress level was intense. As each year ended, I found myself thinking, ‘I got through that, but could I do it again?’ My daughter kept asking why I couldn’t have got a job as a baker or a librarian working down the road. The worst aspect is that concerts

happen in the evenings. This makes our working hours far more unsocial and difficult to organise than for 99 per cent of working parents. I had countless babysitters who told me that they’d be happy to stay until the usual 11pm or so, but not until 2am to allow me to get back from a concert in another town, and certainly not overnight. Thinking back about all this still makes my blood pressure soar.

JS: And returning to the strictly pianistic: what about small hands? Is this a liability?

TOMES: I have small hands, and there’s certainly some repertoire which is literally outside my scope. Liszt, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, certain pieces of Chopin and Brahms. To stretch enormous intervals or chords, I have to ‘break’ them, and the sound annoys me after a while. There are, however, quite a few ‘big works’ which I have gradually found a way to play, usually

by lateral extensions and sometimes sheer willpower. But luckily, the pieces I can’t stretch to tend to be the sorts of pieces which don’t interest me anyway. I’m happy to leave the famous warhorses to people who find them exciting and convincing.

HEWITT: It cuts both ways. Women with rather more delicate fingers are often at an advantage in playing lots of filigree stuff, and things like the C sharp major Fugue from book one of The Well-Tempered Clavier, where so much of the playing is between the black keys. Pianists with big hands, mostly men, are often at a disadvantage when it comes to writing of that kind.

OGAWA: I’m fortunate to have big hands for a Japanese female. I can reach a 10th all right. But in the end, how we work our hands is the most important thing, I think. My technical shortcomings have nothing to do with the size of my hands!

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FIALKOWSKA: One beauty of being a pianist is that the repertoire is so huge that it can accommodate all kinds of hands and minds. But of course the shape and strength of the hands dictates the kind of repertoire one plays, whether one is male or female. In general, a small-handed person would be wise not to attempt the Brahms B flat concerto – but then there’s Ashkenazy, and Gina Bachauer and Rosalyn Tureck and some others, so it’s risky to generalise.

JS: What role, if any, does being a woman have in your playing?

COOPER: At one level, none at all. I’m a musician. On another, deeper level, a great deal. I’m among those who believe that what you are on stage is what you are off it (there are those who believe there’s no connection whatsoever), and as I believe women are capable of a broader overview of life than men, that they can be more intuitive, look more for connections in everything, I feel that when my own inner channels of communication are clear, I can fruitfully bring this to what I do.

FIALKOWSKA: For me it plays no role at all, to tell the truth. Generally

speaking – up until the cancer in my left arm a few years ago – the repertoire I didn’t feel up to physically wasn’t of much interest to me. The pieces that were considered more for males that I did wish to play (pieces of Brahms and Liszt), I played without problems. They fit me physically just fine.

I’ve never really thought about being a woman when I actually play. My interpretation has very little to do with what sex I belong to. It’s what the music says to us and how we express it.

JS: Do you think you can hear the difference between a female and a male pianist? Is there a difference in sound, colour, power?

FIALKOWSKA: For me, it’s more of a question of the individual and not whether they’re male or female. When I hear Imogen on the radio, or Angela, or Martha Argerich, I recognise their playing immediately, but not because of their gender. Great pianists can all be recognised by their unique sound quality. It would be tempting to say that women pianists are more subtle, have more pianissimo colours in their palette, are more sensitive to the delicacies and shadings in their interpretations, that

they can approach the instrument with lighter touches and can understand the composer’s mind with more intuition. And maybe some of this is true, but again, there’s a wealth of male pianists past and present whose playing highlights all these qualities, so it’s hard to generalise.

JS: And finally, any ideas why there are still far fewer female pianists who’ve gained international recognition than male?

TOMES: I think this has a lot to do with family matters and the fact that it’s still not accepted – not even within the family, sometimes – that a woman needs to fulfil her talent. Even when it is accepted, many women themselves find it excruciatingly difficult to walk away from little ones who hate to see them going out of the front door with a suitcase. Looking around, I see male colleagues who are fond fathers but don’t seem to experience the same visceral longing to be with their children. They never agonise about whether or not to accept concerts, because they know their wives will be at home with the kids. My friends often said to me, ‘What you need is a wife!’


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RemembeR that weekend last may when a dog won £500,000 and a sensationally

talented 14-year-old cellist just £2,000? Pudsey and his owner ashleigh attracted an audience of around 14.5 million as they won Britain’s Got Talent, and grabbed the front pages of all the tabloids the following day. Laura van der heijden’s considerable achievement in winning bbC Young musician of the Year was, by contrast, hardly deemed worthy of a column inch.

that’s pop culture, you might surmise, and classical music will always be a niche art form. but does it have to be like that? what happens if you have a competition that is not simply about a group of young artists doing battle but gets an entire city behind it? what if you can bestow on the winner a life-changing sum of money, plus the support to build on their promise? what if you look for an artist who is not just flashy-fingered and capable of thrilling, but a chamber musician as much as a soloist?

these are all questions that have been taken on board by the honens International Piano Competition, held every three years in the Canadian city of Calgary. the competition itself was the brainchild of the remarkable esther honens. She was a self-made millionaire with a passion for the piano, who saw what the Van Cliburn competition had done for Fort worth and aimed to

create something comparable in Calgary. that was back in 1991, with the first competition occurring a year later. It was the only one honens lived to see – she died five days after the final, aged 89. the finals of the latest competition took place in October 2012.

the winner of the honens is awarded the accolade ‘Prize Laureate’ and Ca$100,000, the most substantial prize on the competition circuit. but there’s a lot more to honens than the money. add to the cash prize a career development programme that includes worldwide management for three years, dates at major venues, residencies at the nearby banff Centre, a recording with hyperion and mentorship from artists including Jean-efflam bavouzet (himself a honens laureate) and Stephen hough, and you can see why this package – said to be worth around half a million Canadian dollars – attracts some of the best talent from around the world.

though it’s now deeply unfashionable for competitions to admit that they’re looking for the next super-virtuoso, the honens goes further than most in its quest to find the all-round musician. Last year’s seven-strong jury consisted of not only four concert pianists but also a cellist, a conductor, a festival director and an a&R specialist from the record industry. and the semi-finalists had to offer not only a solo recital but a chamber one, too. these two each counted for 30

per cent towards the total mark, with a concerto counting for another 30 per cent and the final 10 per cent coming from an interview – presumably a particularly daunting prospect for those whose first language was not english. the chamber round was demanding, too, with a choice of three programmes featuring works such as Schumann’s Second Violin Sonata, mendelssohn’s Second Cello Sonata and songs by composers as tricky as debussy, bridge, Schoenberg and wolf. It did cross my mind that prowess in this wide range of fields doesn’t necessarily equate to a great pianist – imagine Shura Cherkassky, arcadi Volodos or Grigory Sokolov being asked to do such things. but, of course, this is true to honens’s concept of the ‘complete artist’.

what was very evident from the atmosphere during the event was that the competition has become a source of civic and even national pride. In years gone by, Calgary was better known for its annual Stampede and its proximity to the Rockies than for its cultural credentials. much of the credit for changing that must go to the competition’s extraordinarily energetic and determined president and artistic director Stephen mcholm. he has taken esther honens’s vision and brought it firmly into the 21st century, while simultaneously bringing together arts and business in a very north american way, with ample and highly visible sponsorship. the whole city

C O m P e t I t I O n R e P O R t

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the triennial Honens InternatIonal PIano ComPetItIon offers the most substantial prize money on the circuit, but, as Harriet Smith reports from Calgary, the winner

reaps far greater rewards than just cash

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seemed to take on a festival atmosphere, with music going on late into the night at Le Bison Noir, a Calgarian take on New York’s famous Poisson Rouge, where members of the jury and laureates could be heard playing everything from Schubert’s mighty E flat Piano Trio to Dudley Moore’s devilish take on Beethoven. Horowitz’s famed Steinway D was also in town, and you could not only see it but touch it, too. There were screenings of Bruno Monsaingeon films and a touching photography exhibition dedicated to Glenn Gould.

But the key question is: did it work? The eventual winner was the Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov (affectionately known as Kalashnikov, though there was nothing brutal about his playing), a

baby-faced 23-year-old who is currently studying in Moscow (at the State Conservatory) and at London’s Royal College of Music. His performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto played down the work’s barnstorming qualities and emphasised its poetry. The sounds that he produced from the Hamburg Steinway were suitably poetic, though to my mind it wasn’t an entirely joined-up performance in terms of piano and orchestra. Conductor

Roberto Minczuk, who led the Calgary Philharmonic in the five concertos, later told me that once he heard Kolesnikov’s reading of the first-movement cadenza he was convinced that he was a great artist in the making.

Of the other four finalists, three performed Brahms’s First Concerto, which made for fascinating comparison. First up was the Italian Lorenzo Cossi, the only player to choose the Fazioli over the Steinway. The performance sounded slightly underpowered; it was almost as if this wasn’t the right choice of work, though he clearly loves Brahms, having programmed him in earlier rounds. On the second evening, 30-year-old Maria Mazo from Russia went for the epic and coaxed from the keyboard some

truly ravishing sounds: although such an Olympian approach was not to my taste, she almost convinced me, such was the belief in her interpretation. She’s a pianist of great variety: in the previous round she’d given an outstanding reading of Boulez’s Notations. In complete contrast, Jong-Hai Park, the 22-year-old South Korean pianist, seemed at times determined to break the speed limits in his Brahms D minor. But, though at times too mercurial for its own good, it

was full of panache, glee and wonderfully imaginative touches. To hear two such compelling performances of this warhorse in a single evening perhaps demonstrates how strong the line-up was. The remaining finalist, American Eric Zuber, had the unenviable task of going first. His Rachmaninov Concerto No 2 was not lacking in virtuosity but it was not the most characterised of performances and at this stage it did feel as if the orchestra was still getting into the swing of things. Did anyone slip through the net? Perhaps one: Zenan Yu, from China, who produced some particularly outstanding Debussy in the semi-final and whose ‘Hammerklavier’ proved he had power and drama running through his veins.

So did Honens get it right? On balance, yes. And it will be fascinating to follow Kolesnikov’s career over the next few years. It will also be interesting to see how many other talented pianists this competition will attract in 2015 and beyond.

Gilles Vonsattel, a Honens Laureate from 2009, will be making his Wigmore Hall debut on 5 April 2013. This concert is part of his prize from the Honens

C O M P E T I T I O N R E P O R T


Pavel Kolesnikov with the Calgary Philharmonic

Lorenzo Cossi

The finalists

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137A Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8TU Tel: 020 7242 9865 www.peregrines-pianos.com

Peregrine’s PianosPiano dealer

Concert & domestic hire

Music rehearsal rooms

exclusive dealer in London

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Once upOn a time, the pianO ruled the roost. it sat proudly in the best room of the house, played regularly by family and friends. the piano is

as culturally relevant as ever, but its role in society is evolving. in a domestic capacity, smaller accommodation and changing priorities means that space is at a premium. Financial pressures ensure that cost is at the forefront of consumers’ minds.

how do piano dealers harness demand in a market that everyone agrees – albeit in hushed voices – is contracting at worst and challenging at best? during the early 20th century, when the piano was first produced for the mass market, there were around 100 small-scale factories and workshops in london alone. the factories may have moved to more exotic climes, but the capital still boasts a relatively wide range of piano shops. a visit to a selection of london showrooms illustrates how organisations are responding to the ever-challenging world of piano sales, and how, while the economy continues to threaten to knock the unsuspecting off course, the industrious remain determined to get the instrument back into the home.

non-musical parents need particular guidance when purchasing a piano for their offspring; the range on offer can be baffling, and without a certain level of customer service, one wouldn’t blame them for giving up in entirely and purchasing a guitar instead. With prices as equally intimidating, many dealers now offer pay-monthly hire schemes, often from as little as £500 a year, including delivery.

piano Warehouse has around 600 acoustic pianos out on rental at present, and the organisation has a strong focus on helping families make the right choice. ‘We are very family-oriented,’ says manager martin Weedon. ‘We go out of our way to make people feel comfortable. a lot of parents aren’t pianists and they are encouraging their children to take up the piano, and it can be daunting. We try to be friendly and approachable; if the children don’t learn, then who will be the piano-buying public in generations to come?’

as we talk in the company’s newly opened Willesden Green branch (it also owns premises in Surbiton), a young girl comes in for her piano lesson in the shop’s practice room. piano Warehouse has resident teachers in both shops, and the lessons add a sense of community. the space used to be a car showroom – in fact, Weedon bought a car here in the early 1990s – but

piano Warehouse undertook an intensive three-week building programme to turn it into a room fit to house around 100 pianos (pictured, overleaf). it’s bright, clean and welcoming, and neatly presents acoustic and digital pianos from Yamaha, Kemble, Weber, Steinmayer, roland and electronic instrument specialist Kurzweil, for whom the company is now the sole distributor.

Families are also well catered for over at markson pianos near regent’s park. the showroom is an aladdin’s cave of pianistic treasures, filled with restored pianos from bygone eras; such as a beautiful italian-made Furnstein and a rare Bechstein upright with a rosewood inlaid case. there are also new instruments for sale too, including digital models. the company has been operational for 100 years and its sales department is bolstered by a thriving event hire service (markson pianos has instruments in the elgar room at the royal albert hall and many of the West end theatres, for example), and a piano maintenance department (work is undertaken in the uK and in poland). there is an atmosphere of earnest musicianship; an apprentice piano tuner works on a newly restored upright and a technician recalls the time he was sent to paris to fix a piano emergency for elton John. in truth, it’s a little jam-packed and in need of a lick of paint – but then, that’s part of its charm. Both first-

p i a n O m a K e r S

amid economic turmoil and social upheaval, the domestic piano market has changed dramatically. But a promenade

around london’s dealerships offers a snapshot of an industry determined to prosper. By Claire Jackson

capital gains

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Our competitive edgeis rather blunt

At Grand Passion Pianos we don’t have the biggest showroom for our selection of Steinway, Bösendorfer, Pleyel and Rönisch pianos. In fact we don’t have a showroom. We don’t have the slickest sales team. Actually, we don’t have a sales team. We

don’t have the widest range or the biggest advertising budget(as you can see).

What we do have on our side is the most powerful force in business – love. We’re driven by an inborn passion for rescuing forgotten luxury pianos and painstakingly hand restoring themto their former glory, piece by piece, day by day. Find out more

or book a viewing at www.grandpassionpianos.co.uk

Grand Passion Pianos – pianos for pianists by passionistas.

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www.worldpianist.orgTo register or learn more visit

The World Pianist Invitational (WPI) is poised to take its place as the world’s premier

international classical piano competition

25 finalists in five age groups will perform live at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

in Washington, D.C.

The competition is open to aspiring classical pianists from ages five through 29

All entries will receive written feedback from two judges

SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS APRIL 13, 2013Live Performance at

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time buyers and connoisseurs stand a strong chance of finding a special ‘one-off’ piano here.

The sales environment couldn’t be more different from that at Steinway on Marylebone Lane or Blüthner in Berkeley Square. Both showrooms are, unsurprisingly, presented with impeccable taste and offer the highest levels of customer service. But then, their customers regularly spend upwards of £70,000 in one sitting. The two shops focus on their own branded products, but Blüthner also supplies Haessler, Irmler and Rönisch pianos. Director Peter Corney explains that Blüthner clients seeking a piano with ‘the golden tone’ expect and deserve to be treated with class. The shop is situated in the most exclusive postcode in the country – its neighbours include Bentley and Porsche – and its practice room is the only one in Mayfair, upstairs in Blüthner’s roomy two-storey suite. There is no sales patter and customers benefit from additional services, such as extra visits from piano technicians and free delivery. Maintenance and repairs are done in-house, in the UK.

While many of us can only dream of spending such amounts on a piano, there is a strong argument in favour of mid to top-priced acoustics, simply because these instruments will last a lifetime, if looked after properly. Of course, new students or families may not want to make such a commitment, but for serious amateurs and professional musicians, it is an important investment. Recently launched Grand Passion Pianos specialises in Rönisch, Steinway, Pleyel and Bösendorfer, and director Muzz Shah agrees that you get what you pay for: ‘You’re buying the Rolls-Royce of pianos and it will probably last longer than a sports car.’

Grand Passion Pianos doesn’t have a permanent shop floor. ‘The key part of our business is that we don’t use traditional showrooms,’ says Shah. ‘We display pianos in private homes and art galleries. We only exhibit one piano at a time so that we can focus all our attention on rebuilding and researching the instrument to the highest level’. The company has already had healthy interest in its current offering, a rare Bösendorfer model 180, which is displayed in a trendy east London warehouse apartment.

‘In a showroom, you can’t get a good idea of what the piano will sound like in your home, so we use intimate settings that

are acoustically checked beforehand,’ Shah says. ‘Some people find piano showrooms intimidating, and because we aren’t a shop we can allow people to practise in private, even at, say, 9pm on a Sunday.’

Not having permanent premises allows Grand Passion Pianos a certain economic freedom that the owners are keen to pass on to their customers. One gets the distinct impression that a lot of time and love has gone into the project; one of the partners is pianist Daniel Grimwood, who demonstrates the instruments to interested parties, and is amenable to offering complimentary recitals to the winning bidder – a cultural sales bonus that befits the ‘boutique’ nature of the business.

Elsewhere, other piano dealers have chosen to specialise in certain brands. Peregrine’s Pianos on Gray’s Inn Road is the exclusive London dealer for German maker Schimmel (as outlined in issue 13, May/June 2012) and Jaques Samuels on Edgware Road has a specially created room – complete with temperature and humidity settings – for Italian-made Fazioli pianos, famously supported by Angela Hewitt. Both Peregrine’s and Jaques Samuels offer a range of other pianos, as well as practice rooms, but have gained credibility through specialisation. ‘For most people, purchasing a piano is an event that they do not often go through and the dealer should exercise the integrity to advise the customer properly,’ says Dawn Elizabeth Howells, proprietor of Peregrine’s. In a similar vein, Chappell of Bond Street promotes Yamaha instruments, including Bösendorfer and Kemble, and a large selection from the company’s digital range.

This study of mainstream piano shops in the UK capital clearly has its limitations, and it would be useful to repeat the exercise elsewhere in the country, and further afield, in order to gain a detailed picture of how piano sales are developing. It would also be relevant to compare and contrast actual sales figures from each store, although for obvious reasons dealers are reluctant to release such sensitive data. But this research does provide a broad overview of the different approaches piano sales teams are focusing on today, loosely split into the following categories: family friendly; elite service; new wave; and specialist brand knowledge.

P I A N O M A K E R S

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p r o f i l e

Composer and pianist Frédéric Meinders tells Leandro Ferraccioli how a rebellious

rearrangement opened the door to an absorbing world of transcription

Weavingmelodies

Frédéric Meinders at the home of friends in the Hague. Photograph by Leandro Ferraccioli


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january/February 2013 International Piano 65

p r o f i l e

fine, i’ll admit it: i am a transcription junkie. and it is precisely this fixation that led to my extended correspondence and friendship with frédéric

meinders. pianist, composer and transcription wizard, he is probably one of the best-kept secrets in the piano world, performing mostly in Brazil or at specialist events such as Germany’s Husum festival, to which keyboard anoraks such as myself flock compulsively. When we meet in the Hague, meinders’ native city, he plays for me at length with seemingly boundless energy, as well as regaling me with stories and musical insights, all conveyed with an irrepressible, trenchant wit.

i ask why, 15 years ago, despite a flourishing concert career, he decided to step out of the limelight and settle in Belo Horizonte, in south-eastern Brazil. ‘my wife, who is Brazilian, was studying piano in the Hague and after we married we decided to continue our life here. But it was exhausting: i was teaching and playing too much, working too hard – there were some years when i gave over 80 concerts a season. so, when my wife went back to visit her mother, who was unwell, i thought maybe i could do something in Brazil instead.

‘i was already composing a little, but wanted to do more. if i’d stayed in Holland i would have given many more concerts but, in all honesty, creating and writing music makes me happier than performing. Who is really happy after a concert? there are always things where you say, “ah, it could have been better”. But if you have a composition you’re satisfied with and you never revise the score, then you’re really happy. With so many concerts, you think: “oh god, 40 minutes were good but in one moment i played a horrible note.” this is terrible for pianists.’

When we talk of meinders’ formative years, two particular figures loom large: dutchman (and cor de Groot pupil) Jan de man and Georgian-russian master technician nikita magaloff. ‘magaloff had a facility for control and light playing – something martha [argerich], who introduced me to him, also says. i was playing very fast at that time, perhaps too fast, so he taught me about the “hold back” as he called it. He gave me exercises that help if you have problems with control (which many people do) and i still use them every day. it’s useful in the finale of chopin’s second sonata, which is difficult for everybody: the first time chopin played it he was afraid of that movement. now i can play it without any problem, which wasn’t always the case.

‘Jan de man, on the other hand, taught me nothing about technique because he said i could do it at home; he focused instead on interpretation. for example, the first time i played the liszt sonata (i was 17 or something), i came for a lesson and he said, “oK, play the first note staccato”. so i did. “no,” he said. “try again. and again.” He spent about half an hour just on how the first note should sound. He said: “i closed my eyes and didn’t feel anything. You must play it as if it’s the middle of the night: you’re in bed, it’s midnight and the moon comes out slowly; you’re nearly asleep and then you hear a knock. You must play it so i become afraid and say, “my god, who is behind the door?” a wonderful lesson!’

i remember i also had a very interesting session with cor de Groot the week before taking part in the scriabin competition in olso [1972]. in the end i won first prize and it marked the start

of my piano career in Holland. de Groot was not only a great pianist but also a very good composer and transcriber, he knew so much about music. the lesson was on scriabin’s fifth sonata because this was the compulsory competition piece. at one point – and i’ll never forget this – he asked me what the sonata’s opening could mean? Well, i had no idea then. for instance, what do you think it could mean?’ His question catches me off guard: given the great work’s radical departure from previous scriabin, with its ‘floating’ harmonic nature, i speculate it could be some abstract representation of the dissolution of tonality. at this he suppresses a convulsion of laughter, his wry smile confirming the real explanation’s incongruity. ‘Well, de Groot told me that scriabin had a cleaning lady who worked for him and, one day, he heard her cleaning his piano with a duster [he mimics the sonata’s opening skittish presto ascent up the keyboard] – and this is what scriabin wrote down! isn’t that just an amazing story? Because then you also try it like that; you say to yourself “i’m simply cleaning the piano” and you have to play it as the cleaner would – so you don’t perform it too chic. But nobody had ever told me about that before; or perhaps nobody else knew and de Groot only did because he was a friend of Gilels.’

despite something of a resurgence in the past few decades, transcription is more associated with the piano’s so-called Golden age, and meinders mentions Vladimir Horowitz and alexis Weissenberg as two of the greatest exponents from that period. But of the bijou group of pianists who still practise this art form today, whom does he admire? ‘stephen Hough and, in particular, arcadi Volodos. in the Volodos in Vienna recital [sony classical] he plays his version of tchaikovsky’s Lullaby in a Storm. i also transcribed that song a long time ago for my old friend nelson freire, but i think Volodos’s version is much more interesting; it’s more modern. i did it with rachmaninov-like harmonies, but Volodos goes further. there’s no pianist in the world – let’s say after Horowitz – who amazes me so much, not only as a pianist but as a transcriber. His harmonies, how he writes – his arrangement of the andante of rachmaninov’s cello sonata is just amazing.’

aside from the pianist-transcribers, i ask him about contemporary interpreters he esteems. ‘compared with the rest, pianistically and musically, Volodos is still absolutely mr God. though there is one other pianist for whom i have great respect: enrico pace. He’s a devil at the piano sometimes. i heard him in Utrecht playing schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, which was just amazing – so poetic that i said to myself: this is the second cortot.’

meinders recalls that his very first transcription (of fritz Kreisler’s Schön Rosmarin) was actually ‘an act of revenge’; written to spite the the royal conservatory of the Hague’s avant-garde director, who forbade him from playing Kreisler with a violin student at an end-of-year concert. He grins at the memory of this chutzpah. ‘Yes, i love Kreisler’s music – he’s just a fantastic composer. i started with him because i discovered the rachmaninov Liebesleid and Liebesfreud. if i can blow my own trumpet for a moment, when cor de Groot heard my Schön Rosmarin he said, “Well, violinists should listen to it because you can play the rubato on the piano better than most violinists.”


p r o f i l e


Contrapuntal studies for two hands by Frédéric Meinders. Full version available to download from www.international-piano.com www.fredericmeinders.com


What fascinated me when I heard Rachmaninov was that he was transcribing music for two instruments onto one piano. And why did he do it? Because he loved these pieces and he loved Kreisler as a musician.’

For pianists seeking new repertoire, Meinders’ website is a veritable Ali Baba’s cave: a brief perusal reveals a staggering catalogue of 750 or so works, consisting of originals and transcriptions. Around 150 of these are for the left hand alone. So what is his fascination with this pianistic ‘straitjacket’ – the technical test? The compositional challenge? ‘Both. I have sold many left-hand scores, so don’t forget there are actually more people than you might imagine who cannot play with the right hand. I have also been invited to perform in the Evmelia Festival in Greece in 2014 and the director, Dino Mastroyiannis [a former pupil of Roberto Szidon], asked me to compose a piece for left hand and chamber orchestra based on Greek songs.

‘I played many Godowsky left-hand works for the radio in Holland and, compositionally, I was very inspired by him: I think this technique where a person can play with the left hand alone but make it sound as if there are two hands is just fantastic. The left can play bass, melody and harmonies, so in your mind you get a better idea of the piano. You can learn a lot, too: when you are writing, you try it and then say, “Oh, this is possible, how fantastic!” So you enrich yourself in the process.’

Putting aside the superficial consideration of keyboard tightrope-walking, I wonder just what it is that Meinders the transcriber admires about Godowsky the transcriber. ‘Well, the first thing is the harmonic aspect. If you divide music into three components – melody, harmony and rhythm – I would say harmony is the most important, perhaps even more so than melody. And I think this may be the case for Godowsky, otherwise why would he transcribe Bach’s Cello Suites and Violin Partitas? He wanted to put in the implied harmonies. And if I listen to a Bach Partita, where the violin plays a single note, I feel the harmonies on the piano. In his reworking of Chopin’s Etudes, I believe he wanted to modernise them; this is what I love in his work. There are moments where you wonder how it is possible to find this amazing harmony or that counter theme. For instance, where he takes the Third Nouvelle Etude and discovers an absolutely gorgeous melody.’

Purists tend to take a dim view of such tinkerings, and one of Meinders’ favourite musical tricks, guaranteed to raise urtext hackles, is the so-called quodlibet. This is the technique of interposing a second melody (usually a popular tune) with a classical theme as counterpoint or a second melodic line – frequently to humorous effect. Bach did this, notably in the last of his Goldberg Variations, and another example of just how beautifully this ‘sacrilege’ can work is Meinders’ delicious reworking of Somewhere over the Rainbow, with no fewer than four counter-subjects. The arrangement begins with an original theme, which forms a counterpoint with the Somewhere over the Rainbow song; then, alongside this, appear Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring and two themes from Chopin’s Impromptu in G flat. You can try it for yourself, as the score is reproduced here and on IP’s website, with the composer’s kind permission.

‘You see, counterpoint is for me something fascinating – as it was, of course, for Godowsky. His 53 Studies on Chopin’s


Etudes opened my eyes and influenced me a great deal, because then I also noticed this aspect in other Etudes – where Chopin didn’t explore it so explicitly. For example, in Op 10 No 11 I realised that you can combine other Etudes as a sort of counterpoint. Or even a Chopin Impromptu in the left and a Chopin Etude in the right.’ (Meinders has, in fact, written a remarkable set of elaborations on Op 10 No 11 and others on the Second Nouvelle Etude.)

‘Well, if you see these things in Chopin then you can go completely crazy – you start to put “Happy Birthday” in a Beethoven sonata!’ I laugh, thinking this is merely rhetorical. But no: to prove it he makes for the piano and, with subversive glee, proceeds to weave the melody into Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, then Beethoven’s Sonata Op 110, followed by Chopin’s Etudes Op 25 Nos 1, 2 and 9. I get the feeling he could keep going all afternoon.

A favourite discussion point for Meinders, which has sparked many an exchange of ‘email tennis’, is the issue of style, both in interpretation and transcription. ‘What is allowed and what is not is an interesting question. I can’t explain why, in some Schubert songs, you can go further – as Rachmaninov did, for instance, in Wohin. It depends also on the person who plays or listens to it. For example, my teacher thought Rachmaninov was wrong, but I’m more modern and believe what he did with the chromaticism is fascinating. However, if you take another Schubert song and do the same, it might well be horrible. So I can’t explain why this “modernising” works with some Schubert Lieder and not others. It comes down to what you feel.’

In terms of style, I suggest that the great pianists of the past did things with which people wouldn’t necessarily agree, but did them with such conviction that one is compelled to listen. ‘Yes, “magic” is the word pianophile Farhan Malik uses for Horowitz and I can see what he means. Yet my wife finds Rubinstein more magical than Horowitz and, while I also love Rubinstein, for me it’s not “magic”. Horowitz is really a pianist for pianists, I think. Sometimes he seemed to be out to prove to other pianists that they couldn’t play like him. He was a one-off.’

As well as composing tirelessly, negotiating with Schott to publish his latest transcriptions of Gieseking’s (unfortunately unknown) songs and preparing for concerts, Meinders has lately been focusing more on the music of Bach.

‘These days I’m coming back to Bach, whom I never loved when I was young; I’m listening a lot to Rosalyn Tureck. Some pianists play Bach as if it’s all about sound-making, as in Chopin. But Bach’s music has nothing to do with creating a beautiful sound on the modern piano – it’s the structure that has to be shown. So I am learning from Tureck as well as listening to old music; one is never too old to learn.’

P R O F I L E

‘Compared to the rest, pianistically and musically, Volodos is

still absolutely Mr God’


International Piano January/February 201368

Oxford Philomusica

Alfred Brendel Patron

András Schi� President

Marios PapadopoulosArtistic Director Piano Festival and

Summer Academy 28 July - 6 August 2013 Masterclasses and Concerts in Oxford

Tel: 01865 980 [email protected]

Artists to includeFederico ColliMahan EsfahaniPeter FranklRustem Hayroudino� Niel ImmelmanYoheved KaplinskyStephen KovacevichTessa NicholsonMarios PapadopoulosChristoph PrégardienMenahem PresslerAndrás Schi�

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Applications must be received by Feb. 15, 2013

mtroyal.ca/musicbridge

Program highlights include our International Concerto Competitionwhere �nalists have the privilege of performing inconcert with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra!Cash prizes are awarded — �rst prizeincludes a $2,500 cash award.

MMB alumni include international concert artists likeYuja Wang and Ning Feng; members of the New York Philharmonic,Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, London Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic,Montreal and Toronto Symphony Orchestras; and top prize winners of theTchaikovsky, Paganini, George Enescu and Wieniawski Competitions.

How well do you stand up to the world’s best? Find out this summer.

Program highlights include our International Concerto Competitionwhere �nalists have the privilege of performing in

July 3-Aug. 2, 2013 • Calgary, AB Canada

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SwitzerlandVerbier Festival Academy19 July-4 August 2013, VerbierAll pianists play in solo masterclasses with two distinguished teachers and participate in a piano quartet as part of the chamber music programme.

Closing date for applications: 21 JanuaryFees: CHF2,500; scholarships availableAge/ability level: Pre-professionals aged up to 27Faculty: Christian Thompson, academy directorTel: +41 21 925 90 60Email: [email protected]/academy

UKAldeburgh Festival/Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme7-23 June 2013, SuffolkThe Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme forms an integral part of the Aldeburgh Festival as well as offering a year-round programme of concerts and events. In 2013, programming celebrates Britten’s centenary.

Closing date for applications: 3 December 2012Fees: VariousAge/ability level: Advanced music students; no formal age limit but applicants are usually aged 19-30Tel: 01728 687100Email: [email protected]

Chetham’s International Summer School and Festival for Pianists14-20 and 20-26 August 2013, Manchester

Residential and non-residential piano courses for pianists of any age – young children, amateur adults and aspiring young professionals. Individual lessons with international faculty of over 50 teachers. Extra courses in jazz, improvisation, organ, composition and piano duets.

Closing date for applications: 8 JuneFees: One part £595. Discounts available for multiple bookingsAge/ability level: Courses for all ages and abilitiesFaculty: Murray McLachlan, artistic directorTel: 01625 266899Email: [email protected]

City LitVarious, London Courses for adults all year round in piano and other instruments, mainly at City Lit’s premises in central London; all levels accommodated.

Closing date for applications: Various, depending on courseFees: Various, depending on courseAge/ability level: Adults 18+Faculty: Janet Obi-Keller, head of musicTel: 020 7492 2630Email: [email protected] www.citylit.ac.uk

Dartington International Summer School27 July-31 August 2013, South DevonFive-week summer school featuring various piano masterclasses, workshops and courses. Opportunities for solo, duet, ensemble, accompanying and

chamber music, and informal performance opportunities. Tuition from world-renowned pianists.

Closing date for applications: Various, according to courseFees: From £600 for a week for full board accommodation, courses and concerts; financial assistance availableAge/ability level: All ages and abilitiesFaculty: John Woolrich, artistic director; Emily Hoare, creative producer; Esther Robinson, administrator; Sophia Sheridan, bookings administrator Tel: 01803 847 080Email: [email protected] www.dartington.org/summer-school

North London Piano SchoolFrom 11 August 2013 at the Purcell School, LondonSummer school and competition; ensembles, accompaniment, one-to-one lessons, masterclasses, lectures,

S u m m e r S c h o o l S

While the elements may suggest otherwise, summer will be here before we know it – and it’s never too early to plan which residential courses to attend. IP lists the best piano summer schools for pre-professionals and amateurs from across the globe

Sumer is icumen in

English retreat: The grounds at Dartington

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Chetham’s International Summer School & Festival for PianistsArtistic Director: Murray McLachlan

Part One: 14–20 August 2013Part Two: 20–26 August 2013

The Friendliest Piano Summer School in the World!

For further information call +44 (0)1625 266899 or email [email protected]

www.pianosummerschool.com

With daily concerts, lectures, improvisation, jazz, composition,intensive one-to-one coaching, duets, organ and harpsichord.

Faculty includes: Elena Ashkenazy, Philippe Cassard, Peter Donohoe, José Feghali, Carlo Grante, Harry Harris, David Horne, Eugen Indjic, Nikki Iles, Matthias Kirschnereit, John McLeod, Noriko Ogawa, Artur Pizarro, Vladimir Tropp.

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JERSEY INTERNATIONAL

FESTIVAL for AMATEUR PIANISTS

25th MAY – 2nd JUNE 2013

Masterclass / Student Class by

Individual and Group Tuition

Extensive practice facilities - one piano per person

Introduction to the piano method of Alfred Cortot

Many opportunities to perform

Closing Public Concert to be recorded by BBC Radio Jersey

Option of staying with host families

www.normandypianocourses.com [email protected]

idil biret

QP_JAN-FEB.indd 1 28/11/2012 16:33:29SummertriosA vibrant musical experience offering chamber music for

amateur and professional musicians

001 [email protected]

www.summertrios.org

Unique piano-centred chamber music summer school

Premium, regular and concerto programs available

June 2013Bryn Mawr and Chambersburg

Application Deadline: March 1st 2013

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CD recordings on site, preparation for solo recitals, competitions and auditions, daily concerts. Gala concert at the Royal Academy of Music.

Closing date for applications: 31 MayFees: From £470; some bursaries available for studentsAge/ability level: Grade 6+ to postgraduate levelFaculty: Professors from the UK and abroad. Michael Schreider, artistic director; Lesley Willner, executive directorTel: 020 8958 5206Email: [email protected] www.learn-music.com/nlps2

Oxford Philomusica International Piano Festival and Summer Academy28 July-6 August 2013, OxfordAn international forum of performing artists, pedagogues and students, celebrating all aspects of the instrument. Featuring public masterclasses and concerts, lectures and classes with internationally recognised artists.

Closing date for applications: May (TBC)Fees: Approx £200-£800 (TBC)Age/ability level: Grade 8+Faculty: Past members have included Dame Fanny Waterman, Marios Papadopoulos and Christopher Elton. Marios Papadopoulos is artistic directorTel: 01865 987 222Email: [email protected] www.oxfordphil.com/piano

USAspen Music Festival and School27 June-18 August 2013, ColoradoProgrammes in collaborative piano, solo piano and chamber music. Piano programme features masterclasses, workshops, performance opportunities; also includes a festival of music events throughout the summer.

Closing date for applications: Varies according to programmeFees: $3,200 per course plus $3,300 room and board; scholarships availableAge/ability level: Advanced students; young musiciansContact: Jennifer Johnston, vice president and dean of studentsTel: +1 970 925 3254 (office);

+1 970 925 9042 (box office)Email: [email protected]://aspenmusicfestival.com

Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Piano Program16 June-10 August 2013, Massachusetts In association with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the course offers private lessons, daily masterclasses and select chamber and large ensemble opportunities. Two three-week programmes; some students stay for all six weeks.

Closing date for applications: 8 FebruaryFees: From $2,805 including accommodation, depending on length of stay; scholarships availableAge/ability level: Ages 15-18Faculty: Sharon Boaz, directorTel: +1 617 353 3386Email: [email protected]/cfa/music/tanglewood

California Summer Music6-29 July 2013, CaliforniaA chamber music festival featuring solo and chamber performances, masterclasses, collaboration with student composers in premieres of their works, daily chamber music coaching and individual lessons.

Closing date for applications: 23 January Fees: $4,200 for tuition, room and board Age/ability level: Ages 11-25, advanced studentsFaculty: Timothy Bach, Lori Lack, Julie Nishimura and Hans BoeppleTel: +1 415 753 8920 Email: [email protected] www.csmusic.org

Golandsky Institute Summer Symposium and International Piano Festival13-21 July 2013, Princeton, New Jersey Seven-day programme focusing on the Taubman approach for pianists and string players. Private lessons, masterclasses, technique clinics, performance opportunities, concerts and more.

Closing date for applications: TBC; check websiteFees: TBCTel: +1 877 343 3434Email: [email protected] www.golandskyinstitute.org

Universty of Houston’s International Piano Festival1-3 February 2013, Houston, TexasFestival run by the Universty of Houston’s Moores School of Music. Students must apply to participate in masterclasses with artists. See website for more information and details of how to apply for masterclasses. A number of guest artists perform recitals during the festival.

Closing date for applications: 4 December 2012Fees: Single masterclasses from $5Age/ability level: Three levels: ages 13-14, 15-17 and 18-graduateFaculty: Markus Groh, Alberto Reyes, Abbey SimonContact: Alan Austin, director of special projectsTel: +1 713 743 3167Email: [email protected] www.music.uh.edu/pianofestival

S u m m e r S c h o o l S

Institute founder: Edna Golandsky

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The seventh Summer School for Singers run by Neil & Penny Jenkins will take place once again in Eastbourne.

AIMS INTERNATIONAL MUSIC SCHOOLat Eastbourne College

AUGUST 18th – 25th 2013

For details of fees for Residents and Non-Residents contact:

Address: AIMS, Barn End, Castle Lane, Bramber, West Sussex, BN44 3FB

Telephone: 01903 879591 Email: [email protected] Full details are shown on the website: www.AIMS.uk.com

Comments from past students include: “...I am an AIMS ‘virgin’ - my first time, but certainly not my last. I was totally inspired and in absolute heaven!” “...Once again it was a wonderful week of learning, performing, and appreciating wonderful music and wonderful singing.” “...Theatre critics would have the heading’Triumph’. I cannot but totally admire the administration: it is faultless ...” “...The concerts have been wonderful, the masterclasses enlightening, the warm-ups and vocal technique classes huge fun. Thank you for making the week such a fulfilling experience...”

CLASSES FOR STUDENT PIANISTS

The week will commence with a Gala solo Recital by Catherine Wyn Rogers accompanied by Eugene Asti.

David Willison will again be running the Piano accompanists course, and will give every student pianist at least 2 solo sessions. Pianists are encouraged to form partnerships with the solo singers on the Singers’ course, and accompany them to their sessions. Please indicate if you need to be paired up, or if you have partnerships already in place. There will be group sessions every day, when the accompaniments to selected repertoire will be studied with either David, Terence Allbright or Eugene Asti. In 2013 the songs of the featured composers Britten & Poulenc will be particularly studied. There will be a visit by Julius Drake on Monday 19th August for a special masterclass; and at the end of the week there will be an Informal Concert.

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CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION • CHAUTAUQUA, NY

http://music.ciweb.org

Rebecca Penneys, chair www.rebeccapenneys.com

The Chautauqua Institution uses Steinway pianos exclusively for its festival. The family of Steinway designed pianos at Chautauqua are facilitated by Denton, Cottier & Daniels, Buffalo, New York.

XVIII Chautauqua Piano CompetitionFirst Prize: $7,500 Second prize: $3,000

Application deadline: March 15To apply, visit our website below.

Significant financial assistance available

June 22 – August 8, 2013

P I A N O C H A U TA U Q U A , N E W Y O R K

C H A U T A U Q U A M U S I C F E S T I V A L

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International Music Course11th - 18th August 2013

hosted by the Purcell SchoolSTRING PLAYERS, PIANISTS, VOCALISTS

Soloists, Duos, Accompanists, Ensembles

ASSOCIATE TEACHERS INVITED Tuition by professors from world leading conservatoires

Concerts and masterclasses. CD recording on siteIndividual schedule for everyone

Gala Concert Sunday 18th August

Contact : Dr Michael Schreider78 Warwick Ave. Middlesex HA8 8UJ, United Kingdom

Tel. +44 (0)20 8958 5206 / 8363 3858.Fax +44 (0)560 312 4864

e-mail: [email protected]: Learn-music.com/nlps2

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2

The IP wishlistEssential – and non-essential – items to take on this year’s residential courses

1

4

3

1 iPhone caseShow your allegiance with this piano keys case, available for iPhone 4/4S/5Price: $17.99 (c.£11.53) | iCaseSeraSerawww.etsy.com

2 LanyardA stylish way to keep ID cards and keys safe while travelling from dorm to masterclass Price: £5.45 | SewMuchDetailwww.etsy.com

3 Diary 2013This bestselling music diary features composer anniversaries and events so you won’t forget a thing. Cover design based on The Rite of Spring manuscriptPrice: £6.99shop.rhinegold.co.uk

4 Piano ManualKnow about the ‘Hammerklavier’ but less about the hammers? Expand your knowledge of piano care with the classic Haynes manualPrice: £19.99 | ISBN: 9781844254859www.haynes.co.uk

5 Shower gelBrighten up someone’s washbag with this piano-inspired novelty shower gelPrice: £3.50shop.rhinegold.co.uk

5

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REVIEWS Concerts

UK


Francesco Piemontesi: ‘supremely accomplished’

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Stifters Dinge – revisited Heiner Goebbels University of Westminster, London4-18 November

Heiner Goebbels is a multimedia artist whose works, such as Hashirigaki, Eislermaterial and Surrogate Cities, combine classical, jazz and popular genres. Some have been released on disc, particularly on ECM – notably Sti� ers Dinge, in 2012. But Goebbels’ home is the theatre and his works really need to be experienced live.

Sti� ers Dinge, a homage to Austrian nature writer and poet Adalbert Sti� er (1805-1868), is realised over 70 minutes by a ‘piano sculpture’ of fi ve pianos without pianists, mechanically rigged to produce a huge range of sounds and set against recorded montages of elemental sources including wind, water and ice, and speech and music. Having experienced the wonderful Hashirigaki three times live, I eagerly anticipated this ‘performance without performers’ or ‘performative installation’, and it didn’t disappoint.

The production took place in the work’s original 2008 home, the cavernous Ambika P3 underneath Marylebone Road, where concrete was tested for the Westway fl yover and which is now a University of Westminster art project space. Artangel, sponsor of work by Brian Eno, Michael Landy, Rachel Whiteread and others, commissioned Sti� ers Dinge in 2008, and under their aegis Goebbels transformed this vast concrete box into a site for a compelling multimedia experience.

The fi ve stripped-down pianos – we are told all are grand pianos but only one seems to be – are mounted on a stage, which is set on rails and can move towards and away from the audience; two instruments have had keyboards removed, their strings now

‘played’ by means of various mechanical contraptions, and all of them are operated through computerised player-piano mechanisms. In front of the stage is an area of illuminated fl oorspace. The event begins when two stagehands – the only visible human presence throughout – sprinkle salt over this area. Wall-mounted pipes are struck mechanically and water falls over the powder to create an artifi cial illuminated lake.

The scene is now set for The Trees, full of foreboding, featuring a long – perhaps overlong – recorded reading by Bill Paterson of The Ice Tale from Sti� er’s My Great Grandfather’s Portfolio. (The only possible slight misjudgment by Goebbels.) With a fl uidity that marks the transition between scenes, The Storm builds from Nancarrow-ish multiple piano glissandos as dry ice rises from front of stage. The Rain sets an interview with a pessimistic Claude Levi-Strauss, against Bach’s Italian Concerto on one of the pianos, and sounds of fl owing water. The Thunder begins with cavernous industrial sounds, on which William S Burroughs’ gravelly monotone gradually intrudes; a quicker cross-rhythm introduces Malcolm X’s stirring declamation. Almost human, the pianos take a concluding ‘bow’, moving forwards, backwards, then forwards again. In this ingenious setting, Goebbels creates a unifi ed e� ect from disparate collage elements – music, sound, staging and lighting, all beautifully judged.ANDY HAMILTON

Nicolas Hodges/Philip ThomasHuddersfi eld Contemporary Music Festival, St Paul’s Hall/Phipps Hall, Huddersfi eld 17/22 November

At this year’s Huddersfi eld Contemporary Music Festival, two solo piano recitals stood out. During the fi rst weekend, Nicolas Hodges presented the work of Jean Barraqué (1928–1973), still a neglected modernist despite the early advocacy of André Hodeir; the jazz writer and composer who argued that Beethoven and Debussy, Barraqué’s idols, had only one successor – Barraqué himself. The composer’s six works are all substantial; for him, artistic creation was a Promethean act ex nihilo. Like fellow Messiaen student Pierre Boulez, he followed the path of total serialism. But the formidable 40-minute Piano Sonata (1952) opposes that strict, almost automatic tendency with a freer style. The

Sonata was the centrepiece of Hodges’s recital, an incandescent performance of controlled explosive brilliance. The Sonata is Barraqué’s o� cial Opus 1, but earlier works were discovered recently in a lo� in Paris. The recital featured a selection, all short or relatively so, and written in 1945-49. Retour is tonal; Intermezzo is transitional to 12-tonal. None were forgotten masterpieces, but they provided interesting historical background to the composer’s mature output.

Philip Thomas’s project Canada Connections features Canadian and British experimental composers. His recital presented three pieces focusing on irregular progression and sustained sounds: Christopher Fox’s L’ascenseur, Martin Arnold’s Points and Waltzes and Cassandra Miller’s Philip the Wanderer, dedicated to Thomas. By ‘progression’ I don’t mean ‘development’, which these pieces avoided. The pianist pointed out a� erwards that similarities between the pieces were accidental, as they were all new commissions – world premieres, indeed.

Arnold is a Toronto-based composer who studied with Rzewski, Cage and Andriessen, and makes his living as a landscape gardener. His delightful Points and Waltzes exhibits a subtle, indirect propulsion, imitating the ‘wonderful, non-narrative polyphonic meander of Elizabeth fantasies’, as the composer puts it – a ‘point’, in 16th-century England, was a piece of counterpoint. Arnold’s composition is not a set of pieces, but an extended refl ection expressed through the medium of the slow waltz. It begins minimally as two single lines in the middle and upper registers, a quixotic discourse that eventually dissolves into hypnagogic musings that at times suggested Ran Blake’s oblique jazz harmonies.

Christopher Fox is a real musical thinker, a conceptual artist in the best sense. L’ascenseur exploits an obvious but ingenious and engaging idea, creating a kind of process music of jagged, apparently fumbling, e� ortful-seeming rhythms. The composer’s surreal musical wit – bland and inscrutable as a Thelonious Monk smile – informed proceedings. Equally obsessive rhythmically was Philip the Wanderer by young Montreal-based Cassandra Miller, an adaptation of traditional music from Mozambique. The piece punctiliously follows the original rhythms, fi lling them out harmonically to create a rich, multi-faceted, larger-than-life portrait. AH

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Lennox Berkeley and Friends: Writings, Letters and InterviewsEdited by Peter DickinsonBoydell Press, 344 pages,£45.00 ($90.00)

Oxford-born Lennox Berkeley (1903-89) composed delectable music for keyboard, including Three Pieces (1935), Paysage (1944), Six Preludes (1945) and his Piano Concerto in B fl at major (1947/48). As anyone who knows the recordings by Colin Horsley and Margaret Fingerhut (on Lyrita and Chandos respectively) will be aware, these works are urbane, charming and pleasurable. Lennox Berkeley and Friends is lovingly edited by the British composer and pianist Peter Dickinson, author of The Music of Lennox Berkeley (Boydell) as well as studies of Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and Lord Berners. Berkeley’s writings reveal the same kindly, urbane and by no means undiscerning personality that is heard in his music.

Pianistic matters are central to his imagination and, at a 1930 concert at which Walter Gieseking

played Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto, Berkeley has this to say: ‘The piano seemed to have more variety of tone colour than the orchestra.’ A year later, Berkeley praised further performances by Gieseking for their ‘utter absence of show and exterior e� ect [...] one had the feeling of listening for the fi rst time to things that one knew by heart.’ Vladimir Horowitz was another favourite: as Berkeley was fi nishing his Four Concert Studies in 1939, he wistfully wrote to Nadia Boulanger that Horowitz would be ‘needed’, but unlikely to embrace the new works: ‘Like most virtuosos, he’s probably not dying to play modern music.’ Friendships with other composer-pianists, from Francis Poulenc to Benjamin Britten – the latter a one-time lover – only helped deepen Berkeley’s lifelong fascination with the instrument. BENJAMIN IVRY

At the 2012 Frankfurt Musikmesse, Modartt’s Niclas Fogwall joked that his team of programmers were ‘too good’; the release of Pianoteq 4 was delayed because the developers kept suggesting improvements to the existing design. So, a� er three years in the making, does the fi nished product live up to expectations?

Modartt has been making ‘virtual pianos’ for use on home computers since 2006. A Steinway D grand piano from Hamburg serves as the reference for the new D4 preset range, while the latest upgrade o� ering is a Blüthner Model 1 add-on, authorised by Blüthner and the world’s fi rst physical model of its prized concert grand.

While I’d hesitate to make a judgement as to whether Modartt has captured that famous ‘golden tone’, the preset sounds are imbued with a real warmth and surprising depth, capable of achieving everything from treble twinkles and shimmers to crisp staccatos and sonorous bass. There are no sampled sounds here; everything

is based on physical modelling with real time response – but at the same time, the entire package is only 20MB in size, making it extremely economical in terms of both cost and space.

There’s the freedom to adjust up to 22 parameters, from the tuning, shape of the soundboard, hammer hardness and damper control to the position of the lid and even the mic placement. The note edit window allows you to edit the parameters of each individual note, allowing for limitless customisation.

One handy new feature is the automatic save. Even if you haven’t clicked the record button, your last performance will be saved on fi le; useful for those moments of inspired improvisation. It’s a thoughtful addition, but a loop playback button would be an even more welcome component.

All in all, this is an excellent new o� ering, and at just €29 for an upgrade to version 4, existing Pianoteq users will fi nd real value here.LOUISE GREENER

Pianoteq 4 ProFrom ModarttFrom €29 | www.pianoteq.com

There is nothing worse than over-excitable, over-interpreted Schumann, so it comes as something of a relief to encounter this second volume of favourite works from Jerome Rose, who absorbs the composer’s free-fl owing imagination into compelling musical paragraphs. Even when the fl ights of fancy come thick and fast, as in Davidsbündlertänze, one is le� with the sensation of supreme logic binding everything together.

In the Op 12 Fantasiestücke, not a single ugly note is sounded. No matter how awkward and fatiguing Schumann’s fi gurations – most infamously in Traumes Wirren – Rose maintains a remarkably relaxed action, so that at times it looks as if he is merely fl opping his fi ngers gently onto the keys and somehow sounding the right notes.

Not surprisingly, the Etudes symphoniques (without the posthumous numbers) respond particularly well to his ability to sustain the long

line that underpins the whole structure. Without resorting to extremes of dynamic or articulation, this is a reading that emphasises the ‘symphonic’ rather than the ‘etude’. However, there are technical triumphs along the way too, not least in Etude 10, where Rose manages to despatch the toccata-like fi gurations against continuously sounded dotted rhythms without using the sustaining pedal.

Kreisleriana is another magisterial conception that refreshingly avoids outbursts of mannered interpretative rhetoric, yet it is the Second Sonata that really li� s the roof o� , with its combination of high-velocity agility and velvety sonorities. The recording and pin-sharp picture quality capture Rose’s e� ortless playing to perfection, and the direction rightly focuses our attention on where it needs to be – those amazing hands.JULIAN HAYLOCK

Schumann Davidsbündlertänze, Op 6; Fantasiestücke, Op 12; Etudes symphoniques, Op 13; Kreisleriana, Op 16; Piano Sonata No 2 in G minor, Op 22Jerome Rose (pf)Medici Classics M60079 (Blu-Ray), 134 minutes, PCM stereo

REVIEWS Books, DVDs & software


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76_77_IP0113_BooksDVDs signed off by Claire.indd 76 05/12/2012 11:31:07

REVIEWS DVDs


Follow International Piano on Twitter: @IP_mag

Released in celebration of what would have been Glenn Gould’s 80th birthday (he was born in 1932), this deluxe 10-DVD set o� ers Gould’s Canadian television broadcasts over nearly a quarter of a century. Although much has been previously available, the present set creates an opportunity for proper reappraisal of Gould’s art, while simultaneously reminding us of his unique genius.

The earliest footage here is of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, captured in December 1954. Though it’s in grainy black and white, with the orchestra sounding none too clear, there’s an unmistakable vivacity to Gould’s reading (he plays his own cadenza, which is unsurprisingly highly contrapuntal). Even at this early stage, Gould’s mannerisms are in evidence, most notably his mobility on the piano stool, his swaying made even more giddying by a camera that seems loath to stay still.

Sharing the fi rst disc is a 1961 broadcast entitled The Subject is Beethoven, with Gould assuming the roles of both performer and educator for the fi rst time (it is preceded by a passionate studio recording of the ‘Tempest’ Sonata of 1960 that tests the tape sonics to their limits; there is also a 1967 performance in better sound later on in the box). Throughout his commentaries and interviews, Gould manages to mix approachability with nuggets of great insight. His enthusiasm is infectious – his talk on Beethoven that precedes the performance of Beethoven’s Third Cello Sonata (with Leonard Rose) is compelling, closed by an emphatic ‘Let’s just play it’, which leads to a remarkable example of true chamber music, with two great artists in complete accord.

That is more than can be said about the encounter between Gould and Menuhin, a striking example of two musical minds not meeting (in Beethoven’s Op 96 Sonata, at least). More enlightening is Gould in conversation with Humphrey Burton, which includes the pianist’s take on recording and the death of the concert hall: Burton’s incredulity forms the bedrock from which Gould’s fl ights of fantasy take wing. The second interview centres on Beethoven: Gould’s Columbia recording of the ‘Emperor’ with Stokowski is invoked, with the idea that it ‘sounds as much like the “Eroica” with a descant piano as we could’ (there is, incidentally, a Toronto performance of the ‘Emperor’ included in this set); and two more fi lms explore Schoenberg and Richard Strauss. Gould’s love of Strauss is palpable and reinforced by a 1967 Toronto performance of the Burleske.

The polemic Gould is found in purest form is his talk ‘I detest audiences’. The reaction from a young Zubin Mehta says it all: ‘I think he’s out of his mind’. Gould on music in the USSR is highly stimulating and his reading of Prokofi ev’s Seventh Sonata is the antithesis of Pollini’s mechanistic take, yet no less powerful for it. And how amazing to fi nd him extemporising a fugue on ‘Doe, a deer’ from The Sound of Music in the exemplary lecture ‘The Anatomy of the Fugue’ before he traces the fugue from its prehistory (Marenzio, Lasso) through Bach, on to Hindemith and beyond.

Gould’s talk ‘Richard Strauss – a Personal View’ fi nds him describing himself as addicted to Strauss as some people are ‘to chocolate sundaes’. Lois Marshall gives a tremendous Cäcilie, as well as the three of the more progressive Ophelia-Lieder; Oscar Shumsky is superb in the fi rst movement of the Violin Sonata. The talk ‘Anthology of Variation’ (including an astonishingly beautiful Sweelinck Fantasia) is remarkably informative, focusing on the canonic variations from the Goldbergs before springing o� to Webern. He is most persuasive, perhaps, in the fi nal two DVDs, where he persuasively presents music by Scriabin, Walton, Poulenc, Křenek and Casella, among others.

We also see Gould also as conductor and pianist/director. He conducts Mahler (‘Urlicht’ with Maureen Forrester), although in truth it looks as if he is directing tra� c. He directs a luscious performance of Bach’s Cantata BWV54 (Russell Oberlin, countertenor; Julius Baker, fl ute and Oscar Shumsky, violin). There is fun here, too: the 1974 commercials for Musicamera with Gould as Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite, Dr Karlheinz Klopweisser (no relation to Stockhausen, surely?) and Myron Chianti.

‘That magnifi cent non-conformist Johann Sebastian Bach’, as Gould refers to him, and with whom his name is forever inextricably linked, forms a thread running through the set. Among the many items is a programme that fi nds Gould playing a rather strange hybrid, the ‘harpsipiano’, in the Fi� h Brandenburg Concerto (where he is joined by Isaac Stern and Oscar Shumsky).

‘Pay no attention to critics, ever,’ Gould says at one point. Perhaps pay attention to this, though: this is a remarkable box covering territory from Sweelinck to Webern, Walton and Hindemith via Bach that o� ers the most eloquent tribute imaginable for Gould’s 80th. COLIN CLARKE

Glenn Gould on Television: The Complete CBC Broadcasts, 1954–1977 Glenn Gould (pf/narrator)Sony 8697952109 (10 DVDs, 19 hours 12 minutes)

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REVIEWS CDsREVIEWS CDsREVIEWS CDs

Weinberg Volume 9: Piano Sonatas: No 1, Op 5; No 2, Op 8; No 3, Op 31; 17 Easy Pieces, Op 24 Divine Art dda25105, 71 minutesWeinberg Volume 10: Piano Sonatas: No 4, Op 56; No 5, Op 58; No 6, Op 73. Divine Art dda25107, 67 minutesMurray McLachlan (pf)

Here are Volumes 9 and 10 of Divine Art’s ever-enterprising Russian Piano Music Series. My colleague Colin Clarke reviewed a rival Grand Piano Weinberg sonata CD for IP in July/August, and supplied some background. There is now a Grand Piano sequel (GP607), coupling the Fourth Sonata with the Sonatina, Op 49 and the 10-movement Partita, Op 54, placing the two labels in more direct competition.

First impressions of Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–96), alias Moishe Vainberg? Shostakovich without the jokes, you may think. The sound-world is bleak and o� en frenzied, unsurprisingly recalling Shostakovich, given the older man’s friendly (and on one occasion life-saving) infl uence. The humourlessness is understandable, given Weinberg’s hounding by – successively – the Nazis and Stalin, and is summed up with artless understatement in the note-writer’s comment, ‘A Jewish artist in the Soviet Union did not exactly enjoy an easy life’. Weinberg composed indefatigably, however: just six piano sonatas (1940–60) but, among his total of 154 opus numbers, there are also 22 symphonies and 17 string quartets and a Trumpet Concerto that piano accompanists may already know.

The best entry for newcomers – be they listeners or players – is the Fourth Sonata (premiered by Gilels, no less), the most well-known and arguably fi nest piece in these two volumes. Murray McLachlan’s performance, here as elsewhere, is brawny, relentlessly energetic and fully committed, encompassing the slow movement’s gigantic stretches with enviable ease. Nervous listeners should warm up on the 17 Easy Pieces, all very short, enticingly harmonised and many of them ripe for early-grade exam syllabuses. Both discs were originally recorded in Sweden in 1996 and issued on Olympia: the recorded piano sound stops just this side of twangy.MICHAEL ROUND

A Tcherepnin Sonatas: No 1, Op 22a; No 2, Op 94 a; Four Préludes nostalgiques, Op 23a; Prelude, Op 85 No 9a; Moment musical; Petite Suite, Op 6b; Rondo à la Russe; Entretiens, Op 46b; Polkab; Scherzo, Op 3b; Expressions, Op 81b; La QuatrièmeAlexander Tcherepnin, Mikhail Shilyaev (pfs)Toccata Classics TOCC 0079, 80 minutes

A Tcherepnin Complete Piano Music, Volume 1: 10 Bagatelles, Op 5. Sonata No 1, Op 22; 9 Inventions, Op 13; Sonata No 2, Op 94; 10 Études, Op 18Giorgio Koukl (pf)Grand Piano GP608, 63 minutes

A Tcherepnin Complete Piano Music, Volume 2: Sonatine romantique, Op 4; Petite Suite, Op 6; Toccata No 1, Op 1; Pièces sans titres, Op 7; Nocturne No 1, Op. 2 No 1; Dance No 1, Op 2 No 2; Nocturne No 2, Op 8 No 1; Dance No 2, Op 8 No 2; Scherzo, Op 3. Message, Op 39Giorgio Koukl (pf)Grand Piano GP632, 63 minutes

It is 14 years since Alexander Tcherepnin’s centenary (not celebrated at the time as widely as it should have been) and 36 since his death so the appearance of three discs of his piano music in rapid succession is as welcome as it is unexpected. The Toccata Classics disc opens with archival recordings made by the composer in New York in March 1965 (produced by the composer Philip Ramey, a former Tcherepnin pupil and subject of an earlier Toccata Classics release) of the two sonatas, Préludes nostalgiques and the ninth of his Op 85 Preludes. The performances are the most exciting of any under review here and have been remastered very fi nely under the auspices of the Tcherepnin Society. The greater part of the disc is made up of a deliciously varied selection of his smaller pieces (the earliest, the Moment musical of 1913, dating from his mid-teens) and sets of miniatures – the early Petite Suite (1918–19), Entretiens (1920–30) and 10 Expressions (1951) – all played with compelling assurance by Mikhail Shilyaev.

With the exception of the Expressions, all the pieces performed by Shilyaev are

fi rst recordings. The second of Grand Piano’s two releases, between them initiating a series devoted to Tcherepnin played by Giorgio Koukl, would have been almost entirely of premieres had not Toccata Classics pipped them to the post with the Scherzo and Petite Suite. However, the Op 1 Toccata was recorded by Murray McLachlan for Olympia in 2000. On Koukl’s Volume 1, the 1921 Inventions and 1920 Études also appear for the fi rst time on disc; note the misleading opus numbers, respectively 13 and 18, do not refl ect the sequence of composition; the Études originate from the same period as the Bagatelles (1912–18). Indeed, both Grand Piano volumes focus on early works, the exceptions being the Second Sonata (1961; Volume 1) and the essay in rhythmic virtuosity Message (1926; Volume 2 – how has this not been recorded before?). The early sets that rework juvenile miniatures do so with considerable acuity and charm, not least the Bagatelles, Petite Suite and Pièces sans titres. The Op 1 Toccata and Op 3 Scherzo (Koukl’s account a touch slower than Shilyaev’s but better characterised) foreshadow the later creative giant while the pairs of Nocturnes and Dances Opp 2 and 8 indicate the range of infl uences on his then still-forming creative personality.

Koukl – fresh from his revelatory recordings for Naxos of Martinů’s complete piano music and concertos – proves himself a most sympathetic advocate for Tcherepnin’s music, whether on a small or large scale. It is instructive to compare his interpretations of the sonatas with the composer’s somewhat wayward ones: Koukl may not achieve the same fury in the First Sonata’s opening Allegro commodo but his pacing and structuring of the movement, while subtly di� erent, is just as convincing; and his playing as a whole, especially in the Second Sonata, is much more precise. The sound for both discs is top-notch.GUY RICKARDS

79_83_CDrevs signed off by Claire.indd 79 05/12/2012 13:34:43

REVIEWS CDs


When Shostakovich graduated in 1925, he was regarded as a pianist fi rst and foremost, who also composed. That perception changed with the First Symphony’s premiere a year later but he wrote for the keyboard throughout his life, not least with four-hand reductions of his symphonies. Toccata Classics’s new series devoted to his complete works for piano duo and duet opens with the Ninth Symphony and it should be no surprise that it transfers remarkably well to the keyboard. The early F sharp minor Suite of 1922 is much less characteristic, stylistically – with ambition outstripping technical ability – yet its four movements make a considerable cumulative impact, suggestive of the symphonist to come (the suite may have originated as an abortive attempt at a symphony).

Vicky Yannoula and Jakob Fichert provide sparkling interpretations throughout their hugely entertaining programme, which concludes with the A minor Concertino (1953) that followed hard on the heels of the 10th Symphony. Older listeners may recall the composer’s 1956 recording with son Maxim (at one time reissued with Shostakovich and Weinberg performing the four-hand version of No 10), which is over two-and-a-half minutes shorter. Yannoula and Fichert are less hectic but what they lack in sheer excitement is made up for in superb precision and a genuinely rethought interpretation. Punctuating the main works are a handful of lighter pieces, the pick of which is The Chase from the fi lm music to Korzinkina’s Adventures (1940). Recommended. GR

Shostakovich Complete Music for Piano Duet and Piano Duo, Volume 1: Symphony No 9 in E fl at major, Op 70; Waltz and Polka; Korzinkina’s Adventures, Op 59 – No 3, The Chase; Suite in F sharp minor, Op 6; Tarantella, Op 84d; Merry March, Op 84c; Concertino in A minor, Op 94Vicky Yannoula (pf), Jakob Fichert (pf)Toccata Classics TOCC0034, 75 minutes

This is Benjamin Grosvenor’s fi rst concerto disc. The programming is exemplary, with each major piece followed by an intriguing, brief encore; in two cases, transcriptions add another musical voice to the mix. Grosvenor’s way with Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto is most a� ecting, capturing not only its fantasy but also its Bachian inspiration. The major competition here comes from Stephen Hough (Hyperion), and if Grosvenor does not quite match Hough’s lightness of touch in the central Allegro scherzando, he certainly gives him a run for his money in the breezy fi nale, where fl eet fi ngerwork and fi zzing trills li� Grosvenor’s performance to another level. The fi ligree of Godowsky’s Swan transcription takes the music’s trajectory closer to Ravel.

He gives a fi ne account of the Ravel concerto too, if not quite scaling the heights of Michelangeli’s legendary reading. The recording allows for plenty of orchestral detail and Grosvenor highlights the intimacy of the fi rst movement, thus linking it to the heartfelt central Adagio assai (where the pianist is eclipsed by a heartbreaking cor anglais solo). But it is in the fi nale that he fi nally hits true form. The 1913 Prélude is a blissful encore.

The clarinet’s sliding glissando that opens the Gershwin is alone worth the price of the disc. The sound stage for the jazz band is generally convincing, although there is some spotlighting. Nevertheless this is a bright and breezy account, full of felicitous touches from Grosvenor, complementing rather than eclipsing Previn/LSO’s full-fat Gershwin. COLIN CLARKE

Rhapsody in Blue: Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor, Op 22; The Swan (trans. Godowsky); Ravel Piano Concerto in G; Prélude in A minor; Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue (original jazz band version, arr. Grofé); Love Walked In (trans. Grainger) Benjamin Grosvenor (pf); Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/James Judd Decca 478 3527, 66 minutes

Play BraxtonMarilyn Crispell (pf); Mark Dresser (bass), Gerry Hemingway (drums)Tzadik TZ 7640, 40 minutes

From 1985 to 1994, Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway were three-quarters of the Anthony Braxton Quartet, one of the most exciting and innovative groups in jazz, which explored new kinds of structure and fresh approaches to improvisation. The trio re-formed in 2010 to play at Braxton’s 65th-birthday festivities, whereupon Tzadik invited them to record this disc.

Given the trio’s familiarity with so much of Braxton’s enormous oeuvre, the CD’s meagre 40-minute duration is inexcusable; however, the playing itself is top notch and the works chosen, though all written pre-1985, do indicate the variety of Braxton’s innovative forms, from Composition 23C’s catchy ‘additive repetition’ to Composition 116’s layered, synchronised ‘pulse tracks’, sounding here like a spiky, demented march music.

As before, the trio deal expertly with the music’s technical complexities and rise to its more poetic moments, such as Composition 110A, once likened by Braxton to ‘the sensation of “blowing winds and trees” (on an island experiencing a rainstorm)’. They bring their own fi erce clarity to the music too, showing it can stand apart from its creator; with his reeds absent, Crispell’s piano becomes the lead voice, hammering an intense improvisation from Composition 69B’s ‘language music’ and skipping gaily through the bebop-inspired Composition 40B. Dresser and Hemingway are just as superb in what is essentially democratic ensemble music. So, though it may only be half a CD, it’s defi nitely half full rather than half empty.GRAHAM LOCK



REVIEWS CDs

Nebra Desde el silencio / From silenceMoisès Fernádez Via (pf)Verso VRS 2118, 60 minutes.

Mozart Piano Concertos: No 17 in G major, K453; No 22 in E fl at major, K482; Rondo in A major, K386Kristian Bezuidenhout (fp), Freiburger Barockorchester/Petra Müllejans (violin)Harmonia Mundi HMC902147, 73 minutes

Mozart Piano Concertos: No 17 in G major, K453; No 26 in D major, K537, ‘Coronation’Ronald Brautigam (fp); Die Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander WillensBIS BIS-1944, 55 minutes The music of the Spanish baroque

remains a largely unexplored treasure trove, especially on record, hence the evocative title for this selection of Nebra’s long-lost sonatas and toccatas for keyboard, although to open the disc with a track of symbolic silence is possibly to labour the point. José de Nebra (1702-68) – or Joseph Nebra, as Verso calls him – was the most celebrated member of an infl uential musical dynasty, famous chiefl y for his many zarzuelas, operas and sacred works, though renowned also as an organist and teacher (his pupils included his nephew Manuel Blasco de Nebra and Antonio Soler). Nearly all the pieces on this disc are manuscript copies unearthed in private collections and archives; most are undated and devoid of tempo and dynamic markings, which suggests Nebra used them for teaching. Though probably intended for clavichord or harpsichord, they sound perfectly suited to the piano on this superbly recorded live recital, and, didactic or not, they make delightful listening, full of darting rhythms, vivacious fl ourishes and ingenious harmonic twists.

The young, prize-winning Spanish pianist Moisès Fernádez Via makes a persuasive advocate, keenly alert to Nebra’s fi nesse and lively idiosyncrasies, from plangent yearning (Toccata in C minor) and skipping gaiety (two Toccatas in G major) to the serene calm and de� fi ligree of the Grave on the 8th Tone. Via closes his recital with a rapt improvisation on a fragment from a lost Grave; it’s a lovely gesture, cajoling new beauty from old as he draws Nebra into the 21st century. GL

In 1802 music theorist Heinrich Christoph Koch praised Mozart’s concertos for their ‘passionate sense of dialogue’ between soloist and orchestra. His remark appears in the notes to Ronald Brautigam’s CD, although it’s the South African pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout and the Freiburger Barockorchester (FBO), on their fi rst disc of Mozart piano concertos, who bring this sense of dialogue gloriously to life. Key to their success, as Bezuidenhout explains in his own CD note, was an experimental recording set-up – strings in a semi-circle behind him, winds in a line facing him: a layout designed to bring the winds ‘to the fore of the sonic picture’ and to allow ‘more natural and vivid interplay’ between piano and winds. These priorities are historically appropriate, refl ecting the more innovatory aspects of Mozart’s later piano concertos, not least K453, one of the fi rst to assign to the winds a prominent role, and K482, the fi rst to feature clarinets. The result, as Bezuidenhout notes, is ‘the piano, playing both solo and continuo, darts in and out of the lush orchestral texture’; the listener is there too, in the midst of the action, hearing the music as if from the inside.

Perhaps it won’t be to all tastes, but I found this immediacy thrilling; the extreme textural and dynamic variations give the music terrifi c bite, especially in K482, with its extrovert tutti fl ourishes and pockets of hushed intimacy (enhanced by the reduction of strings to one-per-part). And if Bezuidenhout sometimes risks compromising the bigger picture in his scrutiny of the close-up – particularly striking in the Andante of the G major, where he turns gentle

pathos into near despair – his playing is always imaginative and constantly engaging. He’s vivacious in the A major Rondo, delightfully zestful in K453’s bu� a fi nale and subtle yet expressive throughout the dark-hued and bright-tinted contrasts of the magical E fl at major work.

Bezuidenhout plays a recent copy of an 1805 Walter fortepiano, which is technically 20 years too advanced, but has a clear and pleasant tone. Ronald Brautigam’s fortepiano is a modern copy of a Walter from c1795; its slightly thinner, more pinched tone is presumably closer to Mozart’s own Walter (c1782) – but is his disc any closer to that Mozartian spirit of interaction? Certainly he and Die Kölner Akademie enjoy a good rapport (this is their third disc of Mozart concertos), though I’d describe it as a courteous rather than passionate relationship, and one that exists more between pianist and orchestra en bloc than between individual players. Die Kölner Akademie’s orchestral sound is smooth and more homogenous than the FBO’s, and their sculpted phrasing complements Brautigam’s own: everything is nicely shaped and crisply articulated, if a little detached. I enjoyed their brisk, coolly measured take on the relatively lighthearted G major Concerto, although a similar approach to K537 made its stylised elegance seem overly chilly and inscrutable. The disc will have its admirers, but that ‘passionate sense of dialogue’ is more fully embraced by Bezuidenhout and the FBO, who revel in the colours and dramas of Mozart’s richly volatile music. GL


REVIEWS CDs


Beethoven The Piano ConcertosDaniel Barenboim (pf); Staatskapelle BerlinDecca 478 3515 (3CD), 183 minutes

These 2007 performances have been previously available on DVD and are Barenboim’s third Beethoven cycle in which he appears as soloist. The fi rst thing to strike the listener is the wide recording range and involving soundstage. The orchestra is superb, too, with a gloriously warm sound, and Barenboim’s rapport with the players is palpable. In the First Concerto he plays his own cadenza (the remaining concertos feature Beethoven’s own). Barenboim projects the melodies of the slow movements to perfection (try No 1’s Largo, for instance, with its superb sense of dialogue). If No 2’s orchestral exposition sounds almost Mozartian, it is to match Barenboim’s grace and clarity of articulation; but on the whole he sounds less involved in this piece than the First. The fi nal two concertos are puzzling in that No 4 is the weakest of the set (uninvolving, with some irritating agogics), while No 5, full of energy and depth, is its crowning glory. CC

Pixis Piano Concerto in C major, Op 100; Concertino in E fl at, Op 68; Thalberg Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 5 Howard Shelley (pf), Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Hyperion CDA67915, 70 minutes

Johann Peter Pixis (1788–1874) was a respected virtuoso in his day, perhaps best known for his contribution to Liszt’s collaborative work Hexaméron (to which Thalberg also contributed). The soundworld of Weber looms large both in Pixis’s Concerto, both in its scintillatingly virtuoso passages and in the dark, forest-like atmosphere of the Adagio cantabile. The music can sound over-decorative in places, but its sheer vivacity holds it all together. The earlier Concertino is extremely charming, with some gloriously imaginative scoring.

Sigismond Thalberg (1812–71) is somewhat better known, and there exist alternatives to this recording by Francesco Nicolosi (Naxos) and Michael Ponti (Vox). Ponti has plenty of charm but the recording and orchestra let him down; Nicolosi gives a grand and thoughtful reading that complements Shelley, but it is the new Hyperion disc that is most consistently convincing. Perhaps the fi nest movement is the gorgeous Adagio, with its Chopinesque arabesques. A superb disc. CC

Schubert Fantasy in C major, ‘Wanderer’, D760; Four Impromptus, Op 142 (D935); Four Impromptus, Op 90 (D899) Viviana Sofronitsky (fp)Avi Music AVI8553250

Equally excellent are the production values on Avi Music’s new disc of Schubert on the fortepiano featuring Viviana Sofronitsky, whose father Vladimir will be familiar to older pianophiles. The rather clattery tone of the instrument takes a bit of getting used to and, in a Wanderer Fantasy executed a touch faster than usual, does not always help clarity of articulation. Matters are easier in the two sets of Impromptus with their more lyrical, at times lilting, melodies. The variation-form B fl at major Impromptu (D935 No 3), based on one of Schubert’s best-known tunes, is very neatly done. Sofronitsky’s strong interpretation of the set seems to support the view (fi rst put forward by Robert Schumann) that this is in fact a free-format sonata. The D899 tetralogy is scarcely less cohesive a design and is delivered with panache. GR

F Schmitt Complete Original Works for Piano Duet and Duo, Volume 1: Trois Rapsodies, Op 53; Sept Pièces, Op 15; Rhapsodie ParisienneIvencia Piano Duo (Andrey Kasparov and Oksana Lutsyshyn, pf) Grand Piano GP621, 54 minutes

The music on this disc highlights the highly perfumed world of French composer Florent Schmitt (1870–1958) and

presents two world premiere recordings. Only the three Op 53 Rapsodies of 1903–4 for two pianos are otherwise currently represented (on Dutton Vocalion), although they were previously recorded by Robert and Gaby Casadesus in the 1950s. The central Polonaise has an energy and ferocity that seems to prefi gure the wildness of Ravel’s La valse. Schmitt’s fi nale, itself a waltz (‘Viennoise’) is harmonically adventurous and the duo bring great swing to its later stages. At over 30 minutes, the Sept Pièces was Schmitt’s fi rst large-scale cycle for piano duet and it exudes a mood of sweet reminiscence. The Rhapsodie Parisienne, with which the disc ends, is again for piano duet and is currently unpublished. The Invencia Duo’s nonchalant delivery perfectly matches the spirit of the piece as they track the harmony’s sweet twists and turns with exquisite precision. CC

Schumann Complete Piano Works, Volume 3: Charakterstücke I: Abegg Variations, Op 1; Papillons, Op 2; Drei Romanzen, Op 28; Intermezzi, Op 4 plus shorter piecesFlorian Uhlig (pf) Hänssler Classic CD98.646, 76 minutes

This is the gem of my selection for this issue. Uhlig has embarked on a project to record all of Schumann’s piano pieces on 15 discs. He is a true visionary (as anyone familiar with his Black Box CD Venezia, featuring music by Wagner, Chopin, Galuppi, Alkan et al., will know). In Papillons, Uhlig seems alive to every nuance. His playing is full of cheeky staccatos and evinces a great sense of fl uidity, line and texture. There follow an exquisitely planned sequence of short pieces related in various ways to Op 2, forming a magical musical appendix. Every item in this enterprise, no matter how small, is clearly a labour of love. The Op 28 Romanzen fi nd Schumann focused on weightier matters and again they are ideally shaped by Uhlig, while Op 4 adds drama and virtuosity to the mix. CC

In Brief...CHOICE



REVIEWS CDs

In Brief...Debussy Children’s Corner; Suite bergamasque; Danse; Deux Arabesques; Pour le piano; Masques; L’isle joyeuse; La plus que lenteAngela Hewitt (pf)Hyperion CDA67898, 80 minutes

Angela Hewitt’s previous recordings of Bach, Mozart and Ravel – with their combination of rigour, precision and poetry – stand her in good stead in her new recital for Hyperion, which comprises the essential Debussy piano music outside the Préludes, Études and Images. Children’s Corner is delightfully light and airy, with some remarkably delicate touches, culminating in a rollicking Golliwog’s Cakewalk. The playing in the Suite bergamasque is near ideal, Clair de lune weaving its subtle magic but as a part (for once) of a convincing whole. The Arabesques, Masques and Pour le piano sparkle in her hands but it is in the Danse (originally the Tarantelle styrienne, later orchestrated by Ravel) and L’isle joyeuse that the most sublime playing is to be found. La plus que lente completes a hugely enjoyable disc. Hyperion’s production values are superb. GR

Le Bœuf sur le Toit – Swinging Paris Miniatures and arrangements for piano Alexandre Tharaud (pf), Frank Braley (pf), with Bénabar, Jean Delescluse, Juliette, Madeleine Peyroux, Natalie Dessay (vocals), David Chevallier (banjo), Florent Jodelet (percussion)Virgin Classics 5099944073725

Alexandre Tharaud’s new Virgin Classics album Le Bœuf sur le Toit is a 26-track evocation of ‘Swinging Paris’ built around arrangements or compositions by Clément Doucet and Jean Wiéner (who between them contribute 12 pieces, including four joint arrangements for two pianos). Doucet’s Chopinata is a fun foxtrot based on Chopin themes as is his Liszt skit, Hungaria. However, Isoldina trivialises its Wagnerian material, showing poor musical judgment.

Milhaud’s title-track appears only by virtue of the extracted Tango des Fratellini (its most famous passage, for sure) as does Caramel mou, one of several tracks to include guest performers: here tenor Jean Delescluse. An ethereal-sounding Natalie Dessay turns up in Wiéner’s Blues chanté and Madeleine Peyroux gives a mannered and tedious rendition of Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It. Tharaud’s playing, when the music gives him anything interesting to do – as in the Gershwin songs – compels attention; otherwise this is no more than frothy wallpaper music, pleasant enough in a hotel bar, but I could not wait to return to Debussy, Schubert and Tcherepnin. GR

Rachmaninov Piano Sonata No 2 in B fl at minor, Op 36 (1913 version); Morçeaux de fantaisie, Op 3; Variations on a Theme by Corelli, Op 42 Alessandro Mazzamuto (pf) Arts SACD47761-8, 71 minutes

This is a remarkable debut disc from the young Sicilian pianist Alessandro Mazzamuto, who was born in 1988. The booklet notes talk of Mazzamuto’s approach being closer to that of an older era of pianists (something that is o� en said about Benjamin Grosvenor, too) and it is easy to see what they mean. Although Hélène Grimaud on DG opts for a slightly di� erent, hybrid text of the Second Sonata, it is still instructive to compare the two and it is Mazzamuto who triumphs in his remarkably fl uency. He balances the textures impeccably (though perhaps the bell-like descants are slightly under-accented) and the Non allegro is tender without a hint of wallowing. This is a thinking man’s Rachmaninov. Even the famous Prelude in C sharp minor (from Op. 3) becomes a miniature tone-poem. The Corelli Variations (given as one track) unveils itself mysteriously in playing that belies the pianist’s tender years. CC

Ravel Sonatine; Gaspard de la nuit, Menuet antique; Le tombeau de CouperinPaolo Giacometti (pf)Channel Classics CCS SA 31612 (2CD), 134 minutes

Each work here is performed twice, on an Érard and on a Steinway. Ravel had experience of both and composed using the French instrument. The older piano is featured on the fi rst disc. The Érard has a dulcet, even ethereal timbre and is slightly fuzzy (perhaps because it was recorded in a church) but it has an attractive sound, with no excessive brightness in the treble and with a dry bass that that doesn’t obfuscate Ravel’s textures. It’s a little watery-sounding at times, somewhat tinkling, but that is analogous to the refi ned sound-world that Ravel conjures. Gaspard de la nuit is perhaps the biggest test of the Érard’s potential. This is not the most powerful account around, but it’s certainly vivid, not least in Scarbo, brought o� by Paolo Giacometti with dash and drama.

The Steinway, unsurprisingly, o� ers a wider dynamic range, a growly bass and a dazzling treble, all of which is exploited by Giacometti while remaining sensitive to Ravel’s unique aural imagination. The sound-image has a greater clarity, the Steinway having been recorded more closely and in a dryer acoustic. It might have been better if the same venue had been used for both instruments. Overall, Giacometti is a sensitive and innate performer, giving shapely, thoughtful and vibrant interpretations, responding to and working within the pianos’ respective qualities and o� ering subtle di� erences in the same works. However, Ravel’s music seems less magical and less involving – heavier, in fact – when heard on the Steinway, so in this particular contest it is the Érard that wins the day!COLIN ANDERSON

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Beethoven Rondo in B fl at major for Piano and Orchestra, WoO 6(Edited by Hans-Werner Kuthen, fi ngering by Andreas Groethuysen, reduction for two pianos by Johannes Umbreit)G. Henle VerlagISMN 979-0-2018-1149-9Beethoven produced four versions of his Second Piano Concerto (which, in fact, was his fi rst). This delightful Mozartian Rondo was originally the fi nal movement of the piece and it is the earliest surviving example of a Beethoven orchestral score. Though heavily indebted to Mozart in terms of structure (it seems modelled on the fi nale of Mozart’s E fl at Concerto, K271, as both works have slower central sections in opposing rhythmic metres to their outer ones) it is far from anonymous. Indeed, there are lots of welcome bravura passages for the soloist, including challenging fi gurations in 10ths and some cadenza-like fl ourishes. But overall, there is less rhythmic energy and melodic memorability than in the eventual last movement of the Second Concerto. The orchestral writing is also much more conservative. Nonetheless, the piece deserves to be much better known and could be useful material for younger pianists and school orchestras to use.

Solo Tango Vol 2Solo piano arrangements by Gustavo BeytelmannUniversal Edition UE 35029ISMN 979-0-008-08406-5The fi rst volume of Beytelmann’s solo tango arrangements was a treasure trove of contrasted delights. In this follow-up anthology, we are o� ered a further seven highly individual, o� en quirky transcriptions that are full of intrigue, originality and provocation. Agustín Bardi shows vivid and unexpected twists of harmony, texture and mood in his highly energised Qué noche!. In contrast, Melodia de Arrabal by Carlos Gardel works as a slow crescendo, leading to an extremely invigorating climax. Heightened expressivity and intense sentiment are hallmarks of Francisco de

REVIEWS SHEET MUSIC


Caro’s Flores negras, while passion really lets fl y with abandon in Gardel’s Por una cabeza. In total contrast, the minimalist textures and sparse non-pedalled sounds of Don Juan by Ernesto Ponzio are impressive, while the almost philosophical quiet musings of Bardi’s Nunca tuvo novio, complete with its memorable melodies, make for a poignant conclusion to the collection. Warmly recommended.

Mendelssohn Rondo capriccioso, Op 14(Edited by Ullrich Scheideler, fi ngering by Hans-Martin Theopold)G. Henle VerlagISM M M-2018-0919-9Ullrich Scheideler’s painstakingly researched new edition of Mendelssohn’s beloved party piece involved no fewer than three autograph scores, three fi rst editions and two later editions during its preparation. As someone who has performed this work for many years, I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, to fi nd that there are no major di� erences on o� er from what has been presented in the past from other houses. But Scheideler’s workmanship exudes authority and it is fascinating to read his footnotes, where alternatives are given to the precise placements on the score of ‘a tempo’ markings following ritardandos. Precision in terms of pedalling in the opening Andante is also most welcome here, and it was interesting to note just how few pedal indications Mendelssohn actually wrote. Excellent background notes on the gestation of the piece are included, while Hans-Martin Theopold’s fi ngering is both practical and intelligent.

Edward Gregson An Album for my Friends (2011)Novello NOV 100452Edward Gregson (born 1945) has an idiomatic understanding of the piano, and this is impressively on display in this charming suite of baroque dance movements. Each movement is dedicated to a particular friend, and cunningly modelled on a particular piece from one of

the Bach French or English suites. For example, Adam’s Allemande (dedicated to composer Adam Gorb) is extremely close motivically and in character to the Allemande from Bach’s G major French Suite. Gregson’s harmonic vocabulary makes use of sequences, dissonances and lots of superimposed fourths, but always combined with a populist appeal. These pieces will be extremely useful to talented younger players in particular as they search for material to present in competitive festivals and school concerts. It would be wonderful to juxtapose the original dances with these charming new pieces in performance, though they can equally stand on their own.

Bohuslav Martinu° La revue de cuisine –Version for piano from the concert suite, edited by Christopher HogwoodLeduc AL18 054ISMN-CZC-0-046-18054-5Those who enjoy Martinů’s Etudes and Polkas will fi nd this jazz-infl uenced reduction from his ballet score La revue de cuisine surprising. Though perhaps less individual in style than his piano concertos and arguably less idiomatic in terms of pianistic layout than his most famous solo pieces, this newly edited version by Christopher Hogwood of the composer’s own solo piano suite certainly makes for enjoyable sight-reading. Martinů made his arrangement for solo piano in 1930. The ballet itself shows infl uences of popular music, including jazz, tango, foxtrot and Charleston, as well as shades of Poulenc, Stravinsky and possibly a little of Martinů’s teacher Albert Roussel. Perhaps too much of it sounds like a reduced orchestral score when played on piano for it to be included in recital programmes, but this music will certainly provide lots of stimulation in private study. In this sense, it can be favourably compared with the reductions for solo piano of the great Debussy orchestral scores such as Jeux and Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune.MURRAY MCLACHLAN

Schumann

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Rondo in Bb major for Piano and OrchestraWoO 6 · Piano Reduction

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IT’S VERY DIFFICULT FOR ME TO talk about music. I’m doing music because I am not a person who can

express her feelings very well in words. It’s easier with the piano! My fi rst teacher didn’t support the method of teaching a child with Czerny or Hanon studies. He thought I should deal immediately with real music. So he gave me Bach: the C major Invention was the very fi rst piece I ever played. I was three years old and putting together all the di� erent voices was just like a puzzle game for me. So for the fi rst few years I played nothing but Bach – Two-Part and then Three-Part Inventions. Then a friend of my parents bought me the Glenn Gould Goldberg Variations as a present. I would have been six or seven. I fell in love with the Goldbergs – it just happened to be Glenn Gould playing. It was only later that I found out about his character. It inspired me not to listen to anyone else’s interpretation of a piece that I was preparing, because you need to fi nd your own way – and that’s exactly what he’s doing. It’s not something you can copy or imitate. You can learn from it, of course, but it’s always been important for me to fi nd my own approach.

One day when I was ten or eleven, I was home alone in Munich. I got bored with practising and I just wanted to play some other music to the piece I was rehearsing. So I looked at my mother’s score shelf and found some Schubert lieder (she is a pianist but she took up singing lessons when we moved to Germany). I started playing the piano parts and singing the melody and really loved it. The next day I went to this very good DVD shop we have in Munich – people love going there because the people who work there know a lot about classical music. It’s not like this anymore! They recommended Fischer-Dieskau with Gerald Moore. Later I listened to soprano versions and Hermann Prey but what I liked about Fischer-Dieskau’s is that, even though

the intonation is not always perfect, it has so much character and charisma – but it never disturbs. One day I want to make a recording of Schubert lieder accompanying a singer coupled with some Liszt transcriptions of the songs.

I discovered Czi� ra through Liszt. My fi rst teacher, who I studied with for six or seven years, was Hungarian and he was a great fan of Czi� ra. There’s no doubt that he is one of the greatest interpreters of Liszt’s music, but two years ago I fi rst heard him playing French Baroque music – Couperin, Lully, Rameau. Tambourin that he plays I love because of the rhythm he had in his blood. It’s so special. Nobody can copy this. When you hear the piece you also imagine Gypsies and dancing – and Czi� ra is a master at this Gypsy-style rhythm. You also feel it in the Hungarian Rhapsodies or anything he does.

I was on the train to Verbier with Steven Isserlis and he asked me which version of the Bach Cello Suites I liked best and I said Daniil Shafran! He said that was all right, he wouldn’t hate me! When I fi rst heard this recording I was in Russia. Some friends played it for me. One of them was doing an exam or something on Shafran and so I found out a lot about him. You can really hear from the way he plays that he has dedicated his whole life to music. It must have been very di� cult for his wife because music was his priority. No 5 is my favourite. One day when I have more time I’d like to take cello lessons. It would be my goal to play the Gigue from the Suite.

Discovering special recordings always happens when I’m with friends, always by accident. One time – it was before Deutsche Grammophon signed me – I was with a Hungarian friend and we were having some nice Tokai wine and he put on Cortot playing the Chopin Waltzes. From the fi rst note I was really shocked because the sound was of a di� erent time, a di� erent world. Today

we don’t have time for anything. You see people at the opera. They’re not chatting to each other anymore. They’re only communicating with their Blackberries and iPhones. Nobody has the time to just sit down on the ground and listen to the air, to the birds. Listening to Cortot is a sound from a time when people had time to enjoy these things. It’s a sound we have lost. It makes you drunk. Not because of the Tokai but because of the music! I can’t put it in a di� erent way. INTERVIEW BY JEREMY NICHOLAS

Alice Sara Ott’s Mussorgsky and Schubert disc is released by Deutsche Grammophon on 21 January. Ott performs at London’s Royal Festival Hall on 12 February, as part of the International Piano series

Bach: Goldberg Variations Glenn Gould (pf)Sony Classical SMK52594 (1955 version) & S3K87703 (1981 version)

Schubert: Winterreise Fischer-Dieskau (baritone) & Gerald Moore (pf)DG 00289 477 8391

Rameau: TambourinGeorges Cziffra (pf)EMI 7243 5 65253 2

Bach: Cello Suite No.5Daniil Shafran (cello)AULOS MUSIC AMC2 012

Chopin: WaltzesAlfred Cortot (pf)Naxos 8.111035

Alice Sara Ott The German-Japanese pianist shares her favourite recordings

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Bach: Goldberg Variations


THERE’S NO SINGLE PIANIST who has infl uenced me more than another, but that whole group

of Golden Age pianists – Hofmann, Lhévinne, Rosenthal, Rachmaninov – very much did. It was more the over-arching style of the period that infl uenced me.

My fi rst choice is John Kirkpatrick playing Ives’s ‘Concord’ Sonata, recorded in 1968. It still hasn’t been issued on CD. My father used to subscribe to what was then called Clavier magazine. For the Ives centenary in 1974, the October issue devoted much space to his music and mentioned this recording. I was 13 and very intrigued. My parents and I were living at that time in Laval [a suburb of Montreal, Quebec]. I went down to our local small record shop and they had a copy. It was the fi rst recording I bought for myself and, in a sense, this was the most important one because it introduced me to record buying – and what a wonderful shock the piece was! It opened up a new world because nothing I’d experienced before was like it harmonically, spiritually or, of course, pianistically. I listened to that recording literally all summer. I bought it in June and got the score in September. Kirkpatrick recorded it once before in 1948, right at the beginning of the LP era. Sony, issue these two performances on a single disc!

A year later in 1976, in that same little music store, I came across two double albums on Deutsche Grammophon of the complete Scriabin sonatas played by Roberto Szidon. For some reason my father had no Scriabin scores in his library, so these pieces were totally unknown to both of us. What attracted me initially was the artwork on the album covers (sadly not reproduced for the CD release): abstract shapes in wonderful colours. I was reasonably familiar with all of the standard repertoire by then, especially the Romantics, and had a fanatical desire to

absorb everything. You can imagine, given how much of a ground-breaker Scriabin was, how incredibly fascinating this music was to me. It’s not for everybody, but I still have a very high regard for it.

A friend, a fellow student at the Vincent d’Indy School [in Montreal], introduced me to Pierre Henry and his Apocalypse de Jean, a setting of part of the Book of Revelations. It’s an electro-acoustic work with narration – that’s to say it combines elements of musique concrète with music produced purely by electronic instruments. Henry uses these resources to paint a very powerful picture of Revelations. There’s one passage where souls are crying and Henry uses the sounds of a hoard of little baby wolves. It’s an extraordinarily evocative work – there are parts that are quite terrifying. It lasts about one hour 45 minutes and is a piece that I know enriched me greatly artistically. The narration is in French but that shouldn’t deter anyone from hearing what is a truly great work in my opinion.

All these choices, I’ve realised, are from my student days before I le§ Montreal at the age of 19 to go to the States. There’s a label in California called 1750 Arch Records and they issued The Complete Player Piano Studies of Conlon Nancarrow (volume one). I came across this just by chance, took it home – and I was just fl oored! The third study is in fi ve parts and is subtitled Boogie-Woogie Suite. Someone described it as 16 Art Tatums playing together! It opened up a totally new world of musical perception for me. There have been various re-issues but the one on the Other Minds label is a remastering in a 4-CD set of the one I bought.

I became a true Frank Zappa fanatic a§ er someone played me an album called Studio Tan, which was basically a collection of instrumental – as opposed to vocal – tracks. One side was devoted to a 20-minute piece called

The Adventures of Greggery Peccary. It’s a wild and woolly thing narrated by Zappa himself with all kinds of voices. The music is very dense, very tricky and very cartoon-ish. Everything in the music illustrates the narration. It’s an absolutely silly story but you have to marvel at the complexity, the inventiveness and the imagination of Frank Zappa. He’s been rather overlooked because his music didn’t lend itself to airplay or the dance fl oor – and rhythmically he liked to trip people up. You can also pick The Adventures of Greggery Peccary up on a compilation of Zappa’s instrumental works called Läther. It’s got a nice picture of a cow on the cover! eINTERVIEW BY JEREMY NICHOLAS

Ives: Sonata No 2 ‘Concord’John Kirkpatrick (pf) Available as a download from Amazon

Scriabin: Complete Piano SonatasRoberto Szidon (pf) DG 0289 477 0492 8 (3-CD)

Henry: Apocalypse de Jean (Oratorio Électronique En Cinq Temps)Pierre Henry (pf); Jean Négroni (vocals)Philips 464 401-2 (2-CD)

Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano (complete, vol 1-4)Supervised by the composerOther Minds OM CD 1012/1015-2 (4-CD)

Zappa: The Adventures of Greggery PeccaryFrank Zappa & othersZappa 3857

Music of my lifeMarc-André Hamelin discusses the recordings that infl uenced him most

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Ives: Sonata No 2 ‘Concord’

088_IP1112 signed off by Claire.indd 88 03/10/2012 11:04:1988_IP0113_MusicofmyLife_CJ.indd 88 05/12/2012 16:48:14

November/December 2011 International Piano 1Untitled-2 1 28/09/2012 09:44:02089_IP_0113 -IBC.indd 1 05/12/2012 17:45:37

Please visit our website · Visitez notre site internetWWW.WFIMC.ORG · WWW.FMCIM.ORG

The WFIMC represents more than 120 member competitions on 6 continents.La FMCIM réunit plus de 120 concours membres sur 6 continents.

International music competitions - a key to successLes concours internationaux de musique - la clé de la réussite

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Documents

International Piano #17