International Piano 20140506

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NO.25 MAY/JUNE 2014£5.50

www.international-piano.com

RISING STARSThe top 30 pianists under 30

JOHN OGDON Remembering his talent, 25 years on

HISTORIC KEYBOARDS

Inside Finchcocks musical museum

INCLUDES MUSIC TO DOWNLOAD

HENRI DUTILLEUXEssential

works

PLUSMarielle

LabèqueJohn Law

Nicolas Hodges

INSIDE SHEETMUSIC POLONAISE IN A FLAT MAJOR OP 53 BY CHOPIN PUBLISHED BY WIENER URTEXT – NEW EDITION

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The Luxembourgian pianist on recording Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes

JEAN MULLER

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May/June 2014 International Piano 3

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Contents66

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17 Cover storyIP meets Luxembourgian pianist Jean Muller

21 30 under 30Artists of the future

24 swiss supportLucerne’s debut series

26 sounds of joyHenri Dutilleux (1916-2013)

30 Hands onFinchcocks Musical Museum in Kent

32 piano manRemembering John Ogdon

38 andrew Litton On Oscar Peterson

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42 masterCLassLearning to linger by Murray McLachlan

45 HeLping Handstips for effective use of the fourth and fifth fingers

47 symposiumInternationally renowned experts discuss the world of Grieg

53 sHeet musiCPolonaise in A flat major Op 53 by chopin, from Wiener Urtext

58 in retrospeCtBach specialist and musical analyst Rosalyn tureck

40 andrás sCHiff at 60Birthday celebrations

7 LettersYour thoughts and comments

8 newsthe latest news and events from the piano world

13 CommentFashion and pianists

15 diary of an aCCompanistIn which Michael Round learns to back-phrase

37 take fiveJohn Law

REGULARS

62 profiLenicolas Hodges

66 wisHListFavourites from the Frankfurt Musikmesse

68 Letter from ameriCathe end of memorisation?

70 reviewsthe latest cDs, books and sheet music, plus recital roundup

78 sHeet musiCReminiscences of Childhood, Op 54 by nimrod Borenstein

82 musiC of my LifeMarielle Labèque shares her favourite recordings

IP0514_03_Contents_CJ.indd 3 14/04/2014 08:04:42

For information on Steinway & Sons pianos or to arrange a private appointment to visit our London showrooms, please call 0207 487 3391 or email [email protected]

WWW.STEINWAYHALL.CO.UK

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IN THE FOREWORD TO HIS book Piano Man, Charles Beauclerk recalls John Ogdon’s extraordinary

performance of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s four-hour Opus Clavicembalisticum in 1988. The work, ferociously complex and physically demanding, contains enough technical hurdles to dissuade even the virtuosic pianist, but Ogdon delivered and was rewarded with an 11-minute standing ovation. This was the tip of the iceberg of Ogdon’s piano prowess; but his gi� s were accompanied by intense psychological di� culties, which contributed to his death the following year.

Beauclerk’s book o� ers an astonishing, unfl inching account of musicianship and mental illness. In this issue, Jeremy Nicholas speaks to Beauclerk and Ogdon’s widow, Brenda Lucas, in the hope of reigniting interest in this talented pianist, who died 25 years ago in August (see pp32-35).

RHINEGOLD PUBLISHING, PUBLISHER OF IP, HAS LAUNCHED A NEW concert series near to our o� ces in Bloomsbury, London, and we would like invite all our readers to attend. The recitals, hosted by Conway Hall, are free of charge

and include a glass of wine and a Q&A with the artist a� er the concert. The next event sees conductor Andrew Litton put away his baton and share a special

piano recital dedicated to his jazz hero Oscar Peterson. The performance will be based on transcriptions undertaken by IP favourite Steven Osborne and promises to be a fantastic evening. I will be speaking to Litton a� er the concert and taking questions from the audience. Do join us for this wonderful – and free! – event. For more information, turn to page 38.

Finally, may I extend a warm welcome back to our esteemed US correspondent Stephen Wigler, who has returned to his column a� er a di� cult year of illness. His latest letter from America is on page 68.

CLAIRE JACKSONEDITOR

Editor Claire Jackson

Sub Editor Femke Colborne

Contributors Nimrod Borenstein, Michael Church, Colin Clarke, Michael Dervan, Andy Hamilton, Benjamin Ivry, Joseph Laredo, Sarah Lambie, Graham Lock, Malcolm Miller, Murray McLachlan, Jeremy Nicholas, Guy Rickards, Michael Round, Jeremy Siepmann, Stephen Wigler

Head of Design & Production / Designer Beck Ward Murphy

Production Controller Gordon Wallis

Advertising Sales Louise [email protected]

Marketing Manager Frances Innes-Hopkins

Managing Director Ciaran Morton

Publisher Derek B Smith

Printed by Advent Colour Ltd

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International Piano, 977204207700507, is published bi-monthly by Rhinegold Publishing, 20 Rugby Street, London, WC1N 3QZ, UK

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior permission of Rhinegold Publishing Ltd. The views expressed here are those of the authors and not of the publisher, editor, Rhinegold Publishing Ltd or its employees. We welcome letters but reserve the right to edit for reasons of grammar, length and legality. No responsibility is accepted for returning photographs or manuscripts. We cannot acknowledge or return unsolicited material.acknowledge or return unsolicited material.

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NO.25 MAY/JUN 2014£5.50




HISTORIC KEYBOARDS




works

PLUSMarielle

LabèqueJohn Law

Nicolas Hodges


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JEAN MULLER

International Piano is proud to be a media partner of the International Piano Series at Southbank Centre

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Piano Sonata in B flat majorDu bist die Ruh (transcr. Liszt)

Ungeduld (transcr. Liszt)

‘Wandererfantasie’ in C major

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HANDELThe Eight Great SuitesDanny Driver’s recordings of CPEBach’s keyboard works have beenmuch admired: praised by criticsas deeply stylish and revelatoryaccounts of eighteenth-centuryworks on a modern piano, withDriver’s impeccable pianismconstantly present. Now he turns toHandel’s ‘Eight Great Suites’, largelywritten when the composer wasresident in Cannons, near London.DANNY DRIVER piano

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TCHAIKOVSKYThe seasonsRussian pianist Pavel Kolesnikovbecame Laureate of the HonensPrize for Piano in 2012 and gavehis Wigmore Hall debut at thebeginning of 2013, where the criticsdelighted in his outstanding pianismand intelligent programming.Hyperion is delighted to present thisbrilliant young artist in an album ofTchaikovsky’s Les saisons and Sixmorceaux.PAVEL KOLESNIKOV piano

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l e t t e r s

Scarlatti SpeakS Dear IP,the recent article on scarlatti was most interesting (issue 23, January/February 2014), but it did not raise one performance issue that could be relevant, most notably the applicability of notes inégales to this music. there are certainly pieces where the application of some inequality enlivens things, for example the Fugue in G minor K 93. What do your experts think?Francis Cox (UK)

This is an interesting question. The practice of applying notes inégales was a style peculiar to the French and although many performers apply the system to ‘foreign’ music occasionally, I believe it should be added with great care and as the French say, in ‘bon gout’.

I think that one should beware of applying notes inégales merely to ‘enliven things’. Varied articulation where there are continuous quavers is always preferable and K 93 is a case in point. This can be achieved either by slurring or detaching, or by using a combination of both. Historically speaking, the French practice of applying notes inégales to Italian or Spanish music would be inappropriate and possibly confusing.

However, a treatise entitled Varii Esercitii published in 1614 by Antonio Brunelli offers advice for singers on how to vary an even row of quavers or semiquavers by introducing different rhythms. We know that this practice was also adopted by instrumentalists, including keyboard players, during the Renaissance and early Baroque periods, but again I would avoid it in Scarlatti’s music, which stands up quite well on its own merit. I hope this helps.Richard Lester, noted Scarlatti interpreter and IP Symposium participant

SuggeStionSDear IP,thank you for a wonderful magazine! I would like to inform you that the great piano composer Anatol lyadov passed away exactly 100 years ago (1914). I think some kind of tribute would be apt in IP.

Also, it would be very nice to read something about improvisation in the classical style in your magazine. sadly, this skill has fallen into oblivion among today’s classical pianists, although it was seen as mandatory in olden times.Fredrik von Schéele (Sweden)

a need for Speed?Dear IP,It was interesting to read your portrait of eugen d’Albert’s life in celebration of his 150th birthday (‘remembering eugen d’Albert’, issue 24, March/April 2014). However, I disagree with the comment that d’Albert’s ‘Waldstein’ sonata is ‘adamant and stolid, omitting a chunk of the music.’ If you are referring to the recording of the rondo on The Centaur Pianist, then this observation is unjustly made: when these recordings were made between 1910 and 1928, the long-playing record had not been invented, so it was common practice to make cuts and reduce pieces to five minutes or less to fit the time limit of the disc (dependent on whether it

was 10-inch or 12-inch). All the other pieces recorded on the CD are also short; the ‘Waldstein’ rondo runs for five minutes and 11 seconds, probably the longest possible time that d’Albert could take to record it.

Busoni aptly sums up the problem of his first recording experience in 1919: ‘they wanted the Faust waltz (which lasts a good ten minutes) but it was only to take four minutes! that meant quickly cutting, patching and improvising, so that there should still be some sense left in it.’ (From larry sitsky’s Busoni and the Piano.)

this issue could also explain d’Albert’s fast tempos – is he playing faster just to fit the piece (with its cuts) onto the record?

Another medium for recording back then was the piano roll, which also had its limitations but allowed for longer recordings. Both d’Albert and teresa Carreño made recordings of the ‘Waldstein’ on piano rolls, at around the same time. Carreño’s, from 1905, is available on CD, while d’Albert’s, from 1906, can be found on Youtube. Nat Ng (Singapore)

correctionDear IP,sorry to see that Guy rickards thinks Hyperion has not been generous with the playing time of stephen Hough’s Brahms Piano Concertos, reviewed in your last issue (issue 24, March/April 2014). As he points out, we have put the two concertos on separate CDs, but he neglects to mention that we have priced the album as ‘two CDs for the price of one’ for all retailers – it is printed on the front of the box – so to accuse us of ungenerosity seems particularly misplaced! We’re acknowledging the short playing time in the price, and then some.Anna KenyonPress managerHyperion Records

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LettersWrite to International Piano, 20 rugby street, london, WC1N 3QZ, email [email protected] or tweet @IP_mag. star letters will receive a free CD from Hyperion’s best-selling romantic Piano Concerto series

s P o N s o r e D BY H Y Pe r I o N r e C o r D s

IP0514_07_Letters_CJ.indd 7 10/04/2014 11:30:08

8 International Piano May/June 2014

Alice Herz-Sommer, concert piAniSt And oldeSt known Survivor of tHe HolocAuSt, dieS Aged 110

PIanIst alIce Herz-sommer, the survivor of nazi concentration camps who became an icon all over

the world thanks to her positive outlook on life, died on 23 February.

Born in Prague in 1903, Herz-sommer suffered four years of oppression after the nazi invasion of czechoslovakia, followed by two more in terezín, the garrison town turned concentration camp outside Prague. there, Herz-sommer gave well over a hundred concerts. When liberation was followed by further oppression under the communists, she and her son, later to make his own name as the cellist raphael sommer, moved to Israel, where she established a reputation as an outstanding teacher.

a cD of private recordings made by Herz-sommer in her 60s, 70s and 80s was released on ‘aHs recordings’ with the German edition of her biography in 2006. they revealed that, hidden behind this story of miraculous survival, she was also one of the great pianists of the past century. she was a ‘grand-student’ of liszt, having studied with conrad ansorge, one of liszt’s later disciples.

alice’s basic philosophy – ‘life is beautiful’ – enabled her to draw strength

even from the many adversities that confronted her over the years. In an interview with Herz-sommer published recently in IP, martin anderson observed: ‘You come away from a visit to alice feeling younger yourself, with a spring in your step: she is not religious, but she radiates gratitude for being alive and her conversation is infused with a profound human decency.’

anderson’s interview was published in issue 23 of IP magazine.

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cHArleS iveS’ Studio recreAted for SpeciAl exHibition

a stuDIo DesIGneD to Be an exact replica of the room used by composer charles Ives has

opened to the public in the galleries of the american academy of arts and letters in new York city.

the newly recreated charles Ives studio mimics the room on the ground floor of the Ives home in redding, connecticut, where the composer worked for 40 years. It was there, on the studio’s modest upright piano, that Ives composed and finished several of his major works, including Three Places in New England, the Fourth symphony, the second orchestral set, the Fourth violin sonata and around 40 songs.

In 2012, Ives’ grandson, charles Ives tyler, donated the entire contents of the studio to the academy for permanent

exhibition. the studio had been largely untouched since Ives’s death in 1954. more than 3,000 objects have been catalogued and restored, including the studio’s furnishings and double doors, to which Ives himself had pinned clippings, photos and keepsakes.

The exhibition will be open to the public 22 May-15 June; Thursday-Sunday, 1-4pm. Closed 24 and 25 May. Future dates to be announced.

How to sign up: online: www.international-piano.com | Email: [email protected]

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N E W S & E V E N T S

news events

RHINEGOLD PUBLISHING TO HOST FREE SERIES OF CONCERTS

RHINEGOLD PUBLISHING, publisher of IP, has launched a new series of free rush-hour

concerts at London’s Conway Hall.The free Rhinegold Live series will o� er

a unique take on the recital experience. Concerts will be held in the round at 6:30pm and will be followed by an informal Q&A with the artist – plus a complimentary drinks reception.

Cellists Julian and Jiaxin Lloyd Webber, with pianist Pam Chowhan, opened the

series on 3 April, fresh from their recent A Tale of Two Cellos tour. The event was sponsored by law fi rm Teacher Stern. Keith Clarke, consultant editor of Classical Music magazine, took charge of the follow-up Q&A session.

On 2 June, Andrew Litton, best known as a conductor, will put away his baton and give a special piano recital dedicated to Oscar Peterson. Featuring transcriptions by pianist Steven Osborne, the programme will launch Litton’s new CD on the BIS label, A Tribute to Oscar Peterson. Claire Jackson, editor of IP, will speak to Litton a� er the concert and take questions from the audience.

Peregrine’s Pianos provided a Schimmel Konzert grand piano for the fi rst performance and will also provide an instrument for Litton’s recital. The organisation, based in central London, sells and hires a range of upright and grand pianos, as well as providing a specialised working environment for the music profession.

Rhinegold Publishing will host six concerts a year featuring a range of artists, from emerging talents to world-famous performers. In a period of increasing pressure to justify the value of the arts, Rhinegold, in conjunction with its partners, has curated the series

in the belief that music should be within the reach of all people.

‘Live classical music is too o� en a remote and impersonal experience,’ said Ciaran Morton, managing director of Rhinegold Publishing. ‘We are seeking to personalise the recital experience, enlightening and welcoming a new audience while delivering artistically to our existing readers. I believe this new concert series is a logical extension of all the good work Rhinegold has done for the classical music sector over the years.’

Readers can register for their free tickets at www.rhinegold.co.uk/live. Each ticket includes a complimentary drink at the reception. There are around 150 tickets available to the public for each concert and seats are allocated on a fi rst-come, fi rst-served basis.

Follow International Piano on Twitter: @IP_mag

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Congratulations to IP reader Mircea Nestor, who won the Stephen Hough competition advertised in our November/December edition (issue 22).

The prize – which comprised a pair of tickets to Hough’s recital in Malvern in February, luxury accommodation and the opportunity to meet the pianist – was provided by Yamaha. Winner Mircea Nestor, right,

pictured with Stephen Hough

Andrew Litton, best known as a conductor, will give a special piano recital dedicated to Oscar Peterson on 2 June

Peregrine’s Pianos, sponsor of the series, provided a Schimmel

Konzert grand for the fi rst recital

British pianist James Rhodes is heading up a three-part series for UK television company Channel 4 which will encourage Britain to engage with music by launching the country’s biggest ever ‘instrument amnesty’. The programmes will be accompanied by a major campaign to get instruments currently languishing in cupboards and attics to the musicians and potential musicians who need them.

JAMES RHODES TO ORGANISE INSTRUMENT AMNESTY

IP0514_08_09_News_CJ.indd 9 14/04/2014 16:54:53

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c o m p e t i t i o n s , aw a r d s s i g n i n g s


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simon passmore, a student of murray mcLachlan at the royal northern college of music (rncm) in manchester, has won the grand prix pianos maene of €1,000 at the 12th edition of the rencontres internationales des Jeunes pianistes in Brussels. the biannual competition had an international jury of nine pianists and featured 24 contestants aged 18 to 24 from china, russia, the Us, Japan and europe. passmore is the first UK winner of the under-24s category. His success follows on from his win last november at the international chopin Festival in mazovia, held in sochaczew.

american pianist garrick ohlsson has been named as the 2014 recipient of the $50,000 Jean gimbel Lane prize in piano performance. the award also includes a residency at the northwestern University’s Bienen school of music and a public recital at the pick-staiger concert Hall in 2016.

the biennial award honours pianists who have achieved the highest levels of national and international recognition. previous winners include richard goode (2006), stephen Hough (2008), Yefim Bronfman (2010) and murray perahia (2012).

a former student of claudio arrau, ohlsson is renowned for his performances of mozart, Beethoven and schubert as well as the romantic repertoire. He is a prolific recording artist and can be heard on the arabesque, rca Victor red seal, angel, Bridge, Bmg, delos, Hänssler, Hyperion, nonesuch, telarc and Virgin classics labels.

Boosey & Hawkes has signed publishing contracts with three new composers:

Johannes Boris Borowski, Bernd richard deutsch and mike svoboda. german composer Borowski has seen his work premiered under the batons of pierre Boulez, susanna mälkki and george Benjamin, and has written for the likes of the ensemble intercontemporain. His piano works include Variation for Piano Four Hands (2010), a piano concerto (2010/11) and a piano trio (2013).

Viennese composer deutsch was featured at last year’s wien modern festival and his Mad Dog – which he describes as a ‘zoomorphic play tracking 24 canine hours in three movements’ – is becoming a popular favourite with leading ensembles.

american trombonist and composer svoboda is best known for his collaborations as a performer with Karlheinz stockhausen in the 1980s and 1990s, and for his premieres of more than 400 works for trombone. current commissions include an ensemble work for the eunoia Quintet and a new triple brass concerto for the cottbus philharmonic.

the annual rhinegold charity Fund, which offers £10,000 worth of advertising across magazine publisher rhinegold’s range of classical music and education titles, has been awarded to the pro corda trust for the 2014/15 financial year.

the fund, established by the publisher of IP, will also provide pro corda with marketing, design and account management support.

pro corda is a music and educational charity established in 1969 to provide education in the ‘art, philosophy and theory of music’ to young people across the UK.

Following applications from a large number of worthy charities, pro corda was selected as the recipient of the fund by rhinegold’s board of directors and the newly appointed chairman of the rhinegold charity Fund, stephen turvey.

applications for the 2015/16 rhinegold charity Fund will open in autumn 2014.

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Johannes Boris Borowski

A masterclass held at Pro Corda’s 2013 amateur piano weekend in Suffolk

US$50,000 prize for Garrick ohlsson

BelgiUmbritish student wins in brussels

UKnew siGninGs at boosey & hawkes

UKrhineGold charity fund awarded

IP0514_11_News_CJ.indd 11 14/04/2014 16:47:18

AcademosIrish Chamber Orchestra Academy

ACADEMOS Irish Chamber Orchestra Academyin association with

Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of LimerickPresents

Master of Arts in Classical String Performance

Applications are invited for the following instruments: Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Piano, Harpsichord

Further information: Dr. Ferenc Szűcs (Course Director) E: [email protected] T: + 353 61 202918

www.irishchamberorchestra.com www.irishworldacademy.ie www.ul.ie

ACADEMY

SOUNDING FORWARD L ISTENING BACK

24 – 29 NOVEMBER 2014Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK

The competition is open to pianists aged 18 to 30

The final will be accompanied by the

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

All applicants are eligible to be considered for scholarships to the RNCM

To find out more, please visit www.rncm.ac.uk/jmipcor contact Andy Macauley on (+44) 161 907 5339 [email protected]

Supported by the James Mottram Bequest

THE JURYMichael Lewin USA

Piotr Paleczny Poland

Matti Raekallio Finland

Martin Roscoe UK

Graham Scott UK chair Nelita True USA

Dan-Wen Wei PR China

Eleanor Wong Hong Kong

First prize of: £10,000 plus concert engagements

Second prize £5,000 | Third prize £2,500

IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 12 14/04/2014 12:37:14

When international concert pianist Yuja Wang performed at the hollywood

Bowl in 2011 wearing – gasp! – a short dress, columns were duly written debating the merits of her choice in clothing, or lack thereof. (‘her dress tuesday was so short and tight that had there been any less of it, the Bowl might have been forced to restrict admission to any music lover under 18 not accompanied by an adult.’) Concert wear is a popular topic for discussion in classical music circles: should the orchestra dress in black? are jeans ever acceptable for audience members? and should soloists prepare a change of outfit for after the interval, like their pop contemporaries?

at the time, Wang patiently answered the inane questions about her outfit: yes, it was very short; yes, she felt comfortable wearing it; and yes, she may wear something similar at some point in the future. and then she probably considered the matter closed.

But three years later, it is impossible to read an article or review relating to Wang that does not mention the Dress. last month, a piece appeared in the Daily Telegraph under the headline, ‘i can wear long skirts when i’m 40.’ it referred to her ‘fondness for riskily short, clingy dresses, which have generated even more comment than her fabulous playing’. the article also mentioned Wang’s sadness at the passing

of much-admired conductor Claudio abbado, who had died the day prior to the interview. Surely an internationally renowned musician’s comment on first-hand experience playing with a legendary conductor is of greater importance than what she chooses to wear on stage? the subs obviously didn’t think so, and led with the fashion angle.

Sadly, Wang’s experience relates to wider issues with sexism in the classical music world. how often does lang lang have to justify his equally alternative choice in concert wear? Wang’s decision to wear a short dress on stage is as about as interesting as James rhodes’s decision to wear jeans; that is to say, relevant in the context of a conversation about stagecraft, but irrelevant in all other circumstances. Wang’s technical brilliance, her highly charged readings of rachmaninov, her studies with pedagogue Gary Graffman, are all far more interesting than her hemline.

the piano world is not immune to this obsession with image, and it is our responsibility to challenge it; the buck must stop somewhere. We have featured a range of artists on the cover of IP, from much-loved stars (Stephen hough, issue 22) to up-and-coming artists (Katya apekisheva, issue 15), elder statesmen (Menahem Pressler, issue 23) and those in mid-career (Shai Wosner, issue 18). Sometimes, we even have pianos on the cover (issues 19 and 24).

We featured Wang on the cover in 2010, pre-dressgate (issue 1, May/June 2010). then, she was interviewed as part of a discussion on the gender gap in pianism. She spoke about the expectation that women are supposed to be lyrical players. Perhaps this is why she excels at works by rachmaninov, going against the grain in her repertoire choices. (in these pages, Michael Church has observed her ‘rousing rachmaninov and scintillating Scriabin’.)

When researching for this piece i was disgusted to find an online video clip that refers to Wang as ‘the pianist who dresses like a street walker’. this is the treatment she receives for simply wearing a short skirt. i have seen many women wear far

more revealing outfits; Wang’s penchant for a shorter dress is not particularly unusual, never mind warrant this level of vitriol.

Many people, including pianists, enjoy experimenting with fashion and expressing themselves through their clothes. it is understandable that soloists may want to dress for the stage, be it in a freshly pressed suit, ball gown or short cocktail dress. But fashion and music are not inextricably linked; and our opinions of the former should not affect our impression of the latter.

Wang is now 27 and, although she has the support of a major label, Deutsche Grammophon, she is not yet at the pinnacle of her career. her Barbican recital in February confirmed her position as a pianist of enormous promise. She is an artist on the world stage and deserves media coverage that praises her technical and musical finesse – everything else, including her dress sense, is peripheral.

C o M M e n t


Pay attention to a pianist’s artistry, not their taste in fashion, writes Claire Jackson

Musician or clothes horse?

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Mikhaïl PletnevAnne QueffélecGrigory SokolovDaniil Trifonov...

Leif Ove AndsnesNicholas AngelichYulianna AvdeevaBoris BerezovskyNelson FreireNikolaï Lugansky

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d I a r y o f a n a c c o M P a n I s t

Monday Busy day ahead. afternoon and evening: young composers’ chamber-music forum. Music not available in advance: happy nevertheless to tackle anything idiomatically written, if not too impossibly difficult. Pack standby drum-sticks, blu-tack, dusters, nail-brush and erasers – all items required in previous contemporary music scores, possibly not needed today though preparedness always helpful. But first, accompany two theatre auditions in morning.

slight hiatus in first audition. singer stops in mid-song. falter, stop, exchange glances. ‘Keep going,’ she hisses, ‘I’m back-phrasing’ – ah, that extreme-rubato trick used by Peggy Lee and others, starting a phrase more than a bar late and catching up en route. Blush, continue. coincidentally, second auditionee also stops en route. Exchange glances: am ready for back-phrasing this time, carry on regardless. singer scowls, approaches piano. ‘cue me,’ she snarls, sotto voce. ‘I’ve forgotten the **** words.’ Blush, stop. anticipate ultimate put-down remark from audition panel, ‘thanks anyway’ – fortunately not forthcoming. Morning ends.

afternoon young composers rehearsal. Greeted on arrival by mentor. Hands over piano part with evil grin. ‘Quite a concerto for you, ha-ha. We told composers to write music as hard as they liked, ’cos you’re all great professionals and can play anything, ha-ha.’ Whoopee, ha-ha. Wistfully recall old

composition-tutor warning: ‘Easy music will be played well: difficult music may not get played at all.’

Piano part is on three staves, mostly full, many notes prefaced by up to eight grace-notes, each with different dynamic and articulation, and all about three octaves apart. tempo-marking manic. Quick glance at other players’ music: seems just as hard. recall similar work from long ago, rehearsal prefaced by conductor saying, ‘I heard [world-famous group] do this

piece. they just made it up.’ V comforting, though had been poor preparation for impromptu pre-performance talk, at which was suddenly asked to demonstrate ‘virtuoso piano part from bar 50.’ Busked something in approximate same contour. ‘now we’ll hear the same again, with violin part added.’ Panic. Had already forgotten what had just played. Had prayed that second busk sounded not too unlike first.

today, glad to notice big percussion section, promising much covering fire. also spot intermittent celeste-part, in bass clef and marked ffff. only way to get ffff sound from celeste is to push it off platform, presume not intended by composer though provocation considerable. rehearsal begins. composer has mistakenly written horn part at actual pitch, rather than properly transposed. ‘no way am transposing ad hoc,’ declares

player. ‘Will play as written.’ does so, a fifth away from intended pitches. composer only notices in very last bar, meant to be in unison. Meanwhile, have been playing anything, save for two whole pages skipped by accident through hasty page-turn. finish before anyone else. Will claim it as ‘front-phrasing’ if asked, but composer apparently satisfied. Move on.

next piece minimalist: notes easy, keeping count harder. repeat same bar for three minutes non-stop while various

uninteresting things happen elsewhere. Ponder that Beethoven & co could get through a whole scherzo in that time. catch eye of pretty girl cellist, roll eyes heavenwards in sympathy. receive glare in reply: turns out to be girlfriend of composer. Most interesting moment is query from clarinettist. ‘What are these squiggles in bar 20?’ reply, ‘standard notation for key-rattling, of course.’ of course.

rehearsal ends. Meal break – definite high spot of day. reassemble for concert run-through. Bar 20 of minimalist piece approaches: no sound from clarinettist, whether key-rattling or not. Look over: clarinet chair empty. ah. Player either still on meal break, lost way back, lost interest – or else indulging in some extreme form of back-phrasing, with plans to arrive shortly. fortunately, composer oblivious. funny old business, music. Il

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In which Michael Round learns to back-phrase

Pack standby drum-sticks, blu-tack, dusters,

nail-brush and erasers – all items required in

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Diary of an

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IP0514_15_Diary_CJ.indd 15 14/04/2014 16:55:19

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‘Music is like sculpture in time’

after several years of intense preparation, Jean Muller has finally recorded Liszt’s transcendental etudes. Sarah Lambie went to Luxembourg to meet him – eventually ⌂

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c o v e r s t o r y

on board my flIght to luxembourg to interview Jean muller, I read IP’s last interview

with the pianist. at the time – february 2013 – he was preparing to record liszt’s transcendental etudes. ‘I’ve been working on them for two years,’ he said. ‘I’m still a little nervous but I now know what I want to do with these pieces.’

a year later, in february 2014, muller’s cd Transcendence was launched with a recital in the grand auditorium of the luxembourg Philharmonie. muller wrote in his own programme notes for the concert that in liszt’s works, ‘a limitless physical, mental and spiritual engagement is demanded of the interpreter’.

the concert began with a work that doesn’t feature on the recording: liszt’s ‘dante’ sonata, Après une Lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata. more than one could ever be while listening to a recording, I was struck by the businesslike assurance with which muller approached the piece. there is a precision to his playing that appears at finger level to be entirely throwaway, and yet at the transitions between the most frenetic passages and the calmer moments, his engagement with the instrument became enormously delicate – seemingly caring, as if for a fragile living thing.

this deference to the music characterised muller’s entire recital. In the transcendental etude no 5, Feux follets – which the pianist described in his notes as ‘perhaps the most difficult work ever written for the piano’ – he combined a quite extraordinary agility and speed with a delicacy of touch that made several audience members around me smile. as in no 7, Eroica, there was a delightful humour to be found in moments of the music, with its comic effect further enhanced by muller’s po-faced execution.

though some commentators have remarked on muller’s apparent disregard for ‘any need to be different’, his performance of etude no 9 stood out for me as a very individual interpretation. the whole piece carried an air of gentle hesitancy, augmented by his creative use of the sustaining pedal. In fact, it was this respect for space that most stood out: the audience’s faith in muller’s rubato was unerring and he was able to stretch certain moments achingly and beautifully.

We saw all facets of composer and performer in these pieces: etude no 10 was perhaps the most passionate of muller’s performances, with the enormous intensity of the repeated high octaves in the final third of the piece. etude no 11, Harmonies du soir, brought a sonorous warmth, and in etude no 12, Chasse-neige, the expertly painted snow flurries in some of the left-hand passages were executed with extraordinary virtuosic pace.

the audience gave muller a much-deserved standing ovation and, though he is relatively unknown internationally, it is testament to his enormous success at home that my post-concert interview was deferred to the next morning to allow him to be congratulated by the family of the grand duke of luxembourg. the country’s royal family have already made muller a chevalier de l’ordre de mérite civil et militaire d’adolphe de nassau and had unexpectedly attended the recital.

I spoke to muller the morning after his concert, and my first question took us back to IP’s last interview with him: had he managed to do what he wanted with the pieces? ‘I think I’m actually quite happy with what happened during the recording, even though of course back then I was still in the working process,’ he says. ‘It’s really difficult to play these pieces, but I think it’s even more tricky to record them, because when you record something you

want to create an interpretation that can stand multiple listenings. I took five days here in the Philharmonie to record them. It was quite exciting, and very tiring too. the piano was tuned every 45 minutes.

‘at a certain point, you need to be able to identify so much with the music that you don’t really have to think about what you play – you just play it and it comes out of you without the need for you to think about any potential problems. since these pieces are packed with problems, it takes a long time to get to that point. I think the musical content in these pieces is somehow hidden behind the wall of technical difficulties.’ Ultimately, however, he says: ‘these pieces are like symphonic poems for the piano, so that’s where I wanted to get to.’

⌂ ‘I took five days here in the Philharmonie to record it. It was quite exciting, and very tiring too. The piano was tuned every 45 minutes’

At the Chopin Monument in Royal Lazienki Park, Warsaw

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I suggest to Muller that he seems to have a particular respect for space, and thankfully he agrees with me: ‘That’s part of what I want to do with music in general. Music is like sculpture in time, somehow. The interesting part is that you only have a certain amount of time, but you have to fill that time well. You have to live and breathe every fraction of a second of it, and I think that’s the challenge. You need to make the time somehow longer. Ideally, while you play, you should make people forget there is time running. That’s my goal when I’m working on pieces.’

AlongsIde hIs fATher And mentor gary, Muller is now a professor at the Conservatoire de

luxembourg. I ask him what he gets out of this job. ‘When you have to explain something to a student, that makes it clearer for yourself,’ he says. ‘sometimes I think I learn more from my pupils than they do from me – but I hope they learn something nevertheless!

‘once, I had a student who was playing the same piece as me, and when I play something for a long time I tend to somehow neglect to look at the score. With this student, I found myself looking at the score and discovered a reading mistake: not with the student, but with me.’ I ask Muller if he owned up. ‘Yes – I looked at it and said, “Ah no, it’s correct.” Usually I do look at the score once again before concerts, and sometimes it’s quite interesting what I find there!’

Beethoven, Chopin and liszt are Muller’s favourite composers, and he’s now released recordings of all three, so I ask him what’s next on the logical trajectory. ‘Well, I have a few interesting projects,’ he says. ‘I’m working on a russian programme with rachmaninov, Prokofiev, scriabin and Tchaikovsky. That’s music I love and which I performed a lot when I was a teenager, but then I lost sight of it and now I really feel I want to do it again with a little more distance – not only the raw emotion.’ In the meantime, however, he’s touring the liszt concert internationally, finishing at london’s Cadogan hall in october. e

Jean Muller’s new album Transcendence is out now via JCH Productions

C o v e r s T o r Y©

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Music for children can be of two kinds. It may be intendedfor children to play or for children to hear. Both kinds ofmusic are characterized generally by brevity and ease ofcomprehension, and often by characteristic titles related tofairy tales or songs. This cd offers old and new examplesof this tradition, performed by nine -years old SerenaWang, the most conspicuous music prodigy under the di-rect tutorship of well-known and highly respected pianoteacher Professor Dan Zhao Yi.Youtube: http://bit.ly/1gaLcZL

Gathering standing ovations she amazes the world withher deep emotional and brilliant play, her extraordinarymusic talents and the way she comminutes through musicand with people.

debut recordingSerena Wang

‘Prepare tobe amazed!’Jared Sacks,producer, sound engineer

IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 20 14/04/2014 09:21:24

The music world is a paradoxical place. it has a fervent interest in young prodigious talent,

yet simultaneously warns that early fame rarely leads to keyboard greatness. The 30 pianists outlined below are proof that youth can be equated with brilliance. each has achieved the impossible dream: a combination of technical excellence and a passion for pianism strong enough to base a career on. No doubt there are others, not listed here, who also deserve our attention. This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but to provide an overview of young players who look set to sparkle.

The supersTarsa septet of 20-somethings have been lucky enough to harness support from major record labels. dazzling on disc and on stage, they are slated as the next generation of super-pianists. deutsche Grammophon has snared the lion’s share of them: Yuja Wang (27), Daniil Trifonov (23), Alice Sara Ott (IP cover artist, issue 6, march/april 2011, now 26) and Sunwook Kim (26) have all recorded for the yellow label. wang, a charismatic soloist, has won praise for her unbridled virtuosity (see her YouTube clip of Flight of the Bumblebee, 3.5 million hits and counting) – no technical challenge is too great for her dexterous fingers. in recent years critics have questioned her musicianship, but nearly all agree that the best is yet to come. The same could be said of ott. when she gave her Proms debut in 2011 ott was relatively unknown, and wowed the audience with her performance of the Grieg Piano concerto, returning to the stage for several encores. Today, she is an international soloist par excellence and recently recorded mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

sunwook Kim has impressed both on record – he’s recorded the ‘emperor’ concerto with the seoul Philharmonic – and on stage, also with Beethoven, performing with the Philharmonia orchestra. But the jewel in deutsche Grammophon’s crown has to be daniil Trifonov. Beloved by fellow pianists and critics – including IP writers – Trifonov won moscow’s Tchaikovsky competition in 2011 and has not put a pedal wrong since. his carnegie hall debut last February was released on disc, to critical acclaim.

Former BBc New Generation artists Khatia Buniatishvili (26) and Igor Levit (27) are both signed to sony. Buniatishvili, who has been supported by martha argerich, divides critics with her penchant for extremes in rubato. in 2011, the liszt bicentenary year, her interpretations stood out as both poetic and individual, and her lunchtime lisztian Prom at cadogan hall was a festival highlight. her chopin recording was equally divisive, but those that admire her playing – and there are many – do so for its confidence and fiery temperament. levit (IP cover artist, issue 21, september/october 2013) is a pianist with a burning intellect and a lively interest in wider repertoire. he has taken harpsichord lessons and champions the work of Frederic rzewski, as well having an affinity with Beethoven. levit’s recent southbank debut was universally hailed a success, with five-star reviews across the broadsheets.

The final artist in the super-pianist group is HJ Lim (IP cover artist, issue 11, January/February 2012, now 27). signed by emi classics, now warner classics, lim released the complete Beethoven sonatas in 2012 as four two-cd sets grouped into eight themes, such as ‘The eternal Feminine’

N e x T G e N e r a T i o N

May/June 2014 international Piano 21

it’s impossible to predict the future, particularly with regard to pianistic talent. Claire Jackson tentatively selects 30 pianists under 30 who are likely to dominate the world stage in years to come

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and ‘Destiny’, with a box set now available. the recordings have a Marmite ‘love/hate’ quality; some claim the interpretations will turn younger musos on to Beethoven, while others dislike the sheer force behind her playing.

The elusivesWhile the super-pianists fill the concert halls, another smaller group of world-class musicians are quietly honing their art. Benjamin Grosvenor (21) is busy studying at the royal academy of Music and rarely gives public performances. When he does, they are extraordinary concerts – such as his performance of Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto to open the 2011 Proms season, or his more recent Wigmore Hall recital. ever since he won the piano category of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition at the age of 11, grosvenor has been marked for great things. Shunning the opportunity of a meteoric rise to fame, he has kept out of the limelight, recording – but not over-promoting – for Decca (two discs so far). an astonishing talent and a very nice man, grosvenor will no doubt rise to the very top of the pianistic ranks – he’s practically there already.

the second pianist in this category also records for Decca. Behzod Abduraimov (24) is not yet a household name, but his Wigmore Hall debut was a triumph and subsequent performances have been unanimously praised. (Michael Church once dubbed him ‘a new Horowitz’.) Both abduraimov and Stefan Ciric (28) remain lesser known, with Ciric’s debut recording soon to be released under Hedone records. these pianists, though at the start of their careers, have built very strong foundations from which to sustain a long and successful life at the piano stool.

The ones To waTchthe phrase ‘up and coming’ is a magazine-friendly term for artists who are yet to be properly defined. these are pianists who have proved themselves exceptional in many ways and are reaching pivotal moments in their pianistic lives. Supported by Classic FM, Chinese pianist Ji Liu (24) – also an accomplished breakdancer – recently reached number one in the UK classical chart with his debut solo album Piano Reflections. But don’t let that put you

off – Liu studied at the royal academy of Music and is currently undertaking a practical PhD project at King’s College, London. other artists on the brink of international success include Alexandra Dariescu (29) who won a Women of the Future award in 2013, Joyce Yang (28), who has subbed for Lang Lang and received the prestigious avery Fisher Career grant; Joseph Moog (26), whose 2013 Scarlatti disc (via onyx) impressed; Dutch pianist Hannes Minnaar (29), whose debut album (on etcetera) was dubbed ‘sensational’ by IP critic eric Schoones; and Wu Qian (30), pianist with the Sitkovetsky trio, which has been favourably compared to the Beaux arts trio.

London-based piano fans will have the opportunity to see some new names perform at Cadogan Hall this summer as part of a new initiative to give young pianists a London platform. Pianoworks, launched

by the Music Incubator and supported by Vladimir ashkenazy, culminates in a special concert on 11 June that features solo repertoire, new transcriptions and works for six hands on one piano. the pianists are Julian Clef (23); Salih Can Gevrek (22) and Arsha Kaviani (23). the more established grace Francis will also perform. each come with dazzling recommendations from artists such as Stephen Hough and all have a clutch of awards to their name. expect eye-watering technique and musical maturity beyond their years.

The compeTiTion winnersWhile securing a prize at a piano competition does not automatically guarantee long-term career success, it can be a useful stepping stone to super-pianist status, particularly if the competition is one of the big hitters. For example, Sunwook Kim came to international attention when

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Conrad Tao

Alice Sara Ott

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he won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006, aged just 18. Pianists with recent wins include Federico Colli (26), who won the Leeds prize in 2012 and will be giving his Southbank Centre recital debut as we go to press; Alexej Gorlatch (26), winner of the 2009 Dublin International Piano Competition; and Pavel Kolesnikov (25), who took first place at the Honens International Piano Competition in 2012. Kolesnikov and gorlatch both garnered rave reviews of the Wigmore Hall recitals they gave as part of their competition prize packages. Sean Chen (25) has just won the american Pianists association’s DeHaan Classical Fellowship (having also won third prize at the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition), which provides him with numerous high-profile recital dates in between his studies at Yale School of Music.

another pianist who has given herself a head start thanks to her success on the competition circuit is Beatrice Rana (20). rana impressed at the Montreal International Musical Competition in 2011,

where she was awarded first prize. She then won second prize and the audience award at the Van Cliburn competition, was picked up by an agency, released her first disc on atMa (to universal praise) and hasn’t looked back.

Similarly, Boris Giltburg (30) thought his chances of winning the Queen elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels were over when he blacked out during the

semi finals, but the russian pianist went on to take the much-coveted first prize and his profile has since rocketed. He gave a superb Southbank recital last year (dubbed the ‘outstanding event of the season’ by the ever-discerning Michael Church).

The prodigiesthere are many issues to consider when nurturing young talent; burnout lurks gloomily in the shadows. one key organisation that aims to support young artists is the gilmore Young artist award, a biennial prize for US pianists aged 22 and under that is strictly monetary and advisory, without managerial assistance. each gilmore Young artist receives a $15,000 stipend to further their musical career and educational development, as well as $10,000 to commission a new piano composition for which they will have exclusive performance rights for one year. nominations are made by music professionals from around the world, and an anonymous selection committee evaluates the nominees (who do not know they are under consideration). the most

recent recipients – Conrad Tao (19) and George Li (18) – have won international acclaim for their extraordinary pianism. tao, who is also a Davidson Fellow Laureate, is a composer, artistic director and recording artist (last year he released two records: Voyages, via eMI; and Gordon Getty: Piano Pieces on the Pentatone Classics label). Unlike his British contemporary grosvenor, tao has continued to perform

extensively while undertaking his studies at Juilliard. Li, whom IP critic Stephen Wigler noted ‘has everything needed to achieve pianistic greatness’, keeps a lower profile, focusing on his dual-degree programme at Harvard University and the new england Conservatory. Both pianists – and the newly announced 2014 gilmore Young artists, Andrew Hsu (19) and Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner (16) – have all the elements required for glittering careers; the next five years will be crucial in their development.

and if these high-achieving young pianists cause us to wince at our own comparative musical shortcomings, spare a thought for friends of Serena Wang. the nine-year-old is clocking up competition wins across asia and has caused jaws to drop across the world. Channel Classics records has just released Wang’s first recording, Dances of the Dolls; it features children’s music by Chinese composers, including her tutor Dan Zhao Yi, plus works by Schubert and Chopin. those anticipating a technically brilliant but robotic performance, prepare to be amazed. Listening blind, it would be virtually impossible to tell that this was a

nine-year-old. aware of the challenges such prodigious talent brings, Serena’s parents – who are not musical themselves – limit the number of concert performances she gives. the disc, brought out by an independent label, is intended for children.

With the right support – from fans and promoters alike – this impressive pool of talent could move us into a new golden age of pianism. Watch this space.

Igor Levit Serena Wang

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Lucerne Is a smaLL cIty by international standards, with a population of just over 76,000. but

it’s also a place where music festivals grow. the world’s greatest orchestras, conductors and soloists congregate there every summer, and under claudio abbado the concerts of the Lucerne Festival orchestra became occasions of fabled music making.

there has long been a smaller-scale easter offshoot of the main festival, and since 1998 there’s also been a specialised piano festival every november. this annual celebration is centred around the KKL, Lucerne’s 1,840-seat lakeside concert hall, but also typically spills out into its foyer – where a Ferrari-red steinway concert grand grabs lots of attention – and beyond that into bars and hotels in the form of a free jazz programme.

the festival also provides a platform for emerging young artists, with midday concerts given in the airy, modern, clean-lined Lukaskirche, just a few minutes’ walk from the KKL. Last november, alexej gorlatch, nareh arghamanyan and adam Laloum presented themselves on days when the main attractions were evgeny Kissin, gabriela montero and murray Perahia. the seasonal timing seeped into montero’s programme: after performing improvisations on themes sung by audience members, she asked for a non-musical theme and ended up celebrating the winter’s first snow, which had arrived earlier that day.

I took time out to meet up with each of the young players and asked all three the same set of questions, from when they

the Lucerne Festival series features some of the biggest names in the piano world, but its ‘debut’ strand showcases the names of the future. Michael Dervan reports from switzerland

SwiSS Support

Nareh Arghamanyan

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realised that being a concert pianist was their destiny (gorlatch and Laloum not until they finished school, arghamanyan from the moment she grasped that her great passion, the piano, could also be a career) to what alternative careers might have interested them (architecture for Laloum, medicine for gorlatch and something with art or a doctor for arghamanyan) and their views on whether the early 21st century is a golden age for pianism (definitely not, said arghamanyan; ask me in 40 years, said Laloum; and maybe, said gorlatch, because of the knowledge of all the various piano schools that’s now so readily accessible).

their backgrounds could hardly be more varied. gorlatch was born in 1988 in Kiev and has lived in germany since 1991. arghamanyan was born in Vanadzor, armenia, in 1989 and began studying in Vienna at the age of 15. Laloum was born in toulouse in 1987, began the piano at the age of ten and completed his studies in Paris.

gorlatch’s recital included the complete Chopin op 10 etudes in a knockout performance, musically thoughtful, technically masterful. arghamanyan showed herself a player of exceptional facility, getting around the keyboard with grace at astonishing velocity and always conjuring unexpected colours, as if the idea of playing anything in the most direct way would be deadly boring. Her Bach, the Partita in a minor, was dreamlike, magical, mysterious, not quite real. Laloum devoted his 75-minute slot to just two works: Schubert’s Moments musicaux (always considered and carefully balanced) and Schumann’s F sharp minor Sonata (full of the excitement of youthful stress).

they were all very clear when I asked about the pianists they admire: ‘alfred Cortot, Sviatoslav richter, and among the living I really enjoy radu Lupu and the young Daniil trifonov, who plays like a god’ (Laloum); ‘anyone who makes me interested to continue listening and keeps my full attention, making it impossible for me to go and switch off or even turn up the volume, because I might miss something while doing that’ (gorlatch); and, ‘the old generation, Claudio arrau, artur Schnabel, Wilhelm Kempff, Mieczysław Horszowski, Vladimir Horowitz, and among living pianists I like Martha argerich, Ivo Pogorelich’ (arghamanyan).

When asked about the best advice they’d had, Laloum said, ‘never be afraid.’ gorlatch pointed to audience feedback, especially in the form of letters. ‘I read them and I understand what music means for other people. I get something from outside that I would never have expected.’ arghamanyan recalled playing Dvořák for Mitsuko Uchida at the Marlboro Festival. ‘She told me, when you’ve got a melody, pet it, carry it, care for it, live with it, put it under your pillow. You will wake up the next morning and you will play it differently.’

aLtHoUgH YoUng, tHeY’re already experienced enough to have amazing stories about some of the

pianos they’ve had to perform on. Laloum recalled one that made his Mozart sound like Prokofiev at an audition in Lyon. gorlatch described another being three times as heavy as normal for a programme that included Beethoven’s op 110. and arghamanyan played Liszt and Chopin on a synthesizer in a French church. the organisers had to source it at the last minute – they had assumed she would be bringing her own.

the most difficult aspect of the art for gorlatch is, ‘Having to make music develop at this one point in time, in a concert. You don’t get a choice. You go on stage and the audience is there, and it will happen

in that moment.’ arghamanyan’s response was related. ‘the most difficult thing is to really go into the exact character when you play a piece. We are a little bit like actors. You have to really become the character of the piece in order to reveal it. and as we play different pieces during a recital, we have to change very quickly.’

I ended each interview by asking what they would do if I gave them enough money to live off comfortably for the next five years. Laloum said he would practise more and enjoy the luxury of spending long periods with just one piece. gorlatch would ‘go to places I’ve never been before, or to places I’ve been before but where there should be more classical concerts. Playing for people who have not been in touch with music until now would be a major matter for me.’ and arghamanyan said, ‘I would buy a piano! I have a very bad one, and having the right tool is like half of your work.’ It’s a cry I’m sure many a young colleague would echo.

The 2014 Lucerne Festival at the Piano runs from 22 to 30 November. The line-up includes Maurizio Pollini, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Leif Ove Andsnes, Evgeny Kissin, Paul Lewis, Martin Helmchen and Marc-André Hamelin, with debut recitals from Vestards Simkus, Sophie Pacini and Benjamin Grosvenor. www.lucernefestival.ch

‘When you’ve got a melody, pet it, carry it, care for it, live with it, put it under your pillow. You will wake up the next morning and you will play it differently’

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French composer henri dutilleux’s (1916-2013) lifelong devotion to the piano was bolstered by his marriage to

the pianist Geneviève Joy, writes Benjamin Ivry

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The French composer henri Dutilleux, who died in may 2013 aged 97, had a special

relationship with the piano. Although famed for writing symphonic works and concertos commissioned by such superstars as the conductor George szell, violinist Isaac stern, and cellist mstislav rostropovich, from the 1940s through the 1990s, Dutilleux also composed fascinating piano works, usually without being commissioned to do so. As Dutilleux told the French journalist claude Glayman in 1993: ‘I love the piano and tell myself that it must still be possible to express oneself, to make further discoveries, even if we feel ourselves – and this affects young composers too – to be somewhat trampled by a repertory of extraordinary richness.’

For Dutilleux, that extraordinary richness included works by his two favourite composers, Debussy and Beethoven, although when asked what desert island choices he would bring by those greats, he chose Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande and Beethoven’s last string quartets. Dutilleux’s lifelong devotion to the piano was proven by his six decades-long marriage to the splendid French pianist Geneviève Joy (1919-2009), whom he first met in 1942. Before they married in 1946, Joy, the daughter of an Irishwoman and a French father who served in the British Army during the First World War, was a brilliant student of the great French pianist and teacher Yves nat (1890-1956). nat, who also taught such notable pianists as reine Gianoli, Jörg Demus, Jean-Bernard pommier and pierre sancan, was a specialist in schubert, schumann, Brahms and Beethoven. In the 1950s, nat recorded the last-mentioned composer’s complete piano sonatas, a set which is still exemplary today. eschewing virtuosity for its own sake, nat was noted for saying about his interpretive approach: ‘Tout pour la musique; rien pour le piano’ (It’s all about the music, not the piano). Joy, and by extension Dutilleux, shared this viewpoint completely.

AFTer GrADuATInG From the paris conservatoire in 1942, Joy taught sight-reading and

chamber music there, and formed a lasting performing duo with the pianist Jacqueline robin. Dutilleux relished

Joy’s ability to sight-read even the most complex orchestral scores, a talent which served him well as a composer. They shared an accepting, encouraging stance towards pianists, piano composers and other musicians. When Joy died in 2009, Dutilleux told the Agence-France-presse: ‘At the very start of my career, the path I chose owed much to her curiosity, talent, youth, and joy,’ making a deliberate pun with the French word ‘joie’ and its translation into english, his wife’s maiden name ‘Joy’. In January 2013, Dutilleux may have had the same word-play in mind when he announced: ‘I’ve had the joy [joie] to live for a long time,’ adding in thanks for a new recording of his work by the French radio orchestra, ‘You’ve given me infinite joy.’

I well recall visiting a serenely merry Dutilleux 20 years ago at his central paris apartment on the Île saint-Louis. Despite the crowds of tourists noisily bustling by, Dutilleux’s windows were wide open to the street, and our conversation was punctuated by the sonorous noise of Joy practising in an adjacent room. While Dutilleux used a somewhat quieter room in an adjoining building for composition work, he nevertheless seemed in his element amid a din which another composer might have found off-putting.

This attitude may have had its roots in his childhood. Dutilleux was brought up in the northern French city of Douai, where his father ran a printing shop, and the cacophonous presses, and the eerie silence when they stopped on weekends, made a lasting impression on the young Dutilleux. As a resident of Douai, Dutilleux developed a lifelong attraction for that city’s enduring tourist attraction, its carillon bell. Douai’s 80m high 600-year-old belfry contains 62 bells spanning five octaves. This bell tower, praised by Victor hugo, features a massive bell weighing 5,550kg. Frequent concerts still create a deafening tintinnabulation, and Dutilleux would cheerfully admit using imposing bell-like sonorities throughout his piano works, as he told Glayman: ‘The carillon in the belfry sounds the hours, the half-hours, and so on. In addition, a bell-ringer used to come on sundays and those sounds excited my imagination. They have very individual timbres, full of rich harmonics.

I used to try and reproduce them on the piano and that was stimulating for me.’

As a boy, imitating carillon bells at the keyboard and trying out chords were only natural, since Dutilleux’s mother, Thérèse Koszul, was an amateur pianist whom he described as a ‘discerning musician…[who] knew how to find the deeper meaning of a work.’ his sister paulette was also a gifted pianist. This family background, added to his wife-to-be’s interest in pianism as a social activity, as opposed to a flashy solo virtuosic occupation, made Dutilleux define piano works as intensely personal, yet shared experiences. When he decided to compose for the piano, he therefore focused on intimate works. In 1944-1945, Dutilleux was commissioned by French radio to compose brief piano interludes for broadcast. he wrote six of them, grouped under the title Au gré des ondes, (wherever the airwaves take you). Although these were published in 1946, the highly self-critical Dutilleux later decided they were too imitative of Debussy, ravel, and other early influences, and withdrew them from his official work list. In 1997, he was not pleased when the French pianist Anne Queffélec insisted on recording them against his wishes.

Despite Dutilleux’s own reservations, these are delightfully characteristic works, many dedicated to noted pianist/teachers. The first piece, Prélude en berceuse, has a naïve, gently cradling rhythm akin to Debussy’s Children’s Corner along with some of the insouciance of Francis poulenc’s early work. The fifth piece is more Teutonic, a Hommage à Bach, showing profound understanding of counterpoint as well as emotional lyricism which is in no way miniaturised. In Dutilleux’s view, Js Bach was a passionately intimate composer, not just the creator of massive church works. A final Étude, dedicated to Joy, is a hyper-kinetic ballet of dazzling virtuosity.

Another early work with extraordinary writing for piano was Dutilleux’s oboe sonata (1947). Dutilleux’s oboe sonata has a compellingly varied piano part of considerable sophistication, clearly reflecting the chamber music ideal exemplified by Joy’s artistry. Its second movement, redolent of stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat, yet less astringent, marches along with lyric vigour before a

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final movement turns into a more Gallic promenade. like other early works, this fine composition would later incur disfavour from the composer, who felt it was not fully representative of his mature compositional style. in 1985, when dutilleux was honoured as composer-in-residence at the Aldeburgh Festival, he was irritated when the Oboe Sonata was programmed for performance without asking his permission beforehand.

Also in 1947, dutilleux made an arrangement for two pianos of debussy’s Clair de lune, the third movement of that composer’s Suite bergamasque. the absolute cohesion of the two pianists in dutilleux’s arrangement is such that the question never arises of whether Clair de lune really needs a second piano to convey its message. this emotional tribute not just to debussy, whom he worshiped, but also the art of duo piano, is yet more evidence of Joy’s lasting impact on dutilleux’s creative imagination.

in dutilleux’s own view, the aforementioned compositions paled before the work which he dubbed his own Opus no 1, his Piano Sonata (1948), dedicated to Joy. this substantial work, which has become widely popular, starts out in a deceptively insouciant, breezy Parisian fashion, before a second movement more reminiscent of Mussorgsky, with bell-sounds befitting Boris Godunov, even if their original inspiration was the douai belfry. the Sonata’s third movement, with its open display of virtuosity, displays utter certainty in chords, unlike the searching, interrogative nature of other early dutilleux piano works. the Sonata’s solidity and assurance, especially in its final movement, surely reflect the dauntless Joy.

As a coda to his large-scale Sonata, dutilleux produced a short work, Blackbird (1950), intended as a didactic work for an anthology series of contemporary music for young pianists. At the time, dutilleux owned a pet bird, an indian or Common Shama (Copyschus Malabaricus) with black and orange feathers. Many birdwatchers relish the richly melodious song of this species, apparently the first birdsong to be recorded (when using an edison phonograph, ludwig Koch preserved a wax cylinder of the sound in 1889). Marked Vif, clair et précis (fast, clear

and precise) at the beginning of the score, Blackbird displays witty intelligence and captivating charm with a kind of musical pointillism. the bird’s flapping wings and flying provided as much inspiration as its song. the concentration of a powerfully orchestral scale of expression in Blackbird makes the listener wonder if it might not have been intended as a sort of self-portrait.

Such a highly personalised approach to writing for piano may explain why dutilleux chose to create piano works when healing from various illnesses. this may have been both because of the restorative powers of working with and for his wife, as well as the fact that piano compositions required less heroic physical force to write than massive symphonies. Whatever the reason, after a series of eye ailments, in 1970 a case of ophthalmic shingles in his left eye obliged dutilleux to resign from teaching posts and in 1972, he underwent a corneal transplant. While confronting these challenges, dutilleux still managed to work on a two-piano composition, Figures de resonances (resonant Faces) to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the piano duo founded by Joy and Jacqueline robin. this work, premiered in 1970 and expanded in 1976, boldly present the resounding bells of douai with an unhurried monumentality of crashing chords. Figures de resonances is a work of substantial mystery, asking more questions than it answers. it investigates the play of echoes and exchanges of sounds in a partnership between pianists, plumbing the depths of the duo piano relationship.

the restorative power of piano composition was again evident in 3 Préludes pour piano, published in 1994, but begun in 1973, after dutilleux had finally recovered from eye surgery. initially planned as five separate pieces, the Préludes were finally only three in number, heavily revised over the decades: D’ombre et de silence (On Shadow and Silence); Sur un même accord (On a Single Chord); and Le jeu des contraires (Game of Opposites). D’ombre et de silence resounds with solid, round bell sounds in a lofty, yet not arid, way. 3 Préludes are not to every music-lover’s taste. One commenter to a recording on Youtube.com furiously noted: ‘that’s nOt music, that’s noise

made with a piano. listening to this just [gave me the urge] to hit [dutilleux] in the face, hard. unfortunately he’s already dead.’ this extreme reaction may be due to the fact that 3 Préludes is by far dutilleux’s least French-sounding work. its blocky chords make a bold statement with no urge to ingratiate. its Spartan assertions soberly indicate what modern piano writing can and should sound like, especially when played with authoritative assurance by Joy.

even at his most uncompromisingly stern, dutilleux as composer for the piano was a nurturing spirit. during the Second World War, he served as a stretcher-bearer, and in modern music, dutilleux was more of a consoling stretcher-bearer than a combattant. Perhaps in part because of his conciliatory stance, he was scorned by some taste-makers such as Pierre Boulez, who never conducted any music by dutilleux, wrote about him, or even mentioned his name in public, although the two composers were on civil terms privately since Joy diligently performed Boulez’s piano compositions. no pushover despite his ingrained mannerly nature, dutilleux made his feelings known when he told the New York Times in 1986, alluding to Boulez and his ilk: ‘i don’t support aesthetic terrorism.’ A contemporary composer for piano of delectable gifts, dutilleux deserves ample performances as centenary commemorations, which are due only two years from now. e

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Some weekS ago, I Played a movement from a Haydn sonata at a local music festival and was

reprimanded by the adjudicator (who shall remain nameless) for using the sustaining pedal. and yet the pianos Haydn himself played and wrote for had this mechanism. did the adjudicator believe it was purely for decoration?

Such misconceptions about early keyboard instruments are still widespread; yet they are also easy to dispel. To see for yourself the instruments of times gone by, you need only pay a visit to the Finchcocks musical museum near Tunbridge wells in kent, where over 100 instruments dating from 1668 to 1875 are on display – and almost half of them can be played.

The collection includes everything from spinets, virginals, harpsichords and clavichords to barrel and chamber organs (there’s even a euphonicon and a crystallophone, if you please) and pianos of literally all shapes and sizes: ‘square’ (actually rectangular), transverse, upright, ‘lyre’, ‘pyramid’ and, of course, grand. The range of grands includes all the famous names you can think of – and quite a few you probably can’t: Fritz, Stodart, lengerer, Rosenberger, Jakesh, Henschker and mathushek, anyone?

even if you don’t play the piano, you will marvel at the ingenious and elaborate designs of the instruments, where art and craftsmanship joined forces in the tireless pursuit of beauty. But the real joy of the Finchcocks collection is in hearing how the music of the past would have sounded

when it was first played – which is often utterly different from the way it sounds on a modern piano.

Hearing the ‘original’ instruments can also help us to understand why some composers wrote as they did. gary Branch, the museum’s educational co-ordinator, says: ‘Have you ever wondered why some original pedal markings in works by the great classical and Romantic composers seem so ridiculous? we can reveal with an instrument of the period why the composer made such markings and discover other details while we play.’

Indeed, pedalling is an area where you will make a number of revelatory discoveries. To begin with, early Viennese instruments had knee levers, not pedals, and these were

often the ‘wrong’ way around, so you had to raise your left knee instead of depressing your right foot. Then there is the fact that the una corda pedal really does enable you to play on a single string – unlike the left pedal on a modern grand, which lets the hammers strike two strings. But some instruments also had a due corde pedal – as well as a moderator (which introduces a piece of cloth between hammer and string), a rasping ‘bassoon’ pedal and sometimes a ‘swell’ or a ‘Turkish’ pedal, complete with bells – perfect for mozart’s famous Rondo k 331!

as far as the keyboard mechanism is concerned, you will be confronted with leather hammers, split keys, assorted pitches, varying compasses, english and Viennese actions – more than enough to

occupy your fingers and ears while your feet (and knees) are busy down below.

In fact, perhaps the most striking thing about these instruments is that each one is completely different; they all behave in different ways and produce quite different sounds. So getting to know them is rather like getting to know people: each has its own characteristics and idiosyncrasies – some delightful, others surprising and even shocking. which means that however many times you visit Finchcocks, there is always something to discover, something to learn, new sounds to produce and enjoy.

The museum, which occupies a palatial georgian manor house set in equally impressive grounds, can be visited on Sunday and bank holiday monday

P I a n o m a k e R S

Finchcocks musical museum in kent holds a diverse collection of historical keyboards, featuring household names like Pleyel and erard as well as rare models such as Fritz and Henschker. Joseph Laredo pays a visit

Hands on

Harpsichordist Steven Devine (right) with Richard Burnett, who, with his wife

Katrina, owns the house and museum

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May/June 2014 International Piano 31May/June 2014 International Piano 31

afternoons throughout the spring and summer, as well as on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons in August. On most days, you will be treated to demonstrations and recitals, as well as having the chance to try out the instruments yourself.

Finchcocks has also hosted concerts by world-famous artists such as Melvyn Tan, but for me the best time to go is on the annual Open Day for Pianists, which this year takes place on 12 October. On the open day, you will be introduced to the instruments by experts including Branch, leading harpsichordist Steven Devine and period piano specialist Richard Burnett, who, with his wife Katrina, owns the house and museum. This in itself is an experience not to be missed, but the core of the day is two sessions of personal tuition and guidance from these authorities on the instrument of your choice in whatever piece or pieces you wish to play. The day ends with a participants’ concert, in which you may be invited to perform. And, of course, you will meet like-minded people – young and old, from beginners to professionals.

I first attended the open day in 2012 and it is now one of the highlights of my musical calendar. Both educational and enjoyable, the event should be compulsory for all piano students, whatever their level and ambitions. The day is guaranteed to reform, revise and revitalise your playing.

P I A n O M A K e R S

Finchcocks Facts

Finchcocks Musical Museum, Goudhurst, Kent, Tn17 1HHPhone: +44 (0)1580 211 702Website: www.finchcocks.co.uk

Open for visits without appointment from easter to the end of September on Sundays and bank holiday Mondays; also on Wednesdays and Thursdays in August. The house is open from 2pm to 6pm, the garden and restaurant from 12.30pm.

A selection of recordings made on the instruments at Finchcocks can be downloaded from our website: www.rhinegold.co.uk/ipdownload

The museum’s next Open Day for Pianists will be held on 12 October

A grand piano by Michael Rosenberger, circa 1800

The museum is set in a Georgian manor house

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John ogdon died 25 years ago this august. he was just 52. The direct causes of his death were a

diabetic coma and bronchial pneumonia but he was also obese, suffered from gout, smoked 60 cigarettes a day, liked his wine and whisky, and was in constant pain. he had kidney failure and had lost all his teeth, both due to the heavy doses of lithium carbonate he had been taking for 16 years. Lithium carbonate is a drug used for depression, mania, bipolar disorder, self-harming behaviour and treating aggressive behaviour. it rescued ogdon’s career from oblivion.

in the 1960s, ogdon was a high-flying, high-profile international virtuoso, hailed as the greatest pianist Britain had ever produced. and despite his wavering career thereafter, interest in this gigantic figure – physically, mentally and pianistically – has never dimmed: pianophiles admire him for his fabulous gifts, while the general public is fascinated by the story of a tortured musical genius. The 1989 BBC film Virtuoso told his story (alfred Molina memorably played ogdon) based on the partial account of his life written by Michael Kerr and his widow Brenda Lucas. now, the first full biography of ogdon has been published. Piano Man: Life of John Ogdon by Charles Beauclerk is a much-needed definitive study that lays to rest the myths surrounding ogdon and reassesses his extraordinary contribution to music.

This piece does not attempt to duplicate that reassessment, nor analyse his recorded legacy or compositions. But it might, hopefully, reignite interest in this ‘genius of enormous sensitivity and very great humour’ (Peter Maxwell davies). For those who

have not encountered him before, a brief overview is in order. John andrew howard ogdon was born on 27 January 1937 at Mansfield Woodhouse in nottinghamshire. From 1945 he studied at what was then the royal Manchester College (now the royal northern College of Music) and was only 21 when he was invited to play the mammoth, rarely performed Busoni Piano Concerto with the royal Liverpool Philharmonic under John Pritchard. his made his BBC Proms and Wigmore hall debuts in 1959, and the following year made his first recording (for hMV) as well as marrying the pianist Brenda Lucas. Two years later, he became a national figure when he was declared joint winner with Vladimir ashkenazy of the Tchaikovsky Competition.

That was when his hectic international career took off. For the next 11 years, ogdon was one of the world’s most sought-after pianists. What set him apart from almost all his contemporaries were the astonishing breadth of his repertoire, a staggering technique and legendary sight-reading ability. he could be presented with the most complex score and deliver a flawless performance after only the briefest inspection. his main interests lay beyond the core german repertoire and he embraced composers from alkan to yardumian, with a special emphasis on the music of his contemporaries and a particular affinity with Liszt, rachmaninov and Busoni.

a series of psychotic episodes began in 1971. Then, in the autumn of 1973, ogdon suffered a nervous breakdown, a victim of the schizophrenia that had also afflicted his father. The next year he tried to kill himself three times – the final attempt by

slitting his throat – but after a period of recuperation he was well enough to take up a teaching post at the University of indiana in 1976 from which he was dismissed in 1980. in the early 1980s he returned to the concert platform, though he was he unable to recapture consistently the glory of those buccaneering days before his tragic illness.

These are The Bare FaCTs oF his life. To put some flesh on them, i talked separately to ogdon’s widow

and Charles Beauclerk. Brenda Lucas’s elegant bijou apartment on London’s Cheyne Walk is a shrine to her husband’s memory. Pictures of John and family photos are everywhere; various diplomas and certificates, including documentation of that Moscow triumph, decorate the small music room; a colour photo of him and Lucas on stage at the royal Festival hall is a reminder of the many two-piano recitals they gave together.

in the period immediately after his death, Lucas and her close friends in the musical world formed the John ogdon Foundation to promote his achievements and provide practical assistance to young musicians through scholarships. did ogdon leave a lot of money to establish this? ‘oh no. We started with donations from the public. somehow people got to know about it and the money came in.’

i ask Lucas how, a quarter of a century after ogdon’s death, she remembers him. over the years, she has been cast as saint and sinner in the ogdon melodrama, praised by some for her dedication and forbearance, castigated by others for the damage she did to his finances and career. Understandably, she is cautious with a stranger and strays

J o h n o g d o n

John ogdon, who died 25 years ago this august, is often presented as a tortured musical genius with a range of mental health issues. But a new biography lays to rest some of the myths surrounding his legacy. Jeremy Nicholas investigates

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little beyond what she has already revealed in Virtuoso. ‘He was a very mixed character,’ she ventures. ‘You see, he was a very ambitious young man. It was all carefully concealed under this demure, humble façade. That driving ambition took him to Moscow. He had a bit of financial help from Robert Mayer but otherwise got there under his own steam. He had to battle with [his agent] Emmy Tillett to go. She had concerts booked for him which John cancelled so he could compete. He won that. He was determined to go. People think I forced him to go but I had a baby. I wanted him to stay at home. He was already a popular pianist but he felt he had to win a major competition if he was to have a big career.’

The pair married despite many people’s misgivings. ‘Everyone said, why are you marrying him? One reason was because I respected him so much. That overpowering intellect! He was multi-faceted: he wrote, he composed, he played.’ Was it a happy marriage? ‘In the early years, very happy,’ she maintains. ‘How could we not be? Fêted and spoilt, meeting wonderful people, recording together. It was a fairytale life. John loved parties. He took time to wind down after concerts. He couldn’t just have a cup of coffee and go to bed. He had to get rid of all the adrenaline and meet people. So I organised parties for him, pushed the boat

out and served lovely food and everything. People thought I was too extravagant and got through too much money doing it. Well, I did. But that’s what he wanted.’

As I leave Cheyne Walk, Lucas adds, very quietly, ‘He could be very frightening.’ Just how frightening is spelled out in page after page of Charles Beauclerk’s brilliant study of the pianist, elegantly written, even-handed and as skilfully assembled as it is meticulously researched. It makes for harrowing reading because, after Ogdon’s lapse into insanity, the relationship between the two pianists descended into the marriage from hell, with one partner irrational and violent, the other extravagant, jealous and at her wit’s end. Beauclerk’s devastating verdict is that, ‘In a way she was Salieri to John’s Mozart, only they happened to be married.’

The affable Beauclerk found it a difficult story to write, especially with Lucas being the mother of one of his childhood friends. ‘I do think Brenda has been demonised in the past. On the other hand, I was determined it wouldn’t be a whitewash.’

The home Ogdon was brought up in was violent and dysfunctional. His father was committed to an asylum when John was only 18 months old. ‘John was the youngest of the five children by almost seven years and had a quite different physique and

look from the other children, almost like a cuckoo in the nest,’ says Beauclerk. ‘He must have been aware of that.’ He spoke with a lisp and had difficulty with the letters C, J and R, as can be heard on the edition of Desert Island Discs he recorded shortly before his death.

When he was at college with Birtwistle, Goehr, Maxwell Davies et al, his ambition was always to be a composer. ‘That was first and foremost,’ Beauclerk asserts. ‘The pianism was second, and as his life developed and he found himself playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto a hundred times a year, the yearning came back with a greater force. I think that was one of the crises that led to his breakdown: the sense that he was actually failing himself, that the true exploration of his gifts would have come as a composer. He did do that [over 200 works in all], but he didn’t give it the dedication he wanted to give it. Brenda definitely did not want him to concentrate on composition. She helped to keep him on the treadmill.’

That treadmill meant a crazy 200 concerts a year in 1973, so although his fee per engagement was a comparatively modest £450 (Ashkenazy, by comparison, was earning £750 to £1,000) his annual income was roughly £100,000 (more than a million pounds in today’s money). ‘Brenda liked the lifestyle that his success had created,’ Beauclerk says.

J O H n O G D O n

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He continues: ‘Interviewing the people I did for the book revealed an amazing fund of goodwill. In a way I think it was because John was a blank slate, an innocent. A lot of his friends were in denial about this other side to him. He could be violent. They saw this childlike side of him – “gentle John” – which was the face he showed to the world. People were fond of him. Matthew Boyden, part of the agency that looked after him, described him as “the most patronised man of the 20th century”. I think the only person who experienced the demonic side of John (apart from the piano that he pounded) was Brenda. Brenda saw a very different side. If you listen to his music and the way he often played the piano you will say, “Ah. Of course.” If Horowitz’s bass was an explosion, Ogdon’s was deeper and darker, almost like an implosion sometimes. There’s something so raw about his playing at times that it could send a shiver up your spine. Quite disturbing.’

SO wHere dOeS One PlAce John Ogdon in the pantheon of the great pianists? His oddball nature

and his preference for non-standard repertoire contributed to him being seen as an outsider. with a frantic schedule, he was often underprepared, happy and able to fly by the seat of his pants. Socially inept (and, thinks Beauclerk, ‘with a degree of autism’), he never developed special relationships with orchestras and conductors. He was never invited by, for instance, the Berlin Phil, the Vienna Phil or the Salzburg Festival.

Yet there are plenty of people around who heard him before and after his illness who will say that Ogdon provided them with the most memorable recitals of their entire concert-going lives. One very knowledgeable pianophile friend of mine recalls going to what turned out to be Ogdon’s final recital. It was at london’s Queen elizabeth Hall. The first half – chopin’s G minor Ballade, the Brahms Paganini Variations and Balakirev’s Islamey – was ‘a total shambles and an utterly dispiriting mess’, my friend recalls. Ogdon was submerged beneath clouds of lithium, unable to exercise any form of control over even the basics (such as pulse), let alone the reams of notes in that repertoire. My

friend was minded to leave at the interval but persevered – and was grateful he did for, by the end of the break, the effects of the lithium had worn off. The second half was all liszt and was ‘the greatest playing I had ever heard in the flesh, and remains so to this day. I was fortunate in hearing Horowitz once, richter over half a dozen times, plus many of the other “greats” born early in the 20th century, but none produced the ocean of sound, the orchestration of sonority and whispered

delicacy of Ogdon in that second half, not to mention the staggering vision of his conceptions.’

nine days later, he was dead. no one from the BBc, the Arts council, the South Bank or the British council came to the funeral. He had long since become a non-person in the eyes of the establishment. e

Piano Man: Life of John Ogdon by Charles Beauclerk is out now, published by Simon & Schuster

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Rhinegold

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2014-15

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Location: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL

2 June 2014Andrew LittonA Tribute to Oscar Peterson

Renowned conductor Andrew Litton returns

A Tribute to Oscar Peterson

6.15pm drinks reception7.00pm recitalINTERNATIONAL PIANO EDITOR’S PICK

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T A K E F I V E

BEFORE HE DISCOVERED jazz back in the 1980s, John Law was living in Vienna,

studying with Paul Badura-Skoda and pursuing a career as a classical pianist. What happened? ‘The short answer,’ he tells me, ‘is sex ’n’ drugs ’n’ rock ’n’ roll.’ Literally? ‘No, no. That’s just a phrase, shorthand for getting into di� erent musics, di� erent ways of life.’ In jazz, he says, he found ‘the energy, the groove’ he’d been looking for; he could still play piano, still compose – ‘and I could do the music of now.’

The fi rst jazz album he bought was by Thelonious Monk – ‘like entering a new world,’ he later wrote – and soon he was listening to everyone from Oscar Peterson to Cecil Taylor. However, ‘very quickly, before I’d got a thorough grasp of the jazz repertoire, I somehow ended up in free improvisation, playing thrash music with wonderful musicians like Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Louis Moholo. I still love their music, though that’s clearly not what I’m doing now.’

Law, born in 1961, began playing piano at the age of four and studied at the Royal Academy of Music before moving to Vienna.

Back in London by the late 1980s, his immersion in free improv proved short-lived. A� er a few years, he says, he grew tired of the volume, the intensity and ‘coming away from the piano with bleeding fi ngers’. It wasn’t all like that: his duo with bassist Guy on the Extremely Quartet CD is neither loud nor bloody, but a mutually busy yet attentive dialogue – free playing with both focus and fi nesse.

Thelonious Monk’s compositions had continued to fascinate him, particularly their ‘strong melodies, with little hooks to work around’, and now they helped to rekindle his enthusiasm for melody and harmony. In 1995 Law’s partner, the visual artist Melanie Day, exhibited a series of Monk-inspired sculptures at London’s Vortex Club; at the opening, Law’s trio played their own versions of Monk’s music, and later recorded them on The Oneliest CD.

‘I didn’t really know how to play jazz then,’ Law remarks. ‘Technically, I could have been more profi cient in the particularities of jazz style. Then again, what you think are your weaknesses can also be your strengths. They’re what make you idiosyncratic.’ Absolutely. The disc still sounds fresh because Law’s playing is so unpredictable – delightfully so on the two takes of Bemsha Swing. The fi rst treats the tune as a gleeful round-cum-romp; the second is acutely inventive, as Law, unschooled in the fall-back formulae of ‘jazz style’, has to improvise from more personal, and creative, resources.

Later albums have mostly featured original compositions, though his classical roots keep reappearing in various guises, from a four-disc set of solo improvisations based on plainsong (Chants) to a jazz quartet version of a Baroque suite (Abacus). Then there’s Law’s fondness for the multi-layered piano parts that have been present in his music for over 20 years. ‘I hear music like that,’ he says, referring to counterpoint and polyphony; ‘I can almost see the parts happening at the same time, like a puzzle you try to solve.’

The best examples of this penchant for complexity can be found on The Art of Sound, a series of albums that also houses the best examples of Law’s complementary gi� for simple, alluring melody. These four discs – two solo, two trio, recorded between 2006 and 2008 – are arguably Law’s fi nest to date, and confi rmed his reputation as one of the UK’s most imaginative and versatile jazz pianists. He cites The Ghost in the Oak as the trickiest of his multi-layered pieces, and his solo version is technically impressive yet oddly plaintive, with Law astutely shading dynamics between the di� erent voices to create a haunting, densely textured sound-world. In contrast, the solo Chorale-reprise has a spare simplicity, its hesitant beauty enhanced by Law’s rapt, lingering performance, before it segues into a gentle township swing.

There are also trio versions of Ghost and Chorale, though I prefer the solo’s tentative, more introspective probing. Several trio pieces do exert considerable melodic charm – Beguile, Song, Look into My Eyes – but my favourite trio performance is the rhythmic power-charge of Congregation, its manic staccato beat inspired, says Law, by the Bad Plus. ‘It’s physically demanding to play,’ he adds. ‘Asif, my drummer, likened it to a power drill.’ To the listener, it’s a surge of elation, a joyful apotheosis, as Law gives new impetus to ‘the energy, the groove’ that had fi rst spurred him to play jazz. e

IP’s jazz columnist Graham Lock outlines key works from John Law’s discographyTake Five1. Two, Part 1, from Extremely Quartet (hat Art)

2. Bemsha Swing 2, from The Oneliest (FMR)

3. The Ghost in the Oak, from The Ghost in the Oak (33 Records)

4. Chorale-reprise, from Chorale (33 Records)

5. Congregation, from Congregation (33 Records)

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IP0514_37_Take Five_CJ.indd 37 14/04/2014 12:11:26


I was born In new York CItY and grew up as an only child in a household where classical music

was listened to 24/7. at the suggestion of my kindergarten teacher, I started piano lessons one month shy of my sixth birthday. I attended my first performance at the Metropolitan opera (the final season of the old Met!) when I was six and saw, thanks to my parents, every single major classical music event of note for the next decade. I attended recitals by star pianists such as Horowitz, rubinstein, richter, Gilels and watts. I was also lucky enough to see every original cast broadway musical from 1965 to 1982. this meant I had a healthy exposure to the Great american songbook. It also meant I had yet to discover jazz.

I had a party for my 16th birthday and one of my friends and schoolmates, a chap named David Frankel (who has grown up to be a successful Hollywood director – The Devil Wears Prada, The Big Year, Hope Springs etc), bought me an LP that

sported a teal-coloured album cover with the words: Tracks – Oscar Peterson Piano Solo. I’d never heard of the guy! when my party was over, curiosity got the better of me and I put on the album. the sounds of an infectiously joyous up-tempo Give Me the Simple Life filled my bedroom, and I was hooked!

I became obsessed with oscar, buying every LP I could find and then, when CDs first appeared, replicated the entire collection in the new format. I dreamt of hearing him live. I got a few chances at Carnegie Hall in the late 1970s. In the meantime, my conducting career started. I decided I wanted to be a conductor at the age of ten and in 1982, at the age of 22, I won the rupert Foundation Conducting Competition in London. My London debut was with the royal Philharmonic orchestra (rPo) in January 1983, and it was the beginning of a long and wonderful relationship. In the summer of 1984, I was conducting the rPo in the andré Previn Festival at London’s southbank in a concert starring the amazing buddy rich. two nights later, oscar was appearing with his quartet (Joe Pass, niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Martin Drew). I sheepishly asked the then chairman of the rPo, John bimson (still one of the greatest horn players I have worked with) if he would introduce me. I wanted to meet my hero as a conductor of the rPo, and not just as a fan. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. oscar was so nice to everyone who came to meet him, and always had a smile and time for you no matter who you were.

the same year I won the conducting competition, I also won the job as assistant conductor of the national symphony orchestra (nso) in washington, DC under Mstislav rostropovich. oscar came to play

every summer in the 1980s at wolf trap, the nso’s summer home in Virginia. of course I was there, and ran backstage to greet my hero. the CD cover photo below was taken backstage in July 1985. Fast-forward to summer 2003 and I was now heading sommerfest, my own summer festival featuring the Minnesota orchestra. I introduced a jazz component to the programming and invited oscar and his quartet. Imagine the incredible thrill I felt standing on the Minneapolis orchestra Hall stage and saying: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome oscar Peterson!’

a Year or so Later, I was at a record producer friend’s 50th birthday party in London, where

he had asked three of us to provide some musical entertainment. stephen Hough played some brahms and I played some Gershwin, and when steven osborne sat down, he began what I instantly recognised as an oscar Peterson arrangement. when the applause died down, I asked him where he had found the music, since I knew it hadn’t been written down. He blithely responded that he had taken the

r H I n e G o L D L I V e

Conductor Andrew Litton shares his love for oscar Peterson’s pianism ahead of a special London recital dedicated to the jazz great

a trIbute to

Oscar Peterson

IP0514_38_39_Litton_CJ.indd 38 14/04/2014 15:24:07


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arrangement straight from the CD! He had done quite a few songs, in fact. When I nervously asked whether or not he had transcribed my all-time favourite Oscar track, Little Girl Blue, he nodded and said, ‘Absolutely!’ At this point, I couldn’t contain my excitement and o� ered him anything he wanted for a copy (I must have sounded every bit like Herod in Salome)! He smiled and said he would happily send me the music. Two days later, the song arrived in the post, along with a few others he had transcribed. Deciphering Steven’s musical notation turned out to be an unexpected hurdle, but the fact that he had actually done the hard part – putting down on paper all those brilliant Peterson harmonies and ri� s – was almost too good to be true.

Little Girl Blue became part of my repertoire and I used it as an occasional encore as well as playing it at my late mother’s memorial service. Eventually, I decided to branch out and started to work on a few other transcriptions, some of which were actually starting to appear in print, and that is where the idea for this recording began.

The 12 songs I’ve recorded come from seven di� erent commercial recordings and span four decades of Oscar’s legacy. The overwhelming majority of Oscar’s recorded output was with his trio or quartet, but I wanted to feature his solo piano work because when he played alone, he o� en eschewed his dazzling virtuosity, making it truly possible to hear the amazing colours and voicing in his playing, the feathering

of the sustaining pedal (only Horowitz had such a pedal technique!), the achingly beautiful original harmonies and the total command of the instrument. This explains why Oscar has proved so popular with classical musicians. He did things daily at the piano while spontaneously improvising that the rest of us spend a lifetime trying to achieve. e

This article was adapted from the liner notes to Litton’s new recording, A Tribute to Oscar Peterson, which is out now on the BIS label

When he played alone, he often eschewed his dazzling virtuosity, making it truly possible to hear the amazing colours and voicing in his playing, the feathering of the sustaining pedal (only Horowitz had such a pedal technique!)

As part of the Rhinegold Live concert series, Andrew Litton will give a one-o� recital to celebrate Oscar Peterson’s legacy on 2 June at 6.30pm. The event, held at Conway Hall in London, is free and includes a complimentary drinks reception for all ticket holders. A post-concert Q&A will be conducted by Claire Jackson, editor of IP. To apply for tickets please visit www.rhinegold.co.uk/live

Julian & Jiaxin lloyd WebberA Tale of Two Ce llos Tour» Thursday 3 April 2014 at 6.30pm

Free rush hour concerts in WC1’s Conway Hall

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terms: all concerts are free to attend – however, tickets are strictly limited. to guarantee your seat, and a drink at our reception, please reserve a place online at www.rhinegoldlive.co.uk. Entry for non-ticket holders is on a first-come, first-served basis: if you have not reserved a place, you may not gain entry. only ticket holders are eligible for the complimentary drinks reception

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IP0514_38_39_Litton_CJ.indd 39 14/04/2014 08:18:33

40 International Piano May/june 2014

At the lAndmArk Age of 60, András Schiff still radiates youthful optimism and curiosity.

As a fully rounded musician and artist, he is admired above all for his personal interpretations, humanity and ability to uplift and inspire. he’s achieved more than most pianists could dream of, but Schiff is not an artist to rest on his laurels. Indeed, as he observed in the notes for the final Cd of his magisterial eight-Cd Beethoven sonata cycle (eCm 1940-9, 2008), ‘We musicians never reach the summit; we have to climb forever upwards. the higher we get, the further away the horizon becomes.’

With the Beethoven cycle under his belt, the next ‘peak’ Schiff set out to climb was Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton diabelli, which he has performed, recorded and lectured about many times. he included the work as the second half of his marathon 60th birthday concert at the Wigmore hall in december, preceded by Bach’s goldberg Variations.

the recital (reviewed for IP online) concluded his Bach series and underscored the special connection between these two famous sets of variations: Beethoven’s were both inspired by and aimed to surpass those of Bach. At the recital’s climax, Schiff was presented with the gold medal of the royal Philharmonic Society. It added one more gem to a crown already adorned with honorary membership of the Beethovenhaus Bonn (2006), the Wigmore hall medal (for 30 years of devoted performance since his 1978 debut) and other major awards from all over the world, including germany, Austria, Italy and france.

Lecture-recitaLfor his lecture-recital, Schiff was joined by michael ladenburger of the Beethovenhaus Bonn. the two men spoke enthusiastically about the autograph of the diabelli Variations, which was acquired by the Beethovenhaus Bonn in 2009. Characteristically original from the start,

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distinguished pianist and recent royal Philharmonic Society gold medal recipient András Schiff marked his 60th birthday with a diabelli Variations recording and Wigmore hall lecture-recital, as Malcolm Miller reports

ndráS SChIff AtA 60

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schiff began with a poignant account of schubert’s influence on diabelli.

The lecture started with a simple question: since Beethoven mainly chose his own themes to vary, what had fascinated him about this apparently trivial waltz by diabelli? in the course of two hours, we heard how the 33 variations transform various motifs. schiff’s language has a lively piquancy: he described how, in the Variation 3, ‘bar lines should not be prison bars’, while noting that its left-hand rumbling was ‘like time standing still’. in Variations 8 and 18, he said, ‘we tend to forget how tender Beethoven can be’. he also noted how the composer ‘uses the different registers of the keyboard like different instruments, an “island of unison” in a polyphonic composition.’ in Variation 13, we heard how ‘silence is the most essential part of music’, while in Variation 20, described by hans von Bülow (the first virtuoso to perform the diabelli Variations) as ‘the oracle’, schiff spoke about the hairpins as ‘monsters’. he also wittily translated the slurred sighs of Variation 21 from von Bülow’s ‘O weh’ to a more hungarian-Jewish ‘Oy vey’.

schiff delved into Beethoven’s relationship with Mozart, underlining the references to the ‘Linz’ symphony in Variation 23. he described Variation 24 as ‘the most beautiful of all: a homage to Bach, a thanksgiving variation […] right out of the ‘Benedictus’ of the Missa solemnis’. We were also reminded how, above all, this late work is full of autobiographical allusions: Variation 10 recalls the finale of Op 2 no 3; Variations 16 and 17 look back on Beethoven’s virtuoso past (‘You feel the elan from the autograph’); Variation 21 recalls the ‘Waldstein’ sonata; and by the final variations, the ‘arietta’ of Op 111 and the diabelli have ‘joined hands’.

With his gift for communication and genial humour, schiff sustained our attention throughout, also winning us round to the joys of manuscript study: while playing Variation 32, a brilliant fugue, he stopped suddenly, pointed to the screen depicting the autograph score and exclaimed: ‘Look at that! Beethoven got so carried away that he knocked over the whole ink pot!’

schiff has recently released a double cd (EcM481 0446) featuring two versions of

the diabelli Variations on two distinct early pianos: a Bechstein from 1921 that belonged to Wilhelm Backhaus before the second World War (on which he also plays Op 111); and a Brodmann hammerflügel of 1820, with six octaves (also used for the Op 126 Bagatelles, Beethoven’s last solo piano work).

The Bechstein interpretation is well characterised and never theatrical. schiff takes special care over rests and details of articulation, and elicits a radiant resonance in the slower variations, with colourful clarity in the faster passagework. The attractive Brodmann tone lends sweetness and power without harshness. here, schiff enjoys the clarity, crystalline textures and vibrant contrasts.

riveting listeningin these recordings – as in his birthday recital – schiff’s playing makes for riveting listening. hearing him play is like reading a good thriller: one does not want to interrupt the thought flow. his biggest achievement is his steady yet always involving exploration of the thematic development towards the profound and monumental final variations, where he brings diabelli’s ‘cobbler’s patch’ to its sublime realisation.

in the ornamental expanses of the slow Variation 31, the pearly touch and glowing colours are achieved with hardly any pedal. Yet within this restrained almost improvisatory eloquence is a degree of suspense that is ready to burst into the fugal Variation 32. schiff’s playing is tripping and racy yet always lucid, with each strand distinctly coloured and shaded. The Bachian filigree patterns flow with virtuoso grace, leading to the fiery interruptions that form the dramatic transition to the final variation. at this point, the colouristic palette opens up into a luminescence as Beethoven touches the stratospheric registers with finely laced patterning, like a spider’s web glistening in sunlight. finally, the last variation comes to an ambiguous rest on a final lingering chord, an acute realisation of Beethoven’s unusual pedal marking.

While Beethoven has been schiff’s most recent venture, his earlier Bach interpretations remain a benchmark in pianism. When he won the rPs Gold

Medal, the judges noted: ‘his revelatory readings of Js Bach have helped to liberate his keyboard music from the increasingly narrow confines of period instrument performance.’ alert to every characterisation and contrast imaginable, schiff’s Bach unfolds with nuances of colour, shading and voicing. he finds in Bach’s abstract patterning of contrapuntal textures a multitude of moods.

schiff MadE his dEBuT aT ThEWigmore hall in 1978 with

Bach’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations. his performance of the work 35 years later at his 60th birthday concert was exhilarating; the canonic and fugal variations, especially, were miraculous for what Vikram seth has described as their ‘equal music’. The fizzing Variation 27 resembles an 18th-century domestic farce, with subjects entering the texture as if from different doors; and the trilling, thrilling final Variations 28 and 29 resemble late Beethoven. Then, finally, work returns to the point from which our kaleidoscopic experience started.

schiff concluded his birthday recital with the poignant miniature Memory of a Pure Soul: Klara Schiff in Memoriam. This work was composed in memory of schiff’s mother by György Kurtág, his friend, mentor and fellow rPs Gold Medallist, who was also present in the audience. schiff was nurtured in his native hungary, studying with notable teachers at the franz Liszt academy including Pál Kadosa, ferenc rados and Kurtág. he then came to the uK to work with George Malcolm in London, where he launched a brilliant international career. he currently refuses to perform in hungary as a protest over its right-wing nationalistic politics, a state of affairs one hopes may soon change.

i also hope we can look forward to coming decades in which to appreciate schiff’s charismatic presence on the concert platform and in recordings, his insights in lectures and his commentaries to major editions of piano masterworks. On the occasion of his 60th birthday, we may all echo the duke of Kent’s congratulatory remarks at the Wigmore hall as he presented the Gold Medal, wishing schiff ‘many more years of glorious music making’.

IP0514_40_41_Schiff_CJ.indd 41 14/04/2014 15:26:08


The PIano rePerToIre contains thousands upon thousands of notes. When vast quantities of them

coexist in challenging contexts, pianists can be stressed. This results in what alexander technique teachers refer to as ‘end gaining’. Pianists will focus on how to ‘get through’ a performance rather than on enjoying each individual moment of it. ‘end gaining’ also encourages a lack of rhythmic control, technical, memory problems, and a feeling of impatience that can lead to boredom.

It is important that we always remember that music exists in the present, and when we play, we should try to love what we are playing. Take time to ‘gloat’ on an expressive appoggiatura or other ornament. Lean and project sensitivity by extending an expressive falling interval. Voice a dominant seventh chord lovingly, with extra weight and depth of tone on the particular inner note that makes the chord special. By expanding in real time significant features in the music we play, we are sharing with the listener things that we feel. Pianists can see themselves as the musical equivalent of enthusiastic guides at an historic site, taking time and effort to share special things with visitors.

If we adopt too rigid an interpretation of strict rhythm, then we risk suffocating the music we are interpreting. Within the discipline of a basic pulse, there are all kinds of subtle variations at work. This can be readily seen by setting a metronome going at the beginning of a commercial recording of a classical sonata slow movement from Brendel, Barenboim or anyone else. While the metronome and recording may start in synchronisation, the two will part company extremely quickly – usually before several bars have passed. The point is that music has flexibility, and that the greatest performers are able to find ways to linger expressively in performance. Let’s look at some examples.

The 64th note scale runs in bars 28-9 of the slow movement in Beethoven’s early C minor sonata, op 10 no 1 (example one) can be terrifying to play, simply because they are exposed and centred around white and black notes. This passage requires challenging, rapid changes in fingering in order to get the hand into different positions. By highlighting the D-a flat tritones in the scale, it becomes much easier to cope with the technical

challenges. Instead of rattling out the passage as though it was nothing more than an expressionless glissando, the notes can become vocal, highly expressive and full of personality. Try sitting a fraction longer on the two Ds that are played before the a flats (i.e. the 5th and 14th notes in the run). This will make you more aware of the two-tritone intervals that are present. The extra time gained by listening just that little bit longer and more acutely will be enough to make execution so much less of a problem. By ‘celebrating’ the inherent angularity in the run, you can turn a pianistic mini nightmare into a pleasurable experience for both yourself and your listeners.

example 2 comes from bars 41-2 in movement one of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto, op 23. Though it appears relatively simple in theory (diminished seventh arpeggios presented in double sixths between the hands) in performance the exposed nature of the passage, (combined with the fact that the piece is so well known!) often leads to lots of stress. as in example one, creative and inspirational help is at hand if you can remember that there is the world of difference between pianistic exercises and strongly characterised, emotionally charged musical gestures (what this concerto is all about!). Firstly, no matter how upsetting ‘mistakes’ may be when practising these arpeggios, we should never lose sight of the fact that the melodic line in the passage resides in the single quaver notes. That in itself should make us less stressed if complete accuracy is hard to achieve. however, within the arpeggio flourishes themselves there is ample scope for creativity. If you play the runs in a bland monochrome style with ‘generically cloned’ tone, (i.e. no dynamics and a uniform sense of articulation), then you are literally setting the scene for errors to thrive and multiply. however, if you try to add random mini hairpins (crescendos and diminuendos) through the arpeggio, experiment with dynamics, balance the hands in a different way so that the left is louder than the right, and ‘sit’ imperceptivity on selected notes (for example add tenutos to the C flats in the left hand) then you should find that your confidence and interest level in practice both increase in direct proportion. In passages like these, you do need ‘good’ fingerings from teachers. You also need

learning

Creative music making is key to a good performance, writes IP tutor Murray McLachlan

m a s T e r C L a s s

to linger

IP0514_42_43_Masterclass_CJ.indd 42 14/04/2014 13:41:22


M A S T E R C L A S S

guidance about how to change position, how to ‘prepare’ and move the thumbs, and how to work in a variety of rhythmic variations to achieve familiarity and eventual security. However, you will fi nd that real reliability and inner confi dence will only come when you are musically ‘on fi re’. It therefore makes sense to experiment by lingering on di� erent notes in this arpeggio in turn, as you practise repetitively. Linger on the C fl ats certainly, but then try sitting on the D naturals or even the F’s in the le� hand. Exaggerate in practise so that the rhythms become distorted, but then in performance try more subtlety so that it is only really yourself who is aware that you

are sitting on selected notes for just a split second longer than you should!

Finally the big solo at bar 168-70 in the fi rst movement of Brahms’ D minor Piano Concerto Op 15 o� ers ample opportunities for the soloist to expand, indulge and linger idiomatically, creatively and expressively. The texture should be broken down into its three basic strands and ‘worked’ at melodically. In the lowest part, this means fully projecting the wonderful wave-like shapes that Brahms writes. There is no point in jumping around like a proverbial kangaroo here – this style demands rich sonority and an awareness of string instruments. Turn your le� hand into a glorious turbo-charged ’cello with extra

low notes added! To bow this passage would require tenutos on the lowest note, and so it follows that you can wait in performance on the E fl at, D, G sharp, etc. Similarly, you can recreate the bowing of a virtuoso violinist in your imagination when tackling the angular intervallic leaps in the right hand. Its ascending sixths and octaves need to be celebrated. Let the long notes fl oat over the texture. Make the most of the expressive potential in intervals by sitting a fraction longer on the fi rst note of each one than you may be used to. By expanding expressively, most of the technical angst associated with this demanding passage morphs into tactile and expressive pleasure. e

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IP0514_42_43_Masterclass_CJ.indd 43 14/04/2014 15:30:05

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Too ofTen, fingers 4 and 5 are seen by inexperienced players as dangerously unreliable. This is a

great shame, because each finger carries its own strengths, personality and qualities. it is wrong to ‘rank’ fingers in order of strength; and it is equally wrong to try and ‘equalise’ the fingers. all of your fingers contribute something unique and valuable to your overall technique. The secret is to realise that they all need individual praise and attention. it makes sense to develop each finger as far as possible and from the earliest stages. Unfortunately, conventional scales make little use of the fifth finger, and perhaps that is why this finger can remain a little undeveloped in a player who is hovering at the grade 5 mark. Lack of mobility and poor articulation in the fourth finger can be put down to the fact that it shares tendons with finger 3. We are built physically in a way that would seem to discourage this particular finger from gaining its independence! This is a shame, as our fourth fingers have great expressive,

sensual potential and are quite different in personality from our infinitely stronger, bolder third fingers.

There are still many teachers who recommend ungainly position changes in order to avoid using fingers four and five as much as possible. in passages where clarity and strength are important, this could perhaps be considered an option. fair enough, too, to adopt this approach in passages marked fortissimo or martellato.But when we are dealing with mezzo piano or softer levels, pianists really do need to be able to use these ‘outer’ fingers with confidence and ease. Begin training four and five by placing your right hand’s fingers 1-2-3-4-5 over the five most central white notes on the keyboard (middle C-d-e-f-g). relax and enjoy stillness as your fingers rest on each key, then quietly begin to lift your fourth finger up. Keep the other fingers still. if you find this difficult, use your left hand to literally pick up the right hand finger. Keeping the other fingers silent and still on the keyboard, try

repetitions of f with your fourth finger. next, do the same for the fifth finger alone. Then try playing fs and gs with fingers 4 and 5 on their own – always keeping fingers 1, 2 and 3 silent and motionless. Try to feel looseness in the wrists. it can help to hold onto your right sleeve with your left hand and literally ‘let go’ so that your left hand is supporting your entire right side as you continue to play f and g many times with your fourth and fifth fingers. You should be striving for a light, hollow, tension-free aesthetic. always ensure that none of the other fingers move (even slightly!) when their ‘weaker’ colleagues are working.

of course, you should also adopt all of the above procedure for the left side, reversing the instructions in ‘mirror’ format so that you place your five fingers over the notes directly below middle C (g-f-e-d-C). You can practise with 4s and 5s together in each hand, and gradually develop a gentle rocking/rotary movement between the two fingers in each hand so that a trill-like exercise in triplets emerges. above all, ensure that your wrists remain free and ‘unblocked’. Perhaps nothing causes more injury and frustration in piano playing than stiff wrists (a future instalment in this series will tackle this issue).

examples 1 and 2 show further ways of extending confidence in the use of fingers 4 and 5. The first extract is taken from the opening of Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist. Begin working slowly and quietly and aim for a sense of ease in playing before attempting to gradually increase velocity and loudness. example 2 is the first of Czerny’s celebrated 101 exercises, op 261 and should be tackled in a similar way to the Hanon. Both are excellent warm-up routines for players approaching grades 4-5 and both can in time be transposed into different keys. as with all exercises and studies, they open up a pathway of development that can be further extended by the student’s own exercises and variations based on the original figurations.

Murray McLachlan offers some tips for effective use of the fourth and fifth fingers

When weak is strong

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IP0514_45_HelpingHands_CJ.indd 45 14/04/2014 08:22:05

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JEREMY SIEPMANN: ‘Most people hate my compositions, even the musicians. For a few they are undoubtedly a closed book, and in such cases the reaction is of course pardonable; but there are others who understand them and to my face express only admiration, while have nothing good to say of them when they walk about with others.’ So wrote Edvard Grieg. Well it wasn’t true then, and it certainly isn’t true now. When they ‘walk about with others’, just as in the pages below, the musicians gathered together for this issue’s symposium have almost nothing but good to say about Grieg’s work. On the concert platform, as in the recording studio, they have worked (and continue to work) unstintingly on Grieg’s behalf. Among the younger members, no one has done more for Grieg’s cause than Leif Ove Andsnes and Håvard Gimse, whose recordings are bringing his music to a whole new generation of listeners; Einar Steen-Nøkleberg, Gerhard Oppitz, Geir Henning Braaten and the Italian pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi have recorded the complete piano works; Daniel Adni has recorded the complete Lyric Pieces, and more, to great acclaim; and all have nurtured a lifelong love of

Grieg’s music. We began by considering its principal attractions.

LEIF OVE ANDSNES: He’s such a sincere composer, he’s never posing, there’s nothing at all pretentious about him. He’s very, very honest. He knew his strengths as a composer, but he also knew his limitations. His sincerity and humanity shine through his music, and it’s this, I think, that touches people’s hearts. He said himself that he wasn’t able to build palaces and castles like Bach and Beethoven but he could build comfortable homes for people. And people have bought into his world in a special way. And then there are his very distinctive harmonies. He himself said he didn’t know where his harmonies came from. Sometimes, of course, they came from Norwegian folk music, but often they came from his own imagination. So what we today think of as something very Norwegian might simply be Grieg’s imagination: he identified so much of what became Norwegian music. That said, his music isn’t an inexhaustible world, like Bach or Mozart. I go through periods where I don’t actually want to be in contact with his music, but always I find myself coming back to it. The songs, particularly, draw me back, again and again. I think they’re still ⌂

THE PANEL (clockwise from top left): Daniel Adni, Leif Ove Andsnes, Håvard Gimse, Einar Steen-Nøkleberg, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Geir Henning Braaten, Gerhard Oppitz

No composer, perhaps, has captured the sense of nature or the feeling of landscape more vividly than

Edvard Grieg (often without recourse to mere pictorialism). Jeremy Siepmann is joined by seven colleagues to explore the art of a unique master

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IP0514_47_51_Symposium_CJ.indd 47 14/04/2014 14:53:58

much less well known than they should be. And there’s so much that’s magical in the Peer Gynt music. Of the piano music, the thing that always draws me back is the folk music connection, the way he harmonises folk-tunes – for instance in Op 66, the Norwegian Folk Songs, and some of the Peasant Dances, Op 72. It’s a very, very special world, I think.

HÅVARD GIMSE: A lot of it has to do with the atmosphere in his music, and, as you say, the part played in it by his use of harmony. But then there’s all the wonderful melodic stuff too. I remember, when I first started playing Grieg’s pieces, when I was about 10, I felt very strongly that this music was quite different from virtually everything I’d played up to that time: not only the harmonies, but his use of chromaticism, too, and the particular kind of melancholy it seemed to express.

EINAR STEEN-NØKLEBERG: He was a harmonic genius! And I agree so much about the chromaticism. There are many examples of both, but none more striking than the great Ballade – right from the very opening, as the bass voice descends in an almost perfect chromatic line through the entire eight bar passage. The whole theme feels as though it’s coming from another world. And the challenges begin right here. When playing it, even if you manage to produce an ethereal, delicate sound, the theme can only really achieve its full potential if you’re aware of the descending bass line, which warns of gloom, of despair, of the possibility of drama. Grieg made wonderful use of the harmonic expertise he’d acquired during his student days in Leipzig, remoulding it and using it as a principle of cohesion. His output was enormous, but the Ballade brings us to the very heart of Norwegian piano literature and it’s significant in countless ways. It’s romantic, profound, tender, introspective … yet its form is very grandly conceived – mirroring the Norwegian landscape.

GEIR HENNING BRAATEN: I love his ability to trigger the imagination of both young and old. Grieg was the first composer I became familiar with, at a very young age. I loved reading Norwegian folk tales and in his music I found the same atmosphere. A

few of his songs even made me cry. Today, my approach to Grieg is more intellectual, and I don’t cry any more, no matter how beautifully it’s sung or played. What matters most to me now, I think, is the very personal use of harmony and colour in his music. There’s always something new to discover and focus on every time I practice a piece for a concert.

DANIEL ADNI: For me, it’s the tremendous lyricism, the beautiful tunes – full of emotions and always evoking a feeling of simple, honest, immediate communication. His music never sounds complicated, but it’s by no means always easy to play. Yet in its way it is easy to understand. He conveys his ideas and emotions very directly and clearly.

GERHARD OPPITZ: I’ve been attracted to the charming and seductive flavour of his music ever since I was a child. One of the things that impresses me most is his highly individualistic sound-world, reflecting both the stimulus he received from famous musicians of his time, especially during his years in Leipzig, and the influence of his own country’s traditional music. It’s a unique blend.

ANTONIO POMPA-BALDI: I too have been attracted to Grieg for as long as I can remember. When I was nine, I acquired by chance a volume of the Lyric Pieces. I knew nothing of Grieg’s music and I instantly fell in love with it: with its utter sincerity and immediacy; its unassertive yet powerful emotional content; the deceptive ‘simplicity’; the endless stream of stunningly beautiful melodies. Grieg can rise to the occasion and produce perfectly beautiful big works, but he’s definitely at his best in the smaller ones. Tenderness, too, pervades his music.

JS: Is colour a prime element in his piano music? How does he rate as a pianistic painter?

STEEN-NØKLEBERG: Oh, very high! Prime elements of his music (and prominent in contemporary accounts of his playing as well), are the richness of his palette and the fine shading of the sound. And no composer depicted both

the landscape and the very atmosphere of Norway more variedly, or vividly, than he did. The weather! And the light! But words can’t describe it. One needs to hear it in order to see it!

POMPA-BALDI: His colours, for the most part, aren’t descriptive but incredibly evocative. Grieg’s very special sound-world makes me, a southerner, visualise beautiful Nordic landscapes, which I always see as watercolours – delicate, yet radiating pure sunlight, made all the brighter by the reflections off snow and ice, as well as the ocean surface. Grieg’s use of colour, I think, like much else in his music, reflects his attempt to free himself from his formal academic training and follow the promptings of his imagination.

ANDSNES: Sometimes there’s a great sort of grandeur in his colouration but most of the time, I agree, it’s a very intimate sound-world. Nevertheless, I feel that many of these pieces have their own special, very individual colour that you have to find.

GIMSE: He had a tendency, particularly, perhaps, in some of his later music, to impressionistic tone painting, but his tonal world is really unique; you can’t label it – and there are some pianistic colours which I think Grieg mastered better than anybody. And as you say, he was so individual! There are very few composers so instantly recognisable on the basis even of a single chord.

JS: Would you say he was a notably polyphonic composer, for the piano?

OPPITZ: Well he didn’t, like Brahms, incorporate complex polyphonic structures in his music, but he was very fond of writing dialogue between two voices, which interact – like, for instance, a soprano and a tenor in duet.

ADNI: To that extent I think there’s a definite polyphonic element in his writings, from the very easy pieces to the very complicated. Schumann was an early and a great influence on him, and although he later turned to writing more dissonant and nationalistic music, the romantic training he had in the art of composition is always evident, I think.


S Y M P O S I u M

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ANDsNEs: As you and Einar have both mentioned, one has to be very alert to the harmony and the chromaticism in Grieg’s textures. There are always things going on in the inner voices, even in the simplest pieces. And this is always very much a part of the character and colour of the composition. If you only concentrate on the melody and the bass you seriously impoverish the music.

sTEEN-NØKLEBERG: A beautiful example of this three-dimensionality in ‘simple’ pieces is the ‘Arietta’ which

inaugurates the great sequence of Lyric Pieces. It has three independent voices, and an important secret to its success is to illuminate this, without being didactic. of course it’s natural to favour the melancholy, gently murmuring soprano voice, but there’s also the arpeggio figure in the middle voice, and the bass line as well, which can be explored with different emphases, first practising the two outer voices together, then the soprano and middle voices, and lastly the bass and the middle voices. Everything will then come together in a unified trio in

which each voice nonetheless retains its individual identity.

GImsE: When he does use out and out polyphony, though, which isn’t often, it’s generally, as Leif ove suggests, to enhance the character and colour rather than for any truly polyphonic purpose – for instance in the First Violin sonata, where he starts off with a fugue and then abandons it after only eight bars! What’s important for the player, in virtually all of Grieg, is to approach the music from a polyphonic, horizontal vantage point. otherwise the sound will be too thin. The texture needs filling out. Each voice needs its own special character. That’s the only way you can get into the real depth of his music.

PomPA-BALDI: But there are some truly, formally polyphonic works, though none of any great significance – the early Canon and seven Fugues, for instance. many pieces present melodic fragments, or even fully fledged lines that proceed by imitation between lower and upper register, evoking, as Gerhard says, a tenor/soprano duet. Then, too, there’s the case of motivic cells appearing in a non-leading voice, which adds a splendid colouring to the whole. And then there are those bass lines, which can almost always be played as a countermelody.

JS: To what extent would you say he emulates the human voice in his piano writing?

ADNI: His melodies in the piano music can nearly always be translated into vocal terms. somehow he managed to give his melodies in the piano writing the same lyrical intensity and beauty as if they were written for the voice.

ANDsNEs: He’s definitely a ‘singing’ composer, but almost never in anything like a grand or operatic style. His letters are often very critical of singers, and of ‘so-called sopranos’ in particular. He used to say that his wife was the only true interpreter of his songs. And everyone who’s written about her has remarked on her simplicity and directness of expression. But it’s not all a question of ‘pure’ melody. In many melodic things, like the beginning

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of the Ballade, where he repeats the same idea again and again, what gives it its rich feeling is the harmonies. But simplicity must always be the keyword here.

GIMSE: One mustn’t put to much ‘pressure’ on the melody, so to speak; mustn’t over-project it. To do that, to treat it as a simple ‘song without words’, risks destroying the true texture and character of the piece. To play Grieg like Chopin or Liszt would be a total failure – because the tension in his melodies, on the whole, is not all that great. But it seems we’re all agreed, Grieg was essentially an intimate composer.

OPPITZ: Many of his piano pieces could easily be imagined to be versions of songs with piano accompaniment. And in playing them we should definitely try to emulate

the human voice, and to avoid anything which could remind the listener that the piano is a percussion instrument. Grieg’s solo transcriptions of some of his songs, sometimes more like paraphrases, are beautiful examples of his poetic sensitivity.

POMPA-BALDI: Hmmm. I seem to be in a minority here. I actually believe that there’s a strictly pianistic quality to his melodies, and that, with some exceptions, they’re not actually vocally conceived at all (I’m not, obviously, referring here to his song transcriptions!). Among the original piano compositions, there are splendid cases like the second movement of the E minor Sonata, where the melody seems to me to emulate the human voice not only singing but speaking. It’s also hard not to hear the human voice in the melody of Op 12 no 1,

the very first of his Lyric Pieces (the ‘Arietta’), just as it’s almost impossible, for me, not to hear human voices in the middle section of Wedding Day at Troldhaugen. However, in Grieg we also find very often (maybe more often than not) the ‘naturalistic’ sounds of chirping birds, cascading waters, and other forest sounds. All in all, I actually don’t think he emulates the human voice more than occasionally; certainly not systematically.

JS: Though he draws fundamentally on national traditions, does he ultimately transcend nationality?

ADNI: Oh definitely! No question. This is music for all. Even things with titles like ‘Norsk Folkeviser’, ‘Halling’ and so forth, are international in all but name.

ANDSNES: I think he does, yes. But not in all ways. Apart from his German training, which he was always very ambivalent about, Norway remained his musical world, as a composer. He knew, for instance, very little about Russian music, apart from his friend Tchaikovsky’s. But Russian music in general was never an influence on him. Particularly in his later years, as Håvard mentioned, he developed an affinity for what we would now call ‘impressionistic’ colours – which I think is a fascinating aspect of his later piano-writing, in pieces like ‘Bell-ringing’, for instance). But this music is all about sound, it’s not about nationality at all.

STEEN-NØKLEBERG: It certainly isn’t! And it’s worthy of direct comparison with Debussy. A work of true genius! And what daring! For fully 37 bars, he calls for nothing louder than pianissimo. And then, later, in those wonderful minim chords starting in bar 77, which resemble a chorale played by a brass choir, he increases the volume from pianissimo to a thundering fortissimo in just five bars.

POMPA-BALDI: By its very nature, Grieg’s music transcends nationality. I’m firmly convinced that while art can originate anywhere and be imbued with (even fundamentally shaped by) local cultural influences, it becomes universal by virtue of its own, intrinsic quality. In other words, true art brings its local elements into the universe for all of humankind to admire.


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There’s no need for the world to go ‘local’ to appreciate it.

GImsE: Absolutely! It limits Grieg to pigeonhole him as a nationalist. The keyword here, for me, is humanity. What makes Grieg great is the depth and quality of his humanity, not his nationality, and the proof is in the response to his music by audiences in every part of the world. I think we’ve all had that experience. Wherever you play Grieg, people love it. North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia – very much so in Russia. He speaks of universal experience, with a directness that everyone can understand.

JS: What are the biggest technical challenges that face the pianist in Grieg’s music?

ADNI: Grieg was a pianist himself and evidently a very good one, so it’s no wonder some of his music has technical challenges. He asks for many jumps (like in the left hand in Wedding Day at Troldhaugen), dexterity in fast passages (Butterfly), and most of the usual difficulties we find in schumann, Brahms and so on. The most challenging thing, though, is to play his music with the right emotions, beauty of sound, legato, espressivo. Technique, after all, isn’t all about speed!

GImsE: The control of sound, of colour, of the whole aural picture is absolutely central - and of a certain type of lightness too. It’s a revelation to play Grieg’s own piano at Troldhaugen, and to listen to his recording of Butterfly and hear that lightness, that delicacy, that special touch. That’s the main thing, I think.

PomPA-BALDI: I think we’re probably all agreed that there are only a few pieces where the actual mechanical demands, in a conventional sense, are very considerable (the Ballade, the solo version of the Norwegian Dances op 35, and certain passages from the Concerto). The orchestral pieces arranged for piano certainly present some technical challenges, especially as far as the pedalling is concerned, so that the bass line, which is often written as acciaccaturas, might be included in the pedal and therefore heard as a line. This

implies some huge leaps, to be smoothed out as much as possible, so that the upper line can sound as naturally flowing as possible. In all of Grieg’s music, there’s also the need for a highly developed voicing ability, so that the beautiful melodies can rise up and proceed undisturbed by the often rich accompaniment. of course schumann and mendelssohn present the same kind of challenge in this respect.

oPPITZ: I certainly agree. Apart from a few spots here and there with rapid position changes – like in the Ballade, the sonata or some other early compositions, I can’t find any technical challenges which would create serious problems for a pianist familiar with the famous standard repertoire.

sTEEN-NØKLEBERG: maybe not. But sometimes, and in one instance in particular, Grieg presents very great challenges not generally found in the mainstream repertoire. I think first and foremost here of the Norwegian Peasant Dances, op 72 (known in Norway as the Slåtter [pronounced ‘slotter’]), which occupy a unique place in Grieg’s output and in Norwegian music as a whole. These singular, uncompromising, beautiful, difficult, animated, miraculous, introspective, swaggering, tender dance tunes are so special that you’d be hard-pressed to find anything like them anywhere else in the world. The ancient, traditional melodies are not the invention of any one person. They’re an expression of the soul of the Norwegian people, the product of a very lengthy process, and weren’t written down until the end of the 19th century. This is an absolutely monumental achievement, still relatively little known, but for me it’s the culminating peak of his output for

piano, for which everything else seems in retrospect like a preparation. Its musical language is unique, and far removed from the Romantic language of his other work.

JS: And what – briefly I’m afraid – are the greatest musical challenges in Grieg’s piano works as a whole?

oPPITZ: In my opinion an important aim is to find a convincing way of portraying the composer’s character with poetic freedom and imaginative fantasy, without ever moving his language too close to sentimentality – an ever-present danger. His music should show a high degree of nobility, and it should breathe in a natural manner, without tendencies to artificial manipulations.

ANDsNEs: I think his subtlety is often under-recognised. The Piano Concerto may be his most played piece but there are many not-so-great performances of it. In the main theme of the first movement, for instance, think of that one chord which has four notes instead of three and that dissonant A and B. Details like that are so important in this music. What makes it really great is when one hears all these things. If they’re ignored, the music suffers. And then, too, there’s the subtlety of the rubato. If you listen to the recordings of Grieg playing, you hear tremendous freedom, but it’s never sentimental.

GImsE: I think the greatest musical challenges for me in Grieg have to do with structure, particularly in the larger pieces, but in the shorter ones also.

PomPA-BALDI: In almost every piece by Grieg, as Gerhard said, the main musical challenge is to avoid sentimentality without sacrificing sincere expressiveness. And this isn’t as easy as it may seem. one needs also to be able to get into the dance-like rhythms and to ‘read’ beyond the titles to come up with a properly descriptive rendition of many pieces.

JS: And there ‘interpretation’ moves from the objective to the subjective. From observation to speculation. From obedience to imagination. No wonder we keep practising! e

‘The Piano Concerto may be his most played piece but there are many not-so-great performances of it’Leif Ove Andsnes


IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 52 11/04/2014 18:27:17

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Polonaise in A fl at major, Op 53, by ChopinPublished by Wiener Urtext – new edition

The A fl at major Polonaise Op 53 is generally considered to be the pinnacle of Chopin’s Polonaise output. Indeed, seen against the entirety of the composer’s works in this genre, his Op 53 stands out as a landmark work. The Polonaise was probably written in 1843 and is fi rst documented in an undated letter by Chopin to the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf und Härtel. The work was published by Breitkopf in Leipzig in November 1843, and by Schlesinger in Paris in December 1843; the London edition by Wessel appeared in March 1844. Of the three autograph engraver’s copies that Chopin prepared himself, only the one for Breitkopf has survived. This makes it the most authentic version of the work. However, the other editions display numerous variant readings which – since they are also based on autographs – are equally relevant as sources. The French fi rst edition seems to have incorporated a number of fi nal authorised readings, which is why it is regarded as the principal source for certain passages, despite numerous errors and inaccuracies. Some of these fi nal authorised readings are therefore also included in the main text of the new Wiener Urtext edition and are discussed in the notes on interpretation.

This applies, for instance, to bar 11 (see fi rst sample page): here, Chopin notates the rhythm in all three sources di� erently and not always correctly. In the autograph engraver’s copy and the German fi rst edition, the quaver on beat 1 is notated without the subsequent quaver rest, so that the bar is a quaver too short. The English fi rst edition amends this error – probably a purely editorial correction – by adding a quaver rest a� er the fi rst quaver. The French fi rst edition o� ers another solution: the chord on beat 1 is reproduced as a crotchet. Since the French fi rst edition not only reproduces a crotchet instead of

a quaver but also omits the slur from bar 10, beat 3 to bar 11, beat 1 and adds a fz to the fi rst note in bar 11, one can assume a subsequent emendation according to bar 1, which also has a fz on beat 1. This also makes musical sense because it emphasises the shortening of the initial four-bar period to a two-bar period.

Some of the discrepancies in the score serve to elucidate the interpretation Chopin had in mind, particularly in instances where his traditional method of notation was no longer fully understood by his contemporaries. This can be seen, for example, in bars 39-40, 71-72 and 161-162: in the French fi rst edition, in contrast to the other sources, the semiquaver groups of the lower sta� are notated without legato slurs but instead with decrescendo forks (see third sample page). The dynamic component of two-note slurs, much in evidence in the 18th century, was still valid in Chopin’s time, involving a slight emphasis on the fi rst note with the following one played more so� ly. The replacement of the slurs with decrescendo forks may have been done to take into consideration that potential performers were no longer familiar with the old rule.

The new Wiener Urtext edition o� ers information on particulars such as these and the signifi cance of the di� erent versions of the musical text in the form of critical notes and detailed notes on interpretation, with footnotes in the score providing initial orientation. Despite all this additional information, the new edition also presents a very clear musical text with improved page turns.

Christian Ubber(English translation: Matthias Müller)

About the music

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


Many early 20th century pianists, from harold samuel to arthur loesser, magisterially

played Js Bach on the modern piano, but few overtly grappled with the composer’s intellectual challenges to the extent that the american rosalyn tureck did. tureck, whose 2013 centenary was fêted with cD reissues from Vai audio and concerts dedicated to her memory, was a powerful thinker who embraced change.

in a letter to the editor of Music & Letters published in 1961, tureck observed: ‘a study of Bach must be taken step by step for the very reason that it involves so many fields of knowledge and so many specialised aspects which can only cause chaotic confusion to the student not yet ready for them.’ For tureck, who died in 2003, the word ‘invention’ was not merely a title for exercises written by Bach, but also a term denoting scientific or technological breakthroughs, which often provided potential inspiration to her as an artist.

at the age of ten, chicago-born tureck was introduced to the russian musical inventor léon theremin and was entranced by the theremin, the eerie-sounding electronic instrument that he devised. at tureck’s carnegie hall debut in 1932, she played the theremin, not the piano. she would later play and promote early synthesizers built by the american engineer robert Moog, and spent decades assisting the american seismologist hugo Benioff (1899-1968), who built electric musical instruments as a sideline. after meeting Benioff in around 1942, tureck recalled in an unpublished memoir: ‘i became acquainted with the electronic piano almost at its birth, when it had only one key – middle c. through more than 20 years i was privy to his problems of tone qualities and keyboard action, his varied experiments and solutions, and time and again i was his guinea pig by playing every conceivable kind of music on this instrument.’

tureck’s willingness to serve as a guinea pig in the quest for new instrumental possibilities was linked to her conviction

that Bach’s music is not idiomatically bound to a specific instrument in the way that chopin or Brahms wrote expressly for the piano. During the post-war rise of the early instruments movement, some considered it heresy to play Bach on the piano rather than the harpsichord. having long pointed out that Bach was familiar with early versions of the piano, tureck was delighted in 1967 when the polish music magazine Muzyka published a receipt from 1749 for the sale of a Gottfried silbermann piano – signed by Bach. tureck saw this as a powerful reply to purists who refused to associate Bach with the piano.

yet she coulD also Be fiercely critical of some Bach performances on the piano. Glenn

Gould praised tureck for ‘playing of such uprightness, to put it in the moral sphere. there was such a sense of repose that had nothing to do with languor, but rather with moral rectitude in the liturgical sense.’ But the admiration was not mutual. in 1999, tureck told the music critic Michael church that Gould was ‘talented and clever, but his idiosyncrasies were the result of a desperate desire to be noticed. i can’t approve […] idiosyncratic playing has nothing to do with art.’

tureck’s path towards such stern pianistic standards began with her teachers: sophia Brilliant-liven, a former assistant to anton rubinstein at the st petersburg conservatory; and Dutch-born Jan chiapusso, a student of Frederic lamond and raoul pugno whose ethnomusicological interests led him to introduce tureck to the sound of the indonesian gamelan orchestra and other world music. in around 1929, when chiapusso heard the solid clarity with which tureck brought out all the voices in a memorised Bach prelude and Fugue, he exclaimed: ‘Good god, girl! if you can do this, you should specialise in Bach.’ however, tureck did not adopt this advice immediately. instead, she went on to work with another instructor, olga samaroff.

For the love of Bachamerican pianist rosalyn tureck was a renowned Bach interpreter, musical analyst and pianistic thinker who was frequently ahead of her time. By Benjamin Ivry

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tureck’s first teacher, Brilliant-Liven, was russian, with a wide social circle which made it possible for tureck to play for a galaxy of renowned slavic keyboard artists, including ossip Gabrilowitsch, Alexander siloti, and sergei rachmaninov. in an unpublished review of a 1965 biography of the last-mentioned star, tureck recalled rachmaninov the man fondly: ‘His face

was large and generous, his expression kind; his hands, which appeared bony and hard from a distance, were so large and soft that when i shook hands with him i lost mine in the cushions of his.’ Yet tureck slated rachmaninov the composer: ‘the musician and the listener who craved more substantial stuff have continuously kept rachmaninov’s name from the list of major

composers. And rightly so. i remember giving up performing the rachmaninov concertos at the age of 24 because i became so bored with playing them repeatedly.’

Avoiding boredom was a key motivation in tureck’s artistic trajectory, as she confided in an undated essay entitled Why Bach?, noting: ‘Already in my mid-20s i began to omit from my concerto repertoire the rachmaninov second concerto, then the tchaikovsky and chopin concertos. in my student days at the Juilliard i had spent two days on the Liszt A major concerto and the Mephisto Waltz. By the third day i was so bored with them that i simply abandoned them. their ideas and texture seemed so thin compared with the density and power of the late Beethoven sonatas, Bach, schoenberg and the Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms concertos.’

tureck, who briefly studied with Arnold schoenberg, was also a doughty interpreter of new music by composers such as William schuman, Wallingford riegger, Vittorio Giannini and Aaron copland, whose 1954 sonata she premiered in the UK. in 1947, the American composer David Diamond wrote his piano sonata no 1 for tureck, cleverly incorporating fugues in the work, which she performed with compelling conviction (tureck’s private recording of the Diamond sonata has been released on cD through VAi Audio).

tUrecK’s VArieD interests in music continued, even if her concert programmes gradually

centered around Bach. she expected the same wide-ranging appetites from her students, and gathered a series of disciples and factotums in the early 1940s. one of them was Miriam Kartch, a longtime teacher at new York’s Mannes college of Music. tureck ordered Kartch to read three books which reveal the importance of the unconscious and mythology to her artistic approach: sigmund Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; the scottish anthropologist JG Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion; and William Bolitho’s Twelve Against the Gods: The Story of Adventure.

A lively interest in the unconscious came naturally – especially since tureck, as she recounted in Why Bach?, had a tendency towards trance-like inspiration: ‘About

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two months after my first lesson [with samaroff], shortly before my 17th birthday, i started on a Wednesday afternoon a new prelude and Fugue – the A minor of Book 1. the Fugue is a particularly complex one and, in the opinion of some theorists, rather awkwardly difficult. its specific complexity triggered, i believe, an experience which was to change my life. in analysing the music and perceiving the elements of the unusual subject and its relationship with the contrapuntal and harmonic elements, i suddenly lost consciousness, whether for a few seconds or half an hour, i shall never know. When i came to, my whole being was possessed of an insight which involved Bach’s concept of form and technique of structure. simultaneously came the realisation that i must develop a new way of thinking which would fit that concept and structure, and also create a totally new technique on the piano in order to fulfill these with the utmost clarity and integrity on this instrument.’

tureck was also fascinated by Bolitho’s Twelve Against the Gods, a 1929 collection of biographical essays about such adventurers as Alexander the Great, casanova and napoleon. if virtuoso pianists were also adventurers whose failures could result in far worse things than merely bad concerts, all the more reason for tureck to relish Bolitho’s comment: ‘We are born adventurers […] one third of all criminals are nothing but failed adventurers.’

one way to avoid potential interpretive crimes was to patiently labour in a grounded way as a researcher. tureck’s many musicological publications, such as

An Introduction to the Performance of Bach (oxford University press), were respectfully received. she disarmed potential critics with such sensible observations as: ‘Historical information, no matter how well sifted and informative, is still far from showing one how to play Bach […] Musical performance is art, not musicology.’ she also wrote: ‘one of the greatest skills required in phrasing Bach’s music is the ability to shape the whole phrase and the inner phrase simultaneously […] the smaller shapes should be played with awareness; they build up into larger shapes to form the entire phrase.’ in 1960, Music & Letters declared that in An Introduction to the Performance of Bach, ‘most of [tureck’s] advice is sound and clear.’

By contrast, reviewers of tureck’s marathon performances sometimes complained of fatigue. A review of her performance at the 1955 edinburgh Festival in The Musical Times by Martin cooper and John Warrack opined: ‘rosalyn tureck’s performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations was another impressive occasion. to memorise an hour and a half’s elaborate music is itself an accomplishment; to play music that is in places designed for two manuals upon one is another; but beyond technical feats, one was gripped and held in a vice-like concentration by the power and insight of her interpretation. no detail was too small for her attention, yet she never deviated from her majestic progress. it was a profound but exhausting experience.’

Less exhausted was Wilfrid Mellers, who the following year in The Musical Times favourably compared tureck’s playing of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier with Glenn Gould’s: ‘When rosalyn tureck plays Bach on the piano she translates everything into pianistic line, to which end the clarity of articulation is only a means. Historical purists may object to what she does (i don’t), but though her performances may be rejected they cannot, being entirely self-consistent and poetically felt, be argued with. With Gould, whose clarity of articulation is no less than tureck’s, i find myself arguing every other bar.’

Ultimately, the future of any musical prophet depends on the quality of his or her disciples. the new York-based

tureck Bach research institute, which continues to perpetuate her legacy, produced a concert commemorating the 100th anniversary of her birth at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the new York public Library at the Lincoln center in December 2013. the programme was recorded on video and will be made available on the institute’s website. the site also features heartfelt video reminiscences by loyal students and friends, who recount their enduring devotion to tureck’s memory.

Although tureck’s energy, determination and drive were scarcely lachrymose, she did sometimes incorporate tears as part of the musical experience. talking about her performances of the Goldberg Variations in an unpublished 1968 article originally intended for Time magazine, she wrote: ‘i always weep on reaching backstage, and continue to do so on each return from the stage. i do not weep for sadness, though that is present also, in the end. i weep for the sheer experiencing of everything that is life and death as we know it. the knowledge, the vision and a gratefulness for the fullness seen and experienced bring the tears. they contain joy, as well.’

After her centenary year, even those piano lovers who find some tempos chosen by tureck to be too doggedly deliberate, or her readings lacking in merriment or terpsichorean qualities, will recognise the weighty significance of her achievements. rosalyn tureck’s time-honoured efforts as a piano virtuoso did not end in tears.

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Tureck’s 2013 centenary was marked with CD reissues from VAI Audio

‘One of the greatest skills required in phrasing Bach’s music is the ability to shape the whole phrase and the inner phrase simultaneously’



‘Baroque on speed’ is how nicolas hodges describes Gerald Barry’s piano Concerto. hodges

premiered the maverick irish composer’s first concerto for the instrument in Munich in november, and i got to talk to him about it afterwards. The performance – with the Bavarian radio symphony orchestra under peter rundel – was in the herkulessaal, a traditional shoebox concert hall with an excellent acoustic in the palace complex known as the residenz. its walls covered in renaissance tapestries of the Greek hero hercules, it is an imposing venue.

The 1,200-seat hall was full if not quite sold out, the audience clearly intrigued by Barry’s concerto, which is filled with a crazy, quirky energy, wittily but gently mocking romantic concerto conventions.

But despite the work’s quirks, hodges insists that the composer should never be mistaken for a joker: ‘he is very serious. his music encompasses the flow of life. [The piano Concerto] is full of comedy, but that comedy is cheek by jowl with profound tragedy – the dark gestures in the piece make the comic seem funnier. The end is incredibly haunting, with its melancholic

warmth – horn and trumpet repeating and repeating. i never thought he would be able to do something like that.’

Comedy is not something 20th-century composers – nor, indeed, western classical composers as a whole – have typically done well, hodges says. ‘The satires of schoenberg aren’t all that funny. There’s not much humour in Brahms… But haydn and Barry would go well together – two great comics of music’.

hodges first tried to commission Barry in 1991, with a project of Bach transcriptions, but Barry politely declined. Then, the

To boldly goPianist Nicolas Hodges talks to Andy Hamilton about premiering Gerald Barry’s new Piano Concerto, working with composers and his love for modern pianism

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To boldly go

pianist happened to be performing in los Angeles while Barry was in town for the premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest, an opera that was to put him on the map in the UK and US. They met, and Barry agreed to write the concerto. it arrived on time, without teething problems. ‘everything was beautifully thought out and notated,’ says Hodges. ‘Gerald judged perfectly the capabilities of all the instruments. He pushes us all to our extremes in a very beautiful way’. They met in Dublin a week before the premiere and corrected some metronome markings. ‘Things immediately click when the speed is right,’ says Hodges.

for the past eight years, Hodges has been living in Germany, where he has a professorship in piano at the Hochschule in Stuttgart. ‘i love teaching and it informs what i do at every level as a musician,’ he says. He believes there is a time-lag between the UK and mainland europe when it comes to acceptance of modern compositions: ‘Music that is considered top-level in Germany – by established figures like rebecca Saunders, Jörg Widmann and Gérard pesson – is presented in london as by a “new young composer”’, he says. ‘on the other hand, every time i go to london i am thrilled by the extraordinary range of artistic activity. it’s very free, compared with Germany. Maybe funding problems lead to more imagination in making art happen’.

Does Hodges consider himself a specialist in contemporary music, and did he make the conscious decision to be one? ‘i was composing from an early age’, he replies. ‘My father had scores of music by Stockhausen and Cage. Then, at the age of 16, i began to study composition with Morton feldman at Dartington Summer School. it took me many years to digest everything that he said – i learned a lot about feldman, because that was how it was with him! At that age, it was crucial to see how profoundly serious and deeply thought through the work of someone like that was’.

i ask him whether he regards both classical and modern pianism as part of a continuous tradition. A pianist’s technique is expected to embrace repertoire from Bach to Bartók, but when one gets beyond Bartók, isn’t the technique very different? ‘it is. But i don’t think there should

be any problem with young pianists encompassing modern techniques. if everyone was introduced to contemporary music in a relaxed way, from an early age, there would be no problem. That is already happening with certain areas of the repertoire – the ligeti etudes are now played in conservatoires around the world, and they were considered really hard when they first came out’.

Would he be suspicious of someone who claimed to be a specialist in 20th-century repertoire, declining to play anything earlier? ‘Well, on the one hand, the world is a big place and there’s room for everything,’ he says. ‘But for me, my quite late introduction to standard repertoire made all the difference to how i played contemporary repertoire’. He turns the question around, towards the many performers who play only traditional repertoire: ‘Contemporary music is so important in the education of young musicians because it affects how one plays all music. To say you’re not going to engage with it is like cutting your legs off. You don’t have to play it at the festival Hall, but a musician should engage constantly with all repertoire. everything informs everything else – for instance, there is virtually no music written since Bach that does not have some relation to him.’

THe firST ConCerTo HoDGeS performed was Cage’s Concerto for prepared piano, in 1992. But then,

during his mid-20s, he studied for five years with a russian teacher, neglecting contemporary music. By the end of that period, he had developed a completely different technique: ‘i had a much wider view of the possibilities of music,’ he says. ‘for instance, i’m now studying Brahms’s orchestral music very intensively, because i’ve learned that studying how orchestral sound is notated can help you understand the solo piano scores by the same composer.’ He has programmed Beethoven and Stockhausen together, and his US concerts especially include earlier material – his Carnegie Hall recitals have included Debussy and Beethoven.

Hodges has worked with the older generation of modern composers including feldman, elliott Carter, Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel. He’s premiered many

concertos, including those by Georges Aperghis, luca francesconi and french spectralist Hugues Dufourt – he performed Dufourt’s On the Wings of the Morning in January with the BBC Symphony orchestra under ilan Volkov. Adès and Birtwistle have written for him, and he’s recorded the latter’s complete piano music. To mark Birtwistle’s 80th birthday, he will premiere a new work in london later this year. He has made many recordings, and future CDs will feature ferneyhough, Birtwistle, Walter Zimmermann and rolf riehm.

Does working with contemporary composers in premiere performances satisfy his early desire to be a composer? ‘i think being a performer actually satisfies my desire to be a composer,’ he replies. ‘i still think like a composer and that affects a lot of what i do, in terms of an analytical understanding of things. Working with composers directly is all part of the same thing.

‘Sometimes working with a composer is nothing but a problem, but luckily that’s not very often,’ he continues. ‘it’s a lot to do with notation. Some composers don’t notate well, and therefore simply need to work with performers. Then there are some who notate very well, but don’t have confidence in what they’ve notated, so they muddy the waters with explication, which isn’t helpful. Sometimes – i am thinking of specific composers – that means making all performers reproduce the interpretation of the first performer, when in fact the score, which is perfectly intelligibly notated, suggests other possibilities as well. That’s a pity.’

Wolfgang rihm is one composer with the confidence to allow the interpreter their own freedom, he says. ‘He has basically never stopped me doing anything. in a concerto of his, i played one passage with a certain kind of rubato, and the conductor stopped and asked, “is he allowed to do that?” And Wolfgang replied, “nick is the interpreter, he’s allowed to do what he wants!” i learned a lot from Wolfgang being there, but he doesn’t ever tell me what i’m doing is wrong. He might say, “i’ve never heard it like that before,” and i would give my reasons for doing it like that.’

Another composer whose work Hodges has performed is Salvatore Sciarrino: ‘He gives me a lot of input, but he’s often thrilled

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to hear my interpretation. Sometimes he just says, “That’s not what i meant, but it’s really beautiful, so let’s leave it.”’ Does he mean that less secure composers don’t really understand that the work is going to be interpreted in many ways? But surely the best composers must understand that? ‘The only thing one can really say about, say, Beethoven’s fifth piano Concerto, is what is written on the page. it’s hard to understand what that means sometimes – some things were not said, because they were obvious at the time. But the more one roots one’s interpretation in the facts on the page, the more chance one has of doing something with integrity.

‘Then, you’re not coming to it only with the sound of other performances in your ears. it’s really critical to go back to the notation. The longer you can spend working on the details and finding the form that grows out of that, the better.’ Does he feel that by working with the composer on a premiere, he’s setting some kind of standard? ‘i’ve never thought of it like that. At Darmstadt, where i teach a piano course every year, people often come with repertoire that i’ve worked on with the composer. And sometimes i simply say to them, “You’ve misunderstood the notation. This is what it means.” That’s a simple correction of fact – an interpreter only has to change the balance of a few elements in a piece for the whole thing to change. But i don’t think i have ever made anyone “copy” the way that i perform a piece, because unless they were physically identical to me, with an identical technique, that would be impossible.

‘There are also freedoms that interpreters need to understand’, he continues. ‘for instance, Sciarrino told me that the different materials he uses in a piece don’t always have to be at the same speed – though it is notated that they are. So there’s a freedom to characterise things in a certain way, contrary to a strict reading of the score. in playing Sciarrino, i have to open up those freedoms. Teaching people how to read scores by different composers is really crucial.’

Harrison Birtwistle is also surprisingly liberal, Hodges says: ‘He changes tempos a lot. With Gigue Machine, we went through

the whole piece and i basically rewrote the score, changing the tempos to what we had ended up with. it was a very creative collaboration. if he had worked with a different pianist, they might have presented him with different options and he might have chosen different tempos.’

returning to the concerto performance at Munich, i ask whether he wishes he’d had more rehearsal time with the orchestra. ‘What we need is not more time, but more performances,’ he replies. ‘Because as soon as you have a second performance, the quality is improved. The conductor will have a recording to listen to, the score will be there in very good time, and if you have the same conductor, they know what all

the problems are immediately. it’s so often the case that the first performance is the worst. But we should all go to it because the music world needs our money! That’s why i buy CDs, too’.

it’s certainly a good reason to attend the first UK performance of Barry’s piano Concerto in Birmingham in June, where you’ll be able to see for yourself how this pianist thinks as deeply about music in his performances he does in words.

Nicolas Hodges performs the UK premiere of Gerald Barry’s new Piano Concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and conductor Thomas Adès on 11 June at Symphony Hall, Birmingham

‘Music that is considered top-level in Germany – by established figures like Rebecca Saunders, Jörg Widmann and Gérard Pesson – is presented in London as by a “new young composer”’

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The IP wishlistFavourites from Frankfurt’s Musikmesse

1 Grotrian-Steinweg Grand Piano 225The German maker’s newest model will be ready for delivery later this summer.Price: €84,200www.grotrian.de

2 Yamaha Clavinova CLP-500 SeriesThe new CLP-500 series introduces the fi rst Clavinova to feature sound samples taken from both Yamaha CFX and Bösendorfer Imperial Grand pianos. The instruments also boast new actions, with escapement and synthetic ivory key tops. The user interface has been completely redesigned to make it more user-friendly and attractive. Price: from £1,257uk.yamaha.com

3 Bösendorfer Opus 50.000Austrian piano manufacturer Bösendorfer showcased its 50,000th instrument, the Opus 50.000, which marks its 185th anniversary. The special edition model evokes the interior of the Musikverein, Vienna’s historic concert hall. Like the hall, the instrument is bedecked with gold leaf and caryatids. The piano is a 225 model that sports four extra keys in the bass to contra F. The Opus 50.000 is currently on show in Harrods in the Fine Furniture Gallery. London-based readers are encouraged to see this fi ne piece for themselves – but be quick, as it will only be there until the end of April.Price: £599,999www.boesendorfer.com

Piano makers from across the globe gathered once again this year at the annual Musikmesse in Frankfurt, one of the industry’s biggest and most vibrant trade fairs. This year’s biennial piano salon showcased a range of new models, from composer-inspired grands to high-tech uprights. Here are our highlights.

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4 Blüthner PH Grand in EspressoThis futuristic piano was actually designed in 1931 by Poul Henningsen. Blüthner has just released a new version of the instrument, seen for the first time at Frankfurt. The new colour is ‘espresso’ (read: brown). The German-made piano has a Scandinavian flair and will suit modern interiors.Price: available on requestwww.bluthner.co.uk

5 Bösendorfer Beethoven EditionBösendorfer continues to impress with its limited edition models. The Beethoven model, released in 2013, has the opening measures of the Presto agitato from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata silkscreened onto the inside of the grand piano lid, based on the original autograph. The Bösendorfer name and an image of Beethoven are captured in mother of pearl. The model on show at Frankfurt had a chrome frame and had been specially made for Yamaha London Music in Wardour Street, where it can currently be seen.Price: upon requestwww.boesendorfer.com

6 Yamaha Transacoustic UprightOne of the most exciting products to be unveiled at the Musikmesse was Yamaha’s

U1TA upright. Based on the classic U1 upright, this model embodies a radical technological twist: the soundboard is transformed into a loudspeaker, allowing the pianist to adjust the volume acoustically whilst also accessing a wide variety of keyboard and instrument sounds. Confused? We were a bit, too. Basically, until now,

this option has only been available on digital instruments or via headphones. With the new piano, the sounds are produced through the soundboard, enhancing the tone. This means that a 121cm upright can produce the sounds of a concert grand. Price: circa £10,600; available from Augustuk.yamaha.com

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AFTER THE BETTER PART OF A year spent in and out of hospitals, I was fi nally able to resume

concert-going late in the fall of last year and am now delighted to be returning to these pages.

During my fi rst three months of concerts, more than half the pianists I heard used printed music. In the past few years, it seems that the rigid protocol (fi rst established in the 19th century by Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt) calling for pianists to play solo recitals and concertos without sheet music has started to lose its hold. In the 1950s, for example, I can’t think of any major pianist, except for Myra Hess, who walked out on stage with a score and a page-turner. By the late 1970s, there were more exceptions, such as Sviatoslav Richter and Cli� ord Curzon. But these tended to be older pianists who’d had confi dence-shattering memory slips and who could be easily forgiven because they had long ago demonstrated how well they knew the music they played. Nowadays, however, it seems that more and more pianists, considerably younger than Richter and Curzon, have taken up the practice.

This may, at least in part, be because most of us now get our primary experience of listening to music on records rather than in the concert hall. It is almost impossible to imagine a pianist doing what Richter did in Carnegie Hall in the autumn of 1960 (fi ve programmes in less than a month without repeating a single work), or what Rubinstein did in the subsequent season (ten di� erent programmes). It would be impossible because their wrong notes, while understandable and almost inevitable when playing so much diverse repertoire, would now – because of our repeated exposure to note-perfect recordings – be considered unacceptable.

Peter Serkin is one pianist who frequently gives solo performances with the music in front of him. He did not use the score when he played Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Symphony Hall (30 November) – but perhaps he should have. His performance was not only littered with wrong notes, but also the worst I’ve ever heard from anyone reputed to be a major pianist. His tempos

– especially in the fi rst movement – were too sluggish; the Scherzo was muddied by a technique insu� cient to meet its challenges; and while the slow movement had some lovely moments, the waltzing Hungarian fi nale was not graceful.

This Brahms experience was so unsatisfying that seven days later (6 December), I took the train down to New York to hear 45-year-old Hélène Grimaud, whom I regard as perhaps the best Brahms player of her generation, play the same piece in Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Unfortunately, Michael Tilson Thomas replaced Nézet-Séguin when he came

down with a cold and Grimaud decided to play the First Concerto instead. This is a piece that I fi rst heard her play more than 20 years ago. It was a great interpretation then, and in this concert it was perhaps even greater: as propulsive and dramatic as ever, but with an even greater sense of spiritual serenity – particularly in the elegiac slow movement.

I WAS BACK IN BOSTON TWO days later to hear Marc-André Hamelin’s recital in Jordan Hall in

the Bank of America’s Celebrity Series (8 December). The French-Canadian virtuoso used printed music, but, interestingly, only

L E T T E R F R O M A M E R I C A

Our US correspondent Stephen Wigler ponders whether the protocol of soloists playing recitals and concertos without sheet music is losing its hold

THE END OFMEMORISATION?

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Marc-André Hamelin used sheet music for one piece: his

own Barcarolle, which had been composed a few months earlier

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for one piece: his own Barcarolle, which had been composed a few months earlier and was receiving its Boston premiere. This nine-minute work, a kind of homage to those in the same genre by Chopin, Fauré and others, is intended, as the pianist wrote in a programme note, ‘to evoke the Venetian gondolier, the stroke of his oar and the gondola’s smooth glide over the water’. But the piece broke new ground, with a remarkable sense of colour and atmosphere. It contains a panoply of difficulties for the pianist: treacherous crossings of hands, a demand for exquisite, frequently feather-weighted sonorities and a strict requirement for transparency of texture; but Hamelin played it beautifully.

The rest of the difficult programme – the part played from memory – was just as impressive: Nikolai Medtner’s infrequently heard Sonata in E minor, Op 25 No 2 (nicknamed the ‘Night Wind’ Sonata after Fyodor Tyutchev’s 1832 poem, which is used as an epigraph to the score) and Schubert’s Sonata in B flat major, D960.

Hamelin played Medtner’s dark and explosive 35-minute sonata, written in 1911 and dedicated to Rachmaninov, as if it were as easy for him as a Hanon exercise. After the interval came the even longer Schubert sonata, in which Hamelin used the first movement repeat to make the recurring bass trill every bit as ominous as the composer intended. He performed the rest of the sonata with elegance and playfulness that did not belie the undercurrents of pain and nostalgia that characterise so much late Schubert.

Alexander Melnikov made his Boston debut with two successive recitals in the Gardner Museum’s Sunday Concerts Series (19 and 26 January), presenting a complete cycle of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op 87. If Melnikov, a student of Lev Naumov and Eliso Virsaladze and a protégé of Richter, is not as well known as some of his contemporaries – such as Nikolai Lugansky, Denis Matsuev and Boris Berezovsky, who were also Moscow-trained – he is certainly as talented. His

comprehensive technique rose easily to the virtuoso challenges of these difficult pieces and he plays with colour and imagination. His remarkable pianissimos made it possible for him to make sustained, meticulously nuanced passages almost eerily quiet, while his playing, in the fugues particularly, could also rise to effortlessly powerful heights.

I find it interesting that Melnikov – who has been performing these pieces for more than 15 years, has made a prize-winning recording of them and clearly knows them as thoroughly as any pianist since Tatiana Nikolayeva, to whom Shostakovich dedicated them – played with sheet music and a page-turner. He has a remarkable architectural grasp of these pieces that made the listener feel from the beginning of the cycle that the music was headed towards an inevitable conclusion. It comes, of course, in the Mussorgsky-like grandeur of the D minor Prelude and Fugue, which Melnikov made ring out with heroic tintinnabulation that left the listener both astonished and exhilarated.

L E T T E R F R O M A M E R I C A

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Myra Hess, pictured here in around 1943, frequently walked on stage

with a score and a page-turner

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reviews


London recitaL roundupSouthbank Centre Maurizio Pollini, 18 FebruaryWigmore Hall Grace Yeo, 27 december; Francesco Piemontesi, 16 december; Pavel Kolesnikov, 12 January; Jayson Gillham, 27 January; Angela Hewitt, 17 February; Richard Goode, 24 February; Mei Yi Foo, 13 FebruaryBarbican Leif Ove Andsnes, 4 March

This season’s discovery had already been discovered elsewhere: Pavel Kolesnikov, 24, won the Honens International Piano Competition in 2012, and he lit up the Wigmore with a fascinating combination of Rameau, Debussy and Chopin. I had already admired his recording of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata and Schumann’s Kinderszenen, but the refined grace of his Rameau was something else: he knew instinctively how to manipulate his Steinway to suggest the sound world of a harpsichord. Debussy’s first three Images emerged with transcendent beauty, and Chopin’s Sonata No 3 had a noble spaciousness. Wisdom is rare in one so young, but this pianist has it in spades; I suspect he won’t put a foot wrong as he goes on developing.

The same could not be said of 26-year-old Jayson Gillham. I was initially won over by the warmth of his tone and the infectious pleasure he brought to Beethoven’s two Op 51 Rondos, letting the first flower at its own pace and bringing out the virtuosity of the second with easy grace. He then gave a high-spirited reading of Beethoven’s Op 101 Sonata (though he hadn’t yet found the key to its mysteries), but Schumann’s Etudes symphoniques proved woeful. Gillham’s performance portrayed none of the work’s sense of poetry and was unremittingly coarse-grained. Whenever he got the green light from Schumann to go fast, he galloped at break-neck speed; those variations that should have been ethereal remained earthbound, while the inner melodies in the bass were crudely thumped out.

All the established figures heard during the period under review remained true to form. Maurizio Pollini’s famous nerves got him so badly in the first two big Chopin works of his Southbank recital that they communicated themselves to us through smudged passagework and strikingly joyless lyricism. But in the sweetly singing middle section of the funeral march in the Sonata No 2 in B flat minor, something clicked and he was suddenly playing with his old authority, going on to deliver the ‘wind over the graves’ finale with breathtaking wizardry. The rest of his concert was sublime, with Debussy’s first book of Preludes becoming a richly suggestive succession of tone poems thanks to his uniquely poised touch.

Back at the Wigmore, Angela Hewitt laboured over Haydn’s Variations in F minor, dragging out the last stages funereally, but she gave a spring-heeled account of Beethoven’s Op 2 No 2 and wound up with a blistering performance of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor: Bach was always her natural habitat, and still is.

Leif Ove Andsnes is currently immersing himself in Beethoven, and at the Barbican gave us a vivid taste of this project, starting with an incisive performance of the craggily dramatic Sonata in B flat major Op 22. This was followed by a finely shaped Op 101, the surprises in its last movement sprung with flawless assurance. The concluding ‘Appassionata’ was magnificent, but the USP of this recital was Andsnes’s chiaroscuro treatment of the enigmatic Six Variations on an Original Theme, Op 34. And yet… one was left with the feeling that although his interpretations had been deeply pondered, he had somehow been left untouched by the music.

Since Richard Goode’s real métier is Beethoven, one was curious to know how he would deal with Schubert, Chopin and Debussy. And the answer was: provocatively. His manner with the first D899 Impromptu was bracingly martial, while the third had none of the melting sweetness most other pianists give it. Then, things went downhill: for a group of Chopin Mazurkas he applied a positively Beethovenian touch, and his treatment of Debussy’s first book of Preludes had none

of Pollini’s refinement, no trace of the requisite mystery. Goode may be a wonderful Beethovenist, but he has neither the technical brilliance nor the subtlety to bring Debussy’s music to life.

After such experiences, one turns with relief to younger and fresher talents, even if they do play the same old repertoire. Grace Yeo’s account of the ‘Appassionata’ was both thrilling and intimate, and she brought out the qualities of Haydn’s Sonata in E flat major H XVI:52 with sparkling authority; only in Liszt’s Sonata in B minor did she mar things with a tendency to hurry.

Francesco Piemontesi, at 30 a fully fledged master, played four Debussy Preludes in a manner to rival Pollini’s, while his account of Schubert’s D960 Sonata was both ravishing and original. Finally, hats off to a young Malaysian: in a cleverly constructed 60-minute lunchtime programme of Messiaen, Ravel, Bartók and Balakirev, Mei Yi Foo intrigued, charmed and dazzled in equal measure. She now deserves a full Wigmore evening.MichaeL church

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Pavel Kolesnikov’s Debussy ‘emerged with transcendent beauty’

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REVIEWS Books

Intimate Piano: Conversations with Nicolas SouthonAlexandre Tharaud Editions Philippe Rey (www.philippe-rey.fr), 173 pages, £13.64

Alexandre Tharaud, born in 1968, has made CDs of Chopin, Scarlatti and the French repertoire from Rameau to Satie. Born in Paris, Tharaud has that city’s psychoanalytical tastes, and his book of conversations with the incisive, well-informed musicologist Southon is a gimlet-eyed auto-analysis. Tharaud sees his early ambitions to record piano music as ‘narcissistic’, since he daydreamed that he would become his idol, the eccentric Samson François (1924-1970), or resemble Arthur Rubinstein. Asked why he decided to unite seemingly random works by Schubert on a CD for Arion, Tharaud replies that his motivations were ‘egoistical’ and that he recorded ‘voraciously’, following personal appetites instead of considering the programme’s musical coherence. Tharaud also remembers how he paid extreme attention to the cover photos of his CDs, posed for a hundred photographs and a short fi lm displaying the beauty of his hands, and appeared in Amour, the 2012 French-language fi lm directed by Michael Haneke, even allowing Haneke to choose the ‘tempos and interpretation’ for his renditions of Schubert’s Impromptus D899 Nos 1 and 3. This self-awareness may be due to long experience with zen meditation, which makes Tharaud seem like an eccentric individualist. He refuses to own a piano, preferring to visit the homes of two dozen friends who are willing to lend him their keys. This unusual method allows him to adjust immediately to varied, less-than-ideal pianos on tour. There is method in Tharaud’s Gallic, Cartesian intimacy. BENJAMIN IVRY

The Music of Herbert HowellsEdited by Phillip A Cooke and David MawBoydell Press (www.boydellandbrewer.com); 382 pages, £50.00

Francis Poulenc: Articles and InterviewsNicolas Southon (editor), Roger Nichols (translator)Ashgate Publishing (www.ashgate.com), 313 pages, £65.00

The witty pianist and composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was always a chatterbox. This volume, representing less than a third of Poulenc’s miscellaneous writings as published in 2011 by Fayard, benefi ts from a translation favouring sense above stylistic posing. Yet Poulenc was a skilled poseur, praising his friends beyond all logic. Defending the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska in 1950, he complained that on the piano, Bach’s counterpoint ‘grows fat, to the point of turning into a burble’ (neatly ignoring another friend, Marcelle Meyer, who recorded Bach on the piano charmingly). Always a man of idées fi xes, Poulenc the pianist was obsessive about pedal usage. Explaining that Satie’s works sometimes require a lot of pedal, he mused, ‘One has nevertheless to play clearly, something [pianist Ricardo] Viñes could do marvellously but which, sadly, many pianists do not manage to understand.’ Of Ravel’s Concerto for the Le� Hand in D major, Poulenc wrote: ‘I am grateful to [pianist Jacques] Février for playing this concerto with very little pedal.’ And in a carefully scripted series of radio interviews, he ranted about his own piano works: ‘The pedal can never be used enough, do you hear! Never enough! Never enough!’ In the same interviews, Poulenc ungallantly badmouthed a recording of his Two Piano Concerto, apparently played by the American duo Arthur Whittemore and Jack Lowe, as being ‘intolerable on the nerves’, with ‘frightful rubatos’ and ignoring his metronome markings. Sometimes catty but constantly captivating, Poulenc’s prose is defi nitely worth reading. BI

In 2000, piano lovers were startled to discover that the English composer Herbert Howells (1892-1983), celebrated for his Anglican church music, also wrote two fi ne, long-forgotten piano concertos (1914 and 1925). Howard Shelley’s recording of these newly discovered works (on Chandos CHAN 9874), accompanied by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Richard Hickox, was revelatory. In a preface to this informative new collection of essays, Maw argues that the concertos ‘were too Romantic to seem truly modern, and too modern to please a public keen to see a perpetuation of the Romantic tradition’. Howells’ Piano Concerto No 2 in C major is a dazzling, take-no-prisoners virtuosic e� ort radiating confi dence, which the composer himself lacked. Distressed when the noted soloist Harold Samuel complained of inadequate preparation time, resulting in a lacklustre premiere, Howells was further upset when an amateur critic in the audience, a chum of the notorious gadfl y composer Peter Warlock, shouted ‘Thank goodness that’s over!’ when the performance ended. Howells’ Second Piano Concerto was duly withdrawn from his catalogue, while the First Concerto was disavowed as a student e� ort. Referring to the latter, Howells’ fellow composer Hubert Parry complained of a ‘certain sti� ness of manner that did not engage the hearer’s interest’, but Ivor Gurney disagreed, writing from the trenches of the Great War to inform Howells: ‘I o� en think of your [First] Concerto and its strength and beauty.’ Now we can all appreciate these works afresh, with the useful and pertinent insights a� orded by this welcome volume. BI

CHOICE

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REVIEWS Sheet music

Pianissimo: Piano DuetsFifty Original Pieces From Three Centuries (Intermediate)Edited by Monika TwelsiekSchott ED 21379ISMN 979-0-001-8763-3£15.50

Schott’s glamorously packaged Pianissimo series has already given us 100 Beautiful Studies and Für Elise, Liebestraum and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, three anthologies of moderately challenging popular repertoire. Here, the series continues with duets from no less than 20 composers. Edited by Monika Twelsiek, the music chosen comes from the 18th to the 20th centuries, with many of the usual suspects in evidence. These include Debussy (En bateau) Moszkowski (one of his most famous Spanish dances) Fauré (part of the ‘Dolly’ Suite) Grieg (‘Peer Gynt’ Suite), Brahms (waltzes, Hungarian Dances) Dvořák (Slavonic Dances) and of course Schubert (Marche Militaire and Ländler). As such, the 261-page selection will be of limited value to experienced, enthusiastic duettists, who may well already own copies of all of these standards. Indeed, this clearly presented and well laid-out edition seems designed as a wonderful ‘induction’ for players of around Grade 5 to 6 level who are ready to begin duets. Not that there is any shortage of rarities among the 50 pieces on o� er here. Not many of us will know the charming Valse pour Nadia of Emile Naoumo� (born 1962), but it could prove very useful as a teacher and pupil educational motivator, and is exquisitely cra� ed. Also of benefi t is JC Bach’s contrasted F major Rondo, which would serve as a good initial foundation in classical duet playing before works such as the Beethoven D major Sonata (also included here) are introduced. Overall, pianists in search of a bargain bumper duet pack cannot fail to be satisfi ed.

Classical Piano AnthologyWorks by Mozart, Cimarosa, Voríšek and CzernyEdited by Nils FrankeScott ED 13440ISMN 979-0-2201-3275-9£10.99

Praise for Nils Franke’s previous anthologies in this ongoing series should not make us take his painstakingly thorough editorial work for granted. Franke is an exceptionally conscientious editor, equipping his chosen repertoire with tasteful performance suggestions and some fascinating biographical material. The selection in this volume will suit students at around Grade 5 to 6. Fingering and editorial work on the actual text is done with a light, sensible touch, and the fi ngerings are o� en creative and idiomatic (as is the case in that o� ered for the repeated notes in Weber’s exquisitely charming 16 bar E fl at Waltz). There is relatively familiar music from Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Czerny and Cimarosa, but also fascinating and characterful works from the likes of Jan Václav Voříšek, Václav Tomášek and Michal Kleofas Ogiński. Particularly fascinating is the D29 Andante from the 15-year-old Schubert – a work that already shows his distinctive personality through its melodic shape and harmonic progressions. The slow movement of Beethoven’s Wo084 Sonata is presented in its 1975 completion by Ateş Orga, though the alternative, historic 1830 completion by Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries is also included as an appendix. With a generous CD included in the back cover containing carefully gauged renderings of all the music from Franke on a model D Steinway, this is another bargain anthology for intermediate players. Strongly recommended.

Saint-Saëns Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, Op 35 for two pianos, four handsEdited by Maurice Hinson and Allison NelsonAlfred Masterwork EditionISBN-10: 1-4706-1044-2

It is wonderful to see this sparkling and substantial work – a comparative rarity – reappear in the excellent Alfred Masterworks series. Though we all know and love Saint-Saëns for a handful of repertoire pieces such as his Second Piano Concerto, much of his deliciously idiomatic piano music remains unfairly neglected. This virtuoso piece uses the trio in the third movement of Beethoven’s Op 31 No 3 E fl at Piano Sonata as the basis for a completely democratic display of athleticism between two pianists. Written in 1874 for the composer’s friends Alfred and Marie Jaëll, the work is clearly designed for professional use. In terms of pianistic layout and idiom, it is similar in many respects to the composer’s celebrated Carnival of the Animals. A� er a witty introduction hinting at the skeleton of Beethoven’s Op 31 Sonata theme, that theme makes a full, literal appearance, with each pianist taking it up in turn – only partially at a time. The result is extremely humorous and convincingly bizarre. Variations 1 to 8 concentrate separately on various decorative deviations and satellite discoveries from the theme. Eighth notes, repeated semiquavers, repeated chords, arpeggios and even a funeral march appear. A short interlude leads into a substantial and exciting 130-bar fugue before the fi nal exhilarating Presto coda closes the work. Though challenging and meaty in total, this is also the sort of work that amateur pianists would enjoy dabbling with, if not performing in public. Helpful background notes and fi ngerings are included. A rewarding and most useful issue of a work that deserves far more recognition.MURRAY MCLACHLAN

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Schubert Piano Sonata in B fl at, D960 (three versions); Drei Klavierstücke, D946Paul Badura-Skoda (fp/pfs)Genuin GEN 12251, 144 minutes (2 CDs)

REVIEWS CDs

This release utilises the potential of the recording process to the full. It is a rather specialist mode of thought, perhaps, to include not one but three performances of the same piece on one release. But for pianists, historians and musicians alike, this disc is a goldmine. Badura-Skoda performs Schubert’s last sonata on a Graf fortepiano from around 1826, a 2004 Steinway and a 1923 Bösendorfer. Each instrument has its own individual sound.

Badura-Skoda plays the Klavierstücke on the Graf, as he does the fi rst D960, thus ensuring the whole of disc one is on the same instrument. He delivers a muscular, imposing reading of D946, with an underlying disquiet throughout.

However, the three readings of D960 o� er the most fertile ground here. To add spice, Badura-Skoda opts for the fi rst movement repeat in the Graf and Steinway performances, but omits it for the Bösendorfer (his booklet essay is fascinating on this topic). He sees how each instrument can reveal di� erent facets of this ever-rewarding music. The piece sounds almost fragile on the Graf, yet the climaxes still manage to convey huge power. The Andante sostenuto is desolate without being overly slow, while the edge to the instrument’s tone is most e� ective in the Scherzo’s angry accents.

The Steinway performance is tremendously lyrical, but such is Badura-Skoda’s interpretative grasp that one does not feel as if the edges are blunted. Clarity is maintained at all times. Finally, the 1923 Bösendorfer, with its more velvety tone, inspires Badura-Skoda to his most interior, serious reading. A most fascinating release that is urgently recommended.COLIN CLARKE

This CD booklet calls Yvar Mikhasho� a ‘musical polymath’, an apt description for a pianist and composer who studied with Boulanger, worked as a ballroom dancer, edited Nancarrow’s music, commissioned Cage’s Europera 5, curated tango festivals and tirelessly championed 20th-century American piano music. This four-CD set, released to mark the 20th anniversary of Mikhasho� ’s death in 1993, has its origins in the famous free ‘mega-concert’ he gave in New York in 1984 under the title ‘The Great American Piano Marathon: Seventy Works in Seven Hours from Seventy Years (1914-1984)’.

The discs, recorded in 1991/92 as he fought against the AIDS that would kill him, feature 62 works by 48 composers from an 80-year span (1911-1991). Mikhasho� had planned to record more, and not everything he did record has survived, so perhaps it’s unfair to point to absentees, such as John Adams and Elliott Carter, or to note that the great majority of composers he chose to record were white, male and born before 1945. While many immigrants to the US are included here, this only makes the lack of a substantial African-American presence all the more disappointing.

That said, Mikhasho� presents an impressive sweep of American piano music, from pre-modernist to post-minimalist, Antheil to Zappa, Charles Ives to Kamran Ince. Several composers appear twice and Cage appears on all four discs. Most of the pieces selected last under fi ve minutes – Virgil Thompson’s two contributions are timed at just 19 seconds and 58 seconds – while only a handful exceed ten, the longest being Alvin Curran’s For Cornelius at 13:47. So it’s a mixture of slight and

substantial, mainstream and avant-garde, high art and broad humour (Cowell’s Amiable Conversation, Brant’s Music for a Five and Dime), with occasional lip service paid to folk and popular sources, such as Roy Harris’s treatment of Streets of Laredo and Zez Confrey’s Nickel in the Slot. There are also seven fi rst recordings and two fi rst recordings for piano.

Mikhasho� ’s real achievement here is to bring a sense of cohesion to such diverse materials through the excellence of his playing. He doesn’t impose himself, but embraces each composer’s aesthetic, playing each piece with total conviction and the appropriate kind of brilliance. He’s at home with everything from the extended techniques required for Crumb’s amplifi ed Tora! Tora! Tora! to the dreamy lilt of various waltzes, commissioned in the 1970s for an earlier project and re-recorded for this one.

The title of Shani Diluka’s American disc is an awkward amalgam, referencing Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road and the Route 66 highway, which she cites as the two ‘mirrors’ of her ‘journey through American music’. Though her 14 chosen composers are a diverse bunch – from Amy Beach to Leonard Bernstein to Bill Evans – she plays them all in the same muted, over-refi ned style; it comes across as precious and, cumulatively, leaves the music sounding enervated, even soporifi c.

Natalie Dessay’s breathy, listless delivery of a Cole Porter number confi rms there are no kicks on Road 66.GRAHAM LOCK

Panorama of American Piano MusicYvar Mikhashoff (pf)Mode 262/65, 274 minutes (4 CDs)

Road 66Shani Diluka (pf)Mirare MIR239, 70 minutes

CHOICE

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74 International Piano May/June2014

REVIEWS CDsREVIEWS

Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3; Triple ConcertoAnnie Fischer, Géza Anda (pf), Wolfgang Schneiderhan (violin), Pierre Fournier (cello), Bavarian State Orchestra/Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/Ferenc FriscayPristine Audio PASC400, 72 minutes

At her best, as on this 1957 studio recording of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the Bavarian State Orchestra and Ferenc Fricsay, Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer (1914-1995) was a captivating artist. Fischer displayed plenty of verve and paprika in her playing. She and her compatriot Fricsay audibly share a poetic imagination and mutual complicity in the Beethoven Third, which itself contains emotions of controlled, quasi-hysteric intensity.

The Beethoven Triple Concerto is again conducted by Fricsay, this time leading the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Sometimes the Triple Concerto has been pointlessly slated, as by a critic for The Guardian who, in 2009, termed it ‘arguably the least successful of any of Beethoven’s mature concertos’. Yet pianists including Martha Argerich, Claudio Arrau, Eugene Istomin, Joseph Kalichstein, Hephzibah Menuhin, Lev Oborin, Menahem Pressler, Sviatoslav Richter, Rudolf Serkin, Howard Shelley, Lars Vogt and Christian Zacharias have chosen to record it, disregarding any such glib value judgments. In 1960, the Hungarian Géza Anda (1921-1976) joined their number, expressing both the work’s sombre gravity and its dancing high spirits.

CD purchasers can also download two bonus tracks: Fischer’s charming 1959 renditions of two Mozart Concert Rondos. A booklet note by reissue producer Andrew Rose accurately praises these recordings as ‘essentially very well made’, adding that ‘these new transfers have, with XR remastering, built on very fi ne originals with a clean, clear and full sound that in both cases might have been recorded just last week, rather than more than 50 years ago.’ BENJAMIN IVRY

Prokofi ev Piano Concertos Nos 1-5Jean-Effl am Bavouzet (pf), BBC Phihlarmonic/Gianandrea NosedaChandos CHAN10802, 122 minutes (2 CDs)

This set updates the previous Chandos o� ering of the Prokofi ev piano concertos, conducted by Neeme Järvi and split between pianists Boris Berman and Horacio Gutiérrez. The new booklet notes, by the Prokofi ev expert David Nice and Bavouzet himself, are a model of their kind.The fi ve concertos fi t neatly over two discs.

The BBC Philharmonic blossomed with Noseda as its principal conductor (2002-2011; he is now conductor laureate), and the close rapport they enjoy is evident here. It needs to be, given the ensemble challenges of Prokofi ev’s scores, both for the orchestra alone and between soloist and tutti. Bavouzet, one of the most intelligent pianists active today, plays with complete authority.

Bavouzet made his concerto debut at the Paris Conservatoire with Prokofi ev’s First Piano Concerto. He captures the work’s youthful energy. The BBC Philharmonic is on exceptional form in the Andante assai, yet it is the work’s closing pages that sum up the vitality of the Bavouzet/Noseda combination so perfectly. The musicians capture in the recording studio (MediaCityUK, Salford) all the excitement of a live event. The performance is up there with Argerich/Dutoit (EMI).

The tremendously and notoriously di� cult Second Piano Concerto seems to hold no fears for Bavouzet (although he acknowledges the di� culties in his commentary). Communication between piano and orchestra is once more a highlight, as is Bavouzet’s very muscular cadenza. The helter-skelter passages in the fi nale are wonderfully done. Excellent though Yuja Wang is (Deutsche Grammophon), Bavouzet is the more

mature musician, while demonstrating just as fi ne a technique.

The Third Piano Concerto, by far the most famous of the fi ve (and the most recorded), emerges as almost feather-light and Classical in outlook. Bavouzet’s crisp, clear articulation, de� fi ngerwork and intelligent, sensitive contributions to the set of variations that comprises the central movement are remarkable. The fi nale’s pace is slightly leisurely, but this strategy comes o� in the lead-in to the fi nal gestures.

The Fourth Piano Concerto is for the le� hand only (it was originally written for and commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein). Bavouzet gives it his all. There is a tremendous sense of strength, particularly in the fi rst movement; Noseda and the BBC forces equal him in profundity, though, in the depth of the string sound at the opening of the Andante second movement.

The Fi� h Piano Concerto brings Bavouzet up against titanic opposition in the form of Sviatoslav Richter (the Deutsche Grammophon version, with the Warsaw Philharmonic under Rowicki). Both pianists give valid readings, with Bavouzet more open to the work’s humour – in fact, he is decidedly cheeky at the opening, providing a contrast to Richter’s wide-eyed exuberance. Both pianists capture the myriad moods of this piece with uncanny ease, from the motoric elements of the second movement to the nightmarish processional at the heart of the fourth (Bavouzet and Noseda are particularly successful here, and the pianist’s magnifi cent jeu perlé touch therea� er is magical).

This is a release that e� ectively sets the standard for 21st-century Prokofi ev interpretation. CC

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REVIEWS CDs

Chávez Piano Concerto; Meditación; Moncayo Muros Verdes; Zyman Variations on an Original ThemeJorge Federico Osorio (pf), Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México/Carlos Miguel PrietoCedille CDR 90000 140

Carlos Chávez’s Piano Concerto is an attractive, big-boned work in the traditional three movements, built on a Rachmaninovian scale and running for 36 minutes. Internally, the writing seems to owe something to Prokofi ev in the motoric, toccata-like passages in the huge fi rst movement, or to Bartók (or perhaps Cowell) in the percussive use of the instrument. But there are also Mexican rhythms and harmonies – in the freewheeling opening Allegro agitato (with its Largo non troppo introduction), the succeeding Molto lento (the lowering mood of which seems to redefi ne the work’s fi rst span) and the festive Allegro non troppo. The music is vividly rendered by Osorio in a performance of compelling virtuosity – just listening to him negotiating the torrents of chords is hair-raising – and he is vibrantly accompanied by the Mexican National Symphony Orchestra under Carlos Prieto.

Chávez’s Meditación was written 20 years earlier, an apprentice piece showing a delicacy of feeling and an awareness of the French Impressionists. Of stronger profi le are Samuel Zyman’s fi ne Variations on an Original Theme (2007) and Moncayo’s Muros Verdes (‘Green Walls’, 1951) – but don’t expect a Huapango for piano, or you may be disappointed. This is a fi nely wrought piece, adding depth to the profi le of a composer too o� en thought of as a one-work creator. Zyman’s Variations are more recent, but fi t well with the rest of the disc; an attractive, well-written set, expressively and technically interesting. Osorio is on his mettle here, and indeed throughout. A disc that just gets better with every playing.GUY RICKARDS

Williamson Piano Concertos Nos 1-4; Concerto for Two Pianos; Sinfonia ConcertantePiers Lane (pf), Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Howard Shelley (pf/conductor)Hyperion CDA 68011-2, 116 minutes (2 CDs)

Australian-born but UK-domiciled Malcolm Williamson (1931-2003) was once the most commissioned composer of his time, with a catalogue of over 120 works. He is little played now and few discs devoted to his music seem readily available either here or down under. This two-disc set from Hyperion makes handsome amends in collating all his piano concertos, composed between 1957 and 1994.

The solo parts demand virtuosity and energy in equal measure, and Piers Lane sparkles inexhaustibly. Composer infl uences abound: Concerto No 1 alone may remind you of Bartók, Prokofi ev, Lutosławski, Britten and the neo-classical Stravinsky, while Messiaen hovers over the two-piano concerto with strings. (Williamson was a virtuoso pianist: his 1966/67 BBC recording of Messiaen’s Visions de l’amen with fellow composer Richard Rodney Bennett is a historical treasure that ought, if it still exists, to be released on CD.) A knack for uninhibited and memorable tunes recalls Malcolm Arnold. The highly regarded Third Concerto (rival CDs exist) changes style possibly too widely to cohere but is always compulsively listenable, as is the whole set.

Williamson was particularly good at catchy fi nales, while his slow movements exude total, positively post-coital calm. Trumpets shine, both as joint soloists in the Sinfonia Concertante and elsewhere; other orchestral playing is accomplished but occasionally deadpan. The recording is handsome; le� -right separation between soloists in the two-piano concerto is very fair, given that co-soloist Howard Shelley also directed the orchestra and presumably had to be centrally placed. An absorbing and highly entertaining experience.MICHAEL ROUND

Life Carries Me This WayMyra Melford (pf)Firehouse 12 FH12-04-01-081, 56 minutes

Myra Melford has been a prominent fi gure in American jazz for the past 25 years, yet this is her fi rst solo recording. And although her music has o� en refl ected her interest in other art forms, from poetry to dance to architecture, I think this is the fi rst project she has devoted to fi ne art. The music here is her response to the paintings and drawings of Californian artist Don Reich, who died in 2010. He was a close family friend and, she says, ‘an artistic inspiration for as long as I can remember’, so clearly this is a very personal and deeply felt album.

Melford and Reich had planned the project together but he died before she could complete the music, and her ruminations on his artworks are touched at times by a keen sense of loss, as with Red Land’s gently rocking grief or the tender farewell implicit in Still Life. Yet this is not a sad record overall. In her booklet note, Melford remarks on Reich’s ‘colorful and quirky sensibility’, and her music, with what she calls its ‘tendency towards lyricism, abstraction and rhythmic mobility’, certainly captures those qualities. From the playful sense of form evident in, say, Curtain, to Piano Music’s colourful acrobatics, the whirls and splatters of notes recall the rhythmic panache of Don Pullen as much as Reich’s jubilant zigzag chromaticism.

The booklet includes the relevant paintings and Melford’s piano is beautifully recorded. This is a wonderful and moving tribute from one artist to another. GL

Follow International Piano on Twitter: @IP_mag

IP0514_73_75_CDRevs_CJ.indd 75 14/04/2014 13:38:06

REVIEWS CDs in brief

Bach and the Early FortepianoLuca Guglielmi (fps, clavichord)Piano Classics PCL0062, 67 minutes

Like Prospero’s isle, this disc is full of ‘sounds and sweet airs’ played on ‘twangling instruments’; not a thousand, though, just three – all examples of the early keyboards on which Luca Guglielmi is an expert performer. He shares the limelight here with copies of a 1726 Cristofori fortepiano, a 1749 Silbermann fortepiano and a 1784 Hubert clavichord. He employs the Silbermann for six of the disc’s eight works – a reasonable choice, given that Bach played a Silbermann. Both fortepianos possess a range of seductive timbres, their mellow, so� -edged charm further enhanced by Guglielmi’s adoption of the Bach-Lehman temperament. He plays Bach’s early Toccata in C minor, BWV 911, on the Cristofori; and the Sonata in A minor, BWV 1003 – originally composed for solo violin – on the clavichord, as we know Bach did, where it sounds very attractive. GRAHAM LOCK

Beethoven The Complete Piano Trios, Vol 3: Trio Op 11; Variations on ‘Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu’, Op 121a; Trio Op 38Gould Piano Trio, Robert Plane (clarinet)Somm Céleste SOMMCD 0135, 78 minutes

This well-fi lled disc nicely complements the ‘complete’ Florestan Trio set I reviewed in January/February 2012 – exactly when these live Gould Piano Trio performances were recorded at St George’s Bristol. Here is Op 11 in its original form for cello, piano and clarinet (Robert Plane is bright and up front in the mix). For the same combination is the rare trio arrangement of the Septet Op 20 – no doubt a shrewd commercial move on Beethoven’s part, though in these reduced colours quite wearing. The fi rst Minuet quotes from the Sonata Op 49 No 2. The ‘Kakadu’ Variations (the only piece here with violin) are seriously played, diluting the

‘ponderous introduction to silly tune’ joke famously reused in Dohnányi’s Nursery Variations. Somm’s invaluable booklet notes are by the ever-reliable Robert Matthew-Walker. MICHAEL ROUND

Bowen Chamber Works: Clarinet Sonata, Op 109; Rhapsody-Trio, Op 80; Piano Trio (unfi nished, completed by the Gould Trio); Phantasy Quartet, Op 93; Piano Trio, Op 118Gould Piano Trio, Robert Plane (clarinets)Chandos CHAN10805 (78 mins)

There has been something of a blossoming of interest in York Bowen in recent years.Continuing this trend, Chandos has delivered this generously fi lled disc of chamber music, mostly featuring piano. It’s worth mentioning the superbly cra� ed Clarinet Sonata (1943), here expertly played by Robert Plane. The Rhapsody-Trio of some 18 years earlier, for piano trio, is of a di� erent (and magical) world. Lucy Gould’s searingly emotive violin playing is ably supported by Benjamin Frith. The Piano Trio of around 1900 is here completed by the present performers and here receives its premiere recording. A� er the mysterious world of the Phantasy Quartet (bass clarinet and strings), the unabashedly Romantic Piano Trio of 1946 is given a pointed, fi ery performance; the central Adagio is very tender indeed. CC

Beethoven Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, Op 27 No 2; Schumann Kinderszenen; Chopin Piano Sonata No 3 in B minor, Op 58; Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1; Mendelssohn Cello Sonata No 2Pavel Kolesnikov (pf), Johannes Moser (cello), Calgary Philharmonic Ochestra/Roberto MinczukHonens 2012-3/04CD, 124 minutes (2 CDs)

Born in Novosibirsk in 1989, Pavel Kolesnikov won the Honens International Piano Competition in 2012, and a notable

Wigmore Hall debut in January this year seems to have confi rmed his credentials. This twofer documents his Honens recital and concerto appearances. The Calgary Philharmonic is not a great orchestra, and the recording rather shunts it into the background. Kolesnikov, though, has a fi ne grasp of Tchaikovsky’s First. Surprisingly considered interpretationally, his reading still holds excitement: it is Kolesnikov rather than the orchestra who captures the fi re of the fi nale. Unfortunately the solo items are rather nondescript. There is no doubting Kolesnikov’s musicality – nor, as the ‘Moonlight’ fi nale reveals, his technique. But suspicions are confi rmed with the Schumann. Kolesnikov simply does not have the maturity for Schumann’s meditation on youth. Similarly, the Chopin Third Sonata is merely good conservatoire playing, years away from a fully formed reading. CC

Schumann Fantasiestücke, Op 12; In der Nacht; Carnaval; Beethoven Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, Op 27 No 2; Chopin Two Nocturnes, Op 27 Hough Piano Sonata No 2, Notturno Luminoso Stephen Hough (pf)Hyperion CDA67996, 77 minutes

Hyperion’s superb recording and Stephen Hough’s burnished sound make this a most appealing disc on the subject of music of the night. Schumann bookends the recital, his In der Nacht beautifully sustained before Hough gives a ‘Moonlight’ Sonata in a di� erent league from Kolesnikov (above), fi nding cheeky accents in the central Allegretto and presenting an explosive fi nale. The two Chopin Nocturnes, both beautifully shaded and harmonically aware, precede Hough’s own Second Piano Sonata, a consideration of various facets of the night: brightness, darkness and irrational fears. Dissonant yet based in Romanticism, the piece includes nods to Scriabin, Webern and Messiaen. Hough is his own fi nest interpreter, playing


IP0514_76_77_CDRevsBrief_CJ.indd 76 14/04/2014 12:03:43


with a fi erce belief in the score. Finally, Schumann’s Carnaval (each movement separately tracked) is full of character. The opening gestures are gloriously exuberant, introducing one of the fi nest readings available. CC

Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales; Sonatine; La valse; Scriabin Piano Sonatas Nos 4 and 5; Waltz in A fl at, Op 38; Poèmes, Op 32 HJ Lim (pf)Warner 5099991450920, 64 minutes

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this intelligently programmed disc. Lim is not particularly well served by the recording, which tends to lack depth. But her problem is that she cannot align herself with these composers fully, so that everything sounds at an interpretative remove. This is most obvious in the Scriabin Sonatas. In No 4 she cannot quite capture the perfumed, elusive quality at the heart of the music, while in the Fi� h Sonata she misses the primal, gestural aspect. Her Ravel su� ers from similar faults. Any sense of ecstasy is missing (in the Valses nobles and particularly in La valse). The Sonatine is merely superfi cial, missing any sense of the suave or sophisticated. Try Osborne on Hyperion for a truer experience. If the slighter Scriabin pieces fare better, it can hardly generate a recommendation. CC

Edwin Fischer Trio Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann Piano Trios Edwin Fischer (pf), Wolfgang Schneiderhan (vln), Enrico Mainardi (cello) Pristine Audio PACM088, 59 minutes

This Bavarian Radio recording captures a 1953 recital at the Salzburg Mozarteum by the eminent Swiss pianist Fischer (1886-1960) and his longtime chamber music partners. Fischer was a great listener as much as a great pianist, and his discernment

radiates through these performances. He was a chamber music devotee from early on and formed his fi rst trio with Mainardi and the violinist Georg Kulenkamp� , whose death in 1948 made a replacement essential. Kuhlemkamp� was an altogether chaster artist than the showboating Schneiderhan, so it is unfortunate that the original Fischer Trio apparently le� no recorded trace. Even so, this later formation of the trio is well worth hearing. BENJAMIN IVRY

Eller Complete Piano Music, Vol 5Sten Lassmann (pf)Toccata Classics TOCC0225, 73 minutes

This fi � h disc of Lassmann’s Heino Eller survey is arranged broadly (though not exclusively) in chronological sequence, from the early Caprice (1911), to the sublime 13 Pieces on Estonian Motifs (1940/41). The result is an overview of Eller’s development as a keyboard composer, from initial late Romanticism in the fi rst fi ve pieces to the leaner, modernist-nationalist idiom of the Estonian-inspired 13 Pieces. These, together with the second book of Preludes (on an even higher plane than the First Book, on Volume 1), are among the fi nest works he wrote for the keyboard, encompassing delicacy, subtlety and power. Lassmann plays superbly, as he has throughout this series, and Toccata’s sound is beautifully clear. GUY RICKARDS

Lutosławski Complete Piano Music:Piano Sonata; Deux Etudes; Melodie Ludowe; Bukoliki; Three Pieces for Young People; Invencja Ewa Kupiec (pf)Sony 88883778432, 58 minutes

This is a magnifi cent disc and my clear pick of the crop for this issue. Ewa Kupiec plays this music with unfailing authority and technical mastery. The recording has stunning presence and defi nition.

Lutosławski’s Piano Sonata dates from 1954 but was not published until 2004. There are few recordings available, and Kupiec goes straight to the top of the pile. Various infl uences are discernible: Chopin, Szymanowski and Bartók, but the work retains its own integrity. Kupiec projects the varied terrain of the central Adagio perfectly and her touch in the fi nale is simply beautiful, nowhere more so than in the fi nal gesture, as the music fl oats away into nothingness. She also plays the Etudes (contemporaneous with the famous Paganini Variations) with panache. The rest of the disc is taken up almost exclusively by music for young people, delivered with style and grace. Recommended. CC

Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos 4 and 5 Walter Gieseking (pf) Pristine Audio PASC390, 68 minutes

In 1944, a primitive form of stereo sound was used to record a performance by the German pianist Walter Gieseking (1895-1956) with the Berlin Reichsender Orchestra, led by Artur Rother, an opera specialist. Given the Second World War-era setting and the anti-aircra� fi re faintly audible during the fi rst movement, it is unsurprising that Gieseking adopted tempos that are sometimes so brisk. Gieseking’s 1934 recording of the ‘Emperor’ the Vienna Philharmonic and Bruno Walter is of greater pianistic interest. A 1951 studio Beethoven Fourth has the UK’s Philharmonia Orchestra conducted with intermittent languor by Herbert von Karajan. Gieseking is in muted, if still masterfully limpid, form. A previous 1939 recording with the Saxon State Orchestra and Karl Böhm is a more straightforward indication of Gieseking’s mastery in this repertory, but this is certainly worth hearing for every piano lover. BI

CHOICE

REVIEWS CDs in brief

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Reminiscences of Childhood, Op 54 is a set of three contrasting pieces entitled Lucilla’s Beehive, Uchti-Tuchti

and The Melancholic Mobile. These pieces offer three different ways of looking at childhood: the first piece focuses on the innocence and beauty

of childhood; the second, a fast scherzo-like piece, is about playfulness; and the highly dramatic third piece is written as if we were looking at childhood from an adult perspective, complete with identification and regrets.

For me, contrasts are an essential part of art. I am interested in creating short and meaningful pieces that, due to their intensity and inner diversity, give the illusion of much longer works. These three pieces can either be performed separately or as a cycle. NB

REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOODNIMROD BORENSTEIN

© N

imrod Borenstein 2012. A

ll Rights R

eserved


s h e e T m u s I c

An excerpt from Lucilla’s Beehive is printed below. Reminiscences of Childhood can be downloaded in full from www.rhinegold.co.uk/ipdownload.

Digital readers click heRe.

Reminiscences of childhood, Op 54 By Nimrod Borenstein

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HISTORIC KEYBOARDS




works

PLUSMarielle

LabèqueJohn Law

Nicolas Hodges



JEAN MULLER

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January/February 2014 International Piano 27

M U S I C I N T H E 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y

asked if we can help with an instrument. We’ll say, “Well, we do have a very good piano dealer in that area so perhaps we can also offer some tickets to the piano dealer’s customers, perhaps Artur can visit the store or perhaps we can arrange some links between a retailer who stocks CFX pianos and Artur.” Or if Stephen Hough decides to record a particular CD on a Yamaha instrument, we will know about that. HJ Lim is a brand ambassador, so we’ll say to EMI, “HJ is recording this particular repertoire for a CD to be launched next year – can we include some information about why she selected a CFX for this repertoire, for this record?” And because it’s all so top end and so professional, the comments of venues and pianists all add up to a critical mass with momentum that gets other serious pianists or labels or venues thinking about the Yamaha CFX. It’s quite different from just asking an artist to do an advert for you.

‘Outside the classical world, we have people like Jools Holland and Jamie Cullum, who actively get engaged in programmes to promote pianos and piano playing. A brand ambassador will do a variety of activities beyond just playing the instrument – maybe workshops in schools, or developing software in the case of Chick Corea, who plays Yamaha pianos and synthesisers.’

Other pianists lending their name to the brand include Julian Joseph, Hiromi, Ananda Sukarlan, who has been working with Yamaha on a national piano competition in Indonesia, and Nise Meruno, who was the first Indian to be named a brand ambassador of Yamaha and who also represents AKG microphones.

Everywhere you look, pianists are jumping on the brandwagon. Yundi Li is a brand ambassador for audio and video product manufacturer Bang & Olufsen; German-Russian pianist Olga Scheps flies the flag for Audi and Swiss-based luxury company Chopard, and was the first person to appear on the front of German women’s magazine COVER; and Jordanian telecoms company Umniah has native pianist Zade Dirani on the line.

Music and fashion are a marriage made in heaven from a promotional point of view – male pianists get away with a dark suit, but when women walk onstage to

‘They get nothing. They’ve never even asked

to have a line in the programme saying I’m

dressed by Chanel. It was just a gift; goodwill

from a very generous company’

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ABDULLAH IBRAHIM began life as Adolph Brand and made his fi rst

recordings as Dollar Brand, a tag that stuck until his conversion to Islam in 1968, which prompted the change to his current name. Born in Cape Town in 1934, he heard his fi rst jazz courtesy of the township ice cream vans, whose loudspeakers blared out hits by American bandleaders such as Louis Jordan and Erskine Hawkins. Brand had studied piano since childhood and, aft er stints with dance bands, joined up with trumpeter Hugh Masekela and alto saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi to form the Jazz Epistles. In 1961, they became the first black group in South Africa

to record an LP. However, increasingly sickened by the repressive apartheid regime, Brand left for Europe the following year. In 1963, Duke Ellington heard him play in Zurich and was so impressed that he recorded the young pianist and invited him to

IP’s jazz expert Graham Lock picks some quintessential recordings by South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim

T A K E F I V E

Abdullah Ibrahim

Take Five

1. Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro

(solo, 1969), from African

Piano (ECM/JAPO)

2. Moniebah (with Archie

Shepp, 1978) from Duo

(Denon)

3. The Wedding (with

Ekaya, 1989), from African

River (Enja)

4. African Market (1988, with

sextet), from Mindif (Enja)

5. Joan – Cape Town

Flower (with trio, 1997),

from Cape Town Flowers

(Tiptoe/Enja)

the USA. In 1965, Brand appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival and Carnegie Hall, and then joined the Ellington Orchestra for a West Coast tour. He also embraced the more experimental jazz of John Coltrane, whose music raised questions of freedom and spirituality that had a particular resonance for him. Following his conversion to Islam and name-change, Ibrahim returned to Cape Town in the late 60s. He left again aft er the suppression of the 1976 uprisings and settled in New York, becoming what he called ‘a cultural ambassador’ for the African National Congress (ANC) and, in songs such as Hit and Run and Tula Dubula, he looked forward to apartheid’s downfall and the promise of ‘a new world a-coming’. Commentators have discerned a number of infl uences in Ibrahim’s music, from Negro spirituals and Islamic incantation to Cape Town street dances and the percussive dissonances of Thelonious Monk. Blended together they fuel what critic Francis Davis has called the ‘defi ant joy’ that characterises so much of Ibrahim’s African jazz. Eruptions of joy certainly punctuate the rolling left -hand ostinatos on the live 1969 recording of Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro, where Ibrahim’s darting right-hand flurries evoke both the spirit of free jazz and a dervish-like ecstasy. The extraordinary force with which his right hand strikes the keyboard (a signature technique) means the notes seem to jangle and shimmer in the air like shards of frozen light. Ibrahim’s Cape Town recordings of the early 1970s were hugely popular in South Africa, particularly his township tributes Mannenberg and Soweto. Elsewhere, he was better known for quieter, meditative pieces such as The Pilgrim and Moniebah. The latter can be heard in a leisurely 1978 duo version with US saxophonist Archie Shepp. Ibrahim’s piano deft ly ushers the raspy, slithering tenor through a set of improvised arabesques that curl like smoke around the haunting theme. Ibrahim’s best-loved tune is probably The Wedding, with a ‘lovely arching melody’ that Wilfred Mellers likened to ‘the breath of God’. He has recorded it in several diff erent versions (as he has many of his pieces), and it sounds especially poignant on the alto saxophone – try the ardent sound of Carlos Ward on the Water from an Ancient Well CD or the more stately, slightly wistful tone of Horace Alexander Young on African River, both framed by Ibrahim’s gently rejoicing piano. Those two albums, featuring Ekaya (it means ‘home’), the septet he formed in 1983, are among Ibrahim’s finest, though principally because of his attractive compositions and arrangements rather than his self-eff acing piano. To better appreciate his value as an ensemble pianist, listen to African Market, from the Mindif album, where his delightful splatters of improvisation inspire the horns in their carousing evocations of a busy marketplace. Once apartheid had ended, Ibrahim was able to return to Cape Town. Peace and contentment are the predominant emotions on Yarona and Cape Town Flowers, the two trio albums he made in the mid-1990s. Joan – Cape Town Flower, from the latter, is remarkably calm and limpid; a handful of well-chosen notes that seem to float on air, then dissolve into nothingness. The music tells you he was home at last.

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



M A S T E R C L A S S

not. Whatever the performer’s choice, decisions also need to be made with regard to articulation, dynamics, fingering and tempo – all of which can be considered as a continuation of composition.

And exactly the same is true for music

written after 1800. By its very nature, music notation is extremely vague and approximate. One only needs to think of the basic distinctions of dynamics; within the boundaries of pianissimo, piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, forte and fortissimo there

are infinite shades of colour. The same is true in terms of articulation: ‘staccato’, for example, is generally considered as an indication of ‘detached’ playing, but many different types of staccato are possible on a modern grand piano, and it is up to the pianist to decide just how short or how long an individual staccato marking should be played.

Example 2 comes from one of the most densely packed scores in the classical literature: the third movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat, Op 110. In examples like this, it is extremely difficult to even project an ‘aural photograph’ precisely, simply because there is so much information to process. But the magic and creativity comes from refining and choosing from the infinite range of shades possible within the parameters laid down by Beethoven in this sublime spiritual masterpiece. This is where real freedom resides: in small, carefully considered and measured differences of approach. In the second bar of Example 2, the performer needs to decide on the touch to adopt within the held pedal – does he stay close to the keyboard or come ‘off’ the keys and let the music carry across the hall? The third bar’s dynamic oscillation needs special care, experimentation and refinement, while in the fourth bar tonal balancing between the hands and experimentation with just how flat or curved the right fingers should be will be time consuming (though not boring if you are working with freedom and creativity within the parameters given on the text).

The scope for freedom within the given parameters laid out

by a composer is vast. We should never underestimate just how much freedom we actually possess as interpreters; especially when we observe every printed marking to the letter in a Beethoven sonata, Bartók Romanian Dance or Debussy Etude.

EX

AM

PLE

S EXAMPLE 1a

EXAMPLE 2

Bach Sixth Partita in E minor, Allemande and Gigue

Beethoven Sonata in A flat, Op 110, third movement

EXAMPLE 1b

46 International Piano January/February 2014

IT SOUNDS LIKE QUITE A DEAL: more than 100 piano lessons at your fingertips for just over £3 a week. Too

good to be true? Yes and no. For this is online learning, where the world is your oyster but you don’t actually get to shake hands with it.

When Mathieu Papadiamandis set up his online piano learning resource, he got a mixed response. Murray McLachlan wrote in this magazine: ‘Online piano resources are inspirational and extremely important, but they will never be better than what can be provided by human contact in the traditional sense’. For sure,

no online teacher is going to tell you that your posture is wrong, your legato leaves something to be desired, or that your pedalling is all over the shop. But it would do Papadiamandis a disservice to suggest that iplaythepiano.com was ever intended to take the place of live one-to-one piano lessons.

In fact, he was driven to create the site because of the sheer volume of bad advice on the web. ‘There was a need for me to create such a website because on the internet you can find a lot of blogs and YouTube videos where people give advice without any knowledge, so people imagine

that we can learn to play the piano as if we were learning to cook an egg,’ he says.

The site, in essence, is a selection of filmed masterclasses in which a series of teachers concentrate on one work at a time. You get analysis, opinion and perhaps inspiration. The lessons are divided into ten stages, from beginners through intermediate to advanced. Before tackling any pieces, beginners receive practical introductions to aspects of playing the instrument, including hand position, learning to sight read, creating a good sound and crossing the thumb under to get a legato.

Beginners’ pieces include a Mozart minuet, a Czerny study and a waltz by Hummel. Intermediate pieces range from Beethoven’s Bagatelle Op 119 No 9 and the first of Satie’s Gymnopédies to Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin and Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante defunte, while advanced players can tackle Liszt’s Ballade No 2 in B minor and Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’.

The lessons are in the hands of seven teachers, including Papadiamandis himself and headed up by Michel Béroff, who, like Anne-Lise Gastaldi and Marie-Joseph Jude, is a colleague of Papadiamandis at the Paris Conservatoire. Making up the team are Jean-Marc Luisada of the École Normale de Musique in Paris, Jerome Rose of Mannes College in New York and Jacques Rouvier, a professor at the Salzburg Mozarteum and the University of the Arts in Berlin.

IPLAYTHEPIANO.COM STARTED life as jejouedupiano.com in 2011. ‘It was easier to start in France with

French teachers,’ says Papadiamandis. ‘I studied at the Paris Conservatory and I found it really natural to ask some of the teachers there to take part in this project. We started three years ago and because it was a big success in French language countries – Belgium, Switzerland, even French Canada – I decided to make an English and more international website.’

The French site boasts more teachers and a lot more lessons – a total of more than 300. The French masterclasses are gradually being dubbed into English. It is time-consuming work, but Papadiamandis is keen to see the site grow as comprehensive as possible and he welcomes approaches from new teachers.

E D U C A T I O N

CACHE BENEFITSOnline piano learning resource iplaythepiano.com offers conservatoire-standard masterclasses at the touch of a button. Keith Clarke logs on

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STRAUSS’S PARERGONA Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

LEFT-HANDED PIANIST NICHOLAS MCCARTHY

ESSENTIAL REPERTOIREIncluding Ravel’s Left Hand Concerto and Britten’s Diversions

PLUS...CENTENARY STARDutch pianist Cor de Groot

NEW SERIESPiano partnerships: piano and voice

JULY/AUGUST 2014

ON SALE 24 JUNE

Next issue

INTERNATIONAL PIANO DIGITAL EDITION

www.rhinegold.co.uk

AVAILABLE FROMrhinegold.subscribeonline.co.uk

Now available online, on iPhone, iPad,

Kindle Fire and Android devices

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NO.25 MAY/JUN 2014£5.50




HISTORIC KEYBOARDS




works

PLUSMarielle

LabèqueJohn Law

Nicolas Hodges


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E 2014

International Piano

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JEAN MULLER

exclusive interactive

content

LEFT-HAND PIANO MUSIC SPECIAL

IP0514_81_NxtIssue_CJ.indd 81 14/04/2014 12:24:00


WHEN I WAS SMALL, WE always seemed to be listening to opera. We were living in a

small town called Hendaye on the Basque coast, near the border with Spain, where there was no music and no concerts. So we could only listen at home, and of course with my mother being Italian and from Torre del Lago, there was a lot of Puccini.

There was no one to teach us the piano in Hendaye, so my sister and I would travel by train with my mother to Paris once a week for lessons. The fi rst opera she took us to was La Bohème in Paris, with Mirella Freni. I still remember that. She was amazing. We were all crying. That was the work that opened the door for me into the world of opera – a world I am very much involved with today, of course, because of Semyon Bychkov, my husband. It is such a joy – the orchestra, the fabulous voices, the staging. For me, it’s a miracle. And I think I enjoy the rehearsals even more. There’s something very honest about it with just the voices and the piano.

These childhood experiences stay with you. I remember the fi rst time we heard Michel Béro� play Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus – from memory! He was 15 years old. Unbelievable! That was important because that is how Katia and I started. We met Michel and he said, ‘You know, you should look at the score of Visions de l’amen for two pianos because you could play it well.’ And why did we want to play it? Because of his playing of Vingt regards. Well, we started work on Visions at the conservatoire and one day we were rehearsing it and Olivier Messiaen happened to be walking down the corridor and heard us playing. He opened the door and said he liked what he heard and asked

if we would record the piece for Erato. That was our fi rst recording. A long time ago: 1970. Can you believe it?

The fi rst person to tell me about Robert Levin was John Eliot Gardiner. He said, ‘You know, he’s a genius.’ It’s important for me to speak about him because when people talk about great pianists – Richter, Argerich or whoever – they never mention Levin. For me, he is a revelation. He improvises all his cadenzas, he plays the organ, fortepiano, harpsichord and piano, and his knowledge of music is incredible. He can play anything. I adore his Beethoven concertos with Gardiner, though when he plays the second movement of No 4 I fi nd it quite scary! He plays it on a fortepiano and the question and answer between the instrument and the orchestra has never been so clear. He speaks the music; he tells you a story. You can see the opera. I have enormous admiration for him.

My next choice is Gardiner again, a concert I went to of Bach’s B minor Mass. It was so beautiful. I was crying a� erwards and I went backstage to see him and I couldn’t say anything. Every phrase, every gesture seemed to be the culmination of his life’s achievements. When I am so deeply moved by music like that, it is really hard to speak about it. I love to listen to music from this era. Katia loves new music. She loves to discover. I have a tendency to stay in this period, one we don’t focus on so much ourselves.

Now I must include something by my husband – but it is so di� cult. I can never make a decision! Katia always decides when we fl y, where we fl y to and at what time – and then a� erwards we can change it. It’s the same with music! There are so many of Semyon’s recordings

to choose from, like the Verdi Requiem, but I will go for Eugene Onegin because it reminds me of a very beautiful period with him in Paris back in 1995. I didn’t know the music of Onegin at all and that’s when I discovered it. I really adore it. Semyon and I met in Paris in the 1980s and Elena Bashkirova [the pianist wife of Daniel Barenboim] said I must come and hear this conductor. I’d never heard of him. He conducted Shostakovich. Then, later, we had dinner together at Daniel Barenboim’s – et voilà! We’ve been together now for 27 years. Unbelievable. Time goes so quickly. e

INTERVIEW BY JEREMY NICHOLAS

Marielle’s sister, Katia Labèque, named her ‘Music of my Life’ in issue 21, Sept/Oct 13

PucciniLa BohèmeFreni, Pavarotti et al, Berlin Philharmonic/Herbert von KarajanDecca 421049

MessiaenVingt regards sur l´enfant JésusMichel BéroffEMI 69161

BeethovenPiano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58Robert Levin, Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique/John Eliot GardinerArchiv Produktion 459622

BachMass in B minor, BWV 232John Eliot Gardiner Archiv Produktion 4150514-2

TchaikovskyEugene OneginHvorostovsky, Focile, Shicoff et al, Orchestre de Paris/Semyon BychkovPhilips 475 7017

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if we would record the piece for Erato. That was our fi rst recording. A long time

PucciniLa Bohème

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Music of my lifeMarielle Labèque – one half of French piano duo the Labèque sisters – shares her favourite recordings

IP0514_82_MusicOML_CJ.indd 82 14/04/2014 11:17:13

IV BNDES INTERNATIONAL

PIANO COMPETITION OF

RIO DE JANEIRO

Tribute to MAGDA TAGLIAFERRO and VILLA-LOBOS

November 27 – December 6, 2014Total amount of prizes BRL 200,000.00(two hundred thousand Reais), plus concerts in Brazil, USA and Europe

Age limit 17-30Application deadline July 2nd, 2014

2012 Edition Winners – From left to right: Nino Bakradze (3rd prize), Mikhail Berestnev (2nd prize), Tamila Salimdjanova (1st prize)

Information:Rua Marquesa de Santos 42 # 170222221-080 - Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brazil (+55) 21 - 2225-7492

www.concursopianorio.com | [email protected]

Artistic director: Lilian Barretto

Sole Sponsor

Support Producer

Alink-Argerich Foundation

Member of

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LOFOTENPIANOFESTIVAL

New Piano Festival in the spectacular surroundings ofLofoten inNorthern Norway.www.lofotenfestival.com

Paul Lewis, piano

Christian Ihle Hadland, piano

Louis Lortie, piano

Lise de la Salle, piano

Gyorgy Tchaidze, piano

Phillip Baden-Powell, jazzpiano

Marianne Beate Kielland,mezzosopran

Engegårdkvartetten

Lofoten FestivalStrings

ARTISTICDIRECTOR:

Jean-Effl amBavouzet

7.–12.JULY

Book tickets andaccommodation at

www.festicket.com

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