Mese: luglio 2018

Some magnificent playing and a remarkable performance of Chopin 24 Preludes ……………two exhilarating encores of a Liszt transcription of a Schubert Lied and Rachmaninov’s transcription of the Scherzo from a Midsummer Nights Dream. An important debut of which Ronan and Hannah O’Hora were justly proud ……………

Ming Xie studied from an early age in China before going on to Julliard where he studied with Sergei Babayan and Emanuel Ax. He is now completing his studies with Ronan O’Hora at the Guildhall .

Starting the day at my old Alma Mater of the RAM with the Piano Festival that started at 10 am with Haydn Sonatas and continued with Mozart Concertos,Haydn Trios,Multimedia two handed Card Games culminating in a performance of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto 8 hours later.

Little was I expecting what awaited at the Wigmore Hall at the end of the day.

” Phenomenal” as described by Martha Argerich and she should know!

It was from the very first note the most phenomenal natural talent that spread itself across the piano like liquid gold.

A cross between Trifonov and Mustonnen where everything is possible ,with a total command of the keyboard and keyboard sonorities that is of the very few.

Under the eagle eye of Ronan O’Hora the programme consisted of Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit and Chopin 24 Preludes both pillars of the piano repertoire but also of great technical difficulty .

Enough to say that Fou Ts’ong calls the Preludes 24 problems!

Ronan a student of Vlado Perlemuter was able to control and give a very definite shape to this talent that can very easily get out of control in the sheer almost animal like euphoria of playing in front of an audience.

Bounding on stage with his gold bow tie glistening in the lights and commencing the concert with two of Granados’s Goyescas that immediately allowed us to enter into this extraordinary sound world.

El Amor y la muerte Bk 2 and El Fandango de Candil.

A wonderful world full of colour and excitement played with the same natural almost improvisatory virtuosity of the composer himself.

It was at the specific request of President Woodrow Wilson for Granados to perform at the White House after the enormous success of his opera Goyescas ( based on melodies from his piano suite) at the Met that lead to he and his wife boarding the later boat back to Spain that was torpedoed in the Channel on 24 March 1916 by a German U boat.

No Haydn Sonata but we were plunged immediately into this world of Ming Xie.

Steering well clear of the classical repertoire we entered a magic multi coloured world where anything is possible very similar to his teachers other famous pupil Danil Trifonov.

A real voyage of discovery .

Of course the greatest interpreter of Spanish music in our time was Alicia De Larrocha and it was she that showed us the nobility and kaleidoscopic colours allied to a strictly classical approach in a music that can so easily slip into salon music.She was too one of the great interpreters of Mozart and Beethoven .

We amazed at the sounds and flexibility she could produce with such a small hand.

From the Frank Marshall school of which she later became Principal.

I am sure she would have been amazed by Ming Xie’s performance just as that other great lady pianist Martha Argerich was, judging from the publicity.

Gaspard de la Nuit ,that evocative suite by Ravel, was an ideal choice for tonights pianist.

Ondine was full of magic sounds kept firmly under control allowing the music to speak for itself with a sense of balance that allowed the melody to emerge accompanied by the most florid and perfectly executed arabesques.

The tolling bell in Le Gibet was indeed tolling for Ming Xie .

Scarbo that Ravel had written with the intent of writing one of the most difficult pieces for the piano since Liszt or Balakirev was played with amazing agility and sense of colour that was quite breathtaking.

No doubt that Ronan O’Hora’s musicianship from his own studies with Perlemuter a disciple of Ravel,played a large part in keeping this young virtuoso under control and focusing on the great architectural lines that Ravel so vividly draws. https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/ronan-ohora-at-the-wigmore-hall/

Changing to a more sober bow tie for the second half we were treated to the 24 Preludes of Chopin.

Each of the Preludes was treated as a miniature tone poem .

The sombre Lento in A minor n.2 was menacing as the Vivace that followed was refreshingly simple like a fresh breeze .The Largo in E minor was played with a very subtle sense of balance that allowed this simple melody to sing out so poignantly.

N.12 in G sharp minor was overwhelming in its’ euphoric technical command and lead to the most poetic lento in F sharp minor .

The “Raindrop” prelude was not quite a dramatic as Sokolov but was simply played before his truly phenomenal display of virtuosity in the B flat minor Presto con Fuoco .

The deep tolling bells and the shimmering melodic line that was allowed to emerge in n.17 in A flat made one aware of the similarity between Ravel and Chopin’s bell ringing. The vivace in E flat where the treacherous leaps were played with an ease that allowed the melodic line to be so clearly shaped.

The great C minor Largo played with all the nobility dissolving into almost nothing.

The charming little F major was indeed “delicatissimo”.

The calm before the storm one might say.

And what a storm!

In the final Allegro Appassionato that I have rarely heard played with such power and infallible accuracy.

For Ming Xie these were certainly not twenty four problems but jewels allowed to shimmer and shine in his hands. All that was missing was a feeling of a whole cycle where a more constant less dramatically changing sound world would have had the effect of unifying the Preludes into a more cohesive whole.

The publicity talks quite rightly of “ phenomenal” fast establishing himself as a rising star in Classical music.I hope that now he has established his credentials we can appreciate his amazing talent in the Classical repertoire.

A classical Repertoire that was certainly on show the next day in Milton Court in an Artist Diploma Final Recital performance by a young Italo Australian pianist Jonathan Ferrucci.

Very few people in the audience but when that includes such musicians as Joan Havill,Martin Roscoe and Ronan O’Hora I was glad to catch the first part of this recital dedicated to Bach.

Two Preludes and Fugues in G major bk 2 and C sharp minor bk 1 and completing the sandwich was the English Suite in G minor.

All beautifully played with great sense of style and unwavering rhythmic pulse that is the very core of Bach.

I remember every time that Rosalyn Tureck came to Rome she would ask me for a metronome to create this rhythm pulse in which the Bachian miracles could appear.

Her English Suite was much slower and more deliberate than Jonathans lacking slightly in the grandiosita that I well remember from Wilhelm Kempff.

But when this young man started the great C sharp minor five part fugue the miracle occurred .

One might have thought it was a Busoni transciption such were the colours and architectural shape he was able to give to Bach’s sparse notes.

It was quite overwhelming and one of the finest performances of a Bach Fugue that I have ever heard.

How I would have liked to stay for his Chopin 24 Preludes too but the Gurrelieder and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s 60th birthday awaited.

I could not help thinking that with all the thousands of people on stage for the Gurrelieder that included choirs from the four major music Academies too that the young man alone with his big black Steinway had created the same overwhelming impression for me.

I have a sneaking feeling that Schoenberg would have thought so too!

Tessa Uys at St Lawrence Jewry

As Tessa said after her superb performance of Beethoven’s Appassionata she still had the score with our old teacher Gordon Green’s markings from 50 years ago….she said it not me!

We met in the early seventies when we were both in the class our adorable never forgotten mentor Gordon Green at the Royal Academy in London. Playing in his Friday afternoon masterclass were Philip Fowke,Ann Shasby,Richard McMahon,John Blakley,Simon Rattle,Peter Bithell and Tessa Uys. Tessa was already playing regularly in her home country of South Africa where she had an established career and would often play through her programmes to us on Friday afternoon.

I remember very well her exquisite performances of Mozart concertos in particular K.291 ,the Schumann Humoresque and indeed the Appassionata that we were to hear today.

I also accompanied her and Josef Frohlich to Harry Blech ( founder of the London Mozart Players ) to play the Cesar Franck Sonata to him.

About fifteen years ago she came to play for us in Rome and what fun we had together with my wife and our entourage of animals that we kept at home. She gave a memorable recital in our theatre and met up with an old school friend of hers from SA and now our neighbour in Rome.She reminded me too of the rabbits and host of animals that we had in our house and even after all these years gave me some foto mementos that she had she had kept

Since then I have not heard from Tessa who I presumed must have a big career in her home country that took her away from us. It is very often the case that many musicians that live in London do not actually perform there. That is until I saw four recitals announced in St Lawrence Jewry in the centre of London and also a performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with organ instead of the orchestra. I was very curious to hear her after all these years and managed to catch one of these recitals last Monday.

It was very refreshing to see that all her impeccable musicianship and technical command were still intact. A very particular musicianship that like Imogen Cooper is very rare in these times of bombastic virtuosity in the place of simple intelligent musicianship.

Myra Hess and Moura Lympany raised by “Uncle Tobbs” – Tobias Matthay even though never lacking in technical ability could make the piano sing with a sense of balance and a seeming simplicity that today can seem so rare.

It is a great lesson when one can hear the music speak and tell a the story that the great composers had imparted to us via their world of sound.

The beautiful Menuett in G minor by Handel in the arrangement of Wilhelm Kempff was allowed to speak with such simplicity. Anyone who heard Kempff in his later years were made immediately aware of his ability to convince us that the piano could actually sing when in the hands of a true magician and poet. Radu Lupu is the prime example now of course.

It was this very piece that my wife had chosen in the moving closing moments of “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolff ” when the wife breaks down as she realised that her child had died. We used the performance of Idil Biret recorded in one of her recitals in our theatre but we could just as well have used the beautiful performance that Tessa offered us today.

The 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs by Bartok were dispatched with an amazing range of colour and the drone created in the final song was so reminiscent of the peasant bagpipes that fill the street of Rome as the Shepherds come down from the hills at Christmas Time. So many evocative moments played with a true understanding and fantasy that was quite riveting.

The mighty Appassionata was seen as one whole. From the very opening to the tumultuous final there was a rhythmic propulsion that swept the music on in its inevitability. Not sure purists would agree with her splitting the hands in the opening semiquaver passages but it did give a strength and assurance that is rarely heard.Strangely enough the final arpeggiandi in the first movement were played almost as Beethoven had written them and were very assured indeed.

There was not a moment in the whole sonata that did not hold your attention . Even the Andante con moto was kept very much with a forward looking movement that made the amazing interruption before the Allegro ma non troppo even more astonishing. I had forgotten that Tessa too had studied in Siena with that great musician Guido Agosti and I could in fact feel his influence in the sonata today. Tessa had sent me later a foto of her at the final concert in Siena with Agosti and other colleagues Peter Bithell , Ursula Oppens and Yoko Li. She even told me that Lydia Agosti had lent her a concert dress to wear as she had not thought she would be chosen for the final concert of Agosti’s prestigious class. Agosti was a great musician and could certainly recognise first and foremost the real musicians…..and not!…. in his midst.

Nice to remember her brother the famous political satirist Peter Dirk Uys whose character of Lady Evita Bezuidenhout took London by storm a few years ago at the Tricycle Theatre.

Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman receive a standing ovation for a superlative performance of Beethoven`s Fifth Symphony in Scharwenka`s transcription for piano duet. Superb sense of balance and great urgency from Ben`s bass added to the clarity of Tessa`s treble united in a passionate performance that swept all away before it. Lebenssturme by Schubert was played with equal passion and delicacy but the question of balance was not fully resolved .

Schubert`s dense writing can lead to such murky waters where the simplicity of Schubert’s unending melodic invention was somewhat submerged. Swopping seats for the Beethoven the problem was miraculously resolved…….and how!

On Saturday 30th at St Michael’s Church in Highgate they will perform an even rarer 9th Symphony always in the transcription of Franz Xaver Scharwenka.

And what a performance it was ……………Superb playing televised for TV.

The tension from the first to the last note was electric Tessa discovered the transcriptions by Scharwenka of the Beethoven Symphonies amongst her mothers scores.

Helga Bassel ,Tessa’s mother was her first teacher in Cape town before winning an Associated Board Scholarship at the age of 16 coming to study with Gordon Green.

She won all the top prizes and was elected Associate of the RAM in 1994.

Sorry to miss our dear friend  Shura Cherkassky in Highgate Cemetery but lovely to see everyone enjoying themselves on Hampstead Heath on this wonderful golden Summers day