Another memorable concert at Farm Street Church in Mayfair for the collaboration with the young artists from The Keyboard Charitable Trust
On Saturday, 7 December, Bocheng Wang gave the Keyboard Trust’s final UK concert of 2019, as we return to the magnificent Farm Street Church.
This mid-afternoon concert also included short spoken Advent Reflections.
Farm Street Church – 114 Mount Street, London, W1K 3AH
I unfortunately was not able to be present as I am in Italy for Kissin tomorrow together with the final of the International Piano Competition that Yuanfan Yang won last year.
However my esteemed colleagues were at the concert and here are some of their comments:
”Tremendous technique with beautiful sound and many colours.A thorough control of the instrument and balanced musicality…-.he should go far” Elena Vorotko
”Such a wonderful technique that some times if he could control his faster tempi it could be better related to the character of the music.”Noretta Conci-Leech
Bocheng Wang with Trustee c/o Artistic Director of the KCT Elena Vorotko and son
PROGRAMME
Bach / Busoni – Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 645)
Chopin – Preludes, Op.28
BIOGRAPHY
British-Chinese concert pianist Bocheng Wang was born in Lanzhou, China and is currently studying with Professor Christopher Elton for a Bachelor’s Degree at the Royal Academy of Music. His study is generously supported by the Violet Irene Strutton Award with a full scholarship and he is an artist with the Talent Unlimited Foundation.
Bocheng’s competition successes include first prize at Grand Prize Virtuoso “Salzburg” International Music Competition (2019), first prize at Croydon Concerto Competition (2015), second prize at Liszt International Society Piano Competition (2015), third prize at the ‘Young Pianist of the North’ International Piano Competition (2012). In 2018, he was a semi finalist at the prestigious Santander International Piano Competition and performed with the Cuarteto Quiroga. In recent years, he has performed with many orchestras such as the Dulwich Symphony, London Mozart Players and Purcell Symphony. He has also worked with conductors including Leigh O’Hara, Dominic Peckham, and Robin O’Neil. In addition, he has appeared in many international festivals such as Konzertarbeitswochen Goslar, PianoTexas, Ferrara, and Dartington.
In June 2016, he was invited to play for a celebratory concert in honour of HM The Queen Elizabeth II ‘s 90th birthday and honoured to meet Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex. Since then, he performed in prestigious venues such as the Fazioli Hall in Sacile, Italy, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, London’s Kings Place, Wigmore Hall, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Fairfield Hall and Watford Colosseum. In 2017, he toured in North England.
Bocheng has also participated in many masterclasses worldwide with maestros such as Professor Dmitri Bashkirov, Arie Vardi, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Andrzej Jasinski, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Pascal Rogé, Pascal Devoyon, and Dmitry Alexeev.
The return of the rebel-Pogorelich is back in town
Warming up…..Pogorelich is back in town………
It was very interesting to be able to hear Pogorelich again after his disastrous recital in London three years ago.
A renowned critic who was one of the few to remain to the bitter end (most fled in the interval) declared it to be the worst concert he had ever heard in the Festival Hall.
Pogorelich has always been a controversial figure from that moment when he was eliminated from the first round of the Chopin competition and Martha Argerich resigned, quite rightly,in disgust.
‘Cause célèbre’ indeed.
He has never fitted into any convenient box but the most notable thing today was that whatever he did- and he did a lot of unusual things- he played with a beauty of sound and with an obvious love of teasing magical sounds out of the piano just as that other enigmatic figure De Pachmann might have done at the turn of last century.
Pogorelich far from being a revolutionary has become a historic figure of the past……………….
He appeared on the vast stage of the S.Ceclia auditorium in his glad rags to warm up as the public entered the hall ……..
He returned at the start of the concert looking like the Richter we had known in his Indian Summer, who also chose to play with the score .
Pogorelich looking ever like Richter
I well remember Vlado Perlemuter telling me that DG had sent a demo recording of his Ravel for approval and consideration.
Hoping for some words from a historic figure who had studied Ravel’s works with the composer.
Vlado simply replied “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça”!
Fou Ts’ong was playing in my theatre for our Euromusica series the day after Pogorelich was being promoted in the theatre by the agent Proshinsky.I explained to Ts’ong that he might not appreciate the concert, two Mozart Sonatas and the Chopin 4 Scherzi, as Pogorelich could be very capricious like Shura Cherkassky.
Ts’ong listened to the concert and rebuked me afterwards with ” but Shura loves the piano …this man hates it!”
The only words that Pogorelich uttered to me that evening were that he had in his contract(which was not with me as I had innocently hired the theatre out for a series that included mostly great singers ) that he should have a key to the green room and that he did not believe that we would get the stage ready as per contract after an afternoon performance of Old Times !
There was the famous confrontation with Karajan – two divos indeed.
Sparks were flying when the Tchaikowsky concerto recording was suddenly taken over by Claudio Abbado.
Karajan’s recording with Richter though is still the beacon by which we measure all others.
There were stories as well about a piano having some blood stains on the keys after a recording session with Zimerman and Bernstein!
All went to making a reputation but sometimes forgetting that here was a pianist with a unique technical command that Argerich had immediately noticed .His musicianship or lack of it has always been in discussion.
And so the controversy raged until the tragic death of his wife ,teacher and mentor Alisa Kezeradze led obviously to a complete breakdown.
So it is good news that he has come through and is playing as he used to again.
The difference is that now he plays with the score, although rarely looks at it, with an evident love of piano sonorities that is quite beguiling.
In the end though it is without any architectural shape or musical direction and ultimately becomes boring.
All song and no dance!
It was interesting to see this figure at the keyboard just very quietly playing parts of the Bach that we were allowed to overhear while entering the hall.Really beautiful sounds with every so often a very precise accent like a bell similar to when one had to turn the page on the old typewriter.No score in view all played by someone who was just experimenting with the sounds that he would share with us in the concert later.
pre concert musings
He then disappeared about five minutes before the beginning of the concert reappearing in very distinguished evening dress looking ever more like the Richter in his latter years when he too would appear with the score and very subdued lighting.
With the page turner very discreetly seated on a stool beside him, the scores for the next performances thrown casually onto the floor behind the piano.
A ritual had been performed and we were ready to begin the concert.
A very fine, if individual, account of Bach’s English Suite n.3 in G minor.
The Prelude opened with great rhythmic impetus and very telling voicing.
An Allemande beautifully flowing and sung with a whispered repeat of touching beauty.
A beguiling Courante full of half shades and a very dramatic final cadence.
It opened the door to a very noble Sarabande of great significance dissolving to create some truly magical moments.
In lesser hands it could have seemed grotesque but this was a heartfelt statement of great weight.
An impishly pointed Gavotte with La Musette played almost without pedal was a true tour de force of digital control.
The final Gigue was played with almost hammered rhythmic insistence.
It was an opening of great weight and importance that immediately signified the return of the warrior of yore.
In the Beethoven Sonata op 22 that followed this very individual approach was much more problematic and hard to understand or digest.
Beethoven’s undercurrent of rhythmic energy is not so openly linked to the dance form of the Bach Suites but nevertheless is an energy that should carry us along from the beginning to the end.An achitectural sense of line that takes in Beethoven’s tempestuous changes of mood.
In the first movement there was great insistence on the bass almost submerging the treble melodic line that had to fight to be heard.
Beethoven’s florid rhythmic arpeggios were thrown off like romantic arbesques which did lead eventually to a very effective bass melodic line.A series of rather romantic episodes that broke the magic line that Beethoven so clearly indicates.
A beautiful cantabile in the ‘Adagio con molta espressione’ leading to a ‘Menuetto’ of very capricious sotto voce sounds almost jeux perlé of yesteryear.
A truly hammered middle section dying away to a whisper.
A strange non legato melodic line for the Rondo with some very strange colourings like the great romantic pianists of a past era playing with teasing sonorities.There was great drama in the minor section with enormous contrast which was completely out of context but also very impressive.
A Beethoven that seemed much longer than the actual thirty minutes of musings that we were treated to.
After the interval a Chopin that received a real ovation from his fans but that I found very grotesque indeed.
It is as though Rubinstein had never existed and the old Chopin tradition had continued for another century.
The great nobility and lack of sentimentality together with great respect for the composer wishes is substituted with someone who enjoys taking the notes and playing with them.
Beautiful sonorities that titivate the senses and show off their great range of sounds without any real sense of line or shape.
There is a school of pianists from the East who enjoy using the masterworks of composers to show off their superb technical command.
The opposite of a true interpreter who places their complete technical command to the use of interpreting the composers wishes as expressed in their scores.There is a following of people who have reacted,quite understandably to the overclinical dry respect for the score and have lost the magic that can be created seemingly only with total freedom.
A true interpreter is he that can combine both and they are very few and far between.
Perahia and Zimerman are the supreme examples of course of our day.
It is not just by chance that Perahia was mentored by Horowitz and Zimerman by Rubinstein!
The S.Cecilia Symphony Hall of Renzo Piano at the Parco della Musica Rome
Pogorelich opened the Barcarolle with two hands and then spent time adjusting the stool before entering with the very swaying barcarolle rhythm.A series of episodes some extremely beautiful and others extremely angular but on the whole without any real shape of architectural direction or purpose.It was rather boring.
The Prelude op 45 was played with a superb sense of control with two completely separate layers of sound .The arpeggios that sweep across the keyboard were played with a crystal clear pianissimo which showed off a quite transcendental control of sound.The second layer was a beautifully chiselled melody that was in a completely separate compartment instead of growing out of the flowing arpreggios which Chopin asks for.
Ravel ‘Gaspard de la Nuit’ completed the programme.
It has long been his ‘cavallo di battagia’ much admired by fellow pianists on that famous Ravel disc of thirty years ago.
A beautifully florid ‘Ondine’ showed that Pogorelich has lost nothing of his superb digital control of precision and sound.Some wonderful washes of sound and projection of the melodic line.
‘Le gibet’ was more problematic in that there were a series of very beautiful sounds seemingly totally unrelated to each other.
It reminded me of another work on that famous Ravel disc: ‘Valses Nobles e Sentimentales.’
I remember listening and being somehow reminded of the Valses I knew very well.
I was reminded of what my old teacher Perlemuter had remarked. Such was the disjointed nature of the notes that it sounded like someone in a period of study before piecing them together to make a coherant whole.
This was just the same impression as ‘Le Gibet’ tonight.
’Scarbo’ ,of course showed off all the transcendental technique of which he is still master.Some very pointed sounds on the repeated notes but also some very evocative sounds of great passionate outbursts and enormous sonorities.
The ending was one of the most successful that I have every heard in public.
No encores offered even though the public were on their feet deliriously welcoming back their warrior all over again.
Christopher AxworthyThanks Danny sure you are right but then why did she resign?She obviously saw what a talent he was ………….and competitions do not know how to deal with that type of talent .Should it be immediately eliminated as Agosti would have done or allow his supersonic technical gifts to thrill audiences world wide as happened in this case.Remember Martha was the only student of Friedrich Gulda who gave his last disco in my theatre!!!!Bonkers all of them but my God how they can tickle the keys!!!!!!!And what a thrill they have given to vast audiences.They are ( non Gulda of course in the beginning) more entertainers ,circus acts,than Serkin type interpreters.
So you are right and wrong just like Pirandello depends on how you look in the prism.
‘Cosi è,se vi pare’ indeed !(“Thats how it is,if you like it.”)
Some superb playing from Corbin Beisner left no doubt about the standards that are expected from such experts as Leslie Howard,Mark Viner and Melvyn Cooper for the annual Liszt Society International Competition.
This year Corbin was invited on the jury to help seek outthe winner from the six superb pianists that had come from Italy, Russia,Korea and the UK to compete.
Corbin opened with a beautiful account of Beethoven’s rarely heard six variations on an original theme op 34.
A work that I have not heard since Richter played it in London.
It is the work that precedes the much better known Eroica Variations op 35.
It was strange that Corbin had played the theme in four instead of two but the moment that Beethoven wrote in the elaborate embellishments in the variations the music was allowed to flow so naturally in Corbin’s expert hands. A superb shape and dynamic range but above all a sense of style that left no doubt about Corbin’s remarkable musicianship.
It was obvious from the opening C sharp of the Chopin Barcarolle that here was a pianist who listens attently and plays with superb musicianship and sense of control.
It allowed Chopin’s outpouring of continuous song to flow with a pulse that ebbed and flowed with a very subtle sense of rubato.
Never exaggerating but allowing the music to speak so naturally.
Slightly more pedal would have given even more sheen to the melodic line but it was the absolute clarity and musical intelligence that was so refreshing to hear in a work that too often is reduced to a showpiece for virtuosi!
Of course we come to the Liszt Society to hear the enormous number of works that are very rarely or ever heard in the concert hall.
To be informed and entertained.
The only piece I have heard in the concert hall before in Corbin’s interesting programme was the first of the Valse Oubliées which is often played at as an encore.
Of course the mellifluous works of Liszt are much more accessable than the intellectual Busoni type works that abound in Liszt’s gigantic output .Here Corbin was an ideal interpreter of some of these lesser known works .They were played with an intelligence in totally convincing interpretations that made one, like contemporary scores, want to hear them all over again.
Liszt was like a shining beacon looking into the future and it is this Liszt that we have to thank a pioneer like Leslie Howard for bringing to the world’s attention.
It should also be pointed out that Leslie has recorded all the known works of Liszt in a series of 100 CD’s that has gained Liszt a notice in the Guinness book or records!
With all but one of the contestants we were then treated to some of the better known works of Liszt.
The Third book of Années de Pèlerinage and the fourth Mephisto Waltz was indeed a courageous programme for Stephen Gott from Yorkshire.
Other contestants chose the better known works of Liszt such as the Spanish Rhapsody,Dante Sonata,Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude,Variations on Weinen,Klagen,Sorgen,Zagen.St Francis walking on the waves or Feux Follets.
However as Leslie Howard said as he announced their final decision each contestant had played so well that it had created a magnificent day of music to the glory of Liszt.
Dr Hugh Mather welcoming the Liszt Society and Keyboard Charitable Trust to his beloved St Mary’s
I think our host Dr Hugh Mather agreed that it had been a memorable day for the many people present and also those ,like me ,tuning in to the excellent streaming system that is unique to any concert hall that I know.
Dr Hugh Mather had very spiritedly said in his welcoming introduction that after all this Liszt we would probably be craving for a Bach Prelude and Fugue or a bit of Mozart at the end of the day.
I think even Hugh would agree that such was the level and variety of music heard that on the contrary we were all quite exhilarated and satisfied at the end.
Liszt had won us all over thanks to the extraordinarily serious and learned work of the Liszt Society.
2.45 – 6.00 pm : The Liszt Society International Competition 2019
I have added some of my own personal observations that I made listening to this superb day of music making from the log fire blazing in the Italian countryside.
As they are exactly in line with the juries final assessment I add them here for those that may be interested to compare notes.
2.45 pm Svyatoslav Antipov
Svyatosalv Antipov
Ab irato – Etude de perfectionnement de la Méthode des méthodes, S143
Douze Études d’exécution trascendante, S139: 5: Feux-follets
Rapsodie espagnole – Folies d’Espagne et Jota aragonesa , S254 –
Some very fine playing from a born pianist.The precision of detail was not always evident though and sometimes it led to a lack of real rhythmic control especially in the Spanish Rhapsody.
3.15 pm Mario Cuva
Légendes, S175: 2: St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots
Rapsodie espagnole – Folies d’Espagne et Jota aragonesa , S254 .
Some very musicianly playing with a fine sense of control and intelligence.A great sense of drama brought the music vividly to life.
That last ounce of extra technical skill was missing in the more arduous parts of the Spanish Rhapsody where he very intelligently slowed down to accomodate the enormous difficulties that Liszt asks for.It led to a loss of rhythmic tension that is so important and exhilarating in this work.
It is that tension that I will never forget that was created relentlessly by Emil Gilels in London years ago.
3.45 pm Stephen Gott
Années de pèlerinage – Troisième année – Italie, S163:
1: Angelus! Prière aux anges gardiens
2: Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este – Thrénodie I
3: Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este – Thrénodie II
Vierter Mephisto-Walzer, S696
Some fine musicianly playing of works that I have very rarely if ever heard .A more intellectual approach that did not quite ignite or convince.Hats off though for presenting such an adventurous programme and for such serious preparation.
4.25 pm Connor Heraghty-
Some very beautiful playing .Great control and technically accomplished.The Dante Sonata was give a very dramatic and vivid performance that was really totally convincing and quite remarkable
Schwanengesang – Vierzehn Lieder von Franz Schubert, S560: 7: Ständchen – Leise flehen
Années de pèlerinage – Deuxième année – Italie, S161: 7: Après une lecture de Dante – Fantasia quasi sonata
4.55 pm Minkyu Kim
A quite extraordinary sense of colour and balance was immediately apparent from the very first notes of the beautiful Hymn to St Cecilia A work that he convinced me should be more often played.
The Variations were played with a mastery that goes with a very early training that gives such flexibility and freedom to express his remarkable musicianship without a moments doubt of his complete command of the keyboard.
Hymne à Sainte Cécile de Charles Gounod, S491
Variationen über das Motiv von J. S. Bach: Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen , S180
5.25 pm Connor Fogel
Looking like the Abbé Liszt with a frock coat and long hair he played most beautifully.
The ‘Bénédiction’ and the ‘Jeux d’eau’ were played with beauty and sensitivity.One did not quite feel that he was in total contact with the keys as Kim but he gave some very musical performancs that were much appreciated coming as they did at the end of almost four hours of music making today.
Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S173:3: Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
Années de pèlerinage – Troisième année – Italie, S163: 4: Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este
The distinguished jury Corbin Beisner Melvyn Cooper Leslie Howard Mark Viner
Leslie Howard announcing the winner Minkyu Kim (Korea) with second prize to the two Connors Heraghty(Hayes UK) and Fogel(Wales) and a special commendation for Mario Cuva (Sicily)
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 