Lukinov Gramophone review review and Lagrasse festival

A full house for Nikita Lukinov at the Liberal Club with a display of a supreme stylist blessed with an elegance and a kaleidoscopic range of sounds.
Schumann’s Symphonic Studies that shone like newly minted jewels that astonishingly they could still take us by surprise with his sensitive artistry and passionate commitment.
Moulding such well known phrases into streams of sounds of ravishing beauty where even the posthumous studies seemed at last to have found their true home as he incorporated them into the whole with such sensitive intelligence.
Five of Tchaikowsky’s little pieces op 72 ,having such fun at the end of his life baking his little ‘pancakes’ ,were transformed into miniature tone poems of striking beauty and mastery.
Pletnev’s transcription of four pieces from Sleeping Beauty by contrast paled into insignificance even though played with the mastery that had held us mesmerised from this dashing young Russian who had flown down from his home in Glasgow to enchant and seduce us.
He is by the way the youngest staff member at The Royal Conservatory of Scotland and of all UK’s Music Conservatories.
He and his companion Anastasia ,a renowned novelist,are truly a golden couple who relish the Glaswegian air.

Nikita Lukinov plays breathtaking charity recital for Ukraine in Berlin.

Nikita Lukinov at St Marys The charm and aristocratic style of a star

Nikita Lukinov at St Mary’s a masterly warrior with canons covered in flowers

The Symphonic Studies Op. 13, began in 1834 as a theme and sixteen variations on a theme by Baron von Fricken, plus a further variation on an entirely different theme by Heinrich Marschner.The first edition in 1837 carried an annotation that the tune was “the composition of an amateur”: this referred to the origin of the theme, which had been sent to Schumann by Baron von Fricken, guardian of Ernestine von Fricken, the Estrella of his Carnaval op. 9. The baron, an amateur musician, had used the melody in a Theme with Variations for flute. Schumann had been engaged to Ernestine in 1834, only to break abruptly with her the year after. An autobiographical element is thus interwoven in the genesis of the Études symphoniques (as in that of many other works of Schumann’s).Of the sixteen variations Schumann composed on Fricken’s theme, only eleven were published by him. (An early version, completed between 1834 and January 1835, contained twelve movements). The final, twelfth, published étude was a variation on the theme from the Romance Du stolzes England freue dich (Proud England, rejoice!), from Heinrich Marschner’s opera Der Templer und die Judin based on Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (as a tribute to Schumann’s English friend, William Sterndale Bennett to whom it is dedicated )The earlier Fricken theme occasionally appears briefly during this étude. The work was first published in 1837 as XII Études Symphoniques. Only nine of the twelve études were specifically designated as variations. The entire work was dedicated to Schumann’s English friend, the pianist and composer, and Bennett played the piece frequently in England to great acclaim, but Schumann thought it was unsuitable for public performance and advised his wife Clara not to play it.The highly virtuosic demands of the piano writing are frequently aimed not merely at effect but at clarification of the polyphonic complexity and at delving more deeply into keyboard experimentation.

• Theme – Andante [C^♯ minor]
• Etude I (Variation 1) – Un poco più vivo [C^♯ minor]
• Etude II (Variation 2) – Andante [C^♯ minor]
• Etude III – Vivace [E Major]
• Etude IV (Variation 3) – Allegro marcato [C^♯ minor]
• Etude V (Variation 4) – Scherzando [C^♯ minor]
• Etude VI (Variation 5) – Agitato [C^♯ minor]
• Etude VII (Variation 6) – Allegro molto [E Major]
• Etude VIII (Variation 7) – Sempre marcatissimo [C^♯ minor]
• Etude IX – Presto possibile [C^♯ minor]
• Etude X (Variation 8) – Allegro con energia [C^♯ minor]
• Etude XI (Variation 9) – Andante espressivo [G^♯ minor]
• Etude XII (Finale) – Allegro brillante (based on Marschner’s theme) [D^♭ Major]

On republishing the set in 1890, Johannes Brahms restored the five variations that had been cut by Schumann. These are now often played, but in positions within the cycle that vary somewhat with each performance; there are now twelve variations and these five so-called “posthumous” variations which exist as a supplement.

The five posthumously published sections (all based on Fricken’s theme) are:

• Variation I – Andante, Tempo del tema
• Variation II – Meno mosso
• Variation III – Allegro
• Variation IV – Allegretto
• Variation V – Moderato.

In 1834, Schumann fell in love with Ernestine von Fricken, a piano student of Friedrich Wieck, and for a time they seemed destined to marry. The relationship did not last—Schumann got cold feet after he learned that she had been born out of wedlock—but it inspired some notable music. Carnaval, Op. 9, a set of character pieces for piano, is based on a four-note motive derived from the name of Ernestine’s home town. The Etudes symphoniques, Op. 13, are variations on a theme by Ernestine’s father, Ignaz Ferdinand von Fricken, a nobleman and amateur composer. Of course, Schumann eventually transferred his affections to Clara Wieck, and it was she who gave the first performance of the Etudes symphoniques, in 1837. The piece was published by Haslinger that same year, with a dedication to the English composer William Sterndale Bennett rather than to Ernestine. A revised version appeared in 1852.

Our manuscript is a sketch that includes the theme and variations 1, 2, 5, 10, 12, as well as five others that were not published until 1873, in an appendix edited by none other than Johannes Brahms. It formerly belonged to Alice Tully (1902–1993), the philanthropist whose name graces a concert hall in Lincoln Center. She gave it to Vladimir Horowitz (who counted Schumann’s music among his many specialties in the piano repertoire), and two years after his death, his widow Wanda Toscanini Horowitz donated it to Yale. The other principal manuscript source for this piece belongs to the library of the Royal Museum of Mariemont, in Belgium.

Tchaikovsky’s 18 Pieces (18 Morceaux), Op. 72 were his last works for solo piano, completed in April 1893 at Klin.Returning to Klin on 3/15 February 1893 after a long period of absence, Tchaikovsky straight away set to work on composing his Symphony n.6 At around this time he also assembled materials which were to form the basis for a series of piano pieces. On 5/17 February the composer told his brother Modest : “In the meantime, in order to earn some money, I will compose a few piano pieces and romances”

Tchaikovsky only began to compose these pieces in April, after completing the sketches of his Symphony n.6 and fulfilling a number of concert engagements, from which he returned on 5/17 April 1893.On 5/17 April 1893, Tchaikovsky wrote to ilya Slatin from Klin :’I have been on holiday in Saint Petersburg with my family, which was very nice. I came back today and began collecting my thoughts to compose a whole series of miniature

By 15/27 April, ten pieces had already been written. “In the 10 days since returning from Petersburg , I have decided, for the want of money, to write a few little piano pieces, and have conditioned myself to write at least one a day during this month”, Tchaikovsky wrote to Ilya Slatin on 15/27 April :”I’m continuing to bake my musical pancakes”, he wrote on the same day to Vladimir Davydov : “Today the tenth is being prepared. It’s remarkable that the further I get, the easier and more enjoyable the job becomes. At the beginning it went slowly, and the first two or three items were merely the result of an effort of will, but now I cannot stop my ideas, which appear to me one after another, at all hours of the day”