I had heard this young artist in the remarkable masterclasses of Angela Hewitt that she holds near her home by Lake Trasimeno in Perugia https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/08/24/angelas-generosity-and-infectious-song-and-dance-inspires-her-illustrious-students/

Some musicianly playing from Jeremy Chan with a programme of two of the pinnacles of the keyboard repertoire.The Liszt B minor Sonata and Beethoven’s op 110. In both he allowed the music to unfold naturally with an architectural sense of shape and a scrupulous attention to the detailed indications of both composers.It was fascinating to hear the opening of Beethoven immediately after the visionary final pages of the Liszt Sonata. Liszt had been kissed by the master when he was a pupil of Czerny who had been a pupil of Beethoven.Of course the last three Beethoven Sonatas are visionary as the composer had at last found peace at the end of a tumultuous life. Now completely deaf he could hear the celestial sounds that awaited just around the corner ,very similar to Schubert who found solace in the most mercurial outpouring of song in his final months on this earth.

In the Liszt Sonata it was Jeremy’s musicianship that allowed the music to unfold naturally without any rhetoric or unnecessary showmanship.There was a rhythmic energy and nobility and above all a sense of balance that allowed the musical line to shine out so clearly even in the most transcendentally difficult passages.The single movement unfolded naturally from the opening three motifs that are then developed and incorporated into a quasi sonata form but in which the three characters from Faust are clearly defined and developed.Liszt was searching like Schubert in his Wanderer Fantasy for a new less classical form that eventually would be transformed into the Symphonic poem or by Wagner into the leit motif of the Ring cycle.

Jeremy at key moments would add deep bass notes that obviously opened up the sound of the piano and just showed his versatility and musicianship as he looked for the sounds that are not always easy to find on some difficult instruments.But they are there for those that seek! It created an atmosphere of serenity and religious fervour that was to build into a passionate outpouring beautifully balanced and shaped ,incorporated as it was into the entire overall form of this monumental work.Bass notes added too at the end of the Sonata as the visionary final pages opened up new vistas for music .Liszt himself had realised this and crossed out with the same vehemence as Beethoven his original ending in flaming virtuosistic glory.The knotty twine of the fugato was kept beautifully under control as the music moves inexorably to the climax and the recapitulation.Not sure that his rearranging between the hands of fast passage work is a good musical idea but it was done discreetly and in any case there was no way of cheating with the tumultuous final octave passages that he played with virtuosity and wonderfully controlled passion.

There were so many beautiful things in his Beethoven performance with a deeply felt sensitivity to the mellifluous sound world of the masters last thoughts.The magical change from the E flat to the D flat for the development was beautifully played and if the left hand was sometimes in muddy waters it was because the melodic line was uppermost in Jeremy’s sensitive fingers .There was a rhythmic energy to the Scherzo and the treacherous trio held no terror fo such a musician who endowed the whole movement with the same mellifluous sound of the entire sonata.The Adagio just floated on the long held chordal link between the movements and the Arioso dolente was shaped with poignant beauty as the pulsating left hand was merely a heart beating from within.There was a gossamer glow to the fugue that returns in inversion as it leads to the glorious affirmation of hope that Beethoven declares with passionate conviction.

And it was with this passionate conviction that Jeremy ended a memorable hour of masterworks played with great intelligence and sensitive artistry .

Liszt noted on the sonata’s manuscript that it was completed on 2 February 1853,but he had composed an earlier version by 1849.The Sonata was dedicated to Robert Schumann in return for Schumann’s dedication of his Fantasie in C op 17 (published 1839) to Liszt.A copy of the work arrived at Schumann’s house in May 1854, after he had entered Endenich sanatorium. Pianist and composer Clara Schumann did not perform the Sonata despite her marriage to Robert Schumann as she found it “merely a blind noise”.The original loud ending crossed out by Liszt and replaced with the visionary afterthought of a genius

The Sonata was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1854and first performed on 27 January 1857 in Berlinby Hans von Bulow.It was attacked by Eduard Hanslick who said “anyone who has heard it and finds it beautiful is beyond help”.Brahms reputedly fell asleep when Liszt performed the work in 1853,and it was also criticized by the pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein .However, the Sonata drew enthusiasm from Richard Wagner following a private performance of the piece by Karl Klindworth on April 5, 1855.Otto Gumprecht of the German newspaper Nationalzeitung referred to it as “an invitation to hissing and stomping”.It took a long time for the Sonata to become commonplace in concert repertoire, because of its technical difficulty and negative initial reception due to its status as “new” music.

No other work of Liszt’s has attracted anywhere near the amount of scholarly attention paid to the Sonata in B minor. It has provoked a wide range of divergent theories from those of its admirers who feel compelled to search for hidden meanings. The one generally recognised is :

• The Sonata is a musical portrait of the Faust legend, with “Faust,” “Gretchen,” and “Mephistopheles” themes symbolizing the main characters.

The Liszt Sonata and the Chopin fourth Ballade are together with the Schumann Fantasie pinnacles of the Romantic piano repertoire

Beethoven’s A flat major Sonata, Op 110, was his penultimate sonata, written in 1821, 

The outward gentleness of the opening movement belies its tautness of form, and the contrast with the brief second, a scherzo marked Allegro molto – capricious, gruffly humorous, even violent – is extreme. Beethoven subversively sneaks in references to two street songs popular at the time: Unsa Kätz häd Katzln ghabt (‘Our cat has had kittens’) and Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich (‘I’m dissolute, you’re dissolute’)!

But it’s in the finale that the weight of the sonata lies, and it begins with a declamatory, recitative-like passage that starts in the minor, moving to an emotionally pained aria-like section.Beethoven introduces a quietly authoritative fugue, based on a theme reminiscent of the one that opened the sonata. Its progress interrupted by the aria once more, its line now disjunct and almost sobbing for breath. The way in which the composer moves into the major via a sequence of G major chords is a passage of pure radiance, that Edwin Fischer described as ‘like a reawakening heartbeat’. This leads to a second appearance of the fugue in inversion culminating in a magnificently triumphant conclusion.

In the summer of 1819, Adolf Martin Schlesinger from the Schlesinger firm of music publishers based in Berlin sent his son Maurice to meet Beethoven to form business relations with the composer.The two met in Modling,where Maurice left a favourable impression on the composer.After some negotiation by letter, the elder Schlesinger offered to purchase three piano sonatas for 90 ducats in April 1820, though Beethoven had originally asked for 120 ducats. In May 1820, Beethoven agreed, and he undertook to deliver the sonatas within three months. These three sonatas are the ones now known as Op. 109,110, and 111 the last of Beethoven’s piano

The composer was prevented from completing the promised sonatas on schedule by several factors, including his work on the Missa solemnis (Op. 123),rheumatic attacks in the winter of 1820, and a bout of jaundice in the summer of 1821.Op. 110 “did not begin to take shape” until the latter half of 1821.Although Op. 109 was published by Schlesinger in November 1821, correspondence shows that Op. 110 was still not ready by the middle of December 1821. The sonata’s completed autograph score bears the date 25 December 1821, but Beethoven continued to revise the last movement and did not finish until early 1822.The copyist’s score was presumably delivered to Schlesinger around this time, since Beethoven received a payment of 30 ducats for the sonata in January 1822.