Tuesday 9 January 2.00 pm

Some very musicianly and intelligent playing from Víctor Braojos as you would expect from the class of Martin Roscoe at the Guildhall where Victor now holds a junior fellowship.A fascinating programme that as he so eloquently told us was based of improvisation and free form.

Opening with the beautiful belcanto of Schubert’s G flat impromptu his credentials were immediately revealed in a performance of simplicity and beauty.A sense of balance that allowed the melodic line to sing so eloquently over the crystal clear flowing accompaniment.There was subdued passion and ravishing moments but above all an aristocratic sense style keeping the tempo until the final poignant notes with masterly control and intelligence.

Three preludes by Cortes were a UK premiere and only the second public performance,the first having taken place in the USA.Three beautifully crafted pieces of sadness and melancholy played with the same simplicity as Schubert .An outpouring of fantasy and beauty, played without the score,these three works by his compatriot obviously had a deep significance for Victor.

All these short pieces were but a’ prelude’ to the two major works on the programme:Cesar Franck’s Prelude,Choral and Fugue and Beethoven’s last of his 32 Sonatas ,op 111.Both were played with remarkable control and architectural shape.
The Cesar Franck was played with fluidity and flowing tempo as one complete whole with a great sense of line and drive .Silences that were so poignant in meaning as they punctuated the fragments that Franck so masterly combines into one tumultuous climax of exultation and burning excitement.The superbly played knotty twine of the fugue lead to an exhilarating climax and the explosion of a cadenza that gradually dissolves into the wafts of lapping sounds of the opening Prelude. It was on these wonderfully fluid sounds that the magical reappearance of the opening theme is allowed to float.It was all played with superb control and beautiful articulation but also with artistry and poetic significance.It was the same beauty that he had brought to the choral with its regal outpouring of chiselled sounds before the celestial spread chords on which floats the melodic line.It was played with great authority and purity of sound the same that he was to find for Beethoven’s great Arietta and variations that close the Sonata op.111.

I was surprised that he split the hands in the opening three declarations of op 111 but it in no way diminished the grandeur of this opening before the burning cauldron of the ‘Allegro con brio ed appassionato’.Both the introduction and the Allegro were played with solidity and rhythmic control and a clarity that gave great authority to all that he did.Even slight blemishes were absorbed into the burning driving energy that Victor was able to produce.The Arietta was played with a flowing tempo that never seemed to fluctuate as each of the variations grew so naturally out of the previous one.There was a driving energy and aristocratic control in the mighty third variation before the final whispered meanderings of Beethoven’s world that he could see so clearly spread out before him.Even the triumphant final outpouring of the theme was soon forgotten as Beethoven reaches for the celestial heights that like Scriabin would find solace in vibrations of sound on which fragments of melody could be floated as if on a celestial cloud.This was a performance of a great authority and aristocratic control with the final chord in C major placed with poetically sensitive care.
What can one play after that?Victor had the solution with a beautiful beguiling Epilogue by Granados from his Romantic Scenes

Víctor Braojos obtained his BMus (Hons) at Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (Barcelona)m Later, he moved to London, where he pursued his Master in Piano Performance (Distinction and Concert Recital Diploma) and Artist Diploma at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, working with Martin Roscoe and thanks to an Excellence Scholarship Award given by this institution. He has won several prizes and awards in National and International Piano Competitions, among which we could highlight the awards in the Maria Canals Int. Piano Competition, the Catalunya Piano Competition (youngest winner ever in the 50 years of history of this competition), the Barcelona Piano Competition, the Girona Musical Competition or the prize at the prestigious “El Primer Palau Music Competition”. Along his career he has performed in several venues across Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Russia or the UK, among which we could remark concerts at emblematic venues such as the Palau de la Música Catalana, Palau Maricel de Sitges, the National Auditorium of Barcelona, London Steinway Hall or the Frédéric Chopin Museum in Warsaw. His most recent and future engagements include internationally acclaimed concert halls and festivals, such as the Conservatoire International Concert Series at South Hill Park, the Bloomsbury Festival, National Liberal Club, the International Masters Series of Leon City Auditorium or North Fylde Music Circle. In September 2022, Víctor was appointed Junior Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Víctor Braojos at St Mary’s authority and intelligence illuminates ‘Shreds of light’

After receiving a Deutsche Grammophon CD collection from his grandfather for his 16th birthday, Marc Migó (1993, Barcelona) became unexpectedly and passionately drawn to its contents. This discovery led him to seek out guidance from pianist Liliana Sainz and composer Xavier Boliart. Three years later, he enrolled at ESMUC (Superior Music School of Catalonia).

In 2017, thanks to a scholarship issued by Fundación SGAE, Marc moved to New York in order to continue his musical studies. He pursued his Masters at The Juilliard School, where he was awarded the 2018 Orchestral Composition Prize. In 2019 he received The Pablo Casals Festival Award for his Cello Sonata “Cerdanyenca”, two Morton Gould Young Composers award by ASCAP and the New Juilliard annual commissioning competition award. He also has been a fellow at the 2020 Minnesota Orchestra Composer’s Institute, a winner of the George Enescu Prize 2020, the recipient of the first ever Dominick Argento Fellowship for Opera Composition (2022), and the 2023 Leo Kaplan Award by Ascap, among other international recognitions. 

Marc Migó is currently a C.V. Starr fellow at Juilliard. He has received commissions from leading institutions, ensembles and performers, such as UrbanArias, the Dutch National Opera, Verità Ensemble, Liceu Opera House, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Festival Pablo Casals in Prades, The Cabrillo Festival, l’Associació Joan Manén, La Fura dels Baus, and CUNY University, among others.

Franck’s original plan, according to his pupil Vincent d’Indy, was to write a plain Prelude and Fugue ,

The decision to include a central section, separate from, yet linking, the Prelude and Fugue, came later (again according to d’Indy).However this central section became the emotional core of the work, its ‘motto’ theme used as a symbol of redemption and as a unifying principle at the climax of the Fugue.

Saint-Saëns made his tart observation about the piece that the ‘chorale is not a chorale and the fugue is not a fugue’ (in his pamphlet ‘Les Idées de M. Vincent d’Indy’).Alfred Cortot described the Fugue in the context of the whole work as ‘emanating from a psychological necessity rather than from a principle of musical composition’ (La musique française de piano; PUF, 1930). It is as if a ‘fugue’, as a symbol of intellectual rigour, was the only way Franck could find a voice to express fully the hesitant, truncated sobs of the Prelude and the anguished, syncopated lament of the Chorale. Not that the Fugue solves the problem—this is the function of the ‘motto’ theme; but the rules of counterpoint have given the speaker a format in which the unspeakable can be spoken.

There are two motivic ideas on which the whole work is based: one, a falling, appoggiatura motif used in all three sections and generally chromatic in tonality ; the other a criss-crossing motif in fourths (the ‘motto’ theme, which appears first in the Chorale section and then again as a balm at the point where the Fugue reaches its emotional crisis. The first motivic idea is clearly related to the Bach Cantata ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’, and also to the ‘Crucifixus’ from the B minor Mass; the other idea appears as the ‘bell motif’ in Wagner’s Parsifal.

Beethoven’s last sonata op 111 was written between 1821 and 1822.

It was dedicated to his friend, pupil, and patron, Archduke Rudolf and consists of only two contrasting movements . The second movement is marked as an arietta with variations that Thomas Mann called “farewell to the sonata form”.Together with Beethoven’s The Diabelli Variations op.120 (1823) and his two collections of bagatelles op 119 (1822) and op 126 (1823) the sonata was one of Beethoven’s last compositions for piano. Nearly ignored by contemporaries, it was not until the second half of the 19th century that it found its way into the repertoire of most leading pianists.^.Beethoven conceived of the plan for his final three piano sonatas (op 109.110 and 111 )during the summer of 1820, while he worked on his Missa solemnis. Although the work was only seriously outlined by 1819, the famous first theme of the allegro ed appassionato was found in a draft book dating from 1801 to 1802, contemporary to his Second Symphony .Moreover, the study of these draft books implies that Beethoven initially had plans for a sonata in three movements, quite different from that which we know: it is only thereafter that the initial theme of the first movement became that of the string Quartet n.13 , and that what should have been used as the theme with the adagio—a slow melody in A flat – was abandoned. Only the motif planned for the third movement, the famous theme mentioned above, was preserved to become that of the first movement. The Arietta, too, offers a considerable amount of research on its themes; the drafts found for this movement seem to indicate that as the second movement took form, Beethoven gave up the idea of a third movement, the sonata finally appearing to him as ideal.