In our latest collaboration with the Keyboard Trust (UK), we are thrilled to present the brilliant young Malaysian pianist Magdalene Ho. For her concert in the Library she will play Bach, Brahms and Schumann.

Sometimes words are superfluous !
Magdalene Ho making her Florentine debut last night.
From Bach of surprising beauty and eloquence to the intimate whispered confessions of Brahms and finally the sublime poetic outpourings of eternal love of Schumann.Even the pianistic fireworks of Saint Saens were tempered by a soul of exquisite finesse and noble style .
‘The real thing’ exclaimed Jed Distler just a week ago as he awarded her the coveted Chappell Gold Medal at the RCM

Hats off …The Chappell Gold Medal has uncovered a genius

She will be covered in medals and awards but the greatest gift of all is to be endowed with a musical genius that will enrich all our lives for years to come .

Magdalene Ho – the genial ‘Clara Haskil’ winner at 19 takes Leighton House by storm

The Bach D major Toccata was played with superb clarity and character .The noble opening giving way to an Allegro of simple ease as she changed colour from one layer of sound to another before the Adagio of poignant beauty.All within a certain framework of subtle colour done almost entirely with a refined touch of infinite sensibility.The gentle fugato just seemed to appear as if by some miracle growing out of this Adagio and became an outpouring of searing intensity.Almost imperceptibly discovering a hidden passion before dissolving into a fascinating search for a way out to the final Toccata.What buoyancy and ‘joie de vivre’ she brought to this final outpouring and her ability to make the piano sing almost without the use of the sustaining pedal was a remarkable technical feat that for her was simply the only way she knew how to transmit the music to us her eager eavesdroppers.

The Brahms Variations were a lesson in delicacy and colour with an infinite variety of sounds all barely whispered.This was a performance that like Richter drew the audience in to her private world rather than projecting it out to us.An intimate world of secrets and bitter sweet utterances shared to those that were prepared to listen with her via a secret ear.There were moments too of extraordinary jeux perlé streams of notes just thrown off with the ease of someone who is swimming free through a sea of fleeting sounds sailing across the keyboard.

This was followed by a truly masterly performance of Schumann .Recently I had commented that I found her performance a little hard driven more of the irascible world of Beethoven than the refined elegance of Chopin.Today she combined both elements to play this elusive outpouring of love for Clara with sensitivity and poetry but above all an architectural mastery that held us spellbound through the many faces of love as experienced by Florestan and Eusebius. The last waltz was barely whispered as she played with beguiling sensitivity even tittivatingly provocative.A final sparkling jewel in a performance crowned by sumptuous sounds and a technical mastery that passed unnoticed as this was a story that Magdalene wanted to share with us of a wondrous voyage of discovery to a world of dreams.

An encore from an audience rarely held captive as they had been today,mesmerised by the sounds that they overheard from this young artist’s sensitive hands.Saint Saens Etude en forme de Valse a famous encore of Alfred Cortot but rarely heard in the concert hall these days.

https://youtube.com/watchv=vXJqL_cTHWU&feature=shared

Maybe because you need a sense of style and a jeux perlé of another age.A nonchalance , thrown off with elegance and a sense of improvisiation as streams of notes are just spun like gold and silver shimmering and sparkling with natural ease.Magdalene had let her hair down but like all great artists it was a moment to cherish like the great Belcanto singers of the past who could hold their audience with baited breath as they followed every golden note.

Magdalene Ho in Milan on a wonderful new Steinway D thanks to Maura Romano and her team.

The wonderful bass notes gave such poignant meaning to Brahms’ barely whispered ephemeral farewell to Schumann as the intimate secrets in the last waltz for Clara were of heartrending simplicity.The Adagio and fugato of the opening Bach Toccata were given a new significance on a piano that can sing with seemingly endless reverberations.
We were robbed of Saint Saens,though, as our genial pianist thought they had had enough music.

She had struggled like the great professional she is with under age children and mobile phones and was happy to finish with the sublime outpouring of her exquisitely passionate performance of Schumann ringing in our ears.

As Liszt once said when the King talks even Liszt should be silent !

J.S.Bach Toccata in D major BWV 912 is one of the seven pieces for clavier  BWV 910-916 written between 1703 1713 and although they were not originally organized into a collection by Bach himself (as were most of his other keyboard works) they share many similarities with them and are frequently grouped and performed together under a collective title.Though the specific instrumentation is not indicated for any of the works, they are all strictly manualiter, as none of them call for pedal parts .

• Toccata in D-major, BWV 912
  1. Presto
  2. Allegro
  3. Adagio
  4. [no tempo indication]
  5. Con Discrezione
  6. Fuga

Here is Jonathan Ferrucci who recently played the seven Toccatas in Florence :https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/09/27/jonathan-ferrucci-plays-bach-in-florence/

He will play the Goldberg Variations in Kings place London on the 11th March: https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/10/22/jonathan-ferrucci-kct-american-tour-goldberg-a-voyage-of-discovery/

The relationship between Robert Schumann ,Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms started out as a student who comes to work with his mentor but evolves into something more complex. Brahms had been introduced to the Schumanns in October 1853 with a letter of introduction from the violinist and composer Joseph Joachim. Brahms was then 20 and Schumann praised him in print in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik as ‘fated to give expression to the times in the highest and most ideal manner.’

One of the first things that the young Brahms did to thank Robert was to write a set of 16 variations on a theme taken from a work written in 1841. The Funf Albumblätter: I. Ziemlich langsam, published as part of Schumann’s Bunte Blätter, Op. 99.

What’s unusual about this theme is that it’s in the minor – most variation sets have major-key themes, which opens the possibility of exploring more keys. If we look behind this, we might find some explanation.In February 1854, 4 months after Brahms’ arrival, Robert attempted suicide and was placed in a mental sanatorium in Bonn. Brahms moved to Düsseldorf to support the Schumann family, which consisted not only of Clara but also her 7 children: Marie (1841-1929), Elise (1843-1928), Julie (1845-1872), Ludwig (1848-1899), Ferdinand (1849-1891), Eugenie (1851-1938), and Felix (1854-1879), the last born in June 1854 after his father was sent into the sanitorium.

Brahms handled the family finances and visited Robert in the sanitorium; Clara was not allowed to visit him in the two years he was there except for just towards the end.The explanation, now, for the minor-key theme for the variation set that was begun in early summer 1854 may be clearer: Robert was institutionalized and Clara was with a new born child with already six others at home , the eldest only 12 or 13 years old.Brahms worked on the variations in the spring and summer of 1854 and presented a corrected version of the manuscript to Clara on 15 June, four days after Felix was born, and dedicated the work to her. He wasn’t done at that point and added the completed variations 10 and 11 in August.

How he signed the manuscript indicates how he thought of the work in relationship to Schumann’s theme. Variations 4, 7, 8, 14, and 16 each end with a ‘flourish ending with the letter B’; Variations 5, 6, 12, and 13 are signed Kr. The cryptic Kr refer to E.T.A .Hoffman’s antihero, the Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler who was a character in 3 novels by Hoffmann: Kreisleriana (1813), Johannes Kreisler, des Kapellmeisters Musikalische Leiden (1815), and The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper(1822).

Where Schumann, in his music that he signed with his alter egos Florestan and Eusebius. ‘Florestan the wild’ and ‘Eusebius the mild’ were two aspects of Robert’s own character. In the same way, Brahms used the B and Kr to indicate those works that were Brahmsian and those that were Kreiserlian, i.e., ‘less conventional and further removed from the theme’.

Robert Schumann Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David), op 6, is a group of eighteen pieces composed in 1837 by Robert Schumann , who named them after his music society Davidsbundler. The low opus number is misleading: the work was written after Carnaval op 9 and the Symphonic Studies op.13.

Robert Schumann’s early piano works were substantially influenced by his relationship with Clara Wieck . On September 5, 1839, Schumann wrote to his former professor: “She was practically my sole motivation for writing the Davidsbündlertänze, the Concerto , the Sonata and the Novelettes .” They are an expression of his passionate love, anxieties, longings, visions, dreams and fantasies.

The theme of the Davidsbündlertänze is based on a mazurka by Clara Wieck.The intimate character pieces are his most personal work and in 1838, Schumann told Clara that the Dances contained “many wedding thoughts” and that “the story is an entire Polterabend (German wedding eve party, during which old crockery is smashed to bring good luck)”.

The pieces are not true dances but characteristic pieces, musical dialogues  about contemporary music between Schumann’s characters Florestan and Eusebius. These respectively represent the impetuous and the lyrical, poetic sides of Schumann’s nature. Each piece is ascribed to one or both of them. Their names follow the first piece and the appropriate initial or initials follow each of the others except the sixteenth (which leads directly into the seventeenth, the ascription for which applies to both) and the ninth and eighteenth, which are respectively preceded by the following remarks: “Here Florestan made an end, and his lips quivered painfully”, and “Quite superfluously Eusebius remarked as follows: but all the time great bliss spoke from his eyes.” The suite ends with the striking of twelve low Cs to signify the coming of midnight.

The first edition is prefaced by :

Old saying
In each and every age
joy and sorrow are mingled:
Remain pious in joy,
and be ready for sorrow with courage

The movements are :

1. Lebhaft: Lively (Vivace),Florestan and Eusebius;
2. Innig: Intimately (Con intimo sentimento), , Eusebius;
3. Etwas hahnbüchen: Somewhat clumsily (Un poco impetuoso) (1st edition), Mit Humor: With humor (Con umore) (2nd edition), Florestan (hahnbüchen, translates as “cockeyed” )
4. Ungeduldig: Impatiently (Con impazienza), , Florestan;
5. Einfach: Simply (Semplice), , Eusebius;
6. Sehr rasch und in sich hinein: Very quickly and inwardly (Molto vivo, con intimo fervore) (1st edition), Sehr rasch: Very quickly(Molto vivo) (2nd edition), , Florestan;
7. Nicht schnell mit äußerst starker Empfindung: Not fast, with very great feeling (Non presto profondamente espressivo) (1st edition), Nicht schnell: Not fast (Non presto) (2nd edition), Eusebius;
8. Frisch: Freshly (Con freschezza), Florestan;
9. No tempo indication (metronome mark of ♩ = 126) (1st edition), Lebhaft: Lively (Vivace) (2nd edition), , Florestan;
10. Balladenmäßig sehr rasch: Balladically very fast (Alla ballata molto vivo) (1st edition), (“Sehr” and “Molto” capitalized in 2nd edition), (ends major), Florestan;
11. Einfach: Simply (Semplice), Eusebius;
12. Mit Humor: With humor (Con umore), Florestan;
13. Wild und lustig: Wildly and merrily (Selvaggio e gaio), Florestan and Eusebius;
14. Zart und singend: Tenderly and singing (Dolce e cantando), Eusebius;
15. Frisch: Freshly (Con freschezza), – Etwas bewegter: With agitation (poco piu mosso),with a return to the opening section (with the option to go round the piece once more), Florestan and Eusebius;
16. Mit gutem Humor: With good humor (Con buon umore) (in 2nd edition, “Con umore”), – Etwas langsamer: A little slower (Un poco più lento); leading without a break into
17. Wie aus der Ferne: As if from afar (Come da lontano), (including a full reprise of No. 2), Florestan and Eusebius; and finally,
18. Nicht schnell: Not fast (Non presto), Eusebius.

Magdalene was born in 2003 and started learning the piano at the age of four. In 2013, she began studying in the UK with Patsy Toh, at the Purcell School. In 2015, she received the ABRSM Sheila Mossman Prize and Silver Award. As part of a prize won at the PIANALE piano festival in Fulda, Germany, she released an album of Bach and Messiaen works in 2019. She was a finalist at the Düsseldorf Schumann Competition 2023 and was awarded the Joan Chissell Schumann Prize for Piano at the Royal College of Music a few months later. In September 2023, she won the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Vevey along with receiving the Audience Prize, Young Critics’ Prize and Children’s Corner Prize. Magdalene has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the RCM since September 2022, where she is a Dasha Shenkman Scholar supported by the Gordon Calway Stone Scholarship. She is also sponsored by the Weir Award via the Keyboard Charitable Trust.

Masterclass with Imogen Cooper and Magdalene Ho