Mese: aprile 2024

I have known Ignas for many years now since I was invited by Alim Baesembayev’s teacher ,Tessa Nicholson,to listen to two first years students,Alim and Ignas playing the Mozart Double Concerto in the RAM Annual Piano Festival. Alim has gone on to win the Leeds International Piano Competition but Ignas has been slower to allow his extraordinary talent to mature.There are many temptations for young students when they leave their homeland to study in the great metropolis and the discipline and working attitude they were brought up with can take time to find its place as life and music must grow up side by side in a voyage of discovery which is never easy.Teenagers that are prepared to dedicate their youth to art require an enormous dedication and discipline.Ignas is proving in the past few years to have found that discipline and is having the just rewards that his remarkable talent has always demanded.It sounds foolish to talk about the fluidity of Lithuanian pianists and the relaxed way they seem to caress the keys like strokes of a swimmer in the water.It is a fact ,though, that all the Lithuanian pianist I know have this fluidity of sound that used to belong primarily to the great Hungarian School of Dohnyani : Geza Anda and Annie Fischer are two such examples. The Lithuanian pianists in London that I know well are Gabrielé Sutkuté,Milda Daunoraité,Rokas Valuntonis and Kasparas Mikuzis and are all strangely ‘birds of a feather’!

It was in the last work of the programme that Ignas revealed his great artistry and magnetic personality as rays of light glistened as he spread Chopin’s great web of sounds over the entire keyboard .I have heard him play this work many time before and it has now become part of his being as it was with Rubinstein .In fact there were moments when details were not quite focused and were blurred as rests were ignored and notes sometimes not quite as precise as in the score but there was an overall conviction allied to a quite extraordinary sound world that recreated this masterpiece before our very eyes.There was an architectural shape and an urgency that was compelling.I found the opening Polonaise ‘a tempo giusto’ a fraction too fast but what did it matter as we were drawn hypnotically into a magic world of this dashing young romantic – Rubinstein springs to mind even in his eternally youthful Indian Summer.There was a sumptuous beauty to the ‘Poco piu lento’ where the harmonic progression was as important as the melodic line.The final dynamic drive to the great climax was breathtaking and at the same time full of nobility and aristocratic control.

The concert had begun with Schumann’s Kinderscenen that must be a new work in Ignas’s repertoire.It was played with disarming simplicity and an overall architectural shape but missed the ravishing colour and sense of fantasy that he was to reserve for later in the programme.A beautiful fluidity and sense of balance as the tale of distant lands unfolded with simplicity leading to a curious story of beautifully interwoven sounds.A dynamic drive to the Blind man’s buff also given an overall shape as the counterpoints in the pleading child were so delicately described.If perfect happiness was rather breathless it was only because he could not wait to show us the grandeur and nobility of a Great Adventure.Traumerei had a flowing beauty but missed the magic that was to come later in the programme.His beautiful liquid sound though allowed this most beautiful of Reverie’s to be expressed with disarming simplicity.There was a flowing beauty by the Fireside before the simple drive of the Rocking Horse.Almost too serious flowed directly into the Hobgoblins schizophrenic antics and the gentle slumbers of the child sleeping.But it was the Poet speaks that suddenly ignited Ignas’s imagination and was indeed a poet who had found a voice that illuminated the piano ready for the sumptuous sounds of Vine and Bortkiewicz.This is obviously a work in progress just as I had watched his Schumann Fantasy and Schubert B flat Sonata gradually be transformed from a pianist who had learnt his lesson and was now being recreated with great artistry as he had delved deep and found the gems that lay hidden to all but the very few.I await the next performance of Schumann when he has surely found the key to this chest of jewels.https://youtu.be/UroWVTDb8Oo

The works by Vine and Bortkiewicz obviously stimulated his imagination and with the beauty of his physical movements at the piano he was able to find a kaleidoscope of sounds and a use of the pedal that Anton Rubinstein so rightly said is its very soul. There was clarity and rhythmic drive in the second prelude and clusters of cloudy sounds in the third.His self identification with the Jazz sounds of the fourth saw him crouched low over the keyboard with shoulders moving first right then left as he relived the music with fantasy and brilliance.A slow lazy atmosphere in the last where he spread magic sounds over the entire keyboard.

Bortkiewicz opened with Rachmaninovian grandiosity contrasting with the ravishing beauty of the second prelude. Sombre and passionate sounds of great intensity of the third built to a tumultuous sumptuous climax dying away to a very suggestive ending.There was a wonderful fluidity to the quasi Chopiniana fourth prelude.This was a fascinating short survey of a Ukrainian composer rarely heard in the concert hall and hats off to Ignas for showing us with such artistry what wonders there still are to be discovered.

In July 2021 Ignas Maknickas received “The Queen’s Award for Excellence” as the highest-scoring graduate of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2023 Ignas became the winner of Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) International Auditions, had his debut recital at the Wigmore Hall and in January 2024 had his debut at the BBC Radio 3 programme “In Tune” with Sean Rafferty. Ignas has taken First Prize at the XIX Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition for Youth in Szafarnia, First Prize at the XX Piano Competition “Young Virtuoso” in Zagreb, Third Prize at the Aarhus Piano Competition and, in 2021, was the semi-finalist of the Vendome Prize. 2024-25 highlights include solo recitals at the Wigmore Hall in London, Konzerthaus Berlin, Brighton Dome, King’s Lynn, Fidelio Cafe and others.

Born in California in 1998, Ignas was raised in Lithuania. In 2017, graduating from the National M.K. Ciurlionis School of Art in Vilnius, he was honoured by the President of Lithuania, H.E. Dalia Grybauskaite. With his sister and three brothers the talented Maknickas Family Ensemble has represented Lithuania on National Television and at State Occasions. Ignas completed his Bachelor and Master of Arts programmes at the Royal Academy of Music on full scholarship under Professor Joanna MacGregor. In September 2023 he commenced the Advanced Diploma Programme with Professor MacGregor, also on full scholarship. He is a Leverhulme Arts Scholar, a recipient of the ABRSM Scholarship Award, the Imogen Cooper Music Trust Scholarship, Munster Trust Mark James Award, Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation Award, Tillett Trust and Colin Keer Trust Award and Hattori Foundation Award. He is an Artist of the Munster Trust Recital Scheme. As a soloist he has appeared at the Steinway Hall in London, Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Charlottenborg Festival Hall in Copenhagen, Ed Landreth Hall in Fort Worth, Lithuanian National Philharmonic in Vilnius and Kinross House in Scotland.

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/11/27/ignas-maknickas-at-cranleigh-arts-the-birth-of-great-artist-of-humility-and-poetic-innocence/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/02/15/ignas-maknickas-finds-a-home-in-an-artistic-oasis-between-the-gherkin-and-the-shard/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/09/13/ignas-maknickas-opens-a-wondrous-box-of-jewels-the-magic-world-of-a-true-artist/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/02/10/ignas-maknickas-at-st-jamess-piccadilly-a-great-artist-in-the-making/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/07/06/ignas-maknickas-and-wouter-valvekens-music-at-the-matthiesen-gallery-if-music-be-the-food-of-love-pleaseplease-play-on/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/01/11/ignas-maknickas-fluidity-and-romance-for-the-imogen-cooper-music-trust/

Some more superb playing from Shunta Morimoto in his annual recital in the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati.

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/05/23/shunta-morimoto-a-colossus-bestrides-villa-aldobrandini-as-it-had-when-liszt-was-in-residence/

A fascinating programme opening with one of Bach’s finest of seven toccatas – the one in F sharp minor followed by one of Chopin’s most perfect works the Barcarolle op 60 in F sharp major. The first encore too was in F sharp major with the Fugue from Book 1 of the ‘Wohltemperierte Klavier’.Two works by Schubert followed with his C minor Sonata prefaced by the E flat Klavierstucke .I would not be surprised if all these key relationships were not just a coincidence but designed to give an architectural shape to the entire programme.Shunta at only nineteen has recently won two major competitions since his last appearance in this series organised by the distinguished French pianist Marylene Mouquet .It is not only his superb technical mastery but also his intelligent musicianship that shines through all he does.

Playing with a total commitment where the sounds he is making in the moments of creation are his life’s blood as he is able to hold the audience in his spell where we too feel that we are on a voyage of discovery with him.I have heard Shunta recently play the Schubert C minor Sonata but today’s performance had a drive and urgency that was mesmerising.Moments of sublime beauty too but always with the burning intensity of the most dramatic of the composers last works.

The Schubert Sonata I have written about recently but today was an even greater surprise as this burning intensity shone new light on so many memorable moments.

Here he is playing the Sonata as top prize winner of a competition https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/03/03/shunta-morimoto-takes-hastings-by-storm/

The most extraordinary moment was in the development of the first movement where the streams of chromatic scales were played so quietly to allow the menace of the left hand to be fully appreciated .The rests gave the opening rhythm a terrifying significance before bursting out into the open once more.What noble beauty there was to the Adagio too building into a dynamic force that made the disarmingly beautiful last bars an oasis of whispered beauty . The legato lines of the ‘Menuetto’ where bar lines ceased to exist I have never heard played so beautifully .The gently innocuous last movement just bubbled over with pastoral simplicity but also showing us how much more there was of Beethoven’s tempestuous character in this work than in his others.

What a genial surprise to hear the Allegretto from the Klavierstucke as a bridge between the Barcarolle and the Sonata.The disarming simplicity of the melodic line was only disturbed by the momentary ruffling of the waters returning to the sublime beauty of a work we only ever hear with it’s other two neighbours ,which never really allows us to fully appreciate this unique tone poem on its own terms .Shunta played it,like all he touches,with refined good taste and beauty before the eruption of Schubert in tempestuous C minor mood.

Chopin’s Barcarolle too ,one of Chopin’s most mellifluous works that from the opening deep bass C sharp is a continuous outpouring of song .But today Shunta was in a turbulent mood and he brought an unusual intensity and drive to the work that gave it nobility and poignancy.The gently rocking rhythm to the central section was played truly ‘sotto voce’ as the composer indicates, leading into the most sublime ‘dolce sfogato’ that today in Shunta’s hands came like a ray of golden sunlight suddenly shining down on the water.The passion he then brought to the final pages was breathtaking in it’s abandon and sumptuous rich sound.The final gasping ‘calando’ phrases were played with the subtle inflections that only the greatest of bel canto singers could express .The streams of barely whispered notes with the left hand tenor melody allowed to emerge created a magic that was only to be dispelled with the final mighty fortissimo chords.All through this work there had been a sense of legato and weight where every strand was allowed to sing with beauty and intensity.Shunta’s hands were like limpets on the keys extracting every ounce of meaning from Chopin’s simple rocking melodic line.

The opening Bach Toccata too had been of burning intensity but also of great clarity with the deep bass notes acting as an anchor to the streams of the opening flourishes.The religious calm he brought to the ‘Adagio’ was played with simplicity and very little pedal that gave it a disarming purity before the spiky ‘Presto e staccato’. Shunta’s complete understanding of the contrapuntal direction of the voices showed his remarkable musicianship as he was able to carve this knotty into an architectural shape that took us to recitativi and the final relentless drive on to the noble finish.

Shunta was obviously in Fugal mood today as his first encore was the Fugue in F sharp from Book 1 of the Well Tempered Clavier.A clarity and again an unusual choice to play just the fugue divorced from its prelude.It had me thinking,in my ignorance,that maybe this was a piece by Rameau such was the rhythmic clarity and Sokolovian precision of articulation.Of course a great artist always has a surprise of two in store and Shunta certainly did today.Chopin’s study op 10 n.4 was played with a velocity and ease that were truly breathtaking.It was allied to a sense of character that made the final page as exciting as I remember from Rubinstein when he would raise himself up from the piano tool as he ignited the final page even in his 90th year!

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/06/09/shunta-morimoto-pitti-piano-festival-florence-the-inspired-recreation-of-a-great-artist/

The Toccatas for Keyboard, BWV 910–916, are seven pieces for clavier written by J S Bach Although the pieces were not originally organized into a collection by Bach himself (as were most of his other keyboard works, such as the Well Tempered Clavier and the English Suites etc.), the pieces share many similarities, and are frequently grouped and performed together under a collective title.

The seven Toccatas by J.S. Bach contain some of the great master’s most joyous keyboard music. They are youthful, improvisatory, virtuoso works, composed in the aftermath of Bach’s trip in 1705 to Lübeck to hear the great organist and composer Buxtehude.They represent Bach’s earliest keyboard compositions known under a collective title.The earliest sources of the BWV 910, 911 and 916 toccatas appear in the Andreas Bach Book ,an important collection of keyboard and organ manuscripts of various composers compiled by Bach’s oldest brother, Johann Christoph between 1707 and 1713. An early version of the BWV 912 (known as the BWV 912a) also exists in another collection compiled by Johann Christoph Bach known as the ‘Moller manuscript’ from around 1703 to 1707.This indicates that most of these works originated no later than Bach’s early Weimar years, though the early northern German style indicates possible Arnstadt origin.Though the specific instrumentation is not given for any of the works, none of them call for pedal parts and like Bach’s other clavier works, these toccatas are frequently performed on the piano

• Toccata in F-sharp minor, BWV 910
  1. (Toccata)
  2. [no tempo indication]
  3. Presto e Staccato (Fuga)
  4. [no tempo indication]
  5. (Fuga)

Schubert’s last three piano sonatas ,D.958, 959 and 960, are his last major compositions for solo piano. They were written during the last months of his life, between the spring and autumn of 1828, but were not published until about ten years after his death, in 1838–39.Like the rest of Schubert’s piano sonatas, they were mostly neglected in the 19th century but by the late 20th century, however, public and critical opinion had changed, and these sonatas are now considered among the most important of the composer’s mature masterpieces.

The last year of Schubert’s life was marked by growing public acclaim for the composer’s works, but also by the gradual deterioration of his health. On March 26, 1828, together with other musicians in Vienna he gave a public concert of his own works, which was a great success and earned him a considerable profit. In addition, two new German publishers took an interest in his works, leading to a short period of financial well-being. However, by the time the summer months arrived, Schubert was again short of money and had to cancel some journeys he had previously planned.

Schubert had been struggling with syphilis since 1822–23, and suffered from weakness, headaches and dizziness. However, he seems to have led a relatively normal life until September 1828, when new symptoms appeared. At this stage he moved from the Vienna home of his friend Franz von Schober to his brother Ferdinand’s house in the suburbs, following the advice of his doctor; unfortunately, this may have actually worsened his condition. However, up until the last weeks of his life in November 1828, he continued to compose an extraordinary amount of music, including such masterpieces as the three last sonatas.

Schubert probably began sketching the sonatas sometime around the spring months of 1828; the final versions were written in September. The final sonata was completed on September 26, and two days later, Schubert played from the sonata trilogy at an evening gathering in Vienna.In a letter to Probst (one of his publishers), dated October 2, 1828, Schubert mentioned the sonatas amongst other works he had recently completed and wished to publish.However, Probst was not interested in the sonatas,and by November 19, Schubert was dead.In the following year, Schubert’s brother Ferdinand sold the sonatas’ autographs  to another publisher, Anton Diabelli, who would only publish them about ten years later, in 1838 or 1839.Schubert had intended the sonatas to be dedicated to Hummel , whom he greatly admired. Hummel was a leading pianist, a pupil of Mozart , and a pioneering composer of the Romantic style  (like Schubert himself).However, by the time the sonatas were published in 1839, Hummel was dead, and Diabelli, the new publisher, decided to dedicate them instead to composer Robert Schumann , who had praised many of Schubert’s works in his critical writings.

Sonata in C minor, D. 958

Allegro ;Adagio;Menuetto:Allegro – Trio ;Allegro

Franz Schubert

The three “piano pieces” D.946, were completed in May 1828, the year Schubert died, and follow the far more well-known and popular Impromptus D.899 and D.935, which Schubert composed the previous year. Like the Impromptus, the Drei Klavierstücke express in microcosm so much of Schubert’s unique soundworld and musical personality – daring and unusual harmonies, beautiful songful melodies, and episodes of profound poignancy or intimacy. Throughout these three pieces, we hear the extraordinarily broad scope of his creativity and emotional landscape.

“He has sounds to express the most delicate feelings, of thoughts, indeed even for the events and conditions of human life.” – Robert Schumann

Untitled and unpublished in Schubert’s lifetime, it was Johannes Brahms who anonymously edited and published the Drei Klavierstücke in 1868 and gave the works their collective title. The second of the triptych is a five-part rondo. It opens in E-flat major, which connects it to the previous piece, though it is not known whether Schubert conceived the three pieces to be linked. An elegant barcarolle, the A section has an aria-like melody coloured by harmonic shifts between major and minor.

The Barcarolle in F sharp major op 60 , by Chopin was composed between autumn of 1845 and summer 1846, three years before his death. This is one of Chopin’s last major compositions, along with his Polonaise – Fantasie op 61. In the final years of his short life, Chopin reached a new plateau of creative achievement. His sketches from these years suggest that the agony of composition, the resistance it set up, wrested from him only music of an exceptional, transcendent quality. And nowhere is this clearer than in the three great extended works of 1845–6: the Barcarolle Op 60, Polonaise-Fantasie Op 61 and Cello Sonata Op 65

In the summer of 1845, alongside new mazurkas and songs, the Barcarolle was written . Perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by design, the last of the three Mazurkas, Op. 59, composed in the key of F sharp minor, ends with a switch to the bright F sharp major. And it is in that same F sharp major – a rare key in Chopin – that the Barcarolle begins. It is also in shades of F sharp major (as the work’s main key) that the Barcarolle’s musical narrative proceeds, departing from it and returning to it again.

We do not know when and in what circumstances the idea for this music was conceived. Chopin never visited Venice. He had but a fleeting encounter with Italian landscapes and atmosphere on a boat trip from Marseilles to Genoa. A storm at sea was perhaps more likely to have impressed itself onto his memory of that fatiguing expedition than any image of the city. It is assumed that Chopin could have been given the idea of composing a barcarolle, as well as a prototype for its shape and character, by works in that genre which functioned in the current musical repertoire, especially in opera, and above all in Rossini and Auber. All the operatic barcarolles by those composers were well known to Chopin. He could not possibly have forgotten the barcarolles from Guilllaume Tell, La muette de Portici or Fra Diavolo.

The barcarolle genre was becoming increasingly popular in vocal and pianistic lyricism. We know that Chopin gave his pupils Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worten to play. The sixth number in the first book of the Songs without Words bears the title ‘Venezianisches Gondellied’ Venetian boat song. This could certainly have been a path for Chopin into the convention of the nineteenth-century barcarolle. Yet in Chopin’s Barcarolle there are no references to either the historical tradition of the songs of the Venetian gondoliers (as do appear in Liszt’s ‘Venezia e Napoli’) or the banal idiom of the opera-salon barcarolle of the day, which would soon reach its pinnacle with the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann. In Chopin’s Barcarolle, beneath the cloak of the generic convention, we find music that encapsulates his supreme pianistic experience and the musical maturity that he had attained during this rather reflective phase, and at the same time music that echoes his experience of the whole Mediterranean south of Europe: the Italian songs of Lina Freppa, Bellini’s bel canto, the passionate Spanish songs of Pauline Viardot, which Chopin listened to in rapture, and the wild, but incredibly beautiful landscape of Majorca.

One peculiar, extraordinary moment comes at the point which Chopin defines with the words dolce sfogato and precedes with a lead-in filled with hushed mystery. That enigmatic, unfathomed dolce sfogato then starts to develop and bloom.

In his Notes on Chopin, André Gide went into raptures: ‘Sfogato, he wrote; has any other musician ever used this word, would he have ever had the desire, the need, to indicate the airing, the breath of breeze, which, interrupting the rhythm, contrary to all hope, comes freshening and perfuming the middle of his barcarolle?’

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/02/16/shunta-morimoto-a-star-shining-brightly-at-st-marys-the-uk-debut-of-a-master/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2021/11/23/shunta-morimoto-takes-rome-by-storm/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/03/23/shunta-morimoto-takes-london-by-storm-i-have-a-dream-a-poet-speaks-through-music/

Two superb young pianists Jacopo Feresin and Francesco Grano in a duel much as Liszt and Thalberg were to do in Princess Belgioso’s salon in Paris.’Thalberg is the greatest pianist of all but Liszt is unique’.

And so we were reminded of them today in Velletri in the very hills where Liszt would have travelled on his Années de Pélerinage with the Countess d’Agoult.

Here we were treated to a duel between two young musicians taking turns to be soloist and then orchestra and finally united both at the same instrument on the Erard.
Jacopo played on an 1879 Erard similar to the ones that Liszt preferred and Francesco played a 1998 Pleyel,the preferred make of Chopin.
Both demonstrated their mastery,musicianship and intelligence with concertos by Beethoven and Rachmaninov and a peace making duet by Grieg after being feted equally for their artistry and passionate commitment.

I was very interested to see how Jacopo would open the Beethoven and how he would play the chords in the slow movement .Also how he would approach the embellishments in the development of the first movement when Beethoven due to the limitations of the Erard piano at the time was forced to take another path! Jacopo is a very intelligent and highly prepared young musician and although he spread the opening and the chords in the slow movement it was done so discreetly and with the style that the instrument of 1879 would understand.

I had heard Jacopo playing the Beethoven concerto for Roma 3 University : https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2021/07/15/summer-harmonies-at-teatro-palladium-for-roma-tre-orchestra/

Modern instruments and the later Erard have more notes than those of Beethoven’s day but I think Jacopo allowed Beethoven the last word there. His playing was very expressive with dynamic drive and poetry nowhere more than in Beethoven’s cadenza where his poetic ending was perfectly in tune with Francesco’s orchestra and was really an expression of great artistry from them both.The grandiose Furies of the Andante were replied to by the beseeching questioning of Orpheus, in a dialogue between the two pianist that was poignantly moving for the differing timbres of the two instruments.Nowhere was their superb musicianship more evident than in the Rondò where their superb duo playing was of extraordinary vitality and character.It was interesting to note how Jacopo managed the long pedals that Beethoven indicates but also note some rather strange embellishments that he added to Beethoven’s much simpler efforts !

After a short break in which the artistic director outlined many of the things about the concertos that are described so fully in his catalogue that year after year he produces with tireless passion and scholarship.It was interesting to note the link between Beethoven and Rachmaninov which I am sure Brendel and Schiff must have overlooked! Czerny was Beethoven’s pupil and he was also the teacher of Franz Liszt (he took him as a child to play to Beethoven who famously gave him a kiss of approval.) Siloti was a pupil of Liszt and he was the teacher of Rachmaninov! So the combination of Beethoven with Rachmaninov makes perfect sense.
This series now in its 12th edition has finally been recognised by the Regione Lazio which subsidises a series of 25 concerts within its bounderies.

I had heard Francesco Grano in Mozart K 456 for Roma 3 University :https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2021/02/09/roma-3-orchestra-the-mozart-project/

The Rachmaninov unleashed a youthful spirit in both players who proceeded to give exhilarating performances of subtle beauty and breathtaking athleticism in a display of real duo playing .Beethoven had more obviously been for a soloist and a reduction of orchestra for piano.In the Rachmaninov they were equal partners and it seemed like a work written for two virtuoso pianists.

Francesco playing without the score gave a breathtaking account of the solo part from the opening cascade of octaves to the heart rending melancholy of Rachmaninov’s mellifluous outpourings.A cadenza of nobility and sumptuous richness and sense of improvisation before the startling virtuosity of the ending.A slow movement of haunting poignancy and an ‘Allegro vivace’ that just raced from their fingertips with extraordinary brilliance and contrasted with the beauty of the central episode where the gossamer lightness of Francesco’s embellishments were streams of golden sounds entering and exiting a world of unexpected dreams.

An encore saw them both united at the Erard piano in a performance of ‘Morning’ from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite.

Such a success was greeted by the announcement of an addition to the concert series for this duo who will perform Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in the original two piano version in a concert that will now close the season on the 7th July.

Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto was premiered in March 1807 at a private concert of the home of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz. The Coriolan Overture and the Fourth Symphony were premiered in that same concert.However, the public premiere was not until the 22 December 1808  at Vienna’s  Theatre an der WienTheater with Beethoven again as soloist. The marathon concert saw Beethoven’s last appearance as a soloist with orchestra, as well as the premieres of the Choral Fantasy and the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies .Beethoven dedicated the concerto to his friend, student, and patron, the Archduke Rudolph

A review in the May 1809 edition of the Allegemeine musicalische Zeitung states that ” the concerto is the most admirable, singular, artistic and complex Beethoven concerto ever”.However, after its first performance, the piece was neglected until 1836, when it was revived by Felix Mendelssohn.

Beethoven’s so-called ‘middle period’, roughly the years 1802-12, is often referred to as his ‘Promethean’ phase. The masterworks of this time, we are often told, are characterised by intense striving, heaven-storming ambition, revolutionary daring in matters of form and expression. 

But as Beethoven wrote enigmatically on one of his manuscripts, ‘Sometimes the opposite is also true’; and if any work could be held to demonstrate the truth of that it’s the Fourth Piano Concerto, a work that, composed in 1805-06, enjoyed its premiere at the same huge Theater an der Wien concert on 22 December 1808 – the same event that also saw the first performances of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.

Rachmaninov composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in F♯ minor, Op. 1, in 189 at age 17-18 (the first two movements were completed while he was still 17; the third movement and the orchestration were completed shortly after he had turned 18). He dedicated the work to Alexander Siloti . He revised the work thoroughly in 1917.

This was actually Rachmaninov’s second attempt at a piano concerto. In 1889 he had begun but abandoned a concerto in C minor (the same key, incidentally, in which he would later write his Second PianoConcerto ) He wrote Natalya Skalon on 26 March 1891, “I am now composing a piano concerto. Two movements are already written; the last movement is not written, but is composed; I shall probably finish the whole concerto by the summer, and then in the summer orchestrate it”He finished composing and scoring the piece on July 6 and was satisfied with what he had written.The first movement was premiered on 17 March 1892 at the Moscow Conservatory with the composer as soloist and Vasily Safonov conducting.. This may have been the only time the composer played the concerto in its original form, although Siloti, to whom it is dedicated, programmed it to play himself on several occasions.

Composition students were usually advised to base their efforts on a specific model for their first exercises in new forms. In Rachmaninoff’s case this was the Grieg Piano Concerto which was a favourite work of his and one with which he had been familiar from Siloti practicing it at the Rachmaninoff household during the spring and summer of 1890 for future concerts.Rachmaninoff adapted the entire musical structure of the outer movements to the Grieg concerto, literally building his music into it. With all his other concertos, Rachmaninoff would prove more enterprising.

Revision and current structure

The public was already familiar with the Second and Third Concertos before Rachmaninov revised the First in 1917. The First is very different from his later works; in exchange for less memorable melodies, this concerto incorporates elements of youthful vivacity and impetuosity.

The differences between the 1890–1891 original and the 1917 revision reveal a tremendous amount about the composer’s development in the intervening years. There is a considerable thinning of texture in the orchestral and piano parts and much material that made the original version diffuse and episodic is removed.

Of all the revisions Rachmaninoff made to various works, this one was perhaps the most successful. Using an acquired knowledge of harmony, orchestration, piano technique and musical form, he transformed the early composition into a concise, spirited work.Nevertheless, he was perturbed that the revised work did not become popular with the public. He said : “I have rewritten my First Concerto; it is really good now. All the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself so much more easily. And nobody pays any attention. When I tell them in America that I will play the First Concerto, they do not protest, but I can see by their faces that they would prefer the Second or Third.”

A special evening of music by Almeida Prado at the Embassy of Brazil on Thursday, 25 April 2024 .

Three very fine musicians from the Keyboard Trust ‘stable’ had prepared two of his most significant chamber music works rarely performed in public and it was just a foretaste of the 400 works that Almeida Prado has left us.

The sixth of the 18 Cartas Celestas revealed a very individual sound world written obviously by someone who knew the intimate secrets of the keyboard.Brilliantly played by Ellis Thomas it was just a foretaste for the extraordinary four movement cello Sonata that revealed the colour and style of a highly original composer unjustly neglected.

Whilst some of his piano music has been recorded by Naxos there is as yet no recording of the cello sonata which on tonight’s showing is something that needs rectifying.The concert was video recorded for the Keyboard Trust web site and hopefully this might encourage the powers to be to issue a commercial recording of a very important work to add to the cello repertoire.It was played with great conviction and poetic artistry by Benedict Swindells and Ivelina Krasteva.The cello added another poetic dimension and colour to Prado’s rather spiky almost percussive style of compositions of a stimulating and provocative intellect.

Almeida Prado (1943-2010) was a pianist and composer. He wrote over 400 works and is considered to be one of Brazil’s most important composers.

José Antônio Rezende de Almeida Prado or Almeida Prado (February 8, 1943 – November 21, 2010) was an important Brazilian composer and pianist On his death, the conductor Joao Carlos Martins  stated that Prado had possibly been the most important Brazilian composer ever.He wrote over 400 compositions and won various prizes for his work.

Born in Santos,Sao Paulo  in 1943 he died in there  in 2010, having lived there for the latter part of his life.He referred to his vast set of 18 Cartas Celestes as an “incredible journey”, and the final three were completed just months before his death. Following the luminous Brazilian night skies of No. 13, the poetic references of the final trilogy refer to constellations named after animals, Grecian and Egyptian mythology, and one last homage to a pivotal figure in Brazilian literature. Almeida Prado’s colossal piano cycle Cartas Celestes (‘Celestial Charts’) offers a paradigm of audacious invention but between 1985 and 1991 this prolific Brazilian composer also wrote a set of 14 nocturnes that display the genre’s lyrical impulses. Along with abstract elements and features such as synesthesia, used in homage to his teacher Messaien, the full range of influences can be felt in Almeida Prado’s Nocturnes: Chopin, Scriabinesque colour, bossa-nova, Brahms-like intervals, serenity and radiant songfulness. Ilhas (‘Islands’) is a mystical but programmatic work, the predecessor of Cartas Celestes in many essential element

Welsh pianist Ellis Thomas is rapidly establishing a reputation as a versatile and thoughtful pianist and chamber musician. Acclaimed as a ‘sincere and committed’ musician, offering performances ‘with real understanding’ (Julian Jacobson, Beethoven Piano Society of Europe), Ellis is equally at home with core repertoire as with contemporary and lesser-known works.

     Ellis has performed throughout the UK and is regularly invited to perform at music festivals in England and Wales. In recent years, he has performed in Spain, Germany and Italy, and his performances and interviews have been broadcast on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Cymru, and S4C television. 
     Ellis has been awarded prizes at many competitions including the 2021 Düsseldorf Robert Schumann International Piano Competition, and First Prizes at the Wales International Piano Festival, Gregynog Young Musician, the RIBI National Young Musician and the Wales National Eisteddfod, amongst others. He has had masterclasses with Boris Berman, Imogen Cooper, Pascal Rogé, Yevgeny Sudbin, Till Felner, Péter Nagy and Steven Osborne.

Ivelina Krasteva was born in 1998 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She started to play the piano at the age of four. Two years later she was accepted at the National School of Music and Dance in Plovdiv, where she studied with Elena Velcheva until her graduation with distinction in 2017. Ivelina is currently studying for her undergraduate degree as an HWE and WL Tovery Scholar with Ronan O’Hora and Katya Apekisheva at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
     Ivelina has won numerous prizes including First Prize and a live streamed recital on Radio Plovdiv from the International Piano Competition ‘Schumann-Brahms’ in Plovdiv, Bulgaria; Third Prize at the Pera Piano Competition in Istanbul, Turkey; Second Prize at The Golden Keys Piano Competition; and Third Prize at the ‘Wiener Pianisten’, Vienna, Austria. In addition to her studies, she has worked with internationally acclaimed musicians, including Itamar Golan, Boris Petrushansky, Paul Roberts, Charles Owen, Noriko Ogawa and Stephan Moeller among others.

Born in Ishihara, Japan, Benedict Swindells moved to Stamford in Lincolnshire and first played the cello at the age of seven. After several years studying with Janet Roberts, he attended Pro Corda, a chamber music course based at Leiston Abbey in Suffolk, where he met his current teacher, Prof. Tim Lowe. At the age of 12, he joined Prof. Lowe’s class at the Guildhall’s Junior Department. After several years, he moved to St Edward’s School, Oxford as a music scholar, while continuing to have cello lessons in London. He is currently continuing his studies with Prof. Lowe as a third-year student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

The Keyboard Trust is very proud and happy to continue this very fruitful collaboration with the Embassy of Brazil in their tireless and fearless voyage of discovery together.

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/06/16/tyler-hay-and-david-zucchi-celebrate-the-work-of-radames-gnattali-at-the-sala-brasil/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/05/31/brazilian-embassy-the-tree-of-life-with-pablo-rossi-a-man-for-all-seasons/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/11/30/tyler-hay-and-the-mitsu-trio-at-the-brazilian-embassy-fun-and-games-for-the-joint-anniversary-celebrations-with-the-keyboard-trust/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/07/30/pablo-rossi-a-star-shining-brightly-for-brazil-200/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/03/29/brazil-200-and-keyboard-trust-30-a-collaboration-born-on-wings-of-brazilian-song/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2021/10/06/brazil-200-celebrations-with-the-keyboard-charitable-trust-on-wings-of-song/

Wonders at the RCM today with the legendary Mikhail Voskresensky. At 88 he played with more vigour and artistry than those a quarter of his venerable age.
After an exhilarating Haydn Sonata in E minor followed by a Kreisleriana the like of which I have only ever heard from Nikolaeva Tagliaferro or Perlemuter
The grand school and great line played with weight .

There must be personality and character quoting Anton Rubinstein who said that music must be created .
And he proceeded to show two young pianists exactly what he meant with a very fine but pallid Liszt Sonata in need of an injection of vitality and passion !
And beautifully played Medtner needing the Angels to fly even higher to find their celestial song.

Thanks to Dmitri Alexeev and Dina Parakhina for bringing such a Colossus to the RCM .

Who could have imagined that at 10 am one of the legendary pianists of our time would appear on stage in London and proceed to give performances of such power and personality that one began to question the date of birth printed in the programme .In this age of I pad aide memoire for senior citizens still in career,it was a lesson to see this very distinguished artist impeccably dressed sit at the piano without any fuss and give performances of orchestral proportions.This was on a Fazioli piano which I doubt has ever been asked to dig deep into its body to find sounds that most pianists of today do not know exist.

One of the last of a great school of pianists who were true ‘Kapellmeisters’ ,recreating music with a freshness and directness as though the ink was still wet on the page. Of course no pages were to be seen because like Nikolaeva who was this artists great friend,as she was mine, music had been digested and lived with and was deep within the very soul of a musician where music was their life’s blood. As he was to say to students who played for him after his recital :”but where is the passion ,the drive ,the theatre that lives within your soul with which you can transmit an infinite range of emotions via this black box full of hammers and strings’.You must be an illusionist but above all you must be an artist with a passionate desire to comunicate.And so it was to just a hand full of early risers that this great artist played as though to an audience of thousands. At 88 ,like Rubinstein, there is a vitality and energy that is generated by a passionate desire to comunicate.I have seen this same passion from Eliso Virsaladze ,Alexei Lubimov,Eduardo del Peyo and of course my teachers Perlemuter and Agosti .

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2018/10/29/elisso-virsaladze-in-latina-homage-to-riccardo-cerocchi/

More recently Oxana Yablonskaya who at 85 after being on the jury of a competition all day in Sicily had time for a cup of tea before giving a recital where numbers had no meaning as she was rejuvenated by the music exactly as we were to witness today.

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/04/11/oxana-yablonskaya-la-regina-the-queen-of-the-keys/

Wilhelm Kempff would arrive at the recording studio asking what they would like to hear! A great school of dedicated artists and one wonders why the hall was not full to the rafters for students who have chosen to make music their career.But for real artists music is not just a career but an essential way of a life of dedication and sacrifice because they cannot do less.

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/08/29/kapellmeister-lubimov-leads-us-to-the-very-heart-of-music-with-simplicity-and-mastery/

What a lesson and a reminder of how many ‘bank clerks’ we have on the concert platform these days where real dedicated artists are few and far between.

There was an unusual grandiosity and nobility to the Haydn Sonata in E minor played with bold tone and dynamic rhythmic drive.Crystal clear with phrases shaped like a singer but always scrupulously in style with the times.There were great contrasts too in the development .Robust orchestral ‘forte’ , old school one might say but only because we are used to a more polite Haydn of pallid authenticy! Here there was a rhythmic drive where even the ornaments were like springs unwinding with sparkling brilliance but always within the musical line and conversation that we were overhearing.The music ‘spoke’ with a directness and one phrase answered the other.Even Haydn’s surprise ending was indeed a surprise but revealed a control of sound as the last three notes had different inflections on each. Art that conceals Art indeed . There was an operatic unfolding of the Adagio but perfectly proportioned where the music was played with nobility but also the simplicity and originality of Haydn’s genial invention.’Vivace molto’ the last movement certainly was and as Haydn asks an innocent tongue in cheek sense of humour of charm ,grace and wit. A wonderful sense of balance too where the melodic line had a purity and sense of projection without any exaggeration.The teasing embellishements were played without ever disturbing the relentless forward movement but were with a scintillating style that brought a smile to our faces so teasingly charmed at 10 in the morning by an 88 year old veteran .The 20 year old students were probably still in bed !

The main work was ‘Kreisleriana’ the eight episodes by Schumann dedicated to Chopin .This received a truly monumental performance and I was reminded of Magda Tagliaferro who I had heard at the Wigmore Hall many years ago when she was in her nineties .A tiny lady came floating on stage with bright orange hair and proceeded to turn the piano into a complete orchestra.Similar to today where they great line was the guiding light of an architectural shape where fussy details and personal charms were in second order to the overall message that was being put across with overwhelming drive and power.I have never forgotten that performance and the energy that allowed this wisp of a lady in a cloud of gossamer white chiffon to play five encores ending with Chopin’s Tarantelle!

There was an enormous amount of pedal as Mikhail Voskresensky threw himself into the fray with fearless abandon ,creating an orchestral sound of Philadelphian proportions .This contrasted with the gossamer lightness ,almost without pedal, of the beautiful lyrical central episode where the music was allowed to speak for itself. Helped of course by a very discreet artistic underlining of certain poignant harmonic moments before the return of the burning hot cauldron that was just waiting to erupt again. Beautiful long lines of string quartet richness in the second episode always allowing the music to flow and unwind with such unfettered simplicity .There was a spiky brilliance to the first Intermezzo and a driving sweep to the second.Knotty contrapuntal meanderings were played with a clarity and sense of line that at last made sense of Schumann’s searching of a way back to the opening mellifluous outpouring.

The third episode was more orchestral than the usual note picking precision we are used to. Great clusters of moving harmonies with the triplet figurations merely an accompaniment but that are so often played the other way around and given a musically unjust prominence. He gave a glorious sweep to the central episode with the sumptuous melodic outpouring of expansive long lines and the deep bass notes just opening up the sound and creating a luxuriant wave of sound on which the melodic line emerges with searing romantic intensity.The ‘noch schneller ‘ opened the door for a mighty accelerando of emotional intensity bursting into flames with enormous sonorities and a wild abandon that even in a pianist half the age of our noble pianist would have been breathtaking . There was a simplicity to the string quartet sound of the ‘sehr langsam’ and a simple innocuous purity to the ‘bewegter’.

The fifth episode showed a clarity and rhythmic drive with a passionate outpouring of melody surrounded by pointed counterpoints .There was nobility to the central episode with its driving forward movement and passionate climax only to gradually disappear to a measured whisper. Simplicity and clarity of the melodic line of the ‘sehr langsam’ with its great rhetorical outburst was to dissolve to a heart rending ‘berceuse’ of ravishing whispered beauty. Breathtaking was the only word one could use for the seventh as we were plunged into a wild frenzy of exhilarating declarations and a tour de force of fast moving figurations played at breakneck speed of daring virtuosity.There was an unusual architectural shape to the illusive eighth episode with the deep whispered sonorous left hand and the whimsical playfulness of the right .A romantic sweep to the first episode and an explosion of passionate cries with the second ‘mit aller Kraft’ where the enormous sonorities that Mikhail found were without any hardness but filled with a glorious sumptuous richness and was the true climax of these eight pictures that he had painted with such loving intensity.The syncopated bass contrasted with the whimsical playfulness of the right as it disappeared into the bass of the piano never to re emerge .

Returning fresh and invigorated from this early morning preamble he offered as an encore the Gluck /Sgambati Orfeo that was played with the same great line and sumptuous sounds that we had been treated to all morning by this great artist

Still bursting with energy Mikhail Voskresensky was able with a few well chosen words and theatrical demonstrations to show that music must be created and given character and meaning.’Words without thought no more to heaven go’ Boulanger would quote to us at her masterclasses at the RAM many years ago .It was the same message from this great musician where in just a few words he could illuminate the Liszt Sonata to a very fine Hungarian student Marcell Vadja.

Taking music from being earthbound and giving it a magical life of its own.The opening pages of the Liszt Sonata rather than talking about notes and notation he demonstrated the fearsome cries of Mephistopheles and the gasps that on the page seem merely like scales and accents.He showed what it means to turn black and white into multi colours and how to turn them into drama. How to make Margherita fall passionately in love and to turn music on the printed page into a magic world of dreams.’ Je sens .je joue,je trasmets ‘

A passionate plea for Medtner too pointing out that he was German spending most of his life in England but always with Russia in his heart . Every one of his works is a masterpiece of construction and he showed Lan Hu ,a very fine student of Dina Parakhina, how to differentiate between the melodic line and the myriad of notes that are mere accompaniment. Gilels was the first major figure to play Medtner in 1952 just a year after his death in England ,when he was one of the first to perform the sonata in G minor . I have often described Medtner as being Rachmaninov without the melodies but how wrong I was as the melody is there for those with the artistic sensibility and technical mastery to find it and to allow the celestial angels to sing unimpeded.

A remarkable lesson from a Master who in a few well chosen words with humility and humanity could ignite and inspire these well trained young musicians and show them the beauty that lies in the world of fantasy and artistry that lies beyond the printed page and awaits with a kiss to be awakened.

Here is some information about the theatre in Rome that became a cultural haven for some of the greatest musicians of our time

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/03/20/christopher-axworthy-dip-ram-aram/

Sherri Lun

A twenty year old pianist with a curriculum that would be the pride and joy of someone twice Sherri Lun’s age and who is already in her third year at the RAM under the expert guidance of Christopher Elton .
Her pedigree shone through from the very first notes of her KT presentation recital with a Bach Toccata of absolute clarity and chiselled beauty.Knotty twine that she unraveled to reveal Bach’s early genial invention.

Schubert’s great C minor Sonata was the centre piece for this hour long recital on the magnificent Steinway D that is only to be found in the true home of those magnificent instruments in London. Schubert in Beethovenian mood played with dynamic drive and moments of sublime beauty . Schubert tried hard to be tempestuous and imperious like Beethoven in C minor but his seemless mellifluous outpourings always appear even in stormy weather .Rays of light that Sherri played with disarming simplicity and under Elton’s (Christopher not John!) it was of sterling musicianship ,style and above all an architectural shape that gave strength to a masterwork that was to be part of the composers untimely ‘swansong’ .

But it was Cesar Franck that ignited Sherri’s imagination and unlocked a kaleidoscope of colour that she had kept hidden behind her masterly respect for the monumental giants that preceded it .
Playing now with passionate abandon and bathed in pedal she showed us what Anton Rubinstein meant when he described the pedal as the soul of the piano.Masterly playing nowhere more than in the chorale where the chords unwound with golden streams of sounds leading to the beacons that shone at it extremities.A fugue that was bathed in the fantasy that she denied herself in Bach and here was overwhelming in its impact as she played with mastery and passionate abandon.

Fireworks indeed as Sherri unleashed her unabashed passionate abandon on a hall of very distinguished guests who come to these recitals of the Keyboard Trust knowing that ‘trust’ is the key word when great talent is on show.

And the real fireworks Sherri saved for the encore where the luminosity of La Marseillese shone out with purity, glowing as it arose out of the embers of the astonishing display that Debussy could conjure up almost outdoing Ravel for pianistic exertions of a serious kind!

A conversation in public revealed a charming young lady with a massive talent as she described how she had started playing the piano at four and the viola at five.Coming from a family of professional people ,not musicians, she had been touched by a magic spark that must have been lurking in her genes .

Both parents were in the audience and have transferred to London to share their life with their only child.

Discussions over a glass or two of Prosecco together with her teacher Christopher Elton reveal one of the few teachers who have a passion for sharing music with others and that at 80 ( he celebrates in Brighton with his son on Sunday ) after a days teaching at the RAM he still has the energy to listen and support his students in their concert appearances .Deep in discussion with the distinguished film director Tony Palmer between each piece , it just shows that real passion has no age limit .Sherri is not only very talented but very lucky to have found someone who can nurture her talent and allow it to blossom as Gordon Green had done for Christopher and I over half a century ago!

 ‘2020 Performing Artist of the Year’
South China Morning Post

Bach Toccata in G major, BWV 916

1. Presto
2. Adagio
3. Allegro (Fuga)

Schubert Sonata in C minor, D. 958

1. Allegro (C minor)
2. Adagio (A♭ major)
3. Menuetto. Allegro — Trio (C minor)
4. Allegro (C minor)

Franck Prelude Chorale and Fugue in B minor, FWV 21

Steinway Hall
44 Marylebone Lane London W 1U2 DB

Wednesday, 24 April 2024, 6.30pm

Named ‘2020 Performing Artist of the Year’ by the South China Morning Post, 20-year-old Sherri Lun majored in piano and viola as a junior student at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She is currently studying with Prof. Christopher Elton at the Royal Academy of Music with a full scholarship supported by the Academy and the Hong Kong Scholarship for Excellence Scheme.

In 2013, Sherri was selected as a Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. After her concerto debut with the Midwest Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival at age 11, she was invited to perform again at Ravinia the following year, as well as in Millennium Park (Chicago) and at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris), followed by collaborations with the Salzburg Chamber Soloists, Hong Kong Youth Orchestra and the Kölner Kammerorchester.

Sherri has participated in festivals including Oxford, Pianale, Frost Chopin, Beijing International and the Summer Academy at the Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg. Still in her second year at the RAM, Sherri has won the Sterndale Bennett Prize and the 2023 Chung Nung Lee Prize. She has also been invited to perform in both the Academy’s autumn and summer piano festivals, the Bicentenary Chamber Festival and the Bicentenary celebration concert at Wigmore Hall.

Sherri is also a prize-winner in multiple international competitions including the Robert Schumann Competition (Düsseldorf), Zhuhai Mozart, ASEAN Chopin, Singapore and Steinway & Sons Youth. She was also a semi-finalist in the Aarhus International Piano Competition. In Hong Kong, she won numerous competitions and one of her performances was broadcast by Radio Television Hong Kong. In 2017, Sherri was awarded the ‘Highest Scorer of the Year’ prize by Trinity College London for her LTCL recital. Most recently, she undertook a four-recital tour in Malaysia, and released her debut CD, ‘Romantic Reveries’ on the KNS Classical label, featuring works by Schumann and Franck. As an active chamber musician, she regularly performs with the Adatto Piano Quartet and with orchestras as a violist.

Tuesday 23 April 2.00 pm 

It was from the very first notes that Magdalene Ho drew us in to her secret world with the simple beauty of the opening of the Sonata that Beethoven was to write only four years after the tempestuous ‘Appassionata’ Sonata. During this time he had composed one masterpiece after another: the fourth, fifth and sixth symphonies; the fourth and fifth piano concertos; the violin concerto; the Razumovsky string quartets; and the triple concerto. It was as though Beethoven’s deafness and the invasion of Vienna had opened a secret door to the paradise that surely must exist and was to express itself so poignantly in the final trilogy a few years later.

It was a secret world that Magdalene had found the key to as she immersed herself in sounds that enveloped all she did in this short but very intense recital.Almost not wishing to acknowledge the applause after each piece as she was intent on creating an intimate and deep contemplation where there was just her and the music,nothing else existed.The Beethoven Sonata was played with scrupulous attention to the composers very precise instructions.Rests that became as poignant as the meaning she gave to the beautifully shaped phrases.There was a richness to the chords too which contrasted so well with Beethoven’s continuous questions and answers. There was even more luminosity to the melodic line on its return and it with typical Beethovenian impatience that she attacked the ‘Allegro vivace’ that follows. Once again her scrupulous attention to detail and Beethoven’s very precise pedal instructions gave overwhelming authority to this rather capricious movement.The suddenly legato chords of the coda brought a calming spirit to Beethoven’s whimsy and the two beautifully placed chords ‘piano’ and ‘pianissimo’ made Beethoven’s impatience even more of a surprise as with a flourish we were swept away to the final brilliance of the ending.

There was a poignant beauty to the Fauré 6th Nocturne where Magdalene’s superb sense of balance allowed the melodic line to be sustained by the extraordinarily rich bass harmonies.There was a fluidity and luminosity of searing intensity and a maturity way beyond Magdalene’s twenty years.The syncopated episode was indeed ‘molto moderato’ and although I am used to hearing it more ‘Allegretto’ ,in her poetic hands it was so full of deeply felt meaning that it was totally convincing as the tenor voice conversed with the melodic line. There was ravishing beauty as waves of sound allowed a melodic line of wistful beauty to shine unimpeded as it gradually built to the mighty entry of the bass which was breathtaking for its extraordinary depth of sound. This was a tone poem and a sound world that Magdalene understood and conveyed with conviction and a mature sense of fantasy that was truly hypnotic.The 8th Nocturne almost a ‘ pas sur la neige’ with its melodic line of bare essentials was of extraordinary poignancy and depth.It was played with a superb sense of line and balance with a truly haunting ending leading without a break into Fauré’s last great masterpiece for piano ,the Nocturne n.13 in B minor.

A sound world not easy to infiltrate but it is inspiring that this young musician should play it with real mastery and understanding in the composers centenary year.It is a unique world of contrapuntal intensity with sudden rays of light and streams of melodic outpourings of passionate intensity.Magdalene has a wonderful sense of legato where there is a seemless mellifluousness of richly desolate counterpoints and jets of jeux perlé that seem to flow from her fingers like water from a spring.

I was brought up with Perlemuter’s performances of Fauré. He insisted that I tell the public in a recital in Rome that the nocturnes by Fauré that he was playing were those that Fauré ,the Director of the Paris Conservatoire,in whose house he was living ,were sent down to him to try out with the ink still wet on the page.Perlemuter could not abide any sickly rubato or weak fussy playing as was so often the case with the so called Chopin tradition still rampant.He, like Magdalene today presented a Fauré of aristocratic nobility and originality where the sentiments are deeply imbedded within the notes and not just applied on the surface!

In Brahms she brought a burning intensity to the opening Capriccio with a technical mastery and an extraordinary self identification that created and electric energy driving her forward with ever more intensity.There was the pleading of the Intermezzo in A minor with its simple heart rending beauty etched in golden sounds of wondrous purity where cascades of barely whispered sounds just illuminated this wondrous landscape.The Capriccio in G minor followed with its continuous stream of notes at boiling pitch and its sumptuous central episode of sounds of orchestral richness.A disarming simplicity to the questioning and answering of the Intermezzo in E was reconciled with radiance and a kaleidoscope of sounds of glittering beauty like jewels falling from on high to some magic landscape.There was a ghostly apparition of whispered driven gasps in the intermezzo in E minor evolving to a driving intensity as the sombre beauty of the Intermezzo in E brought the sumptuous beauty of a tenor voice answered by gently majestic chords .Blossoming into radiance with long sumptuous melodic lines passing from tenor to soprano before the clouds appeared once again.Springing to life with the final Capriccio in D minor of great romantic sweep played with superb clarity and dynamic technical mastery.

A wonderful recital where Magdalene’s searing intensity and passionate commitment were shared with an audience who were kept spellbound by her genial delving into a magic world of sounds.

It was the fourteenth dance from ‘Davidsbundlertanze’ by Schumann, played as an encore,that relieved the tension and concentration with a performance of beauty and simplicity which created the magic that only a true poet of the piano could ever aspire to.

Malaysian pianist  Magdalene Ho  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. She has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the Royal College of Music since September 2022, where she is a Dasha Shenkman Scholar supported by the Gordon Calway Stone Scholarship, and by the Weir Award via the Keyboard Charitable Trust. She recently won the Chappell Gold Medal at the RCM

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/11/08/magdalene-ho-the-genial-clara-haskil-winner-at-19-takes-leighton-house-by-storm/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/02/28/magdalene-ho-in-florence-and-milan-the-exquisite-finesse-and-noble-style-of-a-musical-genius/

Fauré’s major sets of piano works are thirteen nocturnes , thirteen barcarolles , six impromptus , and four valses-caprices. These sets were composed during several decades in his long career, and display the change in his style from uncomplicated youthful charm to a final enigmatic, but sometimes fiery introspection, by way of a turbulent period in his middle years. His other notable piano pieces, including shorter works, or collections composed or published as a set, are Romances sans paroles, Ballade  in F♯ major, Mazurka  in B♭ major, Thème et variations in C♯ minor, and Huit pièces brèves. For piano duet, Fauré composed the Dolly Suite and, together with his friend and former pupil André Messager , an exuberant parody of Wagner in the short suite Souvenirs de Bayreuth.Fauré’s stylistic evolution can be observed in his works for piano from the elegant and captivating first pieces, which made the composer famous and show the influence of Chopin, Saint-Saëns, and Liszt. The lyricism and complexity of his style in the 1890s are evident in the Nocturnes nos. 6 and 7, the Barcarolle no. 5 and the Thème et variations. Finally, the unadorned ,essential style of the final period of the last nocturnes (nos.10–13), the series of great barcarolles (nos. 8–11) and the astonishing Impromptu no. 5. Fauré scholars are generally agreed that the last nocturne n. 13 in B minor – which was the last work he wrote for the piano – is among the greatest of the set. Nectoux writes that along with the sixth, it is “incontestably the most moving and inspired of the series.”Bricard calls it “the most inspired and beautiful in the series.”For Pinkas, the work “achieves a perfect equilibrium between late-style simplicity and full-textured passionate expression.”The work opens in a “pure, almost rarefied atmosphere” (Nectoux), with a “tone of noble, gentle supplication … imposing gravity and … rich expressive four part writing.”This is followed by an allegro, “a true middle section in a virtuoso manner, ending in a bang” (Pinkas).The repeat of the opening section completes the work.The eleventh nocturne was written in memory of Noémi Lalo; her widower, Pierre Lalo , was a music critic and a friend and supporter of Fauré and its funereal effect of tolling bells may also reflect the composer’s own state of anguish, with deafness encroaching.The melodic line is simple and restrained, and except for a passionate section near the end is generally quiet and elegiac.The sixth nocturne, dedicated to Eugène d’Eichthal, is widely held to be one of the finest of the series. Cortot said, “There are few pages in all music comparable to these.” It is among the most rich and eloquent of all Fauré’s piano works and one of the most passionate and moving works in piano literature. Fauré wrote it after a six-year break from composing for the piano.Copland wrote that it was with this work that Fauré first fully emerged from the shadow of Chopin,

Johannes Brahms presumably wrote the Fantasies op. 116 at the same time as the Intermezzi op. 117 in the summer of 1892 in Bad Ischl. His sojourn in the Salzkammergut obviously inspired Brahms to write music for solo piano, as a year later he worked on other cycles when he was there. Amongst these late melancholy piano pieces, op. 116 is in particular characterised by opposites. Four “dreamy” intermezzi according to Clara Schumann are juxtaposed with three “deeply passionate” capricci. 

After an early focus on works for solo piano, including the three sonatas that Robert Schumann described as “veiled symphonies,” Brahms tended to employ his chosen instrument, the piano, in collaborative works, producing a variety of duo sonatas (with violin, cello, and clarinet), piano trios, piano quartets, and one piano quintet, as well as two more trios (one with horn and one with clarinet). His final efforts for solo keyboard were published in four sets of shorter works (Opp. 116-119), which appeared between 1891 and 1893.

These four sets of late solo piano pieces are all in effect abstract instrumental songs, though unfailingly idiomatic. (So much so, that he abandoned his attempt to orchestrate the immediately popular Intermezzo, Op. 117, No. 1.) All are in the A-B-A song form typical of character pieces and are as highly concentrated as his greatest songs.

Only the first of these groups (Op. 116) has a continuity that argues for continuous performance. The probable dedicatee of these works, Clara Schumann , with whom Brahms had a rather complicated relationship, praised them as “a true source of enjoyment, everything, poetry, passion, rapture, intimacy, full of the most marvellous effects”.

The Piano Sonata No. 24 Op. 78, nicknamed “à Thérèse” (because it was written for Countess Thérèse von Brunswick was written in 1809.

The second movement is a variation to the ending of the popular patriots song “Rule Brittania!”

According to Carl Czerny, Beethoven himself singled out this sonata and the “Appassionata “ as favourites together with the later ‘Hammerklavier”. After a pause of four years, Beethoven returned to the piano sonata genre in 1809. Unlike its predecessor, the f-minor Sonata op. 57 (the “Appassionata”), this work strikes a new and lyrically cantabile tone that must have been the reason for its tradition-breaking two-movement structure; a slow middle movement would not have provided the necessary contrast to the outer ones. Just as unusual as the general character of opus 78 is its four bar Adagio introduction; this does not directly refer to the subsequent motifs and themes, and serves no other purpose than to “conjure up the atmosphere of the entire sonata in our hearts” (Hugo Riemann).

An hour of superb music making this afternoon in Ealing. Sasha Grynyuk playing Mozart Fantasia in C minor with refined poetic insight,a Wanderer fantasy of dynamic drive and architectural understanding but it was Gaspard de la Nuit that astonished for its total mastery and kaleidoscopic sense of colour.

There was an imperious opening to the Fantasia but combined with great tenderness .The startling contrasts were played with disarming simplicity but always with a menacing twist in the tail as this great drama was played out in an absolutely operatic way. In Sasha’s poetic hands one could envisage the drama unfolding as there was an overall sound even where Mozart writes ‘forte’ and then sudden ‘piano’ and the added gasps of ‘fp’ . Sounds that were always in the context of the personages acting on stage and conversing with one another in an age of civilised mutual anticipation.A piano – Rogers – that at first glance one might have thought not possible to bring so vividly to life ,but its almost fortepiano sound lent much to the music like a beautiful but faded photo with its mellow unpercussive sound.

The Allegro burst onto the scene with dynamic drive with Sasha always keeping the sound under control where the contrasts and rhythmic drive were of more importance than the beauty of the voice that he might have given us on a different instrument. Playing of impeccable style and authoritative musicianship it was the ‘Più Allegro’ that truly ignited the piano with sumptuous rich orchestral sounds of dynamic drive and clarity.The ‘recitativi’ were pure opera as the voices conversed , punctuated only by the comments from the ‘tutti’.The return of the opening was like re visiting a distant landscape, which after a brief reminder took flight as Mozart paved the way so dramatically to the Sonata that it precedes.

The mighty ‘Wanderer Fantasie’ ,too,one might have thought too full of notes for this piano .It is often given to advanced students with the precise goal of acquiring a classical technique.Together with Brahms’ Handel and Beethoven 32 variations the Schubert is one of those works where Delius’s remark about Beethoven being all scales and arpeggios might apply to this most Beethovenian of all Schubert’s piano works. It was Sviatoslav Richer,by many considered one of the finest pianists of all time,who enjoyed the challenge of trying to find the ‘soul’ of unknown pianos that he was to find on his whistle stop tours of desolate towns spread all over Russia.Later of course as a great celebrity he always found magnificent pianos awaiting in the greatest concert halls throughout the world.Later in life Yamaha offered to follow him around together with two technicians wherever he chose to go. But it was the search for sound on unknown instruments that ignited his unique musicianship.An Enigma indeed he was.

It was the same today for Sasha because as the concert progressed the secrets of the instrument were gradually revealed and incorporated into a creative musicianship that could still bring the music vividly to life without any comparisons. It was the orchestral sounds that opened the ‘Wanderer’ that were played with burning intensity as Sasha could now reveal the true nobility of this remarkable work.There was an architectural shape and sweep to the genial transformation of themes, that was to be the inspiration for Liszt and later for his son in law,Richard Wagner. It was the Adagio – ‘The Wanderer’ – that Sasha gave a truly orchestra fullness too with its quartet richness where every strand was of vital importance.The variations that followed were of chameleonic character from the gentle weaving of the first to the explosive second and the ravishing mellifluous beauty of the third .The gently cascading embellishements of the last were transformed into such a typically Beethovenian tempest .A true eruption played by Sasha with astonishing control and virtuosity but above all the sense of balance of a conductor who is listening to the whole and steering us through the maze of notes with intelligence and clarity of vision.There was the rich embroidery of the Scherzo that after the beseeching innocence and questioning beauty of the Trio was to erupt with cascades of notes and driving rhythms leaving us breathless at the foot of the mighty final Fugato. Nobility and dynamic drive were allied to passion and orchestral colours that Sasha played with unrelenting conviction and artistry. His scrupulous attention to the detail in the score allowed the music to rise and fall as the composer has very meticulously indicated. A mighty work restored to greatness as indeed Richter did many years ago with his landmark recording in collaboration with the musicologist Paul Badura Skoda,taking the music as a vehicle for an apprentice and giving it back into the hands of a great artist.

Ravel was obsessed with the mechanics of piano playing and set out to write a work that would outshine even Balakirev’s Islamey for technical difficulty (you will find Sasha’s performance of Islamey in this link to the performance he gave at the National Liberal Club to celebrate 30 years of the Keyboard Trust of which he is a distinguished member https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/06/02/the-gift-of-music-the-keyboard-trust-at-30/)

This was a performance of great clarity where all three episodes were united like a Sonata into a unified whole in a way where even the lack of multi colours on this instrument allowed a much clearer musical line. It certainly did not mean that it lacked character, atmosphere or drive and it was actually one of the finest performances that I have heard for a long time. It was the great ‘old’ school of Perlemuter or Tagliaferro who would show us ,with the ‘weight’ of their true deep legato, a line clearly defined ,never allowing fussy detail to cloud the overall vision.This was in a way the performance that Sasha gave us today.There were of course the enormous number of notes that were played with remarkable mastery but there was a clarity of line that made ‘Ondine’ immediately so enticing. A sparkling brilliance as this water nymph splashed her way in and out of the water that Sasha created with fluidity and luminosity. We were not aware of the remarkable technical hurdles as the music flowed constantly forward like the water it was depicting.The massive climax was played with a clarity ,where the musical line was surrounded by clouds of notes,without any slowing or muddying of the texture.There was a haunting beauty to ‘Le Gibet’ with its insistent bell tolling in Sasha’s hands with continuous almost robotic insistence as the arid landscape was revealed with the delicacy of this devastating atmosphere.’Scarbo’ of course just erupted as this impish gnome got up to his devilish antics. and the composer too adding passages of transcendental difficulty for the pianist, that Sasha played with enviable precision and unrelenting drive.Remarkable how in the depths of the piano there was the desperation of a melodic line of such purity with the wind howling all around as the impish demon escaped to create even more havoc until disappearing like magic into thin air from where he had first appeared.

Fantasia No. 4 in C minor, K. 475 was composed by Mozart  in Vienna on 20 May 1785 and was published as Opus 11, in December 1785, together with the Sonata in C minor K.457, the only one of Mozart’s piano sonatas to be published together with a work of a different genre.

This astonishing Fantasia is probably one of Mozart’s most innovative compositions for solo keyboard. It was composed for Therese Trattner  (1758–1793), and published by Artaria  in Vienna towards the end of 1785, alongside the Piano Sonata in C minor K.457.

Therese (born Maria Theresia) Trattner was the daughter of the court mathematician Joseph Anton Nagel. In 1776, she married the widowed Johann Thomas Trattner, a Vienna publisher and bookseller that Mozart knew well. After Mozart settled in Vienna in 1781, Therese Trattner became one of his first piano students, and surely one of the most talented, she remained so until the composer’s death. In 1784, the Mozarts lived in Trattner’s house on the Graben in Vienna. Well connected in Viennese society, Therese Trattner helped him to organise three subscription concerts here, at which the Piano concertos were performed and which further promoted his reputation as a piano virtuoso in Vienna. She also gave concerts (“academies”) herself in her flat in the Trattnerhof, at which Mozart was present.

Although published together Fantasia K.475 and Sonata K.457 were conceived independently: the rediscovery of the autograph of the two works confirms this.

The Fantasie in C major, Op. 15 ( D.760), popularly known as the Wanderer Fantasy, is a four-movement fantasy for solo piano composed by Schubert in 1822 when only 25 in a life that was tragically cut short by the age of 31.It is widely considered his most technically demanding composition for the piano and Schubert himself said “the devil may play it,” in reference to his own inability to do so properly.The whole work is based on one single basic motif from which all themes are developed. This motif is distilled from the theme of the second movement, which is a sequence of variations on a melody taken from the lied “Der Wanderer”, which Schubert wrote in 1816. It is from this that the work’s popular name is derived.The four movements are played without a break. After the first movement Allegro con fuoco ma non troppo in C major and the second movement Adagio (which begins in C-sharp minor and ends in E major), follow a scherzo presto in A-flat major and the technically transcendental finale, which starts in fugato returning to the key of C major and becomes more and more virtuosic as it moves toward its thunderous conclusion.Liszt was fascinated by the Wanderer Fantasy, transcribing it for piano and orchestra (S.366) and two pianos (S.653). He additionally edited the original score and added some various interpretations in ossia and made a complete rearrangement of the final movement (S.565a).I remember a recent lesson I had listened to of Elisso Virsaladze in which I was struck by the vehemence of the Wanderer Fantasy and the ragged corners that we are more used to in a Beethoven almost twice Schubert’s age .It made me wonder about the maturity of the 25 year old Schubert and could he have had a premonition that his life was to be curtailed only six years later.We are used to the mellifluous Schubert of rounded corners and seemless streams of melodic invention.But surely in the final three sonatas written in the last months of his life the A major and C minor start with a call to arms and only in the last B flat sonata do we arrive at the peace and tranquility that Beethoven was to find too in his last sonata.But the deep rumblings in the bass in Schubert’s last sonata give food for thought that his life was not all sweetness and light.I remember Richter’s long tribulation in the recording studio to put on record as near definitive version as possible of the Wanderer Fantasy with the help of the pianist and musicologist Paul Badura Skoda.

Gaspard de la nuit (subtitled Trois poèmes pour piano d’après Aloysius Bertrand), M.55 was written in 1908. It has three movements , each based on a poem or fantaisie from the collection Gaspard de la Nuit – Fantasies à la manière de Rembrandt e de Callot completed in 1836 by Aloysius Bertrand . The work was premiered in Paris, on January 9, 1909, by Ricardo Vines.

The piece is famous for its difficulty, partly because Ravel intended the Scarbo movement to be more difficult than Balakirev’s Islamey . Because of its technical challenges and profound musical structure, Scarbo is considered one of the most difficult solo piano pieces in the standard repertoire.

The name “Gaspard ” is derived from its original Persian form, denoting “the man in charge of the royal treasures”: “Gaspard of the Night” or the treasurer of the night thus creates allusions to someone in charge of all that is jewel-like, dark, mysterious, perhaps even morose.

Of the work, Ravel himself said: “Gaspard has been a devil in coming, but that is only logical since it was he who is the author of the poems. My ambition is to say with notes what a poet expresses with words.”

Aloysius Bertrand , author of Gaspard de la Nuit (1842), introduces his collection by attributing them to a mysterious old man met in a park in Dijon , who lent him the book. When he goes in search of M. Gaspard to return the volume, he asks, “ ’Tell me where M. Gaspard de la Nuit may be found.’ ‘He is in hell, provided that he isn’t somewhere else’, comes the reply. ‘Ah! I am beginning to understand! What! Gaspard de la Nuit must be…?’ the poet continues. ‘Ah! Yes… the devil!’ his informant responds. ‘Thank you, mon brave!… If Gaspard de la Nuit is in hell, may he roast there. I shall publish his book.’ ”

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/07/11/sasha-grynyuk-anniversary-recital-of-a-great-pianist-in-perivale/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/06/10/sasha-grynyuk-at-cranleigh-arts-for-ukraine-joint-fundraiser-for-the-disasters-emergency-committee-and-cranleigh-arts/

And afterwards a birthday celebration for the founder of the Keyboard Trust,John Leech,now entering his 100th year and proud to have established a Trust as a present for his wife Noretta Conci in order to continue her work in helping young artists reach their goal.Sasha just such an artist,still plays every week for Noretta a former assistant to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Tonight is the night and what a night it was with the two divas unexpectedly confronting each other in the Green Room as La Duse is about to appear to a sold out house .

The ghost of Sarah Bernhardt appears and Duse ,the only one that can see her as they unexpectedly share the star dressing room.
Duse at that point tells the theatre manager that she will no longer cancel her performance but egged on by Sarah she will show the public who is the Queen of the boards
Just three people on stage ,the two divas and their manager playing many roles throughout the evening as the dramatic confrontation plays itself out.

The scintillating Bernhardt of Wendy Morgan is contrasted by the morose intensity of Cynthia Straus as Duse.Nick Waring ,a man of many parts,manages to console and appease the two sparing Divas and is infact the hero of the evening.

A bare minimum of things on stage so it is the bravura of the actors that brings this play to life with intensity,wit and imagination.I remember seeing another ‘Duet’ many years ago in west London at the Shepherds Bush Theatre Upstairs.It was a ‘Duet for One ‘ with the dramatic confrontation of Jaqueline Du Pre and her doctor as she tried to come to terms with multiple sclerosis.It went on to be seen on many of the major stages in the world and I would not be surprised to see this Duet take wing as well.Bedford Park once again the cultural haven that it used to be with just this week a scintillating new theatre production in the Tabard Theratre and just over the road a few days ago at St Michaels and all Angels a magnificent recital by one of the finest pianists of his generation.Who knows what the annual Bedford Park Festival will hold in store in June.
Mark Viner at St Michael and All Angels bringing mastery and discovery to Chiswick https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/04/18/mark-viner-at-st-michael-and-all-angels-bringing-mastery-and-discovery-to-chiswick/

Superb playing on home ground for one of the finest but most neglected pianists of his generation.Having already many CD’s with five star reviews to his name here he was tonight in the beautiful church in Bedford Park where he also serves.

Liszt and Alkan were both fervent believers and it is in their works that this master pianist excels. However his programme tonight opened with two declared atheists with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque.Both were played with impeccable style and intelligence but it was Alkan ‘s ‘Chant d’Amour’ , ‘Le tambour’ and Liszt’s ‘Vallée d’Obermann’ that truly ignited the atmosphere as Mark entered a Romantic world of questioning ,doubt and passionate acceptance.

The first work was the so called ‘Moonlight’ Sonata which was a name penned by the publisher to help boost sales.It has become one of the most instantly recognisable of Beethoven’s 32 Sonatas as the first movement is seemingly easier than his others .It became essential fodder for most aspiring amateur pianists back in the days when the aspedestra and upright piano would reign in the front living room where now sits a giant TV screen!

An unusual church beautifully maintained ,with its elegant pastel colours and rich altar dressings,and that is situated at the foot of the first London garden suburb of Bedford Park.I was brought up here and spent the first twenty five years of my life in Flanders road opposite and I remember very well passing everyday the ‘Tabard’ pub and ‘Mulliners’ the car restorer of Bentley cars ,that stood next to it.

I also heard many great pianists play for the Fayrfax concert society that gave concerts in Chiswick Polytechnic. David Carhart would regularly play concertos with the Chiswick Music Centre Orchestra .I remember the one and only time hearing the Rimsky Korsyakov Concerto from his hands and seeing Harry Isaacs,his illustrious much loved Professor from the Royal Academy, disappear into the Tabard afterwards with his students who included the since renowned accompanist and musicologist Graham Johnson.The Fayrfax included pianists such as Peter Katin,Moura Lympany ,Louis Kentner,Iso Elinson ,Joseph Cooper,Gerald Moore and Sidney Harrison himself who presided over this club with his wife Sydney.

Sidney was eventually to move from Hartington Road (where he lived next to Eamon Andrews of ‘Crackerjack’ and ‘This is your life’ fame) to the Avenue just a stones throw from this magnificent edifice.He was the first person to give piano lessons on television at a time when there was only one channel that broadcast for a few hours each day. Neighbours lucky enough to have a television (that was a large box with a giant magnifying glass ) would invite people in to tune in to see how Peter Croser or Norma Fisher were progressing with their lessons. My mother took me to have lessons with Sidney Harrison who became my mentor and father figure. He took my musical education into hand by taking me to the opera and concerts as well as training me to enter the Royal Academy where I was to continue my studies with him and his great friend and colleague Gordon Green. Eventually proud to see me win the MacFarren Gold Medal,the highest award at the Academy.After my studies in Paris and Rome I came back to reality and began teaching thanks to David Carhart at the Chiswick Music Centre.It had now moved to the top of Belmont School and it fast became part of the West London College of Higher Education by the river in Twickenham.I did though have some private students some of whom were the children of illustrious celebrities living in Bedford Park.Lucy Taylor was my very first pupil and was the daughter of Don Taylor ( who wrote the Exorcist ) and his wife ,Ellen, even more well known as a television playwright .Her best friends were the children of Michael Flanders ,of Flanders and Swan fame.Stephanie and her sister came to me brought by Claudia who was by then the widow of this famous personage .Stephanie was the only pupil whose claim to fame was to fail Grade one piano.Her head was elsewhere ,in economics obviously, as Stephanie Flanders is seen daily on the news talking about the world economic situation.However back to Mark’s wonderful recital .

There was a fluidity that he brought to the opening movement of the Beethoven.It was played in two that allowed the beautifully simple melodic line to float on the wave of the gently flowing accompaniment.A magical sense of balance and architectural shape created exactly the effect that Beethoven would have wanted on pianos of his day that were far less percussive than they later became. Played as Beethoven says ‘senza sordino’ on one string that gives the same etherial effect that Mark created today on an old Bluthner piano ,badly regulated ( as many pianists are wont to bemoan!) but in Mark’s hands became once more an instrument of nobility and pedigree.

There was a lyricism too to the Allegretto and a beautifully shaped Trio of extraordinary style.The Presto agitato of the last movement (which is where most amateur pianists give up in desperation ) was played with dynamic drive and urgency.There was lyricism too and fantasy as he brought the music vividly and beautifully to life. A sense of colour ,helped by the church acoustic, this noble instrument and of course by the artistry of the pianist.There was a unique effect of having heard this work today with the ink still wet on the page.I have often noted that Mark like his great colleague the Liszt expert Leslie Howard,both sit almost motionless as they listen so intently to the sounds they are creating without any superfluous showmanship.Mark is a dedicated musician and his scrupulous attention to the composers indications was immediately apparent from this very first piece.I have never heard the end of the last cadenza played with the three final notes separated by a portamento and it had me hunting in the score for evidence of something I had overlooked ( and most other pianists too ).It brought a poignant calm to the final two Adagio chords before the nostalgia of the coda that is to erupt in typical Beethovenian irascible style.

I do not know the two Alkan works that Mark described first in words and then more importantly in music. Mark is an expert on this composer and President of the Alkan Society having won the International Alkan Competition in Greece a few years ago. Now with numerous CD’s of Alkan’s music to his credit I could just sit back and listen to definitive performances of a composer until recently covered in mystery.Enough said that Alkan was part of those genius musicians Chopin and Liszt who were the true innovators of the modern piano technique.Taking the new inventions in the keyboard instruments of their day as a new lease of life for their compositional invention and poetic fantasy. Chopin on his death bed left his unfinished treatise on piano playing to be finished by his esteemed colleague Alkan.

Two short pieces by Alkan were played with fantasy ,colour and extraordinary virtuosity and was enough to make one want to purchase all the many five star CD’s that were on sale at the door! ‘Chant d’Amour’ was a beautiful lesson in Bel Canto and a tone poem of startling originality. A rare sense of colour and sumptuous golden sounds in the climax with a richness of sound from Mark’s masterly hands.There was a burning intensity to the passionate climax before the return of the nocturnal simplicity of the opening. ‘Le tambour’ was even more remarkable for its extraordinary originality.The bass beating of the drum or was it a heartbeat was played with a driving whispered insistence and showed a remarkable sense of control as the melodic line is gradually floated above it. Opening up to passages of startling virtuosity and excitement before returning to the ever present beating with which it had started. Another miniature tone poem played with total conviction and commitment by a master who the world still has to wake up and discover and to appreciate fully. Mark is similar to Graham Johnson who is the expert on Schubert lieder and who is not only a masterly performer but a great writer and researcher of the genius of Schubert and the poets that inspired him.Mark with Alkan has made a study of this unknown composer a life’s mission writing and even more importantly bringing the actual compositions to public notice rather than just reading stale information in history books!

Mark also has time to rethink and bring to life many of the standard works of the piano repertoire where tradition has brought too great a distance between the composers wishes and a rather more personal view of interpreters of the past .It was just such a point with the most famous of all Chopin’s Polonaises – the Polonaise Héroique – and the emblem for Poland’s independence.It was played with great clarity and after the imperious opening the Polonaise theme was allowed to sing with beauty and poignant eloquence as it built up to the climax. Even the infamous left hand octave passages were played like a breeze blowing over the battlefield with the melodic line always to the fore.A wonderful circular movement too in Mark’s left hand was a lesson for all budding virtuosi where Art conceals Art.The beauty he brought to the long melodic episode before the final triumphant climax was helped by the deep bass notes that Mark struck with velvet gloves .It opened up the piano as it allowed an even more sumptuous glow to the meandering beauty of Chopin’s mellifluous outpourings.Where Rubinstein would lift him self up off the seat at the burning intensity of the final bars ,Mark hardly moved but brought the same ( well almost as Rubinstein was quite unique here!) fervent excitement and exhilaration with which he finished the first part of the concert.

Debussy’s unjustly neglected ‘Suite Bergamasque’ as Mark said was a very early work that has very little to do with his later revolutionary compositions where he too brought new possibilities to music for the ever more evolving grand piano .It is interesting to note that he was also editor of all Chopin’s works. Four movements of which the best known and most loved is ‘Clair de lune’ that Mark told us was originally titled ‘Promenade Sentimentale’! All four pieces were played with ravishing colour and delicacy.There was a glowing warmth to the sound in the ‘ Prélude ‘ and a charming grace and infectious lilt to the ‘Menuet’.There was a fluidity and delicacy to ‘Claire de lune’ ,which is another of those pieces that was on the music stand together with Sinding’s ‘Rustle of Spring’. He brought a refreshing simplicity as the music was allowed to unfold with ravishing sounds due to his exquisite sense of balance.There was a continual forward movement to the ‘Passepied’ with its gentle fleeting charm.

The imaginary landscape of ‘Vallée d’Obermann’ was a magnificent way to finish this recital of ‘Something old and Something new’ a phrase that Semprini would use to open his radio programme!

Obermann, an 1804 novel by the French philosopher, Étienne de Senancour, centers around the mediations of a young, melancholy recluse who retreats into the Swiss Alps to probe profound and unsettling questions. The novel unfolds as a series of letters written by Obermann, the ultimate solitary, Romantic hero. Filled with longing, he is both enthralled and mystified by Nature. He asks:

‘What do I wish? What am I? What shall I ask of nature? I feel; I exist only to waste myself in unconquerable longings…Inexpressible sensibility, the charm and the torment of our futile years; vast consciousness of a nature that is everywhere incomprehensible and overwhelming; universal passion, indifference, the higher wisdom, abandonment to pleasure— I have felt and experienced them all.’

Mark told me afterwards that he had not played this work in public for twenty years and could still put me to shame who has played it for fifty! Thanks Mark for that too!! A wonderful performance of orchestral proportions but also of great poetic license as the searching in music was allowed to unfold with disarming simplicity and a kaleidoscope of colour .One could imagine why Liszt and the Countess D’Agoult would search high and low for it during their visit to Switzerland together in their Years of Pilgrimage.Drama and excitement with recitatives of startling virtuosity until the final murmured return of the opening theme with an ever more ecstatic pulsating of the heart until the final explosion of exhilaration .Cascades of octaves of remarkable difficulty especially if one is to keep the melodic line still intact as Mark did with mastery and intelligence.The final dramatic cadence after a silence of searing intensity was a fitting way to close his recital.

An ovation but no more was expected or offered .Mark is a great artist and knows when to stop!

As you may observe I have heard Mark play before ……people might talk says Mark! But the birth of a great artist is a long and difficult road documented in part here in my own poor words .

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2020/11/15/mark-viner-at-st-marys-faustian-struggles-and-promethean-prophesis/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2020/03/12/mark-viner-at-st-marys-2/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2019/03/11/mark-viner-at-st-marys/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2018/05/05/mark-viner-with-the-camerata/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2018/03/03/mark-viner-takes-london-by-storm/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2018/01/18/mark-viner-takes-italy-by-storm/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2017/02/06/mark-viners-voyage-of-discovery/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2016/09/22/viners-norma/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2016/06/04/mark-viner-virtuoso/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2015/12/29/thalberg-goes-to-the-opera-with-mark-viner/