A fascinating and varied programme of ‘something old and something new’. The works of Mendelssohn have been unjustly neglected these days and I remember Murray Perahia playing the Sonata op 106 as part of the programme that brought him to victory and world wide recognition in one of the first Leeds Piano Competitions. Rudolf Serkin too used to regularly include the Preludes and Fugues in his programmes. So it was refreshing to be able to hear the Fantasy in F sharp minor that the 25 year old Mendelssohn penned obviously for his own concerts. It is a work of scintillating brilliance contrasted with a mellifluous outpouring of the sentiment of its time and one that made Mendelssohn a favourite at the court of Queen Victoria. A work in one movement, sometimes known as ‘Sonata Écossaise’, but divided into three episodes like a sonata .The central episode was of a simplicity and charm and the last with a dynamic drive and noble brilliance of beauty and exhilaration. Simone played it with delicacy and subtlety with a jeux perlé of sparkling exuberance and ‘joie se vivre’ as he delved deep into the heartstrings for the melancholic outpourings of Mendelssohn’s genial melodic invention.

The transcription by Moszkowski of the Nocturne from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer night’s dream is a rarity in the concert hall where the Rachmaninov scherzo is more often heard. A beautiful work played by Simone with a chiselled beauty of sumptuous richness and poignant meaning.

The Busoni ‘Berceuse’ I have only heard in the concert hall played by Serkin who combined it with the Toccata. It is a deeply brooding piece with the very particular sound world of Busoni seemingly without any tonal centre and leaving us suspended in an air of uncertainty. I did play it once in Empoli, where Busoni was born, as it was particularly requested by the organisers, and it was very interesting after all these years to hear it again played so beautifully. Simone played it with refined beauty and an architectural line that was very impressive.

It was linked with Busoni’s famous reworking of the Bach ‘Chaconne’. Simone began with a good flowing tempo but allowed the tempo to fluctuate too often and the chords and octaves were played rather without the weight necessary for such a monumental work.Substituting monumental for brilliance in a rather romantic revisitation that in many ways was very beautiful but lacked the overall architectural shape of one of the most important and ingenious works ever written by J.S. Bach.

Rachmaninov’s beautiful D major prelude op 23 was coupled with the monumental Second Sonata in B flat minor op 36.The world of Rachmaninov suited Simone’s sumptuous sound world and romantic temperament.The prelude was enriched with the sonorous accompaniment on which the melody emerged with strength and beauty in a performance of flowing simplicity.

There was passion and a kaleidoscope of colour in the sonata with an architectural shape that linked all three movements into one unified whole of radiant beauty. There were sumptuous rich sounds with an outpouring of notes of exhilaration and excitement. Simone brought his musicianship to bear in a performance that if it did not have the reserves of more animalistic virtuosi it did have the aristocratic musicianship of intelligence and passionate involvement.

Simone Alessandro Tavoni has given recitals internationally across Europe and U.S in venue such the Purcell room, Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, St Martin in the Fields St.John’s Smith Square, Steinway Hall, St.Mary Perivale in London, Liszt Museum in Budapest, Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, the Aarhus concert hall, The Tallin Philarmonia ( Estonia ) and the Florence Conservatory hall. In 2019, Simone has been selected as a Parklane Group Artist, as Keyboard Charitable Trust Artist and received the Luciano and Giancarla Berti full-ride scholarship to attend the Aspen Music Festival and School studying with renowned professor Fabio Bidini.  Graduated at Royal College of Music with professor Andrew Ball, and Simone has recently attained an Artist Diploma at Trinity Laban Conservatoire with professors Deniz Gelenbe and Peter Tuite. He began his musical education in Italy with professor Marco Podesta’ and pursue his studies at the Liszt Academy of Budapest with Dr.Kecskes Balazs and in Germany at the Hochschule fur Musik un Darstellende of Stuttgart with Dr,Peter Nagy. In 2016 was selected for the BBC pathway scheme and he is a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School. He is generously assisted by HSH Dr.Donatus Prince of Hohenzollern.

 

Simone Tavoni triumphs on the Italian tour for the Keyboard Trust – part 1 Florence – part 2 Venice and Padua
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/01/27/simone-tavoni-triumphs-on-the-italian-tour-for-the-keyboard-trust-part-1-florence/

Simone Tavoni at Livorno Classica flying high with poetic reasoning and with Dinosaurs overhead
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/03/24/simone-tavoni-at-livorno-classica-flying-high-with-dinosaurs-with-poetic-reasoning/

Artistic director Nicola Giuliano Tuccia writes :

‘The Guido Agosti Piano Series was born from the desire to honour the piano as a poetic, narrative, and profoundly human instrument in collaboration with the Gala Music Festival, chairman Diego Melfi. This concert series brought exceptional performers to the stage of Sala Sangiorgi in Forlì, in an intimate atmosphere full of charm.

Promoted by the association Forlì Cultura – chaired by Nicolò Giuliano Tuccia – and enriched by the vision of Vice President Chiara Bolognesi, who brought her deep sensitivity to education and the arts, this project shines with passion, youth, and musical poetry.

Each concert has been a small artistic miracle, awakening deep emotions in the hearts of the audience.

Giuseppe Lo Cicero enchanted with a brilliant and varied programme: Chopin’s Polonaise brillante with bold energy, the jazzy elegance of Gershwin, the painted delicacy of Debussy’s Ballade, and the dreamy elegance of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales. A recital that merged virtuosity and charm with natural grace.

Andrei Makarov won the hearts of the audience with his profound and authentic interpretation of Mozart and Chopin. The clarity of his touch and the maturity of his phrasing turned apparent simplicity into pure poetry. A noble pianist with a direct connection to the soul.

Gianluca Faragli tackled a challenging and majestic programme: Ries, Beethoven Op. 22, Chopin’s Scherzo No.1, and the monumental Chaconne by Bach-Busoni. A performance of great dramatic depth and architectural vision, marked by expressive power and commanding presence.

Ekaterina Chebotareva delivered a whirlwind of color and emotion. The fiery spirit of Stravinsky’s Firebird in Agosti’s iconic transcription, the depth of Rachmaninov’s Sonata No.2, the dreamy Estampes by Debussy, and the noble elegance of Beethoven’s Sonata Op.90. An unforgettable evening of passion and sound.

Shunta Morimoto gave us one of the most captivating performances of the series with a high-level program: Bach’s Partita No.4, Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, and Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie. Impeccable technique, tonal imagination, and a rare narrative sense enchanted the entire audience.

This a link to a newly elaborated audio by Andrea Fasano from the video of op 111 from this concert https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zdb2qjgWnA3HyPph_6FxnxjLHy7APc_f/view?usp=drive_web

Guido Agosti (11 August 1901 – 2 June 1989) was an Italian pianist and renowned for his yearly summer course in Siena frequented by all the major musicians of the age.It was on the express wish of Alfredo Casella that Agosti took over his class which he did for the next thirty years.Sounds heard in his studio have never been forgotten.Agosti was born in Forli 1901. He studied piano with Ferruccio Busoni Bruno Mugellini and Filippo Ivaldi and earning his diploma at age 13. He studied counterpoint under Benvenuti and literature at Bologna University. He commenced his professional career as a pianist in 1921. Although he never entirely abandoned concert-giving, nerves made it difficult for him to appear on stage,and he concentrated on teaching. He taught piano at the Venice Conservatoire and at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome.In 1947 he was appointed Professor of piano at the Accademia Chigiana Siena .He also taught at Weimar and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

His notable students include Maria Tipo,Yonty Solomon, Leslie Howard,Hamish Milne,Martin Jones,Ian Munro,Dag Achatz,Raymond Lewenthal,Ursula Oppens,Kun- Woo Paik,Peter Bithell. He made very few recordings; there is a recording of op 110 from the Ghione theatre in Rome together with his recording on his 80th birthday concert in Siena of Debussy preludes .

2024 Season

Forlì pays Homage to Guido Agosti

I was sorry to miss Nina Tichman’s concert in Trapani ,the wonders of which were still echoing around Trapani on my arrival for the 3rd International Piano Competition Domenico Scarlatti .

Luckily Vincenzo Marrone had thought to share such wonders, after the competition final, with the magnificent Politeama Garibaldi in nearby Palermo, thanks to Donatella Sollima, the artistic director of Palermo’s Associazione Siciliana Amici della musica and a fellow jury member of his competition .

A hall, she tells me, that her father used to bring her as a little girl to listen to artists ,who have now passed into legend, such as Rubinstein ,Kempff,Cherkassky and all the greatest musicians of the age .

A miniature Royal Albert Hall, in which one can feel the presence of it’s past glorious history.

Not only past because Donatella has continued the great tradition and this season the hall has resounded to the magic of Arcadi Volodos, Misha Maisky, Martha Argerich and now to close the season Nina Tichman .

What greater gift could there be for a city steeped in history than a performance of the greatest variations ever written for the keyboard : Bach’s mighty ‘Goldberg Variations’.

Eighty five minutes of sublime music, all created on the simplest of ground basses that Nina as an ‘encore’ revealed in all its naked simplicity. This was after listening with baited breath to the beauty of her performance, played without the score ,and with the subtle pianistic perfection of one of the greatest exponents of the almost forgotten Matthay School of extreme sensibility of touch.

The greatest exponents for Uncle Tobbs ( as he was affectionately known) were another two remarkable women pianists : Dame Myra Hess and Dame Moura Lympany.

Listening to such mastery and dedicated musicianship today, Nina Tichman joins their ranks as an equally illustrious exponent of a school where above all the piano is allowed to sing with the same subtlety as the human voice.

A performance of unusual beauty where Nina allowed the variations to unfold with a refined palette of sounds of extraordinary noble expressiveness. Not projecting the music out to us in this vast hall but miraculously drawing us in to share in the wonders that were being created before our very eyes. Sharing these ingenuous variations with a beauty bathed in intelligence and refined good taste as they were never given a hard ungrateful edge. An ornamentation that was so natural that it could almost pass unnoticed such was it part of the world that Nina inhabited today.Even the 16th variation which heralds the half way mark was played with the elegance of a French overture of it’s time. The twenty ninth too usually played as a gymnastic exercise, where many add deep bass notes, but that Nina allowed to speak for itself as being the culmination of all that had gone before. Busoni of course needed to finish with the glory to God on High (and himself) and his edition from the 16th onwards reads like Liszt studies and a Tchaikovskian 1812 finish in glory. Nina played it with the respectful beauty and nobility of the Genius of Köthen .The ‘Quodlibet ‘ where Bach combines two popular tunes unfolded with unusually refined colouring. Out of the absolute silence after the final chord of the Quodlibet the aria was heard wafting into the refined air of the radiance and beauty that had been created by Nina in an hour an half of concentrated mastery.

Evolving , on Bach’s genial ground bass, with a naturalness that would have had Count Kesserling counting sheep that had at last found safety grazing in the bedroom of an insomniac !

It was in 1991 that my great adventure with the Goldbergs began when I managed to persuade the High Priestess of Bach to leave the archives in Oxford and return to the concert hall where she truly belonged. I also managed to persuade Tatyana Nikolaeva to play the same variations a month later and was much criticised for not having more varied programmes! Rosalyn’s was a monumental Bach carved in stone whereas Nikolaeva was of the song and dance of simple people. I include below Rosalyn Tureck’s own fascinating programme notes for her double performance of the Goldbergs in London in 1972, that gave me the courage to ask her to perform again in public.

“Awesome” and “thrilling” ** are two of the adjectives used to describe Nina Tichman´s performances of Claude Debussy. In New York City, Frankfurt and other cities in Europe and the United States she held audiences spellbound with her traversal of the complete works in three evenings and her CDs with this repertoire have been called “because of her exquisite touch – the most beautiful recording of the complete works”.***

Since her debut at the age of seventeen playing Beethoven´s „Emperor Concerto“ Nina Tichman has appeared in the musical centers of the world such as New York´s Carnegie Hall, the Philharmonie in Cologne, the Konzerthaus in Berlin and the Festspielhaus in Salzburg, to name only a few. Acclaimed as “one of the leading pianists of her generation”****, she is at home in repertoire ranging from Frescobaldi to composers writing today, many of whom have entrusted her with world premieres of their compositions. Her discography includes music by Bartók, Beethoven, Copland (complete), Chopin, Corigliano, Debussy, Fauré, V.D. Kirchner, Krenek, Mendelssohn, Penderecki, und Reger.  Her recording of the Complete Piano Works was hailed as a milestone in Debussy interpretation.

American born, Nina Tichman has been based in Europe since winning the prestigious “Busoni” Competition. Other awards include the Mendelssohn Prize of Berlin, First Prize of the Casagrande Competition in Italy and the Prize of the Organization of American States. She has appeared as soloist with orchestra and in recital in the major music centers of the world and has been featured in radio and television portraits on five continents. Her diverse activities as recitalist, chamber musician and pedagogue have led to invitations to perform and teach in festivals such as Marlboro, Tanglewood, Music from Salem, Styriarte, International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove, Frankfurt Feste, Rheingau Musikfestival, Beethoven Festival Bonn.

Nina Tichman is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where she was awarded the Eduard-Steuermann-Prize for outstanding musical achievement. In 1993 she was appointed Professor of Piano at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne and she has led master classes at Amherst College, Princeton University, IKIF in New York, the Europäischen Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Montepulciano, Holland Music Sessions and at the “Mozarteum” in Salzburg

Concert tours in the last years have taken her to China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Scandinavia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, New Zealand, Mexico, the United States as well as almost all European countries.

Highlights of the 2019/20 season include performances of the last three Beethoven Piano Sonatas as well as the continuation of a cycle of the complete Schubert Sonatas.

* New York Times ** Chelseas News *** Darmstädter Echo **** Neue Musik Zeitung *****Saale-Zeitung

Tobias Augustus Matthay (19 February 1858 – 15 December 1945) was an English pianist , teacher, and composer.

Matthay was born in Clapham ,Surrey, in 1858 to parents who had come from northern Germany and eventually became naturalised British subjects. He entered London’s Royal Academy of Music  in 1871 and eight months later he received the first scholarship given to honour the knighthood of its principal, Sir William Sterndale Bennett .At the academy, Matthay studied composition under Sir William Sterndale Bennett and Arthur Sullivan , and piano with William Dorrell and Walter Macfarren . He served as a sub-professor there from 1876 to 1880, and became an assistant professor of pianoforte in 1880, before being promoted to professor in 1884. With Frederick Corder and John Blackwood Mc Ewen, he co-founded the Society of British Composers  in 1905. Matthay remained at the RAM until 1925, when he was forced to resign because McEwen—his former student who was then the academy’s Principal—publicly attacked his teaching.

In 1903, after over a decade of observation, analysis, and experimentation, he published The Act of Touch, an encyclopedic volume that influenced piano pedagogy throughout the English-speaking world. So many students were soon in quest of his insights that two years later he opened the Tobias Matthay Pianoforte School, first in Oxford Street, then in 1909 relocating to Wimpole Street, where it remained for the next 30 years. The teachers there included his sister Dora. He soon became known for his teaching principles that stressed proper piano touch and analysis of arm movements. He wrote several additional books on piano technique that brought him international recognition, and in 1912 he published Musical Interpretation, a widely read book that analyzed the principles of effective musicianship. However, whilst acknowledging its importance, a later interpreter of Matthay’s writing criticized its lack of clarity:

‘The interminable repetitions, recapitulations, summaries, footnotes, all with a change of emphasis and as often as not with new names for the same thing, led enquirers into a maze from which only the clearest brain equipped with a dogged perseverance, could extricate itself.’

Many of his pupils went on to define a school of 20th century English pianism, including Arthur Alexander ,York Bowen,Hild Dederich,Norman Fraser,Myra Hess,  Denise Lasimonne, Clifford Curzon,Harold Craxton,Moura Lympany,Gertrude Peppercorn,Ruth Roberts,Irene Scharrer, Lilias Mackinnon, Guy Jonson, Vivian Langrish, Hope Squire,Eileen Joyce, jazz “syncopated” pianist Raie Da Costa, Harriet Cohen,Dorothy Howell,, and the duo Bartlett and Robertson . He taught many Americans, including Ray Lev, Eunice Norton , and Lytle Powell, and he was also the teacher of Canadian pianist Harry Dean, English composer Arnold Bax and English conductor Ernest Read. In 1920, Hilda Hester Collens, who had studied under Matthay from 1910 to 1914, founded a music college in Manchester  named the Matthay School of Music in his honour. It was later renamed the Northern School of Music , a predecessor institution of the Royal Northern College of Music.

His wife Jessie née Kennedy, whom he married in 1893, wrote a biography of her husband, published posthumously in 1945.

Trapani, scuola pianistica all’avanguardia alla base della Master Class del 26 febbraio-13 marzo del Maestro Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti

Born in 1914, Dorothy Taubman was the founder of the Taubman Institute of New York and developed what became known as the internationally famous “Taubman Approach” to piano playing.

“Playing the piano should feel delicious”, said Taubman whose technique analyses the motions needed for virtuosity and musical expression. In its early days of development it built a reputation through its rate of success in curing playing injuries. It provoked controversy, however, by questioning the physiological soundness of some traditional methods of piano teaching.

“The body is capable of fulfilling all pianistic demands without a violation of its nature if the most efficient ways are used; pain,insecurity, and lack of technical control are symptoms of incoordination rather than a lack of practice, intelligence, or talent”, said Taubman whose methods were always founded on a fundamentally naturalistic approach.

Besides offering a rational, diagnostic system aimed at solving the musical and physiological problems of piano interpretation, the techniques Taubman pioneered allowed her to cure repetitive stress injuries related to piano playing, and generally to rehabilitate injured pianists. Her techniques have been successfully adapted to help with RSI sufferers in general, especially when caused by computer keyboards.

To quote pianist and teacher Thomas Mark: “The application of the Taubman movements to specific pianistic situations, such as leaps, octaves, arpeggios etc, is often brilliantly effective. Almost all pianists, even highly accomplished ones, can develop more perfect use of fingers hands and forearm, and consequently almost all pianists, injured or not, who have studied the Taubman Approach have improved, even transformed, their playing.”

Among her most successful work, Taubman was recognised for her work with Leon Fleisher who was forced to play with only one hand for many years due to a painful medical condition.

For many years, Taubman directed the Dorothy Taubman School of Piano at Amherst College in Massachusetts and was a former professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music and at Temple University. She famously said that “blaming the instrument is like saying that writer’s cramp is caused by the pencil”.

Taubman was born in the East New York section of Brooklyn on August 16, 1917. Her parents, Benjamin and Bertha, were Jewish immigrants from Russia; her father, a businessman, committed suicide after the stock market crashed in 1929. Taubman never graduated from college, but took courses at Juilliard and Columbia University  and studied with the renowned pianist Rosalyn Tureck for a year. In her 20s, her son said, she decided her calling was to be a teacher, not a concert pianist.

Taubman directed the Dorothy Taubman Institute of Piano at Amherst College  in Massachusetts from 1976 to 2002. She was formerly a professor at Temple University  and at the Aaron Copland School of Music in Queens College, and was featured in numerous articles and interviewed in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times; and the Piano Quarterly, Piano and Keyboard, and Clavier magazines. Taubman was noted for her work with injured musicians. Her students include the American pianist Leon Fleisher,Edna Golandsky and Yoheved Kaplinsky..

Besides offering a diagnostic system aimed at solving the musical and physiological problems of piano interpretation, the techniques Taubman pioneered have been used therapeutically to treat repetitive strain injuries  related to piano playing, and generally to rehabilitate injured pianists. Her techniques have been adapted to computer keyboard typing.

In 1938 she married Harry Taubman, a businessman in the men’s clothing industry and the younger brother of Howard Taubman, chief music and theater critic in the 1950s and 1960s for The New York Times. With Harry, she had one son, who is dean of the school of medicine and dentistry at the University of Rochester .She died from pneumonia on April 3, 2013 in Brooklyn, New York, at the age of 95.

Leslie Howard triumphs in Trapani with the concealed mastery of a pianistic genius.

From Anton Rubinstein to Jerome Kern all wrapped up in an English Country Garden.

An eclectic programme from the ‘Professor’ of the piano who looks deeply into the archives and finds hidden treasures that he has spent a lifetime bringing into the concert hall.

Franz Liszt :Harmonies poétiques et religieuses,S 154 and Variations on theme by J.S. Bach :’Weinen,Klagen,Sorgen,Zagen’,S 180 Anton Rubinstein : Sonata n. 1 in E minor op 12

Chairman of the jury of many important International competitions in particular that dedicated to Liszt in Utrecht, where he sets an unknown work by Liszt as the obligatory piece for all those that dare follow in Liszt’s footsteps.

I first encountered Leslie in the hallowed study of Guido Agosti in Siena where all serious musicians would gather each summer to be inspired by one of the last pupils of Busoni.

A young Australian who Agosti immediately recognised as a future heir to his selfless dedication as a servant of the composers that he was entrusted to decifer. Agosti acting merely as a go between of the printed page and the sounds that they could make in dedicated hands. Lydia, Agosti’ s wife, who propped up the maestro and brought a refreshing vivacity and mondanity to such a dedicated man , she too adored this lithe Australian with golden locks and blue eyes !

It was just this dedication of Agosti that we were witness to today, with a programme of works by Liszt and his pupil Rubinstein that were new for even Oxana Yablonskaya. In fact she leant over to me after the Rubinstein Sonata to say there was nothing much Russian about that!

Each of the many encores had us ‘pianists’ asking each other what piece it was ! A gently murmured hidden waltz we managed to decifer as late Liszt with the final unresolved chords pointing to the future that Liszt could already forsee.

Leslie with his genial nonchalance apologised for not announcing that it was Liszt’s ‘Valse Oubliee’ n 4 ( unjustly forgotten as Leslie demonstrated ) and that he would now play the ‘Valse Caprice’ by Anton Rubinstein.

This was Rubinstein the great pianist who could, like Leslie Howard , let his hair down and put his frightening intellect to one side and tease and beguile us just as the mindless jugglers of notes would do in the Golden era when pianists were first and foremost entertainers.

A performance full of the charm and wizardry of another age .

And from now on Leslie the sage, became Leslie the entertainer. Dedicating an improvised fantasy on a much loved song from the shows of Jerome Kern, to his illustrious colleague, Nina Tichman, whose own performance of Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’ a few days ago is still resounding around this hall. A performance that thankfully will be repeated on Sunday in Palermo for the Amici della Musica.

Leslie played this well know ‘tune’ with the style and insinuating abandon of a showman in a refined piano bar.

By now Leslie had us all in his hands and as a farewell he took us down an ‘English Country Garden’ path thanks to his genial compatriot Percy Grainger. Played not only with a verve that is part of his antipodean heritage, but with an incredible control of sound that allowed him to produce an echo effect of whispered asides, with a mastery that I have rarely heard in the concert hall before.

Party time was guaranteed as most of the public came on stage to thank a Maestro of Maestros who had come in their midst of their beautiful city to ‘bewitch, bother and bewilder’ them, as Liszt himself would have done in the Parisian salons of the last century.

All thanks of course to Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti and his dedicated team who have had the courage and foresight to bring music to their much loved city. Now in it’s third edition the ‘International Piano Competition Domenico Scarlatti’ has become more than a reality, as it goes from strength to strength celebrating by chance today the artistic director’s second quadrato!

What a way to celebrate ….we could have danced all night …..as some of us surely did.

The programme of course will have me studying the archives before I dare comment on such seemingly authoritative performances, but I can comment on the mastery and kaleidoscope of sounds that Leslie demonstrated. An architectural shape to works that took form before our very eyes with the refreshing discovery of works we had rarely if ever heard before.

I am reminded of Rubinstein’s last concert when almost totally blind, in the green room afterwards, he declared that he may be blind, but not too blind to know a beautiful lady when she stood in front of him. Lauren Bacall was charmed by this ever gallant Prince of Pianists.

Just to say that I may not know the scores but I can appreciate the transcendental piano playing that we heard tonight.

Like Rubinstein ,hardly moving , but listening with a concentration as Leslie sent messages from his mind and soul to his fingers that were the magnificent instrumentalists of a full symphony orchestra.

A technical preparation of the old school where the arch of the hand just supports fingers of steely independence, arms resting as if seated in their favourite chair .

It was in fact Agosti who would rest his hands on mine to show me what real weight means. To lean into the keys never leaving them with verticality but rather horizontally squeezing each key. Agosti would exhort his students ‘troppo forte , troppo forte ‘. He could not abide banging or striking the keys with showmanly exuberance. Fingers of steel but wrists of rubber. This is what we were witness to, today, and it was a great lesson to us all to be reminded of the sublime beauty that can be coaxed out of a black box of hammers and strings in the hands of a true magician .

It was Anton Rubinstein ,too, who exclaimed that the pedal was the ‘soul’ of the piano, and as Leslie showed us not a cover up for the misunderstood technical showmanship that we hear all too often these days.

What better example could there be for the young aspiring pianists gathered this week in this jewel that is the magic city of Trapani

Professor Howard will now give us his lesson in words:

Lamartine’s volume of poetry entitled Harmonies poétiques et religieuses inspired fourteen piano pieces by Liszt. The early piece of that title, although later repudiated by Liszt as ‘tronquée et fautive’, remains an astonishingly avant-garde work from a young composer known for competent juvenilia and several brilliant fantasies. Dedicated to Lamartine, the piece begins with no time- or key-signature, marked ‘senza tempo’, to be played with ennui, and develops into a musically wild elaboration of the two ideas heard at the outset. Rhythmic complications prompted Liszt to write in counting numbers within the bars which are basically in 7/4, and there are later regular subdivisions of five notes to the beat. The final section seems more conventional in that a tonality is finally reached, along with time- and key-signatures, but all is dispelled by the desperate outburst at the end. The trailing away into unresolving silence is so characteristic of Liszt’s last years that it is all the more astonishing to find it in a work composed when he was twenty-two.

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1990

‘Howard always seems to know where the music is going, and why’ (Gramophone)

For some reason the New Liszt Edition is issuing the two ‘Weinen, Klagen’ pieces amongst the volumes of transcriptions and fantasies on other composers’ materials, but that has no more sense than to regard, say, Brahms’s ‘Handel’ Variations in a similar way, for these are certainly original compositions in every sense of the word. Both works bear a dedication to Anton Rubinstein, and both are based on the same wonderful theme. The Prelude of 1859 is a dignified and restrained piece with just one dramatic outburst, all within the framework of a passacaglia which unfolds 25 variations on the motif. The Variations are not simply an expansion of the earlier piece, although there are a few fragments in common. The work dates from 1862 and was motivated by the death of Liszt’s elder daughter, Blandine. A fierce introduction leads to the theme and 43 variations, followed by a chromatic development in the shape of a recitative, and then a group of freer, faster variations, culminating with the choral ‘Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan’ (which also ends Bach’s cantata) and a brief coda in which the two themes are juxtaposed before F minor finally gives way to an unequivocally optimistic F major.

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1989

The first important fact about this work is simply that it is probably the earliest piano sonata to be composed by a Russian. It dates from around 1847/8 and, as the product of a teenager who must have been quite a pianist already, it is beyond criticism. It has a youthful naivety about it, with echoes of Mendelssohn as well as a certain brashness which Tchaikovsky was to show in his early keyboard works. Typically, Rubinstein uses no Russian folk material, but some pages of this sonata betray an obviously Russian origin. The first movement, Allegro appassionato, is in a brisk 2/4 and the opening builds through a series of grand gestures into a strong repetition of the first theme in triplet octaves. The tremolos and arpeggios which bind the movement together lead to the second subject and testify to Rubinstein’s easy capacity for fluent melody. The development moves to the remote key of F sharp major where the constantly moving accompaniment stops—as it will again when the second subject returns in the recapitulation. The movement ends quietly and seriously after a further reference to the opening phrase.

The Andante largamente is a simple tripartite conception which launches immediately into its long principal melody in C major. The placid mood becomes gradually ruffled during the central section in A minor, where dotted rhythms are contrasted with pulsating triplets. A delicate modulation (German augmented sixth to tonic 6/4, for those who care about such things) ushers in the principal theme over a florid accompaniment, and the last few bars recall the middle section.

The scherzo, Moderato, is a perky piece in A minor with a tastefully ornamented melody which makes much of the alternative possibilities between G sharp and G natural. The second section, which is repeated, spends some time in C major before returning to A minor and a fortissimo change of gear from 3/8 to four bars of 2/8—something which would have delighted Schumann. The little trio in A major subjects its winsome tune to some quite harmless contrapuntal imitation.

The finale, Moderato con fuoco, is the strongest movement. After a preliminary statement of the theme, a grand Russian outburst reintroduces it in octaves with rushing triplet accompaniment. These rhythms dominate the movement, despite the first appearance of the lyrical second subject—an excellent melody by any standards. The entire development section is given over to a fugue on the first theme, but although young Anton Grigoryevich flexes his academic muscles once or twice the fugal manner actually assists the enormous forward propulsion of the movement. When the second theme returns, the irrepressible rhythm of the fugue continues in the bass, to be displaced only by the grandest possible repeat of this theme, with repeated chords and rich arpeggios, leading (through a harmonic progression that would become Tchaikovsky’s favourite method of heralding a climax) to an enthusiastic conclusion.

from notes by Leslie Howard © 1996

Leslie Howard understands Rubinstein’s range of temperament very well indeed and I cannot think of another pianist whose advocacy could have been more persuasive … a notable pianistic achievement whose effect is heightened by Hyperion’s lifelike digital recording’ (Gramophone)

«Howard est à la fois un prodigieux virtuose et un poète capable de faire surgir de délicates visions de l’ivoire. Si l’on ajoute un imparable sens de la construction conférant une solide assise à ces édifices apolliniens, on comprend que ces sonates ont trouvé avec lui leur référence» (Diapason, France)

Leslie Howard ‘The Prince of Pianists’ 50th Anniversary concert at the Wigmore Hall

Leslie Howard 75th Birthday Concert ‘An experience beyond compare’- The true heir to Agosti – Busoni -Liszt

Leslie Howard Masterclass at the R.C.M Scholarship and Mastery shared

Forlì pays Homage to Guido Agosti

Guido Agosti (11 August 1901 – 2 June 1989) was an Italian pianist and renowned for his yearly summer course in Siena frequented by all the major musicians of the age.It was on the express wish of Alfredo Casella that Agosti took over his class which he did for the next thirty years.Sounds heard in his studio have never been forgotten.

https://fb.watch/yWqGsHp_iU/

Agosti was born in Forli 1901. He studied piano with Ferruccio Busoni Bruno Mugellini and Filippo Ivaldi and earning his diploma at age 13. He studied counterpoint under Benvenuti and literature at Bologna University. He commenced his professional career as a pianist in 1921. Although he never entirely abandoned concert-giving, nerves made it difficult for him to appear on stage,and he concentrated on teaching. He taught piano at the Venice Conservatoire and at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome.In 1947 he was appointed Professor of piano at the Accademia Chigiana Siena .He also taught at Weimar and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

His notable students include Maria Tipo,Yonty Solomon, Leslie Howard,Hamish Milne,Martin Jones,Ian Munro,Dag Achatz,Raymond Lewenthal,Ursula Oppens,Kun- Woo Paik,Peter Bithell. He made very few recordings; there is a recording of op 110 from the Ghione theatre in Rome together with his recording on his 80th birthday concert in Siena of Debussy preludes .

Another miracle in Trapani with the reappearance of the undisputed queen of the keyboard,Oxana Yablonskaya.
A year has passed since her last concert and now at 86 well into her Indian Summer her playing is even more profoundly radiant and her technical prowess proves once again she is still the kitten on the keys.

Leslie Howard triumphs in Trapani with the concealed mastery of a pianistic genius.
From Anton Rubinstein to Jerome Kern all wrapped up in an English Country Garden.
An eclectic programme from the ‘Professor’ of the piano who looks deeply into the archives and finds hidden treasures that he has spent a lifetime bringing into the concert hall.

After careful evaluation by the jury, the candidates who will access the semi-final have been selected.

Trapani the jewel of Sicily where dreams can become reality – The International Piano Competition – Domenico Scarlatti

Another miracle in Trapani with the reappearance of the undisputed queen of the keyboard,Oxana Yablonskaya.

A year has passed since her last concert and now at 86, well into her Indian Summer, her playing is even more profoundly radiant and her technical prowess proves once again she is still the ‘kitten on the keys’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYpZt7iQFcY

A programme of Scarlatti ,Mozart , Beethoven, Rachmaninov and Liszt reminding us once again what it means to play with weight. Seemingly endless amounts of energy, she like her octuagenerian colleague Martha Argerich continue to astonish a public who are starved of real artistry with the selfless dedication to the composers they are serving.

Like ballet dancers they are born with the ‘physique de rôle’ with hands that are made to serve. A technical preparation in childhood when the shape of the hand is formed with fingers of steel,like limpets sucking the sounds out of the keys, but then a wrist of rubber that allows them to play with the seeming ease of someone seated in their favourite chair.

Of course the great example to my generation was Artur Rubinstein who could hold us effortlessly in his hands until his ninetieth year producing golden sounds that will never be forgotten.

Three Scarlatti Sonatas opened the concert and were obviously a homage to the competition of which she is an illustrious jury member. It was enough to show us that she has lost none of her ‘fingerfertigkeit’ as the crystalline clarity and rhythmic drive held us spell bound. But there was much more than that, as the sounds she produced were of a kaleidoscope of colour of operatic performances with the characters parading before us with such individuality, turning these three well known sonatas into miniature tone poems of vibrant beauty.

The first played with a timelessness where the ornaments just sparkled like jewels, with rays of light that illuminated the melodic line without ever disturbing the musical message that was being recounted. In fact an art that conceals art and never draws attention to itself, as a story is being told by a sage of the keyboard .

The second sonata was played with a whispered veiled tone bursting into an ebullient jeux perlé of astonishing vigour and brilliance in the third. Numbers have no meaning in art as Longo numbers have no importance when communication of radiance and beauty are the ‘non plus ultra’ of a true artist.

I remember another High Priestess of the keyboard,Rosalyn Tureck, telling me, after a performance of the Goldberg Variations when she too had reached her Indian summer, that she looked at the numbers of her anagrafical age and they had absolutely no significance where her art was concerned !

A masterly performance of Mozart’s A minor rondo where Schnabel’s dictum springs to mind of Mozart being too easy for children but too difficult for adults!

He obviously had not contemplated Oxana’s Indian summer where a lifetimes struggle has eliminated all superfluous things, as real meaning and significance are distilled into a simple acceptance of the beauty that surround all those that have the soul to appreciate it.

It was just such simplicity that Oxana brought to Mozart with a beauty and crystalline etched beauty of absolute purity. There was a story to tell and Oxana is one of the greatest story tellers of our age, who can bring the notes to life with a meaning and significance where words are just not enough. We were not even aware that she played all the repeats, as the musical discourse was of searing intensity and importance as she returned this monument to the pinnacle of miraculous significance that it truly is .

It was this, too, that was so apparent with Oxana’s masterly performance of Beethoven’s sonata op 109, the first of his trilogy and a farewell to the sonata that had followed his life in thirty two remarkable steps.

A simplicity and fantasy that only the deepest knowledge of the score could contemplate, arriving at the same improvised freedom that was the font of the composers inspiration. The radiance and beauty of the opening will long resound in this hall as an example of a simple mellifluous outpouring . It was as though the sonata like a mountain stream was already flowing as a door was opened by our genial interpreter who could share such beauty with us. The improvised interruptions never allowing this pastoral scene to be brusquely interrupted by Beethoven’s irascible and unpredictable temperament.

The second movement took wing with a dynamic drive and an undercurrent of menace that was to be diffused by the sublime vision of the ‘Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung. Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo’. Words that have no significance where music can express so much more with so little . Beethoven was totally deaf when he wrote these final works that only he could hear with his inner ear but was miraculously still able to share his vision of the world with future generations with simple dots, dashes and words.

Oxana with a lifetime of living with this music could distill the very essence of Beethoven’s message of peace and goodwill after his turbulent and disturbing life . The radiance and beauty of the theme was played with nobility and aristocratic poise but with an inner tenderness, where to watch her hands caress the notes was like watching a great artist with a brush filling a canvas with beauty and significance .

The variations were allowed to evolve so naturally, and even when they burst into dynamic energy it was with the same energy that had lain hidden within the bare notes of the theme .

The fourth variation is where Beethoven, too, gives up on numbers and the significance of this variation becomes evident as the contrapuntal nobility is transformed into a vision of the world that Beethoven could already envisage in the not too distant future. Trills that become streams of sound, as the theme is allowed to float on a sumptuous cloud, as Beethoven ( like Scriabin in the next century ) reaches for the star that shines so brightly and was unfolded by Oxana with knowing brilliance of poignant significance. A cloud dying away with timeless wonder as the theme returns miraculously untouched by the visions we had experienced together, but enriched by delicacy and knowing understanding . Oxana’s hands barely touching the keys as the moments of aching silence that we shared together, after the last whispered confession, was evidence of how Oxana had opened a Pandora’s box of emotions in us all.

After a short break we were treated to works by two of the greatest virtuosi of all time, Franz Liszt and Sergei Rachmaninov .

The Corelli variations op 42, one of the last works that Rachmaninov wrote, but playing in public he would decide on the spur of the moment ,depending on the public’s reaction, if he would play them all or not.

There was no doubt in Oxana’s mind that she should play them all, as she had envisaged the work as a whole with an architectural shape finding momentary refuge in the major key before the final journey back to the original theme. A journey that she shared with us with a constant undercurrent of energy that was always present,whether in the ravishingly beautiful slow variations, the capricious jeux perlé virtuosity or the more monumentally dramatic.

After the dynamic drive of the last three variations the final mighty ‘D’ in the bass was allowed to die away as a ravishingly beautiful coda was played with searing nostalgia and sumptuous chiselled beauty of masterly playing of a weight. Oxana’s fingers dug deep into the keys to find the most extraordinarily poignant sounds, preparing us for the simple vision of ‘La folia’ that had been the inspiration for this magnificent work that Rachmaninov dedicated to his duo partner Fritz Kreisler. Rachmaninov had written to his friend and colleague Nikolai Medtner : “I’ve played the Variations about fifteen times, but of these fifteen performances only one was good. The others were sloppy. I can’t play my own compositions! And it’s so boring! Not once have I played these all in continuity. I was guided by the coughing of the audience. Whenever the coughing would increase, I would skip the next variation. Whenever there was no coughing, I would play them in proper order. In one concert, I don’t remember where – some small town – the coughing was so violent that I played only ten variations (out of 20). My best record was set in New York, where I played 18 variations. However, I hope that you will play all of them, and won’t “cough”.

Today there was no coughing ,and a silence that was truly golden, as this great lady unravelled Rachmaninov’s knotty twine with passion and fearless transcendental mastery.

It was the same mastery that she brought to Liszt’s recreation of three of Schubert’s most sublime Lieder. ‘Standchen’ ,a work that Rachmaninov too had famously recorded, and that Oxana ,inspired by his Corelli variations , played with sublime beauty, where the duets between the voices showed a control of sound that only the very greatest artists can find in this black box of hammers and strings!

The subtlety of her playing of ‘Auf dem Wasser’ and ‘Gretchen ‘ was of another age – a Golden one when pianists were magicians and could find infinite gradations of tone in every key.

A standing ovation was greeted by Chopin’s last Mazurka op 78 n 4 ‘canons covered in flowers ‘ was Schumann’s description of Chopin’s 52 miniature tone poems.

Closing the piano lid to show us that the music making was over for another year.

But indeed covered in flowers from the ever grateful Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti for her constant presence for his brain child now in it’s third year and bringing such illustrious importance to his much loved jewel of a city.

Oxana touched by such warmth and affection from ‘her’ public reopened the piano lid for just one last thank you in music.

C.P.E Bach’s ‘Rondo espressivo’ was played with one last glimpse of the beauty and mastery that she had offered to us all evening.

Oxana Yablonskaya – Sorrento salutes the ‘Queen of the Keyboard’

Oxana Yablonskaja ‘La Regina del Pianoforte’ concert relay from the Città di Minerbio

Oxana Yablonskaya La Regina – The queen of the Keys

I have heard Misha play many times over the past four years since I was invited by his teacher Ian Jones to listen to him playing Rachmaninov First Concerto at Cadogan Hall whilst he was still just a ‘fresher’.https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/10/13/misha-kaploukhii-plays-rachmaninov-beauty-and-youthfulness-triumph/

It has been a great pleasure to see this young student turn into an artist of considerable importance as he has now reached the final stages of his student career. Important friendships with other musicians at the RCM have played their part in this formation. In particular that with Magdalene Ho frequenting each others concerts with a mutual respect and admiration learning from each other as the road to perfection becomes ever more an impossible dream but also the raison d’être of their lives. https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/12/01/chopin-reigns-at-the-national-liberal-club-and-st-marys-perivale-the-triumph-of-misha-kaploukhii-and-magdalene-ho/

It was just a few months ago that I heard Magdalene Ho give remarkable performances of this same Davidsbündler together with Schubert’s magical Fantasy Sonata. https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2025/01/17/magdalene-ho-a-star-is-born-on-the-rising-sun-of-inspired-mastery/

Today Misha coupled the Schumann with Liszt’s masterly entry into the operatic world of Bellini. Listening to Bellini in Sicily obviously takes on another meaning ( I am writing from Trapani where the 3rd International Piano Competition,Domenico Scarlatti is taking place), but the mastery and transcendental command that Misha showed today must have been the similar to that of Liszt who was to take Paris by storm, together with his great rival Thalberg.

Their three handed pianism was just one of the wonders that could be created on a piano where the addition of pedals allowed sounds to be held and create effects that had Liszt’s pupil Anton Rubinstein declare that the pedal was the ‘soul’ of the piano! The pedal too allows for a sense of balance where the melodic line can be floated of a wave of sounds ( as Chopin’s playing of his study in A flat op 25 n.1 was described as a melody floating on an Aeolian Harp of sounds).

For a young musician simplicity is the thing that is so difficult to find, especially after years of study and hard work now being able to master the works that have inspired him to take the long path of becoming a professional pianist. Of course a certain showmanship and bravado is only natural but it can also lead to not listening to ones’ self and relying on physical euphoria to take command. Today Misha showed that he has passed through that difficult phase as the music was revealed with simplicity and flowing beauty. A masterly performance of understatement in the sense of real poetic understanding and commitment. It was summed up so succinctly by Artur Schnabel talking about Mozart being too easy for children but too difficult for adults!

There was a mastery of the pedal nowhere more apparent than in the the very first dance where Florestan and Eusebius combine with their legato and non legato escapades so clearly played with not a little rearranging of the hands too! Refined beauty and luminosity of the second sprang to life with the grandeur of the third. There was passion but also intelligence of the fourth as the melodic line was beautifully etched with searing beauty and authority.Timeless phrasing of great mastery with the simple grace and beauty he brought to the fifth.There was clarity to the sixth but also a dynamic drive and refined aristocratic phrasing and the seventh just unfolded with poignant tenderness like a flower slowly opening.The eighth, too, was played with deeply felt sentiments of beauty contrasting with the ‘joie de vivre’ and rhythmic buoyancy that Misha brought to the ninth. A beautiful architectural shape to the tenth was followed by the sumptuous Brahmsian richness of the eleventh.There was the beseeching questioning of the twelfth as the melodic line is doubled and given slightly more weight allowing more depth and poetic sensibility to this dance that ends with a question mark. Quixotic playing of great character and technical mastery of the thirteenth was contrasted with the fourteenth. A rare sense of balance that allowed the melodic line to sing in the right hand before the sumptuous rich sounds of the middle section of unsentimental mellifluous strength making such a telling contrast to the outer sections.The fifteenth, one of Schumann’s most perfect creations was played with etched beauty allowing the music to speak for itself with poignancy and deeply felt meaning. The opening majesty and authority of the sixteenth just opened the flood gates for an emotional outpouring of sumptuous passionate beauty. There was busy chattering between the hands, of the seventeenth,as they chased each other around the keyboard before gradually dissolving, as Schumann finds the Eutopia of his dreams and we are enticed into a world of sublime inspiration ( only to be found later by Ravel In the final epilogue of his noble and sentimental waltz world!). A magical performance with a kaleidoscope of sounds and a masterly use of the pedal that made one think deeply of how right Anton Rubinstein was. The final waltz played with that simplicity that Schnabel knew was so difficult to capture but that Misha today had found the key, as the final gentle chimes in the bass merely vibrated with his extraordinary poetic understanding.

Leonid Desyatnikov was born in 1955 in Kharkiv, Ukraine and is a graduate of the Leningrad conservatory , where he studied composition and instrumentation. Misha chose four of his preludes.Typical traditional dances of his homeland were played with great commitment and the second was very similar to the Schumann’s Romance in F sharp played with languid beauty as the third entered in mazurka style of questioning rhythmic improvisation. The opening deep bass chimes of the fourth brings to mind Liszt’s Funerailles but with its chiselled folk melody with impish syncopations and dynamic ending.

There was an imperious opening to the Liszt Norma Fantasy followed by luxuriant sumptuous sounds and a gradual build up played with a masterly control of dynamics as fragments gradually linked together until arriving at the triumphant outpouring of the main melody. A glorious melodic outpouring played with rich full sound where Misha never lost sight of the melodic line, even though accompanied by cascades of octaves, that could easily be overpowering in the hands of a lesser artist. There was a languid brooding and passionate commitment to the central episode as it gradually builds to an eruption of dynamic drive and energy. A technical mastery that even though the intensity and drive of the music are taking over the emotional sensibilities, Misha was always in control with a command and seemingly endless technical reserves of fearless virtuosity .Even the final where Liszt combines the two main themes with diabolical technical wizardry the music moved inexorably forward and swept all before it. A quite remarkable performance of one of the great warhorses of the romantic virtuosi par excellence.

An encore would seem superfluous after such and extraordinary performance but Misha managed to pull even more magic out his hat with a beguiling, teasingly titivating performance of Liszt’s elusive Bagatelle sans tonalité.

Misha graduates from the RCM this summer as a great career ahead obviously awaits.

Born in 2002, Misha Kaploukhii is an alumnus of the Moscow Gnessin College of Music. He has recently completed his undergraduate studies at the Royal College of Music and is an ABRSM award holder generously supported by the Razumovsky Trust, Eileen Rowe Trust, Talent Unlimited Charity, The Keyboard Charitable Trust, and The Robert Turnbull Foundation. He is now studying for a Master of Performance with Professor Ian Jones and was incredibly honoured to receive the LSO Conservatoire Scholarship 2024/25. His recent prizes include RCM Concerto Competition, International Ettlingen Piano Competition, Hopkinson Gold Medal at the Chappell Medal Competition and the 1st and Audience prizes at the 2024 Sheepdrove Piano Competition. Misha has gained inspiration from lessons and masterclasses with musicians such as Claudio Martínez Mehner, Dmitri Bashkirov, Jerome Lowenthal, Dinara Klinton, Konstantin Lifschitz, Dame Imogen Cooper. 

His performances with orchestras in UK include debuts in Cadogan Hall playing Rachmaninov’s 1st Concerto with YMSO and James Blair, Liszt’s 2nd Concerto with RCM Symphony orchestra with Adrian Partington and very recently, Rachmaninov’s 4th Concerto performed with the Albion Orchestra.He has performed in the UK, Italy and France at the venues including St Mary’s Perivale, Razumovsky Recital Hall, Leighton House, Cadogan Hall, Sala dei Notari and Giardini La Mortella with a wide range of solo and chamber repertoire. Misha’s future engagements include solo recitals in St Mary Le Strand, 1901 Arts Club, British Institute in Florence and Steinway Hall in Milan. In February he performed Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto in Cadogan Hall with James Blair.

Misha Kaploukhii in Florence and Milan for the Keyboard Trust and Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation

Misha Kaploukhii plays Brahms 2 with passion and mastery

  By Moritz von Bredow, Hamburg 6 April 2025

Italian pianist Andrea Molteni, born in 1998 in Como, played four recitals in a row (!) for the London based International piano foundation, The Keyboard Charitable Trust (hereinafter referred to as KT), in Germany. Having completed 3 degrees in Como, Milan and Lugano resp., the latter being a Distinction Master’s degree in advanced piano performance, Molteni is currently a high profile student of the legendary American pedagogue William Grant Naboré’s at the International Piano Academy in Como. This astonishing pianist left a lasting impression on audiences and organisers alike. 

It was the first KT concert tour organised in his native Germany after the death at 99 years of John Leech MBE, the KT’s revered founder. After each of Andrea Molteni’s recitals, trustee Moritz von Bredow from Hamburg remembered John Leech, without whom and without his wife Noretta Conci the KT would not exist. Blessed be his memory.

The concert venues were:
1)
Augustinum Hamburg (Very many thanks to Dr. Christian Bendrath and Mr. Malte Frackmann for the wonderful organization, gratitude to Kammersängerin Reri Grist for a long, inspiring conversation)

2)
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Amburgo (Great thanks to Dr. Francesca Fazion and all staff of the Italian Cultural Institute for their meticulous preparation of this recital)

3)
C. Bechstein Center Cologne (Heartful thanks to Ms. Monika Hermans-Krüger and Mr. Torsten Röhre for providing their hall as well as a magnificent, brand new Bechstein D!)

4)
Orangerie Schloss Rheda, Rheda-Wiedenbrück (Profound thanks to Her Serene Highness Princess Marissa zu Bentheim-Tecklenburg, indefinite gratitude to our longstanding friends Inge and Bernd Jostkleigrewe who once again prepared this 13th KT recital over a period of 12 months, and thank you to all the ladies of Inner Wheel Rheda-Wiedenbrück)

Andrea Molteni’s programme for this KT tour was audacious, beautiful and very intelligently chosen. Instead of making himself the centre of interest and showing off some velocity of fingers (as unfortunately many young and often mediocre pianists tend to do), posing with lots of drama and playing only romantic pieces (nothing against Brahms and Liszt, please!), Molteni decided to allow the listeners to travel with him on a musical journey through almost 270 years. Well done, very well done indeed! 

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) composed his Toccata No. 6 in G Minor, BWV 915, between 1707 (when he was 22) and 1713. Written by a still very young Bach, largely almost like an improvisation in character, the toccata culminates in a strict, rhythmic, gigue-like fugue. Molteni was able to deliver both the improvisational atmosphere, almost resembling a fantasy, and the stringency of the fugue in a highly idiomatic way. His piano playing was crisp, transparent and delicate, the fugue metrically enchanting, a profound understanding of baroque polyphony so beautifully displayed. Molteni is a wonderful Bach interpreter! This was already a great achievement, a convincing beginning, but there was much more to come.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) wrote his too rarely played Sonata No 28 in A Major, op 101, in 1816 (published in 1817), at a time when he was already nearing complete deafness. Only four more sonatas were to follow. He dedicated this sonata to his pupil Dorothea von Ertmann in Vienna, a German born pianist who never performed in public. The dedication reads: “Receive now what was often intended for you and which may give you proof of my attachment to your artistic talent as well as to your person”.
The four movements are inseparably linked together, although very different in character. The first movement, beginning of the dominant, is very lyrical and poetic, the 2nd movement a vivid March, the third is a very beautiful, pensive Adagio ma non troppo, and the 4th movement brings, after Bach, another fugue, rather a Fugato. 
Andrea Molteni succeeded in fully bringing out the exceptionally beautiful, singing, and lyrical character as well as the colossal fugue of this enchanting late Beethoven sonata without any exaggeration or kitsch. He used the left pedal sparingly and only as Beethoven had suggested, so that in the lyrical passages one could hear an extremely cantabile and very even piano playing. The third movement was a divine revelation, purest, meditative silence. The march and fugue were both resolute and compelling—a completely convincing performance from the beginning to the end.

Goffredo Petrassi (1904-2003) was an Italian composer and professor of composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome where her died in 2003 at age 98. Petrasssi’s style began in neoclassicism before he turned to his own tonal and formal language over the years through his encounters with serial and twelve-tone music. Andrea Molteni captured the lyricism as well as the horrendously difficult passages of Petrassi’s music (written between 1933 and 1976), especially in his Toccata (Molteni’s second toccata!), with absolute control and an obvious love for the virtuoso challenges that Petrassi’s music pose.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote his Variations on a Theme by George Frederic Handel, Op. 24, in Hamburg in 1861, when he was 28 years old. They are based on a theme that Brahms borrowed from a Suite for harpsichord by Handel (1733). At Richard Wagner’s request, Brahms played these variations for him in Vienna in 1864 during their only encounter, whereupon Wagner paid him the following praise: “One sees what can still be achieved with the old forms when someone comes along who understands how to handle them.” – Brahms dedicated these variations, which stand on equal ground with Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, to Clara Schumann: “I have made you variations for your birthday, which you still have not heard, and which you should have practiced for your concerts long ago.” Clara Schumann would play these variations in Hamburg the same year, in December 1861, even before their publication. – Andrea Molteni, performing this large and challenging piano work in public for the first time in ten years, once again delivered a truly outstanding performance after the interval. His ability to adapt instantly to the diverse characteristics of even the smallest pieces of music, and the variations are such, and to render them with great tonal beauty and technical bravura is unusual. His great pianistic talent was particularly evident in the fugue (already the third fugue that evening!) which poses great challenges not only to the technical mastery of the instrument, but above all to the understanding of the musical context and thus to the musical expression itself. No pianist of Molteni’s age (or of any age!) will be able to easily reach that level of his performance.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Fantasy on Themes from Vincenzo Bellini’s Opera ‘La Sonnambula’ is hardly ever played or recorded. However, the great Australian Liszt champion Leslie Howard has produced a sensational reference recording. Liszt wrote the fantasy on ‘La Sonnambula’ years after Bellini’s untimely death at the age of just 33 in 1835. For his repertoire, Andrea Molteni chose the 3rd and by far most difficult version of this fantasy, written in 1874. Liszt brings together the opera’s three main story lines: Amina, a young, impoverished Swiss peasant girl, falls in love with the rich farmer Elvio, and their wedding is planned. Then rumors arise of Amina’s alleged infidelity, and Elvio abandons his fiancée. Amina is talking of her love for Elvio when sleepwalking and nearly drowns, but is eventually rescued. She is rehabilitated, and Elvio and Amina are ultimately reunited. – The immense drama of the plot is brilliantly realized in Liszt’s third adaptation of Bellini’s opera. However, the horrendous technical difficulties of this piano version are only one aspect of the Sonnambula fantasy – it demands not only great virtuosity and complete mastery of the instrument based on an infallible piano technique, but also a profound musical understanding which is indispensable in order to produce the vitally important musical expression. Andrea Molteni possesses all of these prerequisites to a high degree and played incomparably (yes, he did!!) so that at the end the audience, completely electrified, leaped to their feet to give him a standing ovation that lasted for minutes. Would Amina live today, and had she heard Andrea play this fantasy, she would have immediately left Elvio for him! 

Summary
Andrea Molteni is an unusually expressive, technically extremely sophisticated and utterly musical pianist with a strong stage presence and a high level of intelligence. This latter quality is evident not only in conversation, but also in the selection of his fascinating programmes. A certain inherent nervousness is noticeable offstage, but it disappears completely as soon as Andrea Molteni walks up to the piano. His absolute concentration and focus during his performances, combined with great dedication to the composers and fidelity to the grandeur of their works, are deeply impressive. Andrea Molteni is a very distinguished pianist.

The four piano recitals in Germany, performed on four subsequent nights on four different pianos with hour long train travels on the last two of the four concert days have demonstrated Andrea Molteni’s resilience, his capability of handling considerably strenuous demands and that he would not allow these to deter him from the excellence of his piano artistry.

If there were anything to criticise – and it is not so much a criticism but more so a piece of advice – it would be this: the balance of sound, the recognition of the correct tonal language for each respective work, and the ability to empathise with the listener’s perception are the most important prerequisites to play a beautiful recital on any piano or grand piano, whatever size, age and make it may be, and in any hall. The pianist’s ability to adapt the piano tone, timbres, volume, and musical expression to the respective circumstances develops differently for each musician and only over time. These complex skills are something Andrea Molteni will certainly continue to work on. Within just a few days, he has already demonstrated how magnificent his underlying pianistic abilities are in every respect, how fast he understands, learns and adapts, making the last two evenings in particular perfectly balanced, overwhelming experiences.

I hope that Andrea Molteni will have a long, distinguished career ahead of him, in which he will continue to inspire and delight audiences. Above all, may he continue to expand his repertoire and, over the course of his life, become a grand pianist, an artist, and a great musician with something to say, no, with very much to say. He is well on his way, and he has given great honour to the Keyboard Charitable Trust and its goals.

I am sure that John Leech has been watching and listening to Andrea Molteni from heaven during these days with a gentle smile and great happiness in his heart. 

Copyright: Moritz von Bredow, Hamburg, April 2025

Below is a report on the KT activities in Germany in 2024 – I am glad I was able to hear three of our best pianists in one year!

1) Gabriele Sutkutė

In April 2024, I had organised 4 recitals for Gabriele Sutkutė. She played at 

– Representation of Hamburg in Berlin

– Augustinum Hamburg

– Bechstein Centre, Cologne

– Orangery o Castle Rheda, Rheda-Wiedenbrück

PROGRAMME:

Prokofiev – Piano Sonata No. 4 in C minor, Op. 29:

Haydn – Fantasia in C major, Hob. XVII/4, “Capriccio” 

Ravel – “Miroirs”, M. 43: II. Oiseaux tristes

Ravel – La valse, M. 72

I N T E R V A L

Janáček – Piano Sonata “1. X. 1905” (“From the Street”): 

Rameau – Suite in D major (Pièces de Clavecin)

Liszt – Venezia e Napoli, Années de pèlerinage II, S.162 

Gabrielė is a very mature, highly musical pianist, of deep underdstanding for the works she plays, of insight into the historic background – and she has a magnificent natural stage presence. Her pianistic art is simply beautiful – she can perform works from the Baroque to contemporary music at ease and on the highest musical and technical levels. Her performances were captivating and brought the audiences to their feet. Conversations with Gabrielė were delightful and vibrant. 

Gabrielė’s playing is crystal clear, with tremendous technical skills, yet those are always in service of musical expression. Her jeu perlé is breathtaking, and her expression of colours and dynamics, in combination with her phenomenally idiomatic understanding of the works she plays, make her a true artist with a very promising future. Full marks!

2) Giovanni Bertolazzi

In November 2024, I organised 4 recitals for Giovanni Bertolazzi:

Sunday, November 17,

New Living Home, Hamburg

Tuesday, November 19

Augustinum Hamburg

Thursday, November 21

Bechstein Centre, Hamburg

Friday, November 22

Bechstein Centre, Cologne

PROGRAMME:

Bach/Busoni: Chaconne from Partita d Minor for Violin 

Beethoven: Sonata N0. 4 E flat Major  op. 7

PAUSE

Nicolai/Bach/Busoni:Choral-Prelude “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” 

Beethoven: Sonata No. 21 “Waldstein” C Major op. 53

Giovanni Bertolazzi played a very beautifully and intelligently chosen programme of works only by Bach/Busoni (100 death anniversary) and Beethoven.

Giovanni Bertolazzi is a very elegant and noble pianist, reminding me of Michelangeli  in many respects. His command of the piano is astonishing, and his tonal language beautiful and never exaggerating, not even in the tremendous build up during the Chaconne or the Waldstein sonata. HIs Beethoven is reminiscent of Michelangeli’s unparalleled Beethoven performances. A sound full of colours, strict adherence to rhythm and tempo, with the rubato very distinctly chosen. Scarce use of pedals and a strong as well as calm inner centre that would never allow him to lose control. And yet an ever so expressive interpretation of both sonatas. – Bertolazzi’s Busoni interpretations were equally beautiful, never forgetting Bach’s polyphony and allowing to understand what Busoni really wanted: to show Bach’s works as the epitome of music. Bertolazzi most definitely was the perfect pianist to perform this programme. Full marks!

3) Magdalene Ho 

On Dec 14, Magdalene Ho played at Laeiszhalle Hamburg (Small Hall)

PROGRAMME:

Beethoven

Six Bagatelles op. 126

Franz Schubert
Sonata G Major D 894 

Extraordinary, very idiomatic performance of Beethoven’s Bagatelles op 126 and Schubert’s late sonata in G.  Very subtle, amazing colours, the piano always singing, all pianissimi constantly without left pedal. Absolute control of rhythm and phrasing, beautifully chosen rubato, no kitsch, no wrong romanticising of expression, no exaggerations anywhere – very, very impressive. Beethoven had been completely deaf since 1819 (op 126 written in 1824), and his heavy heart which never succumbed to his depression was in Magdalene’s interpretation, and so was Schubert’s melancholy less than 2 years before his death – but he, like Beethoven, would always move on “against all odds”.  I spoke to the astonishing pianist Magdalene briefly before and after the recital, thanking her on behalf of the Keyboard Trust. She did not say much, but her eyes said all when I told her my deep impressions afterwards.  What an amazing, true artist! So shy, so quiet – and yet (as someone once said about Grete Sultan), at the piano she became a queen!

Peter Donohoe with a full house at Bechstein Hall and a fascinating programme based on Chopin’s C minor prelude op 28 . A second half with two sets of variations on that very prelude that Peter had played together with the other 23 in the first half.

 

SCHUMANN: Abegg Variations, Op. 1 

CHOPIN: 24 Preludes, Op. 28 

Intermission 

BUSONI: Variations on a Theme of Chopin, Op. 22 

RACHMANINOV: Variations on a Theme of Chopin, Op. 22

Variations by Busoni and Rachmaninov both coincidentally their op 22 .

The concert had begun with Schumann’s op 1 Abegg Variations played with a jeux perlé of beguiling charm and rubato that made this Bechstein glow with an intimate warmth.The starlit ceiling seemed to shine ever more like will o’the wisps with the fleeting charm that the youthful Schumann could exert on his lady admirers. Peter too played with a fluidity and subtle kaleidoscope of sounds that belong, all too often, to a past age.

The Chopin Preludes ,a new work to Peter’s repertoire, and if they did not yet have the same familiarity as the Schumann each one was sculptured in marble full of individual character and deeply contemplated emotions.The deep brooding of the second with the disarming simplicity of the shortest, the seventh, with its fleeting gasps of seeming innocence. It followed the mellifluous third where the washes of sound in the left hand merely accompanied the simple radiance of the melody. There was a dramatic opening to the fourth and the sixth soon evaporating to ever more whispered sounds.

The long lines of the sumptuous eighth ( obviously a great inspiration to the earlier studies of Scriabin ) were sacrificed for the gasps of a heart that beat with such searing intensity throughout his interpretation. Ravishing jeux perlé of the tenth was with a sense of improvised ease after the majestic nobility of the ninth and the beautifully sung eleventh with its beguiling rubato. The twelfth so often played like a bull in a china shop was played with masterly lightness and an architectural shape that could add exhilaration without hardness. The thirteenth surely one of Chopin’s most original bel canto creations, was played with radiance and beauty.A glowing bel canto and left hand meanderings of poetic simplicity with a central episode with moments that touched the sublime . Dynamic pulsating and ferocity were soon spent as the fourteenth fell to one side to make way for the simple radiant beauty of the so called ‘Raindrop’ prelude. In Peter’s hands it became a real tone poem of poignant beauty. The sixteenth feared by all but the bravest was played with quite extraordinary mastery and clarity which could only have been more exhilarating with more participation from the pounding insistence of the left hand. A beautiful flowing tempo to the seventeenth where the deep bass notes from the opening were the anchor on which such radiance could flourish.The improvised cadenza, that is the eighteenth, was played with insinuating insistence but the nineteenth ( perhaps the most technically difficult of all twenty four) was rather too slow to allow us to imagine the Aeolian harp on which the bel canto can simply float. A very rude awakening for the C minor, that is to become so important after the interval, was played with extraordinary vehemence but allowed Peter to judge with great sensitivity each recurring layer of sound until it became a dying whisper, simply discharged with a single glowing chord.The twenty first was shaped with great beauty if a little too ponderous to allow the melody to breathe with simplicity.The twenty second with the great bass octave declaration was played rather too staccato instead of the legato line that Chopin so clearly indicates. It was played with great clarity but sacrificing the grandeur and nobility before the disarming pastoral simplicity of the twenty third. Peter played this with ravishing fluidity and delicacy before the final mighty twenty fourth. Again sacrificing grandeur and nobility for clarity and remarkable technical authority where Chopin quite clearly indicates long pedal notes. The last three imperious ‘D’s’, though, were played with the undeniable authority of a great pianist .

After the interval we were treated to two very unfamiliar works of which Peter is an authority. I well remember our old piano teacher Gordon Green telling me about a fellow student in Manchester who could play anything even the Busoni Piano Concerto. Gordon had studied with Egon Petri a pupil of Busoni and his enthusiasm for Busoni was contagious and was passed on to all his students, John Ogdon and Peter amongst many others.

Two works I have rarely heard in the concert hall and both were played with mastery and total conviction. A fluidity that was missing in the original Chopin op 28, but here in both works there was a kaleidoscope of colour and chameleonic changes of character. One could even sense Brahms in one of the Busoni variations and the quixotic lightness of Schumann. Both had a ‘fugato’ towards the end that Peter played with clarity, but in Busoni there was the unmistakeable atmosphere of impersonal intellect ,whereas in Rachmaninov, whatever he did, was tinged with his unmistakable Russian nostalgia.

Two masterly performances greeted by a full house with a standing ovation and Peter only too happy to play Chopin’s miraculous Prelude op 45 as a thank you on his auspicious debut at the Bechstein Hall.

Greeted by Lady Rose Cholmondeley and many distinguished guests who were in a hall that has the courage to invite great artists to play in London with such fascinating eclectic programmes.

The Nine Variations on a Chopin Prelude resulted from a substantial revision of a large set of Variations and a Fugue on the celebrated Prelude in C minor (Op 28 No 20), which Busoni wrote in 1884 at the age of eighteen. In 1922 he added an introductory fugato and reduced the number of variations from eighteen to ten for inclusion in the first edition of the Klavierübung (1922), and then reduced it further to nine (by dropping the ‘Fantasia’) for the second edition (1925). Its final pages consist of a ‘Scherzo finale’ in tarantella style with an ‘Hommage à Chopin’ in waltz rhythm as its middle section

Rachmaninov’s Variations on a theme of Chopin, Op 22, emerged during one of his most productive periods, in the wake of the second piano concerto. It was in these years that he developed his own distinctive voice, which comes through clearly in this piece. Chopin’s well-known C minor prelude (No 20 from his set of 24 Préludes, Op 28) gave rise to a stylistic challenge: how to transform Chopin into Rachmaninov and was also Rachmaninov’s first large-scale piece for solo piano, exploring an wide range of pianistic elaborations of great technical difficulty .It was dedicated to the world-famous virtuoso piano teacher Theodor Leschetizky.

The simplicity of Chopin’s Prelude lends itself to use as a variation theme and Rachmaninov returned to Chopin’s original conception, in two phrases (the repetition of the second phrase was only at the behest of Chopin’s publisher). The enormous set of twenty-two variations falls into three distinct phases: 1-10, 11-18 and 19-22.

Rachmaninov premiered the Chopin variations himself in 1903, but the audience showed much more enthusiasm for his Op 23 Preludes, which he played in the same programme. This put doubts in Rachmaninov’s mind, and he gave performers options for shortening the piece; he would himself cut several variations when he felt his audience was restive.

The Variations on the name “Abegg” was composed between 1829 and 1830, while as a student in Heidelberg, and published as his op 1  The name is believed to refer to Schumann’s fictitious friend, Meta Abegg, whose surname Schumann used through a musical cryptogram  as the motivic basis for the piece. The name Meta is considered to be an anagram of the word “tema” (Latin). Another suggestion is Pauline von Abegg. Apparently, when he was twenty years old, Schumann met her and dedicated this work to her, as witnessed in Clara Schumann’s edition of her husband’s piano works.

The first five notes of the theme are A, B♭ (B), E, G, and G. This use of pitch names as letters was also used by Schumann in other compositions, such as his Carnaval .

It is composed of:Theme and 5 Variations.

Chopin’s 24 Preludes op.  28, are a set of short pieces for the piano, one in each of the twenty-four keys , originally published in 1839. He wrote them between 1835 and 1839, mostly in Paris, but partially at Valldemossa,Mallorca, where he spent the winter of 1838–39 and where he, George Sand , and her children went to escape the damp Paris weather. In Majorca, Chopin had a copy of Bach’s ’48’, and as in each of Bach’s two sets of  Chopin’s Op. 28 set comprises a complete cycle of the major and minor keys, albeit with a different ordering. Whereas Bach had arranged his collection of 48 preludes and fugues according to keys separated by rising semitones, Chopin’s key sequence  is a circle of fifths, with each major key being followed by its relative minor , and so on (i.e. C major, A minor, G major, E minor, etc.). Since this sequence of related keys  is much closer to common harmonic practice, it is thought that Chopin might have conceived the cycle as a single performance entity for continuous recital of his préludes .Chopin himself never played more than four of the preludes at any single public performance. Nor was this the practice for the 25 years after his death. The first pianist to program the complete set in a recital was probably Anna Yesipova for a concert in 1876. Nowadays, the complete set of Op. 28 preludes has become repertory fare, and many concert pianists have recorded the entire set, beginning with Ferruccio Busoni  in 1915, when making piano rolls for the Duo-Art label. Alfred Cortot  was the next pianist to record the complete preludes in 1926.

They were actually already finished before setting foot on Majorca, however, he did finalize them there, as referenced by him in his letters to Pleyel: “I have finished my préludes here on your little piano[…]”

The manuscript, which Chopin carefully prepared for publication, carries a dedication to the German pianist  and composer Joseph Christoph Kessler. The French and English editions (Catelin, Wessel) were dedicated to the piano-maker and publisher Camille Pleyel, who had commissioned the work for 2,000 francs (equivalent to nearly €6500 in present-day currency). The German edition of Breitkopf & Härtel was dedicated to Kessler, who ten years earlier had dedicated his own set of 24 Preludes, Op. 31, to Chopin.

Fou Ts’ong called them 24 problems such are their quicksilver technical and poetic challenges

Peter Donohoe is in high demand as a jury member for major international competitions, including the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, Hong Kong International Piano Competition and the Artur Rubenstein Piano Competition. Peter Donohoe is one of the UK’s most respected and sought-after pianists; we are honoured to welcome him to Bechstein Hall

Peter Donohoe was born in Manchester in 1953. He studied at Chetham’s School of Music for seven years, graduated in music at Leeds University, and went on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music with Derek Wyndham and then in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.

In recent seasons Donohoe has appeared with Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic and Concert Orchestra, Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, St Petersburg Philharmonia, RTE National Symphony Orchestra, Belarusian State Symphony Orchestra, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He has undertaken a UK tour with the Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as giving concerts in many South American and European countries, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Russia, and USA. Other past and future engagements include performances of all three MacMillian piano concertos with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; a ‘marathon’ recital of Scriabin’s complete piano sonatas at Milton Court; an all-Mozart series at Perth Concert Hall; concertos with the Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra, St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestraat Royal Festival Hall; and a residency at the Buxton International Festival.

Donohoe is also in high demand as a jury member for international competitions. He has recently served on the juries at the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow (2011 and 2015), Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (2016), Georges Enescu Competition in Bucharest (2016), Hong Kong International Piano Competition (2016), Harbin Competition (2017 and 2018), Artur Rubenstein Piano Master Competition (2017), Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition and Festival (2017), Alaska International e-Competition (2018), Concours de Geneve Competition (2018), Ferrol Piano Competition (2022), and Hong Kong International Piano Competition (2022), along with many national competitions both within the UK and abroad.

Donohoe’s most recent discs include six volumes of Mozart Piano Sonatas with SOMM Records. Other recent recordings include Haydn Keyboard Works Volume 1 (Signum), Grieg Lyric Pieces Volume 1 (Chandos), Dora Pejacevic Piano Concerto (Chandos), Brahms and Schumann viola sonatas with Philip Dukes (Chandos), and Busoni: Elegies and Toccata (Chandos), which was nominatedfor BBC Music Magazine Award. Donohoe has performed with all the major London orchestras, as well as orchestras from across the world: the Royal Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, Swedish Radio, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Vienna Symphony and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras. He has also played with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Sir Simon Rattle’s opening concerts as Music Director. He made his twenty-second appearance at the BBC Proms in 2012 and has appeared at many other festivals including six consecutive visits to the Edinburgh Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, and at the Ruhr and Schleswig Holstein Festivals in Germany.

The 23/24 season kicked off with Peter Donohoe performing as a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle with four performances of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie in London, Edinburgh, and Bucharest. In January 2024, Peter returns to Philadelphia for performance with the Ama Deus Ensemble and will then travel to Dubai to adjudicate the 3rd Classic Piano Competition 2024.

Music making of rare dedication and searing commitment .There has been no greater example of selfless dedication and humility than the Beaux Arts Trio and it was the image of it’s founder Menahem Pressler that cast a shadow over the last two days of music making at the Wigmore Hall.

Last night the Lozakovich/Kantorow duo and tonight the Schumann Quartet.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2025/04/02/daniel-lozakovich-alexandre-kantorow-burning-intensity-and-passionate-mastery-ignite-then-wigmore-hall-as-never-before/

A sixteen year old Lozakovich in Berlin, the Deutsche Grammophon’s yellow lounge and the early formation of the Schumann brothers with whom Pressler gave many concerts including one of his first Franck Quintet’s when he was well into his 90’s!

For two consecutive nights the Wigmore has resounded to music making of rare mastery and commitment and which just demonstrated the perfect size and famous acoustic of the Wigmore Hall for listening to chamber music.

The Schumann quartet playing with authority and masterly musicianship. Ken watching closely his brother as they united with the ravishing sounds of Mark’s cello and the subtle beauty of Veit Benedict Hertenstein’s viola.

Flying in from Frankfurt with not a little difficulty. Lost baggage, hence improvised concert suit for Mark, not to mention the booking for the cello unable to be found and only thanks to BA’s caring staff allowed to arrive for the concert

I think the relief to sit down and make music added a different dimension to their playing and gave a driving intense feeling to all they did.

Nowhere more than in the Weiner String quartet that was played with ravishing colour and a driving masterly intensity. A true discovery of a quartet that had the same astonishing mastery of writing for all four instruments that was so evident in Beethoven’s Razumovsky op 59 n.2

What a joy to see the relish on Ken’s face as his brother added such Razumovskian charm to Beethoven’s final Presto op 59 and to the early op 18 played as an encore .

Haydn is alway a revelation and this string quartet op 54 n2 was astonishing for it’s mastery of writing that just pointed his pupil,Beethoven, in the direction of his inspirational final thoughts of his late quartets op 127 to 135

I look forward to hearing more Beethoven from them on their next visit .

This summer they are performing the 16 Beethoven quartets in their first complete cycle and are even tonight back in Frankfurt with their first ‘Harp’ quartet op 74.

The Wigmore resounding to quartets this week with their International Competition that moves from the early rounds at the Royal Academy onto this hallowed stage on Saturday and Sunday for the semi final and final. All streamed live and not to be missed.