I first heard Emanuil in the 2018/2019 Busoni Competition where he was awarded the Gold Medal https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2019/09/07/viva-busoni-the-final-parts-1-2-3-with-interlude/
His playing was remarkable for its clarity and agility rather than its depth and weight – infact I described his Brahms ‘Handel Variations’ as a short back and sides Brahms! And he won the competition playing Saint Saens rather than Beethoven . His early training and ferocious discipline as a child in Bulgaria had given him a technical preparation that can only be acquired whilst the hand is being formed. His intelligence and musicianship of good taste was always present which is not always the case with wonderfully trained pianists from the East. It was a few years later that I heard him again in Capua ,the city of the bells, near to Naples and it was here that I was bowled over by his Beethoven op 31 n. 2 which was one of the finest from every point of view.
I invited him to join the Keyboard Trust and in his first Steinway Hall audition concert he played the Liszt Norma Fantasy that was overwhelming for it’s intelligence ,musicianship, passionate conviction but above all sumptuous sound and a remarkable clarity.
We invited him to play in Florence in our series of Busoni Winners Concerts and I was a bit perplexed because he wanted to play his own Theme and variations.I need not have worried because it was a work of such overwhelming ingenuity of virtuosity and beguiling innuendo that Oscar Peterson or Art Tatum sprang to mind. The variations were an engagement present for his girl friend and it suffices to say that they are now happily married and giving concerts together .
I am delighted to know that he now has my old Alma Mater behind him and he has been awarded the first Sulaminta Aronovsky Fellowship. She was a formidable lady and friend and I only realised how remarkable she was on reading her obituary!
Now seven years on I heard Emanuil play in a Royal Academy sponsored recital at the Wigmore Hall where he performed the marathon variations by Rzewski
To say it was sensational would be too little. I knew Ursula Oppens, we were in Siena together with the great pedagogue ,Agosti, the summer she won the Busoni Competition. Later in her illustrious career championing contemporary composers, she had commissioned these variations that she has recorded twice. I am sure when Emanuil’s new RAM recording is released she will be the first to bow to his total self identification and mastery of one of the most complex works ever written for the piano.
After such a preamble what we heard today was the arrival of a great artist on the crest of the wave of a very satisfying life in music . As Andras Schiff said the other day in an interview https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14QRssWnTqz/?mibextid=wwXIfr.Concentrate on the love of music …..it is not a business or a career ……..it is a privilege ! Emanuil is a complete musician of which playing the piano is but part of the diamond. Being a composer he is able to delve deep into the scores of others and realise that an interpreter is at the service of the composer . Je sens,je joue ,je transmet was the title of an interview in Le Monde de la Musique ( that alas no longer exists) . Transmit but what ? Some would say the intentions behind the notes and they would not be wrong. But the intentions especially with Debussy ( who had edited all the works of Chopin) are of such minute detail, that like with the deaf Beethoven, one can only marvel at the genius that could write such a detailed blueprint of what they intended at the moment of creation.
It was this that was so remarkable with Emanuil’s interpretation of nine Preludes. A sense of balance that no matter how complicated the line there was always clarity and above all a control of sound that was of extraordinary sensibility. The opening of ‘Les sons’ where pianissimo abounds together with so many hairpin indications and some notes that are legato and others slightly detached. All this was turned miraculously into sounds creating atmospheres and in Puck,Lavine and Pickwick an extraordinary sense of characterisation. The startling difference between marqué and pianissimo staccato in Feux d’Artifice or glissandi in diminuendo did not take anything away from the extraordinary excitement of fireworks or the glowing beauty of the apparition in the distance of la Marseillaise. I remember Fou Ts’ong pondering over these details in Debussy and his being shocked that so called Debussy players completely overlooked them.
It was the same with Emanuil’s discovery of Alkan . This is the territory of Mark Viner ,another favourite of Dr Mather, and Mark is already on his tenth CD to include all the works of this mysterious composer, next door neighbour of Chopin. Chopin esteemed him so highly that he bequeathed his unfinished treatise for Fétis on piano playing to him to finish. Emanuil I had heard play this ‘Symphony’ by Alkan a few months ago and was glad to be able to hear it again today. The brooding Eroica like opening motif in a Mendelssohnian outpouring of notes but of greater depth and originality. The extraordinary Funeral March with the tenor legato melody accompanied by staccato chords played with great mastery and sense of control. A Minuet that was like the ‘Witches sabbath’ , but all this was nothing compared to the ‘tour de force’ of quite incredible mastery of the Finale. Emanuil like Mark Viner showing us a composer that for too long has been a shadowy figure in history books.
An encore by great demand was gladly offered by Emanuil. A ‘little’ piece by Medtner called ‘Spring’. A note spinning work with streams of jeux perlé notes played with the mastery of a Moiseiwitsch, where the melodic line was allowed to glow amongst these streams of gold and silver strands of featherlight notes.
Emanuil Ivanov attracted international attention after receiving the First prize at the 2019 Ferruccio Busoni Piano Competition in Italy. This achievement was followed by concert engagements in some of the world’s most prestigious halls including Teatro alla Scala in Milan and Herculessaal in Munich. He was born in 1998 in the town of Pazardzhik, Bulgaria. From an early age he demonstrated a keen interest and love for music. He regards the presence of symphonic music, especially that of Gustav Mahler, as tremendously influential in his musical upbringing during his childhood. He started piano lessons with Galina Daskalova in his hometown around the age of seven. Ivanov later studied with the renowned Bulgarian pianist Atanas Kurtev from 2013 to 2018. In 2024 he graduated from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, having studied there on a full scholarship under the tutelage of Pascal Nemirovski and Anthony Hewitt. In 2025 he completed the Advanced Diploma course at London’s Royal Academy of Music as a recipient of the prestigious Bicentenary scholarship, under the supervision of Joanna MacGregor and Christopher Elton. Following this, he has been named as the first Sulamita Aronovsky Piano Fellow at RAM.
In February 2021, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ivanov performed a solo recital in Milan’s famous Teatro alla Scala. The concert was live-streamed online and is a major highlight in the artist’s career.
In 2022, he received the honorary Silver medal of the Musicians’ Company, London and later in the same year became a recipient of the prestigious Carnwath Piano Scholarship. He has given critically acclaimed performances and tours in Japan, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, South Africa, the US, the United Kingdom and Poland and has played with leading orchestras in South Africa, the UK, Bulgaria and Italy. Ivanov’s performances have been featured on BBC Radio 3, Italy’s Rai Radio 3 and Japan’s NHK Radio. In 2024, Emanuil also made his debuts on the stages of Wigmore Hall and Konzerthaus Dortmund, and in January 2025, his album of Scarlatti sonatas for the renowned Naxos label was released. In 2025, he also made his recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall. He has continually shown affinity towards some of the more rarely performed works in the repertoire and in 2024 performed Busoni’s mammoth piano concerto, following this with performances of the complete cycle of Preludes and Fugues by Shostakovich in 2025. Apart from playing the piano, he also displays great interest in composition and has composed regularly since childhood.
Charles-Valentin Alkan 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888 was a French composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Chopin and Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life.
The Symphony for Solo Piano op 39 4-7,is a large-scale romantic work for piano composed by Charles – Valentin Alkan and published in 1857.
Although it is generally performed as a self-contained work, it comprises études Nos. 4–7 from the Douze études dans tour les tons mineurs (Twelve Studies in All the Minor Keys), Op. 39, each title containing the word Symphonie . The four movements are titled Allegro moderato, Marche funèbre,Menuet and Finale ( described by Raymond Lewenthal as a ride in hell). Much like the Concerto for Solo Piano (Nos. 8–10), the Symphony is written so as to evoke the broad palette of timbres and harmonic textures available to an orchestra. It does not contain the excesses of the Concerto or the Grande Sonate (Op. 33). But, rather like the Sonatine Op. 61, it proves that Alkan was also capable of writing perfectly balanced and almost ‘Classical’ works.”Unlike a standard classical symphony, each movement is in a different key, rising in progressive tonality by a perfect fourth.
Debussy wrote “We must agree that the beauty of a work of art will always remain a mystery […] we can never be absolutely sure ‘how it’s made.’ We must at all costs preserve this magic which is peculiar to music and to which music, by its nature, is of all the arts the most receptive.”
Préludes are 24 pieces for solo piano , divided into two books of 12 preludes each.Each book was written in a matter of months, at an unusually fast pace for Debussy. Book I was written between December 1909 and February 1910, and Book II in 1911 and 1912.In the original editions, Debussy had the titles placed at the end of each work,allowing performers to experience each prelude without being influenced by its titles beforehand.
Two of the titles were set in quotation marks by Debussy because they are, in fact, quotations: «Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir» is from Charles Baudelaire’s poem Harmonie du soir (“Evening Harmony”), from his volume Les Fleurs du mal. «Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses» is from J.M. Barrie’s book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens , which Debussy’s daughter had received as a gift.
At least one title is poetically vague: The exact meaning of Voiles, the first book’s second prelude, is impossible to ascertain; in French, voiles can mean either “veils” or “sails”.On 3 May 1911, pianist Jane Mortier premiered the first book of preludes at the Salle Pleyel in Paris.German-English pianist Walter Morse Rummel , a student of Leopold Godowsky, premiered the second book in 1913 in London.
Debussy and other pianists who gave early performances of the preludes (including Ricardo Viñes) played them in groups of three or four, which remains a popular approach today. This allows performers to choose preludes with which they have the strongest affinity, or those to which their particular gifts are most suited.
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 