Sokolov tonight was like a light shining brightly with playing of such clarity and beauty that it illuminated the well known Sonata in A K. 331 and Rondo in A minor K. 511 as it did the little known Prelude and Fugue in C K.394.
They were in almost complete darkness and without any break or applause between the three works of Mozart that opened this recital.
It was in the jewel of a theatre in the little hillside town of Todi in the Umbrian hills that it shares with nearby Spoleto.
There was a complete concentration and silence that allowed these works to be heard in all their naked purity.
The fearless almost Beethovenian sounds in the opening Prelude and the absolute clarity of the part playing in the fugue were contrasted with the naive purity of the opening theme and variations of the Sonata.
Each variation sparkled like perfect jewels.
Like the rays of light in a multicoloured prism.
Playing of such purity but of such subtle contrast too.
Seemingly without pedal as it was played with such care and mastery we were never aware of the technical feats at the service of the music.
The Rondo alla turca was played with such delicacy and supreme sense of style that allowed this almost pastoral sonata to seemingly hover above the keys.
The delicacy and intricate weavings of the Rondo in A minor K. 511 were one of the most wondrous things I have heard since Maestro Sokolov’s Haydn Sonatas last year.
The difference between Pletnev and Sokolov was like chalk from cheese.
The intimacy that Pletnev was trying to achieve in Florence on Saturday was achieved tonight in Todi because Sokolov was interested only in purveying the composers wishes without any evident invasion of his own personality.
But my God here was one of the great musical personalities of our time.
The 14 pieces of Bunte Blatter op 99 by Schumann where time stood still as the sumptuous sounds filled the air with poetry,passion,intimate confessions and joyous celebration.
The magic of the melody of the fourth , used by Brahms for his variations op 9 , was something to cherish.
As was the disperation and passion with which he plunged into the Praludium.
Complete darkness did not allow me to make detailed notes but what does that matter when we were treated to such a range of moods.
We were assaulted and then seduced,titivated and then mourned,thrilled and then reduced to tears.
Coloured leaves indeed….and what colours in this magicians hands.
I was in doubt to undertake the two hour car journey from Rome for this concert.
“He can bunte his blatter without me” I told friends………I had heard Trifonov play them all in the Barbican last year and just a few weeks ago heard two from Volodos as a prelude to the Humoresque and that was quite enough for a lifetime.
Two great pianists of course……..
…………………………but then there is Sokolov!
I will be the first in line to cheer the same programme in Rome on the 30th March or Eindhoven on the 13th.
It was the artistic secretary of S.Cecilia that when I had questioned the programme.
He had told me yes it was the complete Bunte Blatter….40 minutes and an absolute masterpiece.
How right he was!
An intimate atmosphere was created in this theatre of 300 seats.He can create the same atmosphere in a hall of 3000 too such is the spell he can spin.
Generous as always or is it something more like a rite, where at the end one can celebrate and enjoy together the absolute gems he was throwing our way.
Two Chopin Mazukas of such perfection ……not sterile perfection but human and full of refined sentiment.
The trills in the B flat mazurka were something to cherish for a lifetime as they spun and unwound each in a different unobtrusive way.
Two of his famous pieces by Couperin and Rameau. In the ‘Rappel des oiseaux’ we could see the birds hovering around him like St Francis just a stones throw from here.
The absolute perfection was once again shared with his doting public.
The Rachmaninov Prelude in G sharp minor op 32 was of a hauntimg beauty that there are no words to describe.
But it was the massive opening and closing chords of Chopins C minor Prelude that had us on the edge of our seats as it got quieter and quieter with a superhuman control of sound.
It sent us into the cool evening air astonished,moved and seduced by the “…..greatest pianist alive or dead”
Of course a pianist needs a perfect instrument to be able to search for such perfection and it was another magician
Mauro Buccitti who was at his side tonight with a truly magnificent Steinway from our old friend of over 50years Alfonsi in Rome.
Chapeau is just not enough!
Five encores later……..
Linda Alberti niece of that great aesthete and much missed actress from nearby Bevagna: Elsa de’ Giorgi.Never forgotten even by Adelaide married to Lindas son Fabio and both artist working in the beautiful hillside town of Bevagna with Montefalco looking on enticingly from above.
Awaiting the legendary Sokolov in beautiful Todi.I decided I really could not miss Bunte Blatter that I have never liked played as a whole but he may just be the one that can convince like he did with Haydn last year
I am jotting down some thoughts and it is only the interval!
One could already fill a book with ideas about the performances of Mozart K.282 and Beethoven op.110.
I had spent the morning with Elisso Virsaladze in Fiesole where she had implored two very fine pianists to just do what Beethoven asks- no more but certainly no less!
A japanese boy,a protégée of Martha Argerich in op.27n.2 and Elia Cecino,winner of the Premio Italia in op 31n.1.
“But why are you doing that if Beethoven does not ask for it?”
The same integrity and humility of the legendary pianist/musician Guido Agosti,my mentor and great friend who gave a lecture recital in my theatre on the very sonatas that Pletnev is offering today (both on video in the Ghione archives.Op 110 on CD in one of the very rare performances to be recorded of this great master who reigned in Siena for many years).
Pletnev today offered a sort of improvisation on themes by Mozart and Beethoven but I think it was much more than that and will try to reason out the riddle.
Both Pletnev and Pogorelich have played in my theatre and so was not surprised to see Pogorelich backstage at a Wigmore recital by his colleague some years ago and if I may say with all respect “birds of a feather.”
I remember Pletnev declaring that to play in the Wigmore was “..like playing unter ze water”
Tatyana Nikolaeva told us that her student was coming to play in our series too after her many recitals for us and we were delighted to take him out to dinner after a wonderful ‘Pictures’ and his own ‘Sleeping Beauty’
Pogorelich had played that season too: the 4 Scherzi and two Mozart Sonatas.
Fou Ts’ong had arrived a few days early for his recital and I asked him if he would like to hear Pogorelich.
I explained that like Cherkassky he was not always faithful to the score.
After the concert Ts’ong took me aside and said:
“…but Shura loves the piano …. this man hates it!”
The thing Pletnev and Pogorelich have in common was as Pablo Rossi immediately said today at the end of op 110…
“but what voicing!Modern day pianists do not do that any more.”
Thank God you might say …..but there is much more to be said about it than that.
Fanny Waterman used the word ‘mold’ but she meant that pianists do not seem to have a distinctive voice.
As Elisso too says, 90% of pianists today have nothing to say.They are too predictable.
In Pletnev’s case though I think on todays hearing:
“All song and no dance make for rather a dull boy!”
I am now continuing these thoughts and reflections long after the end of the concert.
I have reasoned with a whole group of magnificent musicians playing hookey from Elisso’s class over a glass or two in Florence Cathedral square.
They had flocked to hear a legendary pianist in a beautiful programme of Late Beethoven and Mozart.
I have come to the conclusion that without form,shape or some sort of structured order, held together by a rhythmic undercurrent, beautiful sounds on their own become predictable and in the end boring.
An encore of the Scarlatti Sonata in D minor summed up a whole recital and was cheered to the rafters by the same followers of ‘bel canto’ who live for the high wire momentary gratification of some rarified sounds.
But the art of the great interpreter is to make one feel that whilst obeying the composers wishes it should also sound like a spontaneous improvisation but with a rhythmic undercurrent that holds the work together and gives architectural shape to the works played and also to the recital as a whole.
One that keeps an audience on the edge of their seats waiting to see if they should fall off the high wire.
The great musician is he who lasts the course and arrives triumphantly to the finishing post with his humiltiy and integrity intact.
Having shared a unique musical experience with the audience that have created the atmosphere in which anything is possible.
The Amici dell Musica in Florence has for decades been in the dedicated hands of the Passigli family of publishers.
They are renowned for their high standards and absolute musical integrity where only the greatest music and interpreters are allowed to tred.
I brought Perlemuter,Tureck and Cherkassky to them from Rome but it was only Perlemuter and Tureck who were idolised and invited back year after year.
They are renowned for their programmes of the greatest string quartets,something that would be an absolute rarity in Rome or the south.
Serkin,Arrau,Fischer and Brendel were their Gods.
Artists that all others were measured by.
Today regular visitors are Murray Perahia,Andras Schiff,Angela Hewitt,Paul Lewis, Ian Bostridge, Les Arts Florissants,Jordi Savall the Emerson Quartet etc etc.
The same serious intent as the Wigmore Hall in London.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Pletnev in their season but I think a programme of Beethoven Op 110 & 111 plus two Mozart Sonatas was hard to resist!
The Scarlatti was full of rarified sounds.
Episodes in varying tempi that did not relate one to the other.
Scales that sounded like washes of colour from a different world arriving eventually to a bell like trill that unwound like tinkerbell!
It reminded me of the pianists we have heard on the old 78 rpm records of De Pachmann or the like.
Pletnev is no longer the spry young man of thirty years ago when he came to us.Life has lain heavily on him and he shuffles on and off and seems very unsure of his bearings on stage.
However once arrived at the piano he is still the master that had Sandor exclaiming as to why he should want to be a conductor when he could play the piano like the unique virtuoso he is.
He started the recital late and it made me wonder if it would be the same experience we had at Rome University a few years ago.
A five o clock recital in Rome and I was five minutes late too.
I found people still outside the hall and was surprised when they asked me if I was Pletnev as he had not yet arrived!
After a forty minute wait La Sapienza decided to cancel the concert.
It would appear that Mr Pletnev had gone sightseeing not realising that Saturday afternoon there was a protest march that had blocked the ‘Infernal City’ and made a visitors life a misery!
The Teatro Della Pergola was once the Opera House of Florence and who knows if Pletnev was aware of that as he proceded to play Mozart’s E Flat Sonata K:282 as if all the world is a stage.
(The theatre is renowned these days as the most important stage for drama in Italy.I first saw my future wife,Ileana Ghione, there in 1978 in Private Lives by Noel Coward and we last performed John Gabriel Borkman there 20 years later when Rosalyn Tureck had become the absolute ‘Diva’ of Florence).
Pletnev’s performance today was deliciously free and of such subtle multi- coloured shading with all the characters and drama present of an Opera by Mozart.
It may have seemed rather exaggerated in these days of such purity and almost fear to touch the great scores.But it is ignorance of the style and it was Horowitz who lay the same operatic scenario in front of us …his very last concerto recording was of Mozart K 488 with that most elegant and eclectic of conductors: Carlo Maria Giulini.
It may have seemed ‘over the top’ but his slight delays and sudden changing of colours were riveting.
The magical colours in the Menuetto 2 contrasted so well with the return of the Menuetto 1 played very rhythmically.
The Allegro was not rhythmically so clear and his jeux perlé with abrupt changes of tempo started to became rather mannered and predictable and for that reason a little tiresome!
And from here on in this hallowed hall that has seen the greatest musicians of our time we were treated to old style performances between the “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea!”
I had started to make notes as an ‘aide memoire’ but after a while I just shut the book and tried to concentrate on the delicacies that we were being fed instead of being swept up in the current of great interpretations of master works.
A very wayward opening to op 110 where the tempo seemed to change by the second depending on what delicious sounds he was trying to titivate his senses with.The actual sublime opening melody was extremely beautiful after a trill that I have never heard thrown off with such deliberation.
Bass notes that suddenly sounded like an organ stop where the filigree figurations that Beethoven asks for were submerged in pedal.
It did have a certain aspect of being improvised though and the splitting of hands in the magical key change was very effective but by then the tempo had almost come to a halt! It was interesting to see him strike a single note from above like a great painter with his canvas but then the left hand phrasing in twos was completely submerged in pedal as the melody was reduced to a romantic song without words!
The second movement was very deliberately played ,the syncopations hardly recognisable as they were thrown off with a nonchalance that killed the very deliberate rhythmic urgency that Beethoven asks for.
The famous ‘bebung’ or repeated/vibrated notes in the Adagio were played with one finger and seemed to work well and the sublime melody that followed was barely audible but extremely beautiful.
His lack of rhyhmic impulse though left Beethoven’s ‘Sturm and Drang’ out of the equation completely.
What remained was his heart and soul.Even if his heart was sometimes on his sleeve it was a memorable moment to cherish.
The return of the fugue subject in inversion was almost unrecognisable due to his rhythmic distortion.
The mysterious reappearance of the subject after the great chords was as astonishing as it was surprising.
Some very bare isolated pizzicato octaves led to the gradual build up to the final great climax.It was rather thrown away on mists of sound from a different era.We are used to hearing such clarity and forward propulsion to the final break of tension.What we got was a sort of beautiful melody and accompaniment!
The second half began with the Sonata in C K. 330 “Parigina” by Mozart.It opened with a delicate left hand staccato that was very beautiful but then rapidly resorted to the same changes of tempo and exaggerations that had been the hallmark of the first part of the recital.
Op 111 Beethoven’s last great Sonata where the first movement is full of struggle to be resolved only in the sublime Arietta and variations.
The opening fanfare Beethoven asks to be played with one hand- Pletnev chose to play it with both! He reduced the struggle immediately to a sort of jeux perlé where Perlemuter had likened the fast semiquavers to water boiling over at 100% .
Perlemuter had studied with Schnabel who had been one of the first to respect the composers wishes.
His teacher Leschetizsky had told him that he was not a pianist but a musician.
What greater compliment could there be today!
But in that period pianists were entertainers and would have “their own” interpretations that were designed to titivate the senses and show off their technical and emotional prowess.They even spoke to the audience to let them know how they were doing!
And Pletnev today had decided to turn back the clock and reduced the great Artietta to melody and accompaniment.
Where the opening is so obviously a string quartet and the voices in the variations give such energy and meaning to one of Beethoven’s most poignant utterences.
The powerful arpeggios were reduced to arabesques like a Shultz- Evler Strauss transcription.
The etherial meanderings in the upper registers of the piano were in Pletnev’s hand like a fly buzzing around the piano instead of the most magical sounds that lead to the final statement of the theme amidst magical trills and mere fragments magically placed all over the keyboard.
These were just some of the reasons that in the end the recital was boring.
ùIt could have been controversial ,non intellectual,provocative even but I am sorry to say boring it should never have been.
He gave the impression of someone who was tired but if that is what the public accepts so be it.
I was just surprised to hear this in such a hallowed hall and very disappointed more than anything else….
I was expecting nothing and that is what I got!
So perhaps I was not disappointed …but for sure I certainly was not elated!
Some very fine playing in the beautiful surroundings of the British Institute in Florence.
A room with a view indeed surrounded by the books of Harold Acton in this library that he bequeathed to the British Institute.
Harold Acton a great aesthete from the times when Florence attracted artists that had the possibility and wish to dedicate themselves to the beauty that is still at the very roots of this beautuful city.
He left his famous villa “La Pietra” to New York University having been turned down by his Alma Mater at Oxford on the grounds that it would be too onerous to maintain!
That other almost contemporary Bernard Berenson left “I Tatti” to Harvard University.
Ashley is on a four year course with Elisso Virsaladze in Fiesole.
Having won eight years ago the Gold Medal at the Guildhall he has come under the spell of this extraordinary lady whom he met in the summer school of another small town in Italy: Sermoneta .
As this highly talented,intelligent young man realised, immediately, the road to paradise is long and arduous indeed.
If there is someone who can indicate the way to the exceptionally gifted young pianists that flock five times a year to her mastercourse,it is this humble lady much admired by Richter and his peers.
Amazingly at 78 she had come directly from her triumphant recital in Milan (they tell me her Schumann Fantasie was memorable) ready to dedicate herself eight hours or more a day to sharing her secrets with her admiring and adoring students that had come from all parts of the world.
Ashley is now coming to the end of his four years in ‘paradise’ and at the same time completing his doctorate in London on the work of Thomas Ades:
“Ashley Fripp is a genuine virtuoso,an astoundingly brilliant and masterly pianist and his total grasp of the music is a joy to hear”.
The words of Thomas Ades were amply demonstrated in the recital he gave last night rapturously received by a very discerning public.
It has hopefully signalled the start of much music in this hallowed library overlooking the Ponte Vecchio.
Music was the only thing missing…..up to now!
I had followed the masterclasses in Fiesole during the day and had heard a veritable feast of music.
From Beethoven Sonata op 90 and Bagatelles op 126.Haydn’s charming little two movement Sonata in C and Chromatic Fantasie of Bach.Through an extraordinary Scarbo and a contemporary virtuoso piece for left hand alone Tapiola Visioins op 92 by Takashi Yoshimatsu( a much discussed title ‘Commas of birds’..Google to the rescue here) and finally Schumann Piano Concerto.
All superbly played just waiting to be pointed in the right direction or at least another more musically inspired one!
What fun Elisso had conducting the wonderfully charming Haydn last movement or sitting at the piano to show how the glorious phrasing of Schumann could illuminate the many sometimes seemingly empty notes.
But it was Ashley just a few hours before his totally different recital programme who presented Schubert’s last sonata in B flat .
Just a few indications from Elisso who knew that although this was work in progress it was in the hands of a master musician who would always treat the score with such loving and intelligent care .
He would,however, appreciate some indications from a ‘policeman’who had known the area for a lifetime!
Just an hour of music at the British Institute presented by their enlightened director Simon Gammell.
Two impromptus by Schubert D 935 (op 142n.1) and D899 (op 90 n.2)
contrasted with two by Chopin n.1 op 29 and n.2 op 36.
These acted as an introduction to Chopin’s B minor Sonata op 58.
It was immediately apparent the liquid sound that Ashley sought on this old but still noble Bechstein.
It allowed the lyricism of this late Impromptu to be shaped with such loving care and sense of colour.
His refined musicianship never allowed for any sentimentality but a nobility carried forward by an inner rhythmic energy which gave great architectural shape to this the most noble of Schuberts eight impromptus.
It was the same aristocratic elegance and simplicity that I remember from Annie Fischer.
Elisso knew that Annie Fischer had played in my theatre in Rome and told the story of her visiting the class of Neuhaus whilst giving a concert in Moscow.She remembered that this much revered legendary pianist wanted to play a Bartok Concerto to them but amongst Neuhaus’s students there were none that knew the concerto or could play the second piano with her!
This was after Richter and Gilels had left this illustrious nest and were already flying high.
The impromptu in E flat that followed ran like water in a brook with a jeux perlé shaped with such colour and beauty.The march like middle section contrasting so beautifully in the hands of a musician who had known how to achieve such a sense of balance and rigour.
It is a long time since I have heard the Chopin Impromptus in the concert hall.
Hats off to Ashley for choosing to contrast them with the preceding ones of Schubert.
The A flat Impromptu was played with an irresistible charm where the pianists agile hands just seemed to fly over the keys with a lightness and subtle rubato that led the way to the more dramatic Impromptu in F sharp.
A beautiful sense of balance allowed the melody to sing so naturally without any hardness as it did when it transfered to the left hand towards the end with cascades of notes lightly brushing the keys like an artist adding a wash of colour to a masterpiece.
It was the B minor Sonata of Chopin though that showed off the remarkable musicianship and sensibility of this pianist.
Here was a musician from a great school ….the school of that great Dame of the piano here in Fiesole.
It was the passionate, robust recapitulation of Chopin’s second subject that gave such weight and importance to what is so often refered to as Chopin’s weak sense of structure in his sonatas and concertos.
It added the seal to a very taught sense of structure in which Chopin’s sublime melodic invention was allied to a very precise framework.
This second subject in the opening Allegro Maestoso was then allowed to dissolve so magically.
Remarkable too was ‘the knotty twine’ in the middle section of the Scherzo played with such an unusually clear sense of line.
The faster outer sections thrown off with an ease like streams of light during the night.
Magical feux follets indeed.
There was magic in the air too with the sublime stillness that he found in the coda of the slow movement.
I would have linked the final chords of the Scherzo with the arresting call to arms of the slow movement.But his playing and sense of stillness and shape that he brought to this movement created a heatfelt contrast to the scintillating virtuosity of the relentless Presto finale.
In Fiesole influenza had been passing from one student to the other.
Elisso assured me that it was not the corona virus!
But unfortunately it was Ashley’s turn and so meant that his great professionalism had allowed him to come to the end of his recital not without some discomfort, of course unnoticed by the public.
It meant,though, that after a very exciting performance of the Presto finale of the B minor Sonata he had no energy left to offer an encore to a very enthusiastic audience.
A nice glass of wonderful Chianti ensured an almost complete recovery and will be recommended to all the future stars that will be invited to shine in this unique venue
Scriabin: Sonata no 3 in Fsharp minor Op 23
Schubert: Sonata in D major D850 Ariel Lanyi, born in 1997, began piano lessons with Lea Agmon just before his fifth birthday and made his orchestral debut at the age of 7. Since then, he has given numerous recitals in cities such as London, Paris (including Hôtel des Invalides and Radio France), Rome, Prague, Brussels, and regularly in concerts broadcast live on Israeli radio and television. He has appeared as a soloist with a variety of orchestras in the United Kingdom and Israel, including the Israel Symphony Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and has participated in festivals such as the Israel Festival, Ausseer Festsommer, Bosa Antica Festival, Miami Piano Festival, the Ravello Festival, and the Young Prague Festival. As a chamber musician, he has appeared with members (including leading members) of the Prague Philharmonia, the Czech Philharmonic, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and the Israel Philharmonic, among others.
In 2020, Ariel will appear in the Marlboro Festival. Ariel was awarded first prize at the 2017 Dudley International Piano Competition following a performance of Mozart’s Concerto in C minor, K. 491 in the final round, and in 2018, he was awarded the first prize in the Grand Prix Animato in Paris.Ariel studied at the High School and Conservatory of the Jerusalem Academy of Music, in the piano class of Yuval Cohen. He also studied violin and composition, and was concertmaster of the High School and Conservatory Orchestra. He has also received extensive tuition from eminent artists such as Leon Fleisher, Robert Levin, Murray Perahia, Imogen Cooper, Leif Ove Andsnes, Steven Osborne, and the late Ivan Moravec. Currently, he studies as a full scholarship student at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Hamish Milne and Ian Fountain. Ariel is a recipient of the Munster Trust Mark James Star Award and the Senior Award of the Hattori Foundation.
What can one add when you are swept away from the first to the last note by two works that I could not say are my favourites.
From the first robust ‘Drammatico’ of his beautifully full sounds in Scriabin from which the fragments of Scriabin’s romantic imagination come together little by little until he reaches the final explosion and passionate sweep of the ‘star.’
With the imposing octaves of the second movement dissolving to a liquid cantabile of such clarity.
The extreme beauty of the Andante where Ariel’s wondrous sense of colour and balance added to a fluidity of sound of great beauty allowed Scriabin’s magical sounds to float into the rarified air before leading into the Presto con fuoco and great passionate outbursts of the last movement.
Scriabin had been married to a young pianist, Vera Ivanovna Isaakovich, in August 1897 and he and his wife went to Paris, where he started to work on the new sonata. Scriabin is said to have called the finished work “Gothic”, evoking the impression of a ruined castle. Some years later however, he devised a different programme for this sonata entitled “States of the Soul”:First movement, Drammàtico: The soul, free and wild, thrown into the whirlpool of suffering and strife.Second movement, Allegretto: Apparent momentary and illusory respite; tired from suffering the soul wants to forget, wants to sing and flourish, in spite of everything. But the light rhythm, the fragrant harmonies are just a cover through which gleams the restless and languishing soul.Third movement, Andante: A sea of feelings, tender and sorrowful: love, sorrow, vague desires, inexplicable thoughts, illusions of a delicate dream.Finale, Presto con fuoco: From the depth of being rises the fearsome voice of creative man whose victorious song resounds triumphantly. But too weak yet to reach the acme he plunges, temporarily defeated, into the abyss of non-being.
All this was evoked today in the magical hands of this young Israeli pianist ,who is being coached by Ian Fountain ,the only british born pianist to have won the Rubinstein Competition and who is like Ariel a disarmingly reserved master musician.
But it was in the Schubert D major Sonata D.850 that Ariel’s great musicianship and technical command became startlingly apparent.
This is the most Beethovenian of Schubert’s 21 Sonatas (as the Mozart C minor concerto is the most Beethovenian of the 27) and it takes a very great musician to bring it to life.
It needs a forward unrelenting propulsion that is so much part of the world of Beethoven.
Even in the more lyrical sections there is an underlying energy like being on a great conveyer belt or wave that carries us forward.
Never missing however all the wondrous beauty that surrounds this unrelenting journey.
I have only heard this sonata played as today from Curzon or Perahia.
From the sense of rhythmic energy that seemed to bubble over with a great forward propulsion that would every so often burst into a lyricism without loosing the ever present undercurrent that sweeps all before it.
The charming lilt to the ‘con moto’ where the interchange of melodic line from the right hand to the left was pure magic.
The delicate comments ornamenting the melodic line were quite sublime as this movement disappeared to a mere murmur before the wonderful sense of dance in the Scherzo.
There were such humourous comments after the rather serious almost pompous opening and a trio that had a subtle rubato and sense of style where each note spoke so eloquently.
His sense of dynamic control and colour meant that he could arrive at the end without any ritardando which was so startlingly right.
The Rondo was played like the charming clock work clock that it so vividly depicts.
It was played with an irresistible charm and childlike simplicity.The change to the minor was quite breathtaking.
There was indeed magic in the air as Schubert’s sublime lyrical invention suddenly entered on the tail of a great energetic outburst.
It is one of those moments like in the G major sonata where Schubert’s so called ‘sublime length’ was infact just that.
It was in Ariel’s sensitive but very masculine hands that this melodic outburst was so wonderfully shaped with such subtle rubato and colouring.
Seeming to barely touch the keys as he caressed such wondrous sounds out of a piano that rarely have we heard sound so beautiful.
I remember quite some years ago when my wife was playing Candida by Shaw in Rovigo in the Veneto region of Italy.
A little jewel of an opera house in the centre of this town and used for all types of culture.
We noticed that Murray Perahia was to give a recital a month later and we decided to return to hear him.
This was when he was just starting to play in Italy after winning the Leeds Competition.
He played the Chopin 4 Ballades , the Mozart D minor Fantasy and Schubert D Major Sonata.
It was an unforgettable performance.
We were in the square afterwards and saw the young man we had just admired so much coming towards us.
As I obviously looked as though I might speak English he had found himself, after this triumph, completely on his own and he had no idea where he could get something to eat!
Well, we were delighted to take him with us to eat and were overwelmed as much by his simplicity and humility as we had been by his performances.
Murray Perahia has since gone on to conquer the world and in the many masterclasses that I have attended his intelligence,humility and total dedication to the music have been as much of a surprise and his playing.
Each time he plays musicians invariably reach for their scores to discover the beauty that has been revealed from his hands in scores that they have lived with for a lifetime!
As Serkin said to Richard Goode :”You told me that he was good,but you did not tell me how good!”
Ariel too when he was invited to introduce the music today he did it with the same intelligence and humility that his playing revealed.
I very much look forward to his performance of the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto at St James’s Piccadilly on the 27th February at 7.30.
A Concert for Israel .I am flying back from my home in Italy especially.
I am also very much looking forward to his Diabelli Variations ,at last, on the 23rd April at the Arts Club in Waterloo as winner of the Senior Award of the Hattori Foundation.
Hats of to Dr Hugh Mather, Roger Nellist and his team for allowing us to eavesdrop on a future star.
I heard Beatrice Rana in Rome last november with a recital in the two thousand seat orchestral hall of S.Cecilia and remember being completely overwhelmed by her authoritative stylish playing.Today in the more intimate surroundings of the Wigmore Hall it was the power and range of sound that was so remarkable for this quite beautiful but slender young artist.
My first impression jotted down on the way home after an extraordinarily powerful recital rapturously received by the very discerning Wigmore Hall audience:
“Beatrice Rana takes the Wigmore by storm.
From a very masculine Italian Concerto,a sublimely passionate Concerto without Orchestra of Schumann an unbelievably acrobatic work out in Albeniz Iberia Book III to a glorious orchestral explosion of sounds with Stravinsky’s Petrushka.
But it was the hushed silence at the end of Schumann’s Romance in F sharp that will remain with us forever.”
What does it mean ‘very masculine Italian Concerto’?
Well this slender young artist came onto the Wigmore stage to be received by a hall, completely sold out, and without any fuss proceeded to play the opening of the Italian Concerto in a very robust almost martellato way.
I have got used to Rosalyn Tureck playing this work in a similar robust way but here was a different sound that filled the hall in an almost Beethovenian way.
But then midway through the first movement she modified the sound almost as though moving to a different manual and immediately created the magic that was to bewitch us for the entire recital.
Of course always played with impeccable style as one would expect from the school of her mentor Benedetto Lupo but there were so many very subtle things that she did, but always in perfect taste ,that illuminated a work that I have grown up with since I was a child.
And if the first movement was very masculine the second was very feminine !
Beautifully played with great control but I found it a little too fussy at the beginning but then at the ritornello she changed colour to an almost whispered confession and it was sheer magic.
Beatrice had waved her magic wand again!
The coda was quite simply sublime and led the way to the Presto that was too fast!
Presto in two,played without any varying of the very fast but rock steady tempo that she had set herself.An extraordinary technical feat in which also the phrasing and part playing was all perfectly etched.
It was a quite magnificent ‘tour de force’ that in the end was totally convincing.
It added the stamp to the whole evening of a musician with something authoritative and new to say.
Each work she had looked at afresh and with her great musicianship and technical command had thrown herself into the fray so fearlessly.
It opened the flood gate for the quite imperious romantic opening of Schumann’s Concert without Orchestra.
Here in this young pianists hands was an orchestra of such power and beauty even Schumann’s usually irritating dotted rhythms vanished in a cloud of magical sounds with an overall sense of architectural shape that only Pollini has ever convinced me of in this work until tonight!
After concert greeting from Umberto Laureti a former student of Benedetto Lupo too
There were three versions of this Sonata :
A five movement sonata composed in June 1836 and the revised version was published in September 1836 (both scherzos
were dropped and a new finale added and retitled Concert sans orchestre)
Second a very substantial revision published in 1853,with a very considerable revision especially of the first movement; entitled Grande sonate, with the second scherzo of the June 1836 sonata restored (but not the first ).
Throughout all this only the variation movement on a theme of Clara Wieck (later Clara Schumann) remained basically untouched throughout all the revisions.
It is the three movement Sonata of 1836 that Beatrice played at the Wigmore Hall with a very imperious first movement contrasting with the magical beauty and colour that she brought to the Clara Wieck variations.
The final strident chords of the variations were played quite fearlessly and allowed to die down to an almost inaudible whisper from which emerged the last movement’s romantic meanderings that were thrown off with great virtuosity but allowing Schumann’s sublime melodic invention to emerge out of a mist of transcendental sounds.
With Jack Buckley,critic,who has followed her career from her early studies with Elisso Virsaladze in Sermoneta Italy
As Beatrice herself exclaimed afterwards it was a very complicated programme indeed.
The Albeniz and Stravinsky I have written about above when she played them in Rome.
But the opening of El Polo with its monotonous rhythmic insistence was just a prelude to the most amazing sense of colour and romantic fervour that she found in these three remarkable tone poems.
As she herself said a real ‘work out’!
Her Petrushka was even more remarkable than that of the young Pollini who took London by storm many years ago.
A standing ovation by the Wigmore public, not easily conquered as they were tonight, was rewarded by a most magical account of Schumann’s Romance in F sharp.
The absolute stillness and beauty of the work that Clara Wieck had asked to listen to on her death bed created one of those rare moments when an audience do not dare to move or breathe until well after the last magical notes have died away completely.
Not suprisingly she has been invited to form that elite group of musicians resident at the Wigmore Hall.
Chopin instead of shoppin’ in London this morning with a superb Howard Shelley directing the London Mozart Players …..Piano explored and striking gold indeed.
It was nice to be able to hear Howard Shelley again who I have not heard live since his superb Chopin Preludes at his Wigmore debut in 1971.
70th Birthsay celebrations with Beethoven on Ladies Day!
We were all students then together with Peter Bithell,Tessa Nicholson studying in London and competing together in various competitions.
I remember well the British Piano Competition in the Purcell Room judged by Gerald Moore and Sidney Harrison in which we all took part.
Howard Shelley then went on to get rave reviews for his Wigmore debut at the age of 21 and has gone on to create an important position for himself especially with the discovery of little known concertos.
Alexander is his distinguished conductor son and Hilary Macnamara his wife with whom he had a a piano duo for many years.
On the 1st April he will perform in the last of the series a little known concerto by Franz Xaver Mozart (Wolfgang’s son)(26 July 1791 – 29 July 1844), was the youngest child of six born to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartand his wife Constanze He was the younger of his parents’ two surviving children and was a composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher from the late classical period whose musical style was of an early Romanticism, heavily influenced by his father’s mature style.Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart was born in Vienna, five months before his father’s death. Although he was baptized Franz Xaver Mozart, from birth on he was always called Wolfgang by his family.
St John’s Smith Square
He received excellent musical instruction from Antonio Salieri and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. He learned to play both the piano and violin and like his father, he started to compose at an early age. “In April 1805, the thirteen-year-old Wolfgang Mozart made his debut in Vienna in a concert in the Theater an der Wien. The two surviving sons of Wolfgang Amadeus and Constanze Mozart were Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart and Karl Thomas.
Wolfgang became a professional musician and enjoyed moderate success both as a teacher and a performer.
Unlike his father, he was introverted and given to self-deprecation. He constantly underrated his talent and feared that whatever he produced would be compared with what his father had been.
In 1826 he conducted his father’s Requiem during a concert at the cathedral of St George. From this choir he created the musical brotherhood of Saint Cecilia and thus the first school of music in Lemberg. He did not give up performing and in the years 1819 to 1821 traveled throughout Europe.In the 1820s Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart was one of 50 composers to write a vaiation on a theme of Anton Diabelli. Part I was devoted to the 33 variations supplied by Beethoven.
In 1838 Mozart left for Vienna, and then for Salzburg, where he was appointed as the Kapellmeister of the Mozarteum.
He died from stomach cancer on 29 July 1844 in the town of Karlsbad where he was buried.
He never married nor did he have any children.
The following epitaph was etched on his tombstone:
“May the name of his father be his epitaph, as his veneration for him was the essence of his life.”
That was not the case today though with a special request from his faithful lunchtime following for his Piano Explored series in St John’s Smith Square.
Chopin n.1 was on the menu and was a real lunchtime feast.
Exploring in words before performing the whole concerto.I too had not known that Chopin gave no more than 30 public performances in his life and never wrote for orchestra again after the age of 21.
Howard Shelley is coming up to his 70th birthday celebrations next month when he will perform all the Beethoven Concertos on the same day the 8th March.
I have a recording of him conducting them with another of our contemporaries Michael Roll,who was the first winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition.
Howard will now direct himself from the keyboard as he did today with Chopin.
Playing with a simplicity and beauty of sound with the orchestra listening with obvious joy to their superb music making together
Authoritative and convinced playing of quite extraordinary power were the hallmark of some remarkable playing by the young Swedish pianist.
A rarely heard sonata by Stenhammar with all the sweep and passion of Schumann revealed an injustly neglected pianist composer of the 19th century.
His works were quite varied and included two completed symphonies, a substantial Serenade for Orchestra, two piano concertos , four piano sonatas , a violin sonata, six string quartets , many songs and other vocal works, including several large-scale works for chorus or voices and orchestra: the early ballad Florez och Blanzeflor, Op. 3, written around 1891, Ithaka, Op. 21, from 1904, the cantatas Ett folk (A people) from 1905 and Sången (The song), Op. 44, from 1921.
He was considered the finest Swedish pianist of his time and recorded five piano rolls for Welte-Mignon on 21 September 1905.
Wilhelm Stenhammar was born in Stockholm and received his first musical education in Stockholm.
He then went to Berlin to further his studies in music and became a glowing admirer of German music, particularly that of Wagner and Bruckner. He himself described the style of his First Symphony in F major as “idyllic Bruckner.”
He died of a stroke at the age of 56 in Jonsered and is buried in Gothenburg.
Hats off to Pontus who had also chosen a little study especially to celebrate on this very day the birthday of the Polish born composer and violinist, Grazyna Bacewicz (born on the 5th February 1909 – 17 January 1969).
She is the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition, the first being Maria Szymanowska in the early 19th century.
It was followed by 5 preludes op.16 by Scriabin played with a little assistance from a discreet I-Pad and acted as an interlude between the two major works on the programme
They were a fitting introduction to the astonishing pyrotechnics of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Sonata.
If it missed the subtle multi coloured introspection of the quieter moments due to a rather rigid style where the actual sounds did not always correspond to his physical hand movements.
Piano playing can be likened to a great sculptor but carving sounds out of thin air.
But Pontus more than made up for this with his musicianly architectural control allied to a passionate involvement and transcendental technical command
that kept a distinguished audience of piano connoisseurs mesmerised as they were too for the Stenhammer that opened the concert.
Pontus introducing his concert to a distinquished audience
A very fine inquisitive musician who already he tells me has quite a distinguished career in Sweden and was happy to offer the Keyboard Charitable Trust a small sample of his adventurous programming.
It was followed by a musicianly account of Beethoven’s visionary Bagatelle op 126 n.3 where Beethoven’s final long pedal was understood and conveyed so convincingly.
After concert festivities with amongst others Yuanfan Yang and Simone Tavoni who have both played for the Keyboard Trust recently and were happy to support a fellow member and colleague.
Arcadi Volodos at St Cecilia in Rome
A pityfully empty hall for one of the most sublime piano recitals I have ever heard.
Liszt played without a break and conceived as a whole with wondrous sounds that I never knew could exist.
A small but enthusiastic audience in the vast S.Cecilia Hall on Monday night for one of the world’s greatest pianists
The great pianists like Kempff,Arrau or Lupu spent a lifetime trying to find the secret of true legato without any percussive or disjointed phrasing and now we have a man who from the first note to the last can totally convince us that the piano can truly sing,murmur,whisper or roar.
Volodos playing to an unusually quiet audience mesmerised by the sheer beauty of his playing
From the opening Sonetto del Petrarca 123 where he seemed to barely touch the keys sometimes even approaching them with a loving caress from above.Like a sculptor looking and retouching a masterpiece with the eyes (in this case ears) of a true master craftsman.
Such was his mastery of the pedal allied to a touch of true gold that we were transported like magic to the relm of the leggendary Gilels .
That is not to say that in the passionate climaxes there was not an overwhelming sonority of sumptuous rich sound.
The barely suggested opening sounds of ‘La Lugubre Gondola’ a strange premonition of the death of Wagner in 1883 that was written in the last days of Liszt’s life in 1885.
The first version was inspired by a funeral procession on the Grand Canal in Venice in 1882 whilst Liszt was a guest of his son in law Wagner at Palazzo Vendramin.It was a piece that haunted Liszt in the last four years of his life and he elaborated on it in various forms.
The first version was printed the year of his death in 1886 and the second found in manuscript after his death.
They are known as ‘La Lugubre Gondola 1’ and ‘La Lugubre Gondola 2’. At last this strange work made perfect sense in this magician’s hands.
We could almost feel the ebb and flow of the water as the gondola with the coffin slid silently along the murky misty waters of the Canal Grande.A passionate climax too played with real depth of feeling and rare dedication was quite breathtaking.Such was his musicianship and sense of balance were at last able to appreciate this last masterpiece of Liszt that looks so much to the future atonal world that was on the distant horizon!
Inspired by such a performance it is interesting to note the evolution of this quite visionary late work :(Composed for solo piano, 1882, as Die Trauer-Gondel(= 1st version, S.199a/1)Published 2002 by Rugginenti as La lugubre gondolaRevised 1882–83, as La lugubre gondola(= 2nd version, S.200/1)Published 1886 by Fritsch (Leipzig) as La lugubre gondola I2nd version arranged for violin and piano, 1882–83 (= S.134bis)Published 1974 byEditio Musica Budapest (Budapest)1st version further revised 1885, as La lugubre gondola(= 3rd version, S.200/2)Published 1886 by Fritsch (Leipzig) as La lugubre gondola II3rd version arranged for cello and piano, 1885 (= S.134)Published 1974 by Editio Musica Budapest(Budapest))
This led without a break into ‘Saint Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds.’
We could almost see the birds fluttering around the piano such was his total immersion in this magic world of Liszt.
Saint Francis’s sermon was played with such subtle shading and inflection we could almost imagine the words that were being spoken with such loving eloquence.
Volodos made the music speak in a way that drew the audience in to him with his unique totally dedicated sound world.
Volodos thanking his adoring public
This in turn led to the tumultuous swirling of the waves in the opening of the Ballade in B minor S. 171.
It was written in 1853 and is a programmatic one movement tone poem designed to provide both the variety and unity of a sonata or symphony.
He drew his program from Gottfried August Bùrger’s ‘Lenore,’a once widely read Gothic horror ballade Punctuated with the grisly refrain “The dead ride quickly! Are you afraid,” the poem tells of Lenore’s wild hundred-mile midnight ride with the zombie of her recently slain soldier-fiancé, toward a cemetery where their nuptials are solemnized amid a riotous gathering of skeletons and spectres. The ballade is based largely on two themes: a broad opening melody underpinned by menacing rumbles and a luminous ensuing chordal meditation.
Volodos contemplating his magic keyboard
The contrast was quite astonishing in Volodos’s hands.His great sense of balance allowed the melodic line to shine out over the deep rumbling base.The luminosity and change of colour of the chordal meditation was quite astonishing.
The march-like triplet-rhythms unleashed a flood of virtuosity of such sumptuous sound that was truly breathtaking.Never empty virtuosity but always swirling sounds that created a superlative vision of the story that he was telling.
Eventually, Liszt transforms the opening melody into a major-key cantabile of sublime beauty.In the middle register of the piano it was a moment to cherish indeed and led to ever more grandiose exultations with a volume of sound that was never hard but astonishingly full and of quite aristocratic grandeur.
Just as one might like to think of the virtuoso Liszt taking the salons by storm seducing his aristocratic audience with the variety and beauty of sounds that he could conjure from the piano.
A true orchestra that could whisper as it could seduce or roar like a lion.
It is no coincidence that Liszt was known as the ‘Lion of the Keyboard.’
The luminosity of the final contemplative close created one of those magic moments in the concert hall when hundreds of people are united in a comunal sharing of a great and moving experience.
As Gilels himself said the difference between live and recorded performances is the same difference between fresh and canned food!It is the very reason that people still flock to the concert halls.
After the interval which I spent jotting down my thoughts on the extraordinary experience that we had enjoyed, we were taken into the world of Schumann.
Here too were the same magic sounds and incredible luminosity of the world of Liszt.
Already in the March ,the eleventh of the fourteen pieces under the title of Bunte Blatter (Coloured Leaves)op 99,there were such magical almost music box sounds where Volodos’s hands seemed to be dusting the keys such was his extreme sensibility of touch.
(It was in this respect somewhat reminicent of Rosalyn Tureck who would insist on the lid of the keyboard being closed right up until the last minute so no particles of dust could interfere with her extreme sensibility to touch).
This was followed by the Abendmusik op.99.n.12 which in turn led without a break to the sublime opening of the Humoreske op 20.
A series of ‘phantasieren’ like Kreisleriana op 16. A series of episodes from deeply felt song like sequences contrasting with humourous quixotic episodes of great rhythmic energy.
These episodes create a form that has an overall shape that binds them together in a quite magical way.
Volodos of course was an absolute master of making each episode speak in a quite unique way.Even the more virtuosistic were given a sheen and shape where individual notes were always incorporated into the whole overall form.
It was after the six encores that Volodos so generously offered to a public totally drawn into this magic world that I realised I was not any more so enthusiastic.
Great admiration and astonishment at his complete control of sound and superb sense of architectural shape goes without saying.
The first encore ‘Traumerei ‘from ‘Kinderscenen’ of Schumann op 15 began to give me clue to why I was now not so enthusiastic as after the first part of the programme.
It was followed by the ‘Prophet Bird” from Waldscenen op 82 again by Schumann.
The 3rd of Schubert’s Moment Musicaux was played in such a delicate and delicious way only Curzon has come anywhere near this pianistically musical perfection.
In turn by great demand they were followed by Mompou:Paisajes 11;El Lago;Schubert Minuet in C sharp minor D.600 with Trio in E major D.610 and Schumann.
All in Eusebius mode though!
I remember hearing Volodos some years ago for the first time in this very hall and being astonished by the refined old world virtuosity of his encores that really took one’s breath away and was so similar to the historic recordings of pianists like Godowsky,Rosenthal,Lhevine or Rachmaninoff of the so called Golden Era of Piano playing .On that occasion the phrase that had greeted Horowitz on his arrival in Paris sprang to mind:”The greatest pianist alive or dead!”As Rubinstein’s nose was put out of joint he was reassured by his Parisian audience that Horowitz may be astonishing but there was only one Rubinstein who was unique!I even queued up outside the artists entrance with Connie Channon Douglass to meet this fantastic unknown artist.
Even in Schumann there are the contrasts between Eusebius and Floristan.
The two sides to Schumann’s complex character.
A public recital too must have a certain element of showmanship.
Both Horowitz and Rubinstein have shown us that in their very different ways.
Tonight we heard undoubtedly the Berlin Philharmonic with the Philadelphia orchestras …the greatest band imaginable ……..but it needs a Karajan,Ormandy or Kleiber at its helm to provide contrast and variety.
Tonight we were treated to sounds that I have never imagined possible on the piano but without the contrast of uglyness it can become after two hours or more,dare I say it , boring!!!!
I would much rather be bored and submerged with beauty than being blown out of my seat by young russian virtuosi from the Gnessin wonder school as we were the other day in this very hall.
But I remember a Volodos and a Radu Lupu who were not totally absorbed just with their introverted private confessions but were ready to shout and show us their teeth as well.
Horowitz could bewitch us as Volodos but there was always a brittle edge to contrast with the sublime romantic colours of which he too was unique master .
It is a few years now that Volodos dedicates his recitals quite rightly to the great works of the piano repertoire of Beethoven,Schumann,Brahms,Liszt and even Scriabin but should it be to the complete exclusion of those minor ‘lollypops’ of which he is the unique heir today?
Amazing performance for Incontro sulla Tastiera that for 45 years the indefatigable Maria Antonietta Squeglia has been organising in the beautiful city of Palladio.
But today there was something special in the air and a party atmosphere ignited by a young UK born chinese pianist whose improvisations and incredibly natural musicianship were being likened by an enthusiastic public to the prodigy Mozart!
At the end of the concert Yuanfan announced that he wanted to give the audience the chance to take part too.Can anyone offer a few notes on which he would create a piece,their piece,in this very moment?
Discussing the encore improvisation of three voices in jazz style
The public were a bit wary of this novelty and no one wanted to be embarrassed.So Yuanfan turned his back on the keyboard and played five or six random notes and then created a piece in the style of Beethoven.
The President of the Incontro was heard complaining that Beethoven had been missing from the programme!
And what a beautiful piece it was!Even better than Beethoven?!
Review of the concert in Vicenza by Eva Purelli
Now of course the cat was out of the bag and three people wanted to offer notes for a second encore from a now very insistent public.
No problem for our young musician touched by genius.
He improvised in jazz style using all three themes.
It brought the house down and poor Maria Antonietta and the sponsor Ermanno Detto have been bombarded by enthusiastic messages of disbelief and astonishment from their public.
Maria Antonietta Squeglia and Mrs Jieling Yu Yang in the Teatro Comunale of Vicenza
But it was the story that his mother had to tell over breakfast today that revealed the true amazing facts about a young boy who out of the blue was discovered at a birthday party to be able to play the piano!
He was 5.
At the age of 6 the BBC made a programme about him and his amazing musical genius. Yuanfan Yang’s parents from Beijing were at Edinburgh University where he was born.His mother obtained a master in Telecommunications and his father in East European Studies.An exchange between the UK and China in the Thatcher period.Both had top class degrees from Bejing University.
His father is a professor now at Leeds University and for many years his mother taught at Leeds High School.
Yuanfan with Busoni Winner 2017 Ivan Krpan after Ivan’s performance of Liszt 1 at the Sala S.Cecilia in Rome with the Zagreb Philharmonic in celebration of the Presidency of Croazia to the European Union.Yuanfan made a 7 hour trip from Vicenza to salute his colleague and fellow KCT artist……what a family we are
They brought the five year old Yuanfan a piano as soon as they realised that he was born with this talent.
The mother of one of his friends had asked who his teacher was,as he had played so beautifully.But he does not play the piano,she exclaimed, we do not even have one at home!
Well all that changed overnight and Yuanfan was taken to study at Chethams in Manchester with that magnificent trainer of so many amazing talented children,Murray McLachlan.
The family have altered their own lifestyle to give him all the opportunities that his talent demands.
Winning many International competitions and even the BBC composing competition and top prize in China for his First Piano Concerto that as winner toured eight major cities in China!
It was,infact,his own piece :’The Haunted Well’ ,the prize winning piece of the BBC competition played immediately after the interval that ignited the enthusiasm of a usually rather reticent audience.
It was this four minute piece that the audience looked at with suspicion in a programme that included Schumann Carnaval,Chopin B flat minor sonata and Bach C minor toccata.
They soon realised that they need not have worried about this so called ‘contemporary ‘ piece.
They had obviously had some nasty experiences in the past!
But here was a piece full of magical sounds.
Of a fantasy of colours and subtle shading of the clock that strikes 13 at midnight (so clearly introduced by Yuanfan in a charmingly simple way….apologising for not being able to talk in Italian).
It was all so clear as these’pictures’painted in sound filled the air with such sumptuous sounds.
Transcendental technical feats alla Messiaen were eagerly accepted by an audience immediately so involved in the story ..just like the ‘Papillons’ of Schumann ….that he had to tell.
The Chopin B flat minor sonata ( his performance is new to me) was a revelation of clarity allied to a beauty and rigor that I have only experienced from the hands of Rubinstein.
If only we could have started the concert over again we would have realised what a superb performance he gave of Schumann Carnaval.Full of subtle poetry and colour but with an aristocratic sense of rubato and flow that is of the chosen few.
Raffaella Squeglia presenting the concert
Technical considerations never entered into the discussion such was his total mastery.But his incredible technical mastery was also there to be admired by colleagues who have struggled for hours to master ‘Paganini’ or the ‘March of Davidsbundler!’
Sponsor Ermanno Detto with Maria Antonietta Squeglia and enthusiastic friends.
His Bach Toccata now is like a rock.But a multicoloured rock that never wavers but is full of subtle colours and discrete ornamentation …..much more to follow….but would recommend wherever you are in the world to tune in on Friday 24th Jan at 11 pm Italian time to his live broadcast on RAI Radio 3.
Rai Radio 3 ‘La Stanza della Musica’
Stefano Roffi – left – producer La Stanza della Musica Rai 3
Yuanfan Yang last nights’ broadcast available on their website Rai radio 3 ‘La stanza della musica.’
It created quite a stir.Due to the overruning of Tristan with the live transmission from the opening of the season in Bologna there was barely 30 minutes left to midnight.Like Cinderella the midnight hour decides our fate!There was a quick rethinking for the programme and as in all true theatre and live performances there was magic in the air.
Yuanfan sound check
After one of the most beautiful Chopin Barcarolle`s that I can remember and opening with his own piece which starts on the same E flat with which the live relay of Tristan finishes.
He was invited by a phone in audience to improvise on The Godfather Theme of Nino Rota.
As requested ,first in jazz mode and then in vulcanic mode.
A sensational way to finish the day for Stefano Roffi and all his team applauding and cheering him from behind the glass that separates the studio from the control room.Radio switchboard almost erupted too with enthusiastic calls…….and it was almost midnight as Yuanfans prize winning piece’ The Haunted Bell’ struck its midnight E flat 13 times!
Stefano tells me it is available forever on their web site.
From ” Here to Eternity” one might well say!
YUANFAN YANG in Italy Part 2 Viterbo,Frascati and Rome
Review of the concert in the Teatro Comunale in Vicenza
YANG EXALTS AT THE PIANO BETWEEN IMPROVISATIONS AND PICTURES IN SOUND.
“The 23 year old chinese offers points of mastery and technical command also playing with his back to the keyboard like Mozart.”
Eva Purelli
IL GIORNALE DI VICENZA
“Lets start at the end.
Yuanfan Yang,the 23 year old Chinese pianist ,born in Edinburgh at the end of the concert for Incontro sulla Tastiera improvised with great authority on a few notes chosen at random.
Something quite usual in the past centuries for those that played a keyboard instrument or organs.An ability today much appreciated and used in jazz rather than in ‘serious’ music.But Yang after a much applauded concert in the Ridotto of the Teatro Comunale did not choose to play an encore from the vast piano solo repertoire,but instead offered an immediate example of his improvisatory gifts.
With the distinguished french pianist Marylene Mouquet in Frascati
Asking the public in fluent english for any ideas,notes or melodies (next time it would be better to provide a simultaneous translation as it seemed that nobody understood what he was saying).But there was no sign of life from the public.So Yang with a shrug,just turned his back to keyboard and putting his hands on the keys chose some random notes (remember the scene in the film ‘Amadeus’?When Mozart plays with his back to the keyboard).
Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati
Offering the first example of his great talent.Asking again he found three volontiers who climbed on to the stage putting their hands on the keys and making unprepared noises at the keyboard.And Yang asks what type of piece they would like the improvisation to be.In what style.Yang goes for the Jazz style improvisation suggested.
It is here that his great talent showed itself.
In the concert in Vicenza the prodigeous pianist not only showed his great personality and natural fluid technique but also a musical intelligence,capable of involving the public with a born gift of creating visual images .Something rare and of a chosen few.Because he can adapt the sounds to the model being created.
One was aware of this even when he was playing one of his pieces ,”The Haunted Bell”that is on his debut CD for solo piano “Watercolours.”
It was the piece that won him the BBC Young Musicians International Composers Competition in 2012.
Programme in Frascati for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli
The concert however was also made up of standard repertoire,in which the 23 year old chinese pianist showed his technical skill of enviable bravura and refined sensibility.To start with the opening clean and clear Bach of the Toccata in C minor BWV911 without any blemishes (the only exaggeration in some parts was in his unrelenting speed).Of great note was his interpretation of another well known work:the Sonata in B flat minor op.35 ‘Funeral March’by Chopin.
The concert that opened the 2020 season of Incontro sulla Tastiera ,dedicated to Fernanda Muraro Detto confirmed the value of the collaboration with the UK foundation “Keyboard Trust”.
Teatro di Villa Torlonia Rome
After this magnificent review from Vicenza the tour moved down to Rome and the surrounding towns of Viterbo and Frascati.
Unfortunately I was not able to be in Viterbo where the distinguished musicologist and university professor Franco Ricci has for some years organised a Saturday afternoon series in the Tuscia University Auditorium S.Maria in Gradi.
I was in Padua that day for another important presence of the Keyboard Trust for the final of the 17th edition of the International Competition for soloists and orchestra:”Premio Citta’ di Padova” run by Elia Modenese and Elisabetta Gesuato who also invite our pianists in collaboration with AGIMUS to play each year in Venice,Padua and Abano Terme.
We had divided the Italian tour this year into two parts due to incompatible dates.The first half of the tour was taken up with three superb recitals by Alberto Chines
Yuanfan Yang continued his tour after Vicenza ,Rai radio 3 and Viterbo with Frascati and Rome with a slightly different programme that included Chopin Barcarolle and 3 Rachmaninov Preludes in place of the Chopin Sonata op 35.
Dancing baby in Frascati
Another triumph in Frascati for Yuanfan Yang ……even a newly born baby could not resist his improvisations!
And thanks to Marylene Mouquet ,the distinguished french born pianist ,for inviting the Keyboard Trust to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Michelangeli,of whom our founder Noretta Conci was assistant for 15 years.
Yuanfan Yang in Frascati
Now for Rome 3 University after Villa Aldobrandini in another magnificent theatre, that of Villa Torlonia in the centre of the Eternal City.
Rehearsing in the Teatro di Villa Torlonia in Rome
Amazing final concert of Yuanfan Yang in Rome for the Keyboard Trust Italian tour.In the magnificent Teatro di Villa Torlonia for the Roma 3 University under the enlightened artistic directorship of Valerio Vicari
With Marcella Crudeli gracing the proceedings of the winner of her Rome International Piano Competition 2018.
Marcella Crudeli ..the Fanny Waterman of Italy!
”Wonderful evening of music at Teatro Torlonia, protagonist Yuanfan Yang, winner of the 28th International Piano Competition “Rome” 2018. Great talent for a bright future.” Marcella Crudeli
It was she that after a wonderful recital of Bach,Schumann,Chopin,Yang and Rachmaninov ,was seen crying out her preference for an encore of an improvisation on
Valerio Vicari ,artistic director of Roma 3 University
“La ci darem la mano” in rock n’roll style added Valerio Vicari.
Followed by “Nessun Dorma” in Beethoven style and “The Godfather” in jazz style.An unforgettable evening that we will be proud to say that we were present as Yuanfan Yang takes his place on the world stage
The slightly different programme for the last two concerts included Chopin Barcarolle op 60 and three Rachmaninoff Preludes n. 10,12,13 op 32.They replaced the Chopin B flat minor Sonata op 35 that had recently been performed by other pianists in the Rome 3 University series.It was indeed a discovery to find that Yuanfan understood so well the musical language of Rachmaninoff just as he had Chopin.
Yuanfan and Marcella Crudeli,Mrs Yang on right Paolo, Marcella’s son on left with Valerio Vicari behind
FouTs’ong in his many masterclasses for us in Rome over the years had explained that it is the same soul in Chinese poetry as that of Chopin. Small world indeed.
Rachmaninoff was never mentioned by FouTs’ong as it is never mentioned by Andras Schiff,Alfred Brendel,Angela Hewitt,Paul Lewis or other great musicians who realise a lifetime is not enough for Bach,Beethoven,Mozart or Schubert so why trespass on the Russian path of Tchaikowsky,Prokofiev or Rachmaninoff!
Teatro di Villa Torlonia
I remember Benno Moiseiwitsch in his last television broadcast where he spoke of his friend Rachmaninoff and performed for the last time his Paganini Rhapsody and the Prelude op 32 n.10.It was this very prelude that Yuanfan chose to open with.Moiseiwitsch told Rachmaninoff that for him the Prelude depicted with such nostalgia the return.Rachmaninoff was overwhelmed as it was exactly that that has inspired the piece.”The Return” indeed
There was the same aristocratic nostalgia and grandeur in the hands of this young Chinese/Scottish pianist.A remarkable sense of line and colour .The gradual build up was overwhelming in its inevitability and power without any hardening of tone.Like a great string orchestra with sumptuous sound and only full orchestra in the final few bars with a Jochum or Klemperer at the helm of course to keep the brass under control!It gradually dissolved into an explosive swirl of sound where we were not aware of individual notes such was his mastery of the pedal.Above all it was a musicality and mastery that was able to depict pictures in sound.The final yearning chords were deeply felt not only by him but by all those present creating an ideal link to the next Prelude in G sharp minor.
Marcella Crudeli showing the theatre and stage behind
Here again beautifully shaped, the left hand melody wonderfully understated .The change of colour when the melodic line passes to the right hand flute was quite remarkable in its purity.The final notes were thrown off as only a true musician would know how.
It led to the final grandest of Preludes the last of the set op 32 n.13.An aristocratic sense of style allied to an acute sense of richness and colour.Always anchored in the bass which disappeared so magically in the middle section marked pianississimo.It was in the sensitive hands of Yuanfan that it was reduced to a mere murmur on which strands of melody were searching their way forward.A build up of quite transcendental difficulty was thrown off with such ease.It led to the grandest of climaxes where because of his keen awareness of balance and sound there seemed to be no limit to the tumultuous build up.The final explosion of octaves took our breath away and brought the audience to their feet.
Ready to be astounded by improvisations in any style chosen by them.
Of course his CD’s at this point became almost collectors items!
Rehearsing in Villa Torlonia
The Barcarolle op 60 by Chopin is a seemless melodic outpouring with no beginning and no ending arriving at sublime heights with the ‘dolce sfogato’ central section.It is Chopin’s absolute masterpiece The final pianissimo leggiero demisemiquavers Perlemuter confided that Ravel loved so much.
Janina Fialkowska played it in a recital dedicated to my late wife,Ileana Ghione.Coming off stage after a performance that had the eloquence and simplicity of her mentor Rubinstein ,she confided to me waiting in the wings “ that was Ileana.” We both knew what that meant!
The first C sharp in the bass as the last C sharp and F sharp are just there to open and close the sublime sonorities and are certainly not percussive in any way.Much in the way that the great pianists of the past playing in enormous opera houses would subtley add bass notes to open up the piano so they did not have to force the tone in the upper registers.Rubinstein used to do this so subtley and to wonderful effect. I will never forget the end of the first movement of the B flat minor Sonata in his hands.
The pianist who most resembles Rubinstein for me today is Nelson Freire and he often adds very subtle bass notes to wonderful effect.Straight to the solar plexus indeed!He even adds a bass chord in Chopin ‘s 2nd piano concerto before the first entry high in the upper register.
Villa Torlonia The Theatre Today
Our young Chinese pianist does this instinctively too.I had noticed it in Schumann Carnaval between Coquette and Replique and at the end of Papillons.Very pointed phrasing too at the end of Promenade and so many other memorable things that will remain with me for a long time.
It cannot be taught it is something that comes naturally to those touched with greatness.It is a question of total dedication and deep love of the piano sonorities.
In fact I was listening to the 18 year old Malofeev playing Tchaikowsky first piano concerto relayed live from Rome He comes from the Gnessin school in Moscow where the technical preparation can often take precedence over their musical preparation.Infact it was an extraordinary exhibition of virtuosity.But in the interview afterwards he was asked if he regretted having to practice for hours each day or give up many normal things at his tender age having been launched into a worldwide career so young.
His reply was astonishing.He simply said it was not study or career it was quite simply the love of his life!I will look out for him in a few years time with expectation.
Yuanfan too played so instinctively with an obvious love for the piano sonorities.Hats off to his teachers that have also given him the musical and technical means to indulge himself and us without damaging his extraordinary natural gifts !
He will be noticed in the Rubinstein Competition where he is one of the few selected to partecipate next spring.I and his audiences in Italy would have no hesitation in awarding him first prize but unfortunately we are not part of that Circus act.Fingers crossed that his great talent will be recognised so more people can enjoy the extraordinary interpretations as we all have in the past few days.
Review of the concert in the Teatro Comunale in Vicenza
YANG EXALTS AT THE PIANO BETWEEN IMPROVISATIONS AND PICTURES IN SOUND.
“The 23 year old chinese offers points of mastery and technical command also playing with his back to the keyboard like Mozart.”
Eva Purelli
IL GIORNALE DI VICENZA
“Lets start at the end.
Yuanfan Yang,the 23 year old Chinese pianist ,born in Edinburgh at the end of the concert for Incontro sulla Tastiera improvised with great authority on a few notes chosen at random.
Something quite usual in the past centuries for those that played a keyboard instrument or organs.An ability today much appreciated and used in jazz rather than in ‘serious’ music.But Yang after a much applauded concert in the Ridotto of the Teatro Comunale did not choose to play an encore from the vast piano solo repertoire,but instead offered an immediate example of his improvisatory gifts.
The distinguished french pianist Marylene Mouquet in Frascati
Asking the public in fluent english for any ideas,notes or melodies (next time it would be better to provide a simultaneous translation as it seemed that nobody understood what he was saying).But there was no sign of life from the public.So Yang with a shrug,just turned his back to keyboard and putting his hands on the keys chose some random notes (remember the scene in the film ‘Amadeus’?When Mozart plays with his back to the keyboard).
Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati
Offering the first example of his great talent.Asking again he found three volontiers who climbed on to the stage putting their hands on the keys and making unprepared noises at the keyboard.And Yang asks what type of piece they would like the improvisation to be.In what style.Yang goes for the Jazz style improvisation suggested.
It is here that his great talent showed itself.
In the concert in Vicenza the prodigeous pianist not only showed his great personality and natural fluid technique but also a musical intelligence,capable of involving the public with a born gift of creating visual images .Something rare and of a chosen few.Because he can adapt the sounds to the model being created.
One was aware of this even when he was playing one of his pieces ,”The Haunted Bell”that is on his debut CD for solo piano “Watercolours.”
It was the piece that won him the BBC Young Musicians International Composers Competition in 2012.
Programme in Frascati for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli
The concert however was also made up of standard repertoire,in which the 23 year old chinese pianist showed his technical skill of enviable bravura and refined sensibility.To start with the opening clean and clear Bach of the Toccata in C minor BWV911 without any blemishes (the only exaggeration in some parts was in his unrelenting speed).Of great note was his interpretation of another well known work:the Sonata in B flat minor op.35 ‘Funeral March’by Chopin.
The concert that opened the 2020 season of Incontro sulla Tastiera ,dedicated to Fernanda Muraro Detto confirmed the value of the collaboration with the UK foundation “Keyboard Trust”.
After this magnificent review from Vicenza the tour moved down to Rome and the surrounding towns of Viterbo and Frascati.
Unfortunately I was not able to be in Viterbo where the distinguished musicologist and university professor Franco Ricci has for some years organised a Saturday afternoon series in the Tuscia University Auditorium S.Maria in Gradi.
I was in Padua that day for another important presence of the Keyboard Trust for the final of the 17th edition of the International Competition for soloists and orchestra:”Premio Citta’ di Padova” run by Elia Modenese and Elisabetta Gesuato who also invite our pianists in collaboration with AGIMUS to play each year in Venice,Padua and Abano Terme.
We had divided the Italian tour this year into two parts due to incompatible dates.The first half of the tour was taken up with three superb recitals by Alberto Chines
Yuanfan Yang continued his tour after Vicenza ,Rai radio 3 and Viterbo with Frascati and Rome with a slightly different programme that included Chopin Barcarolle and 3 Rachmaninov Preludes in place of the Chopin Sonata op 35.
Dancing baby in Frascati
Another triumph in Frascati for Yuanfan Yang ……even a newly born baby could not resist his improvisations!
And thanks to Marylene Mouquet ,the distinguished french born pianist ,for inviting the Keyboard Trust to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Michelangeli,of whom our founder Noretta Conci was assistant for 15 years.
Yuanfan Yang in Frascati
Now for Rome 3 University after Villa Aldobrandini in another magnificent theatre, that of Villa Torlonia in the centre of the Eternal City.
Rehearsing in the Teatro di Villa Torlonia in Rome
Amazing final concert of Yuanfan Yang in Rome for the Keyboard Trust Italian tour.In the magnificent Teatro di Villa Torlonia for the Roma 3 University under the enlightened artistic directorship of Valerio Vicari
With Marcella Crudeli gracing the proceedings of the winner of her Rome International Piano Competition 2018.
Marcella Crudeli ..the Fanny Waterman of Italy!
”Wonderful evening of music at Teatro Torlonia, protagonist Yuanfan Yang, winner of the 28th International Piano Competition “Rome” 2018. Great talent for a bright future.” Marcella Crudeli
It was she that after a wonderful recital of Bach,Schumann,Chopin,Yang and Rachmaninov ,was seen crying out her preference for an encore of an improvisation on
Valerio Vicari ,artistic director of Roma 3 University
“La ci darem la mano” in rock n’roll style added Valerio Vicari.
Followed by “Nessun Dorma” in Beethoven style and “The Godfather” in jazz style.An unforgettable evening that we will be proud to say that we were present as Yuanfan Yang takes his place on the world stage
The slightly different programme for the last two concerts included Chopin Barcarolle op 60 and three Rachmaninoff Preludes n. 10,12,13 op 32.They replaced the Chopin B flat minor Sonata op 35 that had recently been performed by other pianists in the Rome 3 University series.
It was indeed a discovery to find that Yuanfan understood so well the musical language of Rachmaninoff just as he had Chopin.
Yuanfan and Marcella Crudeli,Mrs Yang on right Paolo Marcella’s son on left with Valerio Vicari behind
FouTs’ong in his many masterclasses for us in Rome over the years had explained that it is the same soul in Chinese poetry as that of Chopin.
Small world indeed.
Rachmaninoff was never mentioned by FouTs’ong as it is never mentioned by Andras Schiff,Alfred Brendel,Angela Hewitt,Paul Lewis or other great musicians who realise a lifetime is not enough for Bach,Beethoven,Mozart Schubert so why trespass on the Russian path of Tchaikowsky,Prokofiev or Rachmaninoff!
Teatro di Villa Torlonia
I remember Benno Moiseiwitsch in his last television broadcast where he spoke of his friend Rachmaninoff and performed for the last time his Paganini Rhapsody and the Prelude op 32 n.10.
It was this very prelude that Yuanfan chose to open with.
Moiseiwitsch told Rachmaninoff that for him the Prelude depicted with such nostalgia the return.Rachmaninoff was overwhelmed as it was exactly that that has inspired the piece.”The Return” indeed
There was the same aristocratic nostalgia and grandeur in the hands of this young Chinese/Scottish pianist.A remarkable sense of line and colour.
The gradual build up was overwhelming in its inevitability and power without any hardening of tone.
Like a great string orchestra with sumptuous sound and only full orchestra in the final few bars with a Jochum or Klemperer at the helm of course to keep the brass under control.
It gradually dissolved into an explosive swirl of sound where we were not aware of individual notes such was his mastery of the pedal.
Above all it was a musicality and mastery that was able to depict pictures in sound.
The final yearning chords were deeply felt not only by him but by all those present creating an ideal link to the next Prelude in G sharp minor.
Marcella Crudeli showing the theatre and stage behind
Here again beautifully shaped, the left hand melody wonderfully understated .The change of colour when the melodic line passes to the right hand flute was quite remarkable in its purity.The final notes were thrown off as only a true musician would know how.
It led to the final grandest of Preludes the last of the set op 32 n.13.An aristocratic sense of style allied to an acute sense of richness and colour.Always anchored in the bass which disappeared so magically in the middle section marked pianississimo.It was in the sensitive hands of Yuanfan that it was reduced to a mere murmur on which strands of melody were searching their way forward.
A build up of quite transcendental difficulty was thrown off with such ease.
It led to the grandest of climaxes where because of his keen awareness of balance and sound there seemed to be no limit to the tumultuous build up.
The final explosion of octaves took our breath away and brought the audience to their feet.
Ready to be astounded by improvisations in any style chosen by them.
Of course his CD’s at this point became almost collectors items!
Rehearsing in Villa Torlonia
The Barcarolle op 60 by Chopin is a seemless melodic outpouring with no beginning and no ending arriving at sublime heights with the ‘dolce sfogato’ central section.
It is Chopins absolute masterpiece.
The final pianissimo leggiero demisemiquavers Perlemuter confided that Ravel loved so much.
Janina Fialkowska played it in a recital dedicated to my late wife,Ileana Ghione.Coming off stage after a performance that had the eloquence and simplicity of her mentor Rubinstein ,she confided to me waiting in the wings “ that was Ileana.”
We both knew what that meant!
The first C sharp in the bass as the last C sharp and F sharp are just there to open and close the sublime sonorities and are certainly not percussive in any way.Much in the way that the great pianists of the past playing in enormous opera houses would subtley add bass notes to open up the piano so they did not have to force the tone in the upper registers.Rubinstein used to do this so subtley and to wonderful effect. I will never forget the end of the first movement of the B flat minor Sonata from his hands.
The pianist who most resembles Rubinstein for me today is Nelson Freire and he often adds very subtle bass notes to wonderful effect.
Straight to the solar plexus indeed!
He even adds a bass chord in Chopin ‘s 2nd piano concerto before the first entry high in the upper register.
Villa Torlonia The Theatre Today
Our young Chinese pianist does this instinctively too.
I had noticed it in Schumann Carnaval between Coquette and Replique and at the end of Papillons.
Very pointed phrasing too at the end of Promenade and so many other memorable things that will remain with me for a long time.
It cannot be taught it is something that comes naturally to those touched with greatness.
It is a question of total dedication and deep love of the piano sonorities.
I was listening to the 18 year old Malofeev playing Tchaikowsky first piano concerto relayed live from Rome.
He comes from the Gnessin school in Moscow where the technical preparation can often take precedence over their musical preparation.Infact it was an extraordinary exhibition of virtuosity.But in the interview afterwards he was asked if he regretted having to practice for hours each day or give up many normal things at his tender age having been launched into a worldwide career so young.
His reply was astonishing.
He simply said it was not study or career it was quite simply the love of his life!
I will look out for him in a few years time with expectation.
Yuanfan too played so instinctively with an obvious love for the piano sonorities.
Hats off to his teachers that have also given him the musical and technical means to indulge himself and us without damaging his extraordinary natural gifts !
He will be noticed in the Rubinstein Competition where he is one of the few selected to partecipate next spring.
I and his audiences in Italy would have no hesitation in awarding him first prize but unfortunately we not part of that Circus act.
Fingers crossed that his great talent will be recognised so more people can enjoy his extraordinary interpretations as we all have in the past few days.
T
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 