Tuesday 23 April 2.00 pm 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was the final concert in a series of six recitals sponsored so generously by the Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation in collaboration with the National Liberal Club’s Asia Circle.It had begun with a greeting to the founder of the Keyboard Trust ,John Leech.Unable to attend this evening but who will be 99 years old in a few day’s time and a greeting from us all was recorded and will be shown to him and his wife Noretta Conci on his birthday of Sunday the 21st April.

Giulia Contaldo enchanted and entranced the audience of the Liberal Club with playing of superb musicianship and a kaleidoscope not only of colours but of intense concentration as she told a story of wondrous marvels.
A Respighi Nocturne of ethereal beauty but also of passionate outpourings of overwhelming intensity
A Debussy of fluidity and aristocratic control allied to a technical mastery that allowed the fleeting lightness of ‘movement’ to sweep across the keys with transcendental mastery.
The passionate intensity she brought to Wagner’s Liebestod was even more astonishing for the palette of colours that she used to paint a picture of burning intensity and searing inner murmurings
But it was in Schubert that her great artistry was revealed to the full with playing of aristocratic control as she allowed Schubert’s mellifluous outpourings to speak with heart rending immediacy and simplicity.

The simple fluidity of the Notturno by Respighi was played with subtle half colours and a sense of balance that allowed the wistful melody to glow on the gentle breeze that she created with infinite care and sensitivity.Growing in intensity with passionate involvement but always a sense of line that guided us through this seemingly innocent little piece that in Giulia’s hands became a ravishing tone poem of jewels that were allowed to shine with purity and beauty.

It was the same fluidity and fantasy that she brought to Debussy.But this was not the more usual impressionistic mist but a performance of virile rhythmic drive played with a kaleidoscope of changing colour that created a picture of the ‘reflections’ that Debussy was depicting in music. A sense of line of intelligence and musicianship but allied to a technical mastery as cascades of notes were merely streams of sound on a wave of sultry beauty.The simplicity and glowing purity she brought to the the sounds in the coda were indeed like drops of crystalline water falling so perfectly onto a canvas, as only a true poet of the keyboard could aspire to. ‘Hommage a Rameau’ was a movement much loved by Rubinstein because it needs an aristocratic sense of control but also a subtlety of sound without any sentimentality.This is like a Greek temple of poignant beauty and a feeling that history has past through the atmosphere that is evoked by such a noble edifice.Giulia had a range of sound from the opening French aristocratic cantabile that was truly Rubinstein’s, but there was also passionate conviction and masterly control as she opened up to the climax with great flourishes over the entire keyboard.The wonderful change of harmony at the end was of whispered secrets of heart rending intensity. In this one piece Giulia showed us her masterly control of the keyboard and a range of sounds that could bring this extraordinary piece to life with the virile intensity that is of such poignant significance.’

‘Movement’ was played with extraordinary clarity and murmured precision as the accents were like signposts in this breeze of sounds.The declamations in the right hand answered by the left were even more surprising over such a murmured atmosphere.Opening up into a transcendental display of rhythmic drive where notes were spread over the entire keyboard with a technical mastery that never allowed the music to become clouded or interrupted.The murmured brilliance of the opening was a never ending undercurrent throughout this movement as the notes gradually moved closer to the top of the keyboard with strands of melody that lit up this stream of sounds with jewel like rays of light.Disappearing into the distance I have rarely heard this movement finish with such mastery and musicianship.This was the Impressionism of vision and virile emotions that only a true musician could find in Debussy who surely is the greatest pianistic innovator since Chopin.

The opening of Liebestod was like a call to arms leading to sumptuous strands of melody that weaved there way forward with ravishing beauty .The clarity of the counterpoints was always perfectly controlled as they grew in ever more passionate intensity.The climax was played with a dramatic force and passionate conviction that was quite breathtaking as indeed it should be.We all knew that this burning cauldron of sounds was about to explode but it was the masterly control that kept us with baited breath waiting for the moment when Giulia would at last succumb to this red hot atmosphere and lose all control with frenzied movements and theatrical command.Allowing the music to gradually die away to a mere murmur where even here in Giulia’s poetic hands there was a sense of balance that allowed the final melodic notes to glisten like jewels as they lay exhausted after such passionate intensity.A remarkable performance where once again Giulia’s sense of architectural shape made such a poignant statement of one unified whole.

The whole of the second half was taken up with Schubert’s penultimate Sonata.A work lasting forty minutes and was one of the last works that the composer was to write before his untimely death.Long neglected after his death because it needs a true musician to be able to mould this great edifice into one unified whole.One who can see the whole architectural shape but at the same time turn Schubert’s seemingly endless streams of mellifluous outpourings into sounds which should have the same inflections as a singer ,where every note has a story to tell of great significance.Giulia gave a superb performance that keep the audience mesmerised from the dynamic opening declamations of intent to the final equally imperative chords that come forty minutes later.It was of course in between that Giulia brought every strand of music vividly to life with poetry,whimsical fantasy,passionate drive and above all with the simplicity of Art that conceals Art.Beethovenian you might say in its rigour and formal construction which is what Schubert was accused of in his own time .But there is a content of Viennese charm and dramatic invention , less irascible and tempestuous that is quite unique to Schubert .It takes a pianist of great musicianship to be able to enter into this world of poetic fantasy and mellifluous beauty without loosing the overall architectural shape of monumental invention and drive.There should be from the first to the last note an undercurrent on which the music evolves and the pianist like a conductor must show his players with flexibility and colour how to fill this vast canvas where the wood must be constructed with the beauty of the trees still intact.

There was absolute clarity to Giulia’s playing with a sense of improvisation as she unwrapped the music before our very eyes and where the music was allowed to flow so naturally as it built up with rhythmic intensity.Some very personal touches too brought the music vividly to life in a true musical conversation .Streams of beautiful seemless scales in the development floated on gently vibrating chords as the music gradually returned to the opening imperious chords.A coda of extreme delicacy where the legato melodic line was accompanied by whispered staccato notes leading to clouds of sounds that brought this movement to a delicate close ready for the poignant simplicity of the Andantino.There was purity and delicacy in the melodic line over the continuous barcarolle like accompaniment .A melodic line of searing intensity as the heart beat so gently underneath.A remarkable control of sound and a masterly control of the pedal that allowed for purity without ever any clouding of the texture .Gradually building up to a storm of truly Beethovenian intensity and drive and a recitativo of heart rending intensity rebuked by the composer with such unusual vehemence until surrendering to the magic return of the main theme.Returning with the most ravishing embellishments and comments that were played with exquisite delicacy revealing an ever more masterly control of sound.She brought sparkling brilliance to the Scherzo and tender refined elegance to the Trio.The ever more delectable return of the Scherzo this time ending with the same finality that owed more to Beethoven than Schubert! The gently flowing Rondo was of subtle shading and beauty as the episodes unfolded with teasing charm and gentle brilliance before burning themselves out.An attempt at restarting the Rondo with Schubert teasingly trying to find a way out which he does with a coda of burning intensity and dynamic brilliance.A final brusque recollection of the Rondo theme leads to the same dramatic opening chords that this time close a story that has spanned all the emotions of the genial invention and mastery of a poet destined to die just a few months later.A performance played by Giulia with mastery and poetry and above all supreme musicianship.

The Sei pezzi per pianoforte (“Six pieces for piano”),P.044, is a set of six solo piano pieces written by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi  between 1903 and 1905. These predominantly salonesque pieces are eclectic,drawing influence from different musical styles and composers. The pieces have various musical forms and were composed separately and later published together between 1905 and 1907 in a set under the same title for editorial reasons; Respighi had not conceived them as a suite , and therefore did not intend to have uniformity among the pieces. The set, under Bongiovanni, became his first published work. Five of the six pieces are derived from earlier works by Respighi, and only one of them, the “Canone”, has an extant manuscript.

1. Valse Caressante” – (“Tempo lento di Valzer.”)
2. “Canone” –  (“Andantino”)
3. “Notturno” –  (“Lento.”)
4. “Minuetto”
5. “Studio” – (‘Presto”)
6. “Intermezzo-Serenata” – (“Andante calmo”)

Images is a suite  of six compositions for solo piano by Claude Debussy. They were published in two books/series, each consisting of three pieces. The first book was composed between 1901 and 1905, and the second book was composed in 1907. Debussy wrote to his publisher , Jacques Durand about the first series : “Without false pride, I feel that these three pieces hold together well, and that they will find their place in the literature of the piano … to the left of Schumann, or to the right of Chopin… “

Liszt Tristan und Isolde – Liebestod S.447

Tristan and Isolde is a musical drama in three acts written by Richard Wagner between 1857 and 1859, and premiered in 1865. Two years after the debut of the work at the National Theater of Munich, Franz Liszt (who was Wagner’s father in law) made a piano transcription of Isolde’s final aria. The piece, called “Mild und leise”, was referred to as “Verklärung” (Transfiguration) by Wagner. Liszt prefaced his transcription with a four bar excerpt from the Love Duet from Act II, which in the opera is sung to the words “sehnend verlangter Liebestod”. Accordingly, he referred to his transcription as ‘Liebestod’. Later it was designated with the catalogue number S. 447. Liszt’s transcription (which underwent a revision in 1875) became famous in Europe well before Wagner’s opera reached most places.

Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde),was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Konigliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 conducted by Hans von Bulow .Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it “eine Handlung” (literally a drama, a plot, or an action).

The score of Tristan und Isolde has often been cited as a landmark in the development of Western music.^[15] Throughout the opera, Wagner uses a remarkable range of orchestral colour, harmony, and polyphony, doing so with a freedom rarely found in his earlier operas. The very first chord in the piece, the Tristan chord , is of great significance in the move away from traditional tonal harmony  as it resolves to another dissonant chord:

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

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

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

Schubert probably began sketching the sonatas sometime around the spring months of 1828; the final versions were written in September. The final sonata was completed on September 26, and two days later, Schubert played from the sonata trilogy at an evening gathering in Vienna.In a letter to Probst (one of his publishers), dated October 2, 1828, Schubert mentioned the sonatas amongst other works he had recently completed and wished to publish.However, Probst was not interested in the sonatas,and by November 19, Schubert was dead.In the following year, Schubert’s brother Ferdinand sold the sonatas’ autographs  to another publisher, Anton Diabelli, who would only publish them about ten years later, in 1838 or 1839.^[16] Schubert had intended the sonatas to be dedicated to Hummel , whom he greatly admired. Hummel was a leading pianist, a pupil of Mozart , and a pioneering composer of the Romantic style  (like Schubert himself).However, by the time the sonatas were published in 1839, Hummel was dead, and Diabelli, the new publisher, decided to dedicate them instead to composer Robert Schumann , who had praised many of Schubert’s works in his critical writings.

Giulia Contaldo attracted international attention when she replaced Elisso Virsaladze in a performance (broadcast live on BBC Radio 3) of Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. ‘A dashing account’ — Guardian
Giulia was born in Florence and graduated from Florence’s Luigi Cherubini Conservatory. She went on to study at the International Piano Academy at Imola where she completed her diploma with Jin Ju in 2019. She subsequently won a scholarship to study for the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Piano Performance at the Royal Northern College of Music with Graham Scott and Dina Parakhina and graduated with distinction. In 2021/2022 she studied on the International Artist Diploma Course at the RNCM.Giulia won First Prizes at the 28th J.S. Bach Italian National Competition (S. Levante) and the 15th International Maria Giubilei International Piano Competition. She also won prizes at the International Competition Prémio Internacional de Piano Figueira da Foz (Coimbra), the 32nd Concours Européen de Musique de Chambre organized by FNAPEC (Paris), the Massarosa International Piano Competition and the James Mottram International Piano Competition. In 2022, she won Second Prize and the Classical Sonata Special Award at the Verona International Piano Competition. Also in 2022, she won the Concerto Competition and the Piano Duo Prize at the RNCM — and was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal.As a soloist, Giulia has performed with the BBC Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, Orchestra dell’ Arena di Verona, RNCM Symphony Orchestra, Young Musicians European Orchestra, Giovane Orchestra di Abruzzo and the Orchestra del Carmine di Firenze. She has performed at many festivals throughout Europe and at prestigious venues including Bridgewater Hall, Wigmore Hall, Musica Insieme (Bologna), Teatro Alighieri (Ravenna) and the Teatro Filarmonico (Verona).  She is also a passionate chamber musician.Since 2022, Giulia has been continuing her studies at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Geneva with Ricardo Castro.  She is also a Professor at the Conservatorio A. Scontrino in Trapani, Sicily

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/05/18/giulia-contaldo-in-london-at-steinways-for-the-keyboard-trust/

Our series of six concerts at the National Liberal Club :

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/06/06/giovanni-bertolazzi-liberal-club-en-blanc-et-noir-5th-june-2023-a-star-is-born/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/06/14/adam-heron-at-the-national-liberal-club-an-eclectic-musician-of-refined-taste-and-eloquence/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/09/05/milda-daunoraite-at-the-national-liberal-club-sparks-flying-with-refined-piano-playing-of-elegance-and-simplicity/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/11/07/nikita-lukinov-at-the-national-liberal-club-a-supreme-stylist-astonishes-and-seduces/

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/03/05/pedro-lopez-salas-at-the-national-liberal-club-with-aristocratic-style-and-artistry/

‘One of Kholodenko’s two most notable qualities as a pianist are his stunning ringing tone, which allows him to leave notes hanging in the air longer than the physics of acoustics would suggest is possible. The other is an opposite crisp and spectacular digital speed.’
Los Angeles Times

‘Vadym Kholodenko’s ear-tickling trills and textural transparency … set the stage for the intimate, subtle and crisply detailed playing to come’Gramophone

The virtuoso pianist presents an unusual recital of two halves: Mozart’s Requiem transcribed for piano and Rzewski’s resistance anthem.

Winner of the 2014 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko devotes his concert to two vast, extraordinary works – spanning a narrative from grief to resistance that connects deeply with the spirit of his home country.

He performs Mozart’s Requiem in a little-known, grand-scale transcription by Karl Klindworth, a pupil of Franz Liszt, who managed to encapsulate the beauty and magnificence of the work for chorus and orchestra on the piano alone.

The recital’s other half consists of Frederic Rzewski’s 36 Variations on ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated!’, the American composer’s ear-boggling transformation of Sergio Ortega’s Chilean resistance anthem.

This truly iconic piece has become the late 20th century’s successor to the giant variation sets of Beethoven and Bach.

Standing ovation for a true ‘tour de force’ of multifaceted playing of prismatic colour and total mastery by Vadym Kholodenko
Klindworth’s transcription of Mozart appeared rather dated compared to the extraordinary vivid and vital Rzewski variations on ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated’ .How actual can that be as the bombs fall on the cradle of Cristian civilisation last night .
‘An eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth when will it ever end!’
These were the last words my wife declaimed on stage as Electra by Euripides before being struck down by an aneurysm – the silent killer on the stage of our own theatre in Rome!

Exhilarating and quite exhausting performance from a master pianist.
Commissioned and first performed in 1975 by Ursula Oppens who passed by Siena to play to Agosti in 1968 before catching the train to Bolzano where she won the Busoni Competition.
Kholodenko ,winner of Van Cliburn , with courage and resiliance can really show us what it means ‘never to be defeated’.

This is an interview with Ursula Oppens : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uuarpS_u59Q.

And to Jed Distler’s Between the Keys : https://soundcloud.com/jeddistler/episode-0032-the-people-united-at-40-2015-11-03?in=jeddistler/sets/between-the-keys-archive

The song on which the variations is based is one of many that emerged from the Unidad Popular  coalition in Chile between 1969 and 1973, prior to the overthrow of the Salvador Allende  government. Rzewski composed the variations in September and October 1975, as a tribute to the struggle of the Chilean people against the newly imposed repressive regime of Augusto Pinochet ; indeed the work contains allusions to other leftist struggles of the same and immediately preceding time, such as quotations from the Italian traditional socialist   song “Bandiera Rossa “ and the Bertold Brecht /Hans Eisler “Solidarity Song”

In general, the variations are short, and build up to climaxes of considerable force. The 36 variations, following the 36 bars of the tune, are in six groups of six. The pianist, in addition to needing a virtuoso technique, is required to whistle, slam the piano lid, and catch the after-vibrations of a loud attack as harmonics: all of these are “extended” techniques in 20th-century piano writing. Much of the work uses the language of 19th-century romanticism, but mixes this language with pandiatonic  tonality, modal writing, and serial techniques .

As in the Goldberg Variations , the final variation is a direct restatement of the original theme, intended to be heard with new significance after the long journey through the variations.

Jeremy Chan’s review of the concert can be read here :https://literallylefthanded.com/2024/04/14/vadym-kholodenkos-core-shaking-rzewski-variations/

Rzewski was born on April 13, 1938,to parents of Polish and Jewish descent,and raised Catholic.^[He began playing piano at age 5 and attended Phillips Academy Harvard and Princeton , where his teachers included Randall Thompson,Roger Sessions,Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt . In 1960, he went to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship where in addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola in Florence he began a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element.

In 1966, Rzewski co-founded Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran  and Richard Teitelbaum in Rome which was conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments  prominently featured. In 1971, he returned to New York from Italy.

In 1977, Rzewski became Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège, Belgium, then directed by Henri Pousseur

In 1963, Rzewski married Nicole Abbeloos; they had five children.While Rzewski never divorced Abbeloos, his companion for about the last 20 years of his life was Françoise Walot, with whom he had two children. He also had five grandchildren.Rzewski died of an apparent heart attack in Montiano Tuscany on June 26, 2021, at the age of 83.Nicola Slonimsky  said of Rzewski in 1993: “He is furthermore a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument.”Michael Schell called Rzewski “the most important living composer of piano music, and surely one of the dozen or so most important living American composers”.

Rzewski plays ‘The People United Will Never Be https://youtube.com/watch?v=xiWwYsWWVSk&feature=shared

At the time of Mozart’s death on 5 December 1791, only the first movement, Introitus (Requiem aeternam) was completed in all of the orchestral and vocal parts. The Kyrie, Sequence and Offertorium were completed in skeleton, with the exception of the Lacrymosa, which breaks off after the first eight bars. The vocal parts and continuo were fully notated. Occasionally, some of the prominent orchestral parts were briefly indicated, such as the first violin part of the Rex tremendae and Confutatis, the musical bridges in the Recordare, and the trombone solos of the Tuba Mirum.What remained to be completed for these sections were mostly accompanimental figures, inner harmonies, and orchestral doublings to the vocal parts.

The eccentric count Franz von Walsegg commissioned the Requiem from Mozart anonymously through intermediaries. The count, an amateur chamber musician who routinely commissioned works by composers and passed them off as his own,wanted a Requiem Mass he could claim he composed to memorialize the recent passing of his wife. Mozart received only half of the payment in advance, so upon his death his widow Costanze  was keen to have the work completed secretly by someone else, submit it to the count as having been completed by Mozart and collect the final payment.Joseph von Eybler was one of the first composers to be asked to complete the score, and had worked on the movements from the Dies irae up until the Lacrymosa. In addition, a striking similarity between the openings of the Domine Jesu Christe movements in the requiems of the two composers suggests that Eybler at least looked at later sections.After this work, he felt unable to complete the remainder and gave the manuscript back to Constanze Mozart.

The task was then given to another composer, Franz Xaver Süssmayr who borrowed some of Eybler’s work in making his completion, and added his own orchestration to the movements from the Kyrie onward, completed the Lacrymosa, and added several new movements which a Requiem would normally comprise: Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. He then added a final section, Lux aeterna by adapting the opening two movements which Mozart had written to the different words which finish the Requiem Mass, which according to both Süssmayr and Mozart’s wife was done according to Mozart’s directions. Some think it unlikely, however, that Mozart would have repeated the opening two sections if he had survived to finish the work.The completed score, started by Mozart but largely finished by Süssmayr, was then dispatched to Count Walsegg complete with a counterfeited signature of Mozart and dated 1792. The various complete and incomplete manuscripts eventually turned up in the 19th century, but many of the figures involved left ambiguous statements on record as to how they were involved in the affair. Despite the controversy over how much of the music is actually Mozart’s, the commonly performed Süssmayr version has become widely accepted by the public. This acceptance is quite strong, even when alternative completions provide logical and compelling solutions for the work..

A musician is known by his programme and it was the three bold blocks that Kenny Fu presented that showed off his serious musicianly qualities.His Schumann was played from the very first notes with style and poetic sensibility but never sacrificing the clarity and chameleonic wistful changes of character that Schumann’s imbues into this work of seemingly improvised fantasy.

There was a rhythmic drive to the ‘sehr rasch und leicht ‘ and even Schumann’s insistence of even more energy was played with a sparkling lightness bursting into moments of rhetoric before finding its way to the magic of the opening.Episodes played without a break as Schumann joins the differing movements together into one unified whole.Kenny showed a wistful sense of poetic understanding in the gently flowing ‘hastig’ and if he just missed the sense of arrival in the spiky chords that follow he brought a sense of magic and colour to the ever changing moods of the Floristan and Eusebius characters that Schumann describes.The ‘Einfach und Zart’ of the third episode was expansive and elegiac before bursting into dynamic energy with an Intermezzo that he played with authority and technical skill as he maintained the tempo even through the infamous octaves that abound.The ‘Innig’ of the fourth that seems almost improvised in character was where the fleeting changes were brought to life with great vitality and poetry.There was fluidity and driving energy in the ‘sehr lebhafter’ and Kenny managed to give a sense of expansiveness as the excitement grew until the ‘Mit einigem Pomp’.It is here that Schumann manages to create a legato melody of searing intensity in this rather militaristic outpouring.There was a strange misreading at the opening of the ‘Zum Beschluss’ but not given any importance as the music was allowed to flow so naturally until the final imperious unwinding of the coda.

Debussy’s Images Book 1 was played with a beautiful fluidity where after the tempestuous outpouring at the climax of ‘Reflets’ Kenny brought a magical stillness to the coda but strangely seemed to miss the resolution of the final chord! However it lead beautifully into ‘Hommage a Rameau’ that he played with poetic freedom and as he said in his introduction a sense of fluidity that pervades all three pieces of Images Book 1. ‘Movement’ too was barely a murmur as it gradually became bathed in sunlight with playing of transcendental drive until disappearing into the distance from where it had first appeared.

It was however the Rachmaninov Sonata that ignited a spark in this young musician.Here was playing of more colour and sumptuous sounds as he obviously identified with the passionate romantic outpourings and cauldron of boiling sounds creating excitement and intensity.Here was playing where the clarity and precision of Schumann and Debussy were followed by playing of searing drive and intensity and considerable technical mastery.It was the same beauty of colour and sense of balance that he showed in the encore of the Bach /Siloti Prelude in B minor.Barely touching the keys he allowed the tenor melodic line to enter as if by magic creating a spell that showed off magical sense of balance and quite considerable artistry.

All week I’ve been sitting at the piano and composing and writing and laughing and crying, all at the same time,” wrote Schumann to his beloved Clara Wieck from Vienna in March 1839. “You will find this beautifully illustrated in my Opus 20, the great Humoreske.” 

The conflicting emotions Schumann felt while composing his Humoreske are reflected in the music’s contrasting moods, or ‘humours’. In a letter of 15 March 1839 to his Belgian follower Simonin de Sire, Schumann provided a hint as to the meaning of the work’s title when he pointed out that the word ‘humoreske’ couldn’t adequately be translated into French. ‘It is a pity’, said Schumann, ‘that there are no good and apt words in the French language for such deeply ingrained characteristics and concepts as Gemütlichkeit, and for humour, which is the happy fusion of the gemütlich and the witty. But it is this that binds the whole character of the two nations together.’ The previous year, in drawing de Sire’s attention to his F sharp minor sonata, Op 11, and the Fantasiestücke, Op 12, Schumann told him: ‘The human heart sometimes seems strange, and pain and joy are intermingled in wild variegation.’

“Do you not know Jean Paul, our great writer? I have learnt more counterpoint from him than from my music teacher”. His “Vorschule der Ästhetik” with its extensive treatment of humour probably occasioned Schumann to think of giving a piano work the title “Humoreske” – thus giving birth to a new musical genre.
The “romantic humour” is not, however, aimed at humour in a modern sense of the word, but rather at a portrayal of the fragility and contradictory nature of the human condition. As if in a kaleidoscope, Schumann juxtaposes the most diverse elements of form and moods. Ernst Herttrich’s revision reflects the latest scholarly findings for this unusual work.

Schumann needed some happy diversion in his life at that particular time: he was very unhappy being separated from Clara but the reason for being in Vienna was to be able to establish in the Austrian capital his journal, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which he had founded in Leipzig in 1833. But the city fathers said a resounding “No.” So, what to do other than compose a new keyboard masterwork.

In fact, Schumann in 1839 was close to the end of the line of works for the keyboard, master or otherwise. His creative life had centered virtually exclusively on music for the piano, the instrument on which he envisioned becoming a virtuoso. This dream, however, was shattered when he injured his fingers by way of a contraption he used to strengthen those digits that might have been his means for attaining performing fame. But after his marriage to Clara in 1840 he turned more to songs and then symphonies and chamber music.

1. Einfach Sehr rasch und leicht Noch rascher Erstes Tempo Wie im Anfang
2. Hastig Nach und nach immer lebhafter und stärker. Wie vorher
3. Einfach und zart Intermezzo
4. Innig Schneller
5. Sehr lebhaft. Immer lebhafter
6. Mit einigem Pomp
7. Zum Beschluss. Allegro

Images is a suite  of six compositions for solo piano by Claude Debussy. They were published in two books/series, each consisting of three pieces. The first book was composed between 1901 and 1905, and the second book was composed in 1907. Debussy wrote to his publisher , Jacques Durand about the first series : “Without false pride, I feel that these three pieces hold together well, and that they will find their place in the literature of the piano … to the left of Schumann, or to the right of Chopin… “

Piano Sonata No. 2, op 36 was  composed by Rachmaninov  in 1913, who revised it in 1931, with the note, “The new version, revised and reduced by author.”

Three years after his third piano concert  was finished, Rachmaninov moved with his family to a house in Rome that Tchaikowsky had used.It was during this time in Rome that Rachmaninov started working on his second piano sonata.However, because both of his daughters contracted typhoid fever, he was unable to finish the composition in Rome but instead he moved his family on to Berlin in order to consult with doctors.When the girls were well enough, Rachmaninoff traveled with his family back to his Ivanovka  country estate, where he finished the second piano sonata.Its premiere took place in Kursk on 18 October 1913 ,The sonata is in three interrelated movements:

1. Allegro agitato
2. Non allegro—Lento (E minor—E major)
3. Allegro molto (B-flat major)

When Rachmaninov performed the piece at its premiere in Moscow, it was well received.However, he was not satisfied with the work and felt that too much in the piece was superfluous and in 1931, he commenced work on a revision. Major cuts were made to the middle sections of the second and third movements and all three sections of the first movement, and some technically difficult passages were simplified.

A performance of the original version lasts approximately 25 minutes, while a performance of the revised version lasts approximately 19 minutes.

In 1940, with the composer’s consent, Vladimir Horowitz created his own edition which combined elements of both the original and revised versions.His edition used more original material than revised throughout all three movements.A performance of the Horowitz revision lasts approximately 22 minutes.

From his early solo debut at the Wigmore Hall to his attainment of the prestigious Sir Elton John Scholarship, Kenny Fu holds much potential and promise for a bright future. He has given concerts on three continents and performed extensively throughout UK which include distinguished halls such as the St Martin-in-the-Fields, Kings Place, Wigmore Hall, Assembly Hall and Fazioli Concert Hall. His repertoire choices gravitate toward the late Classical and Romantic Eras where he brings an intense and captivating temperament to the works of Beethoven, Brahms and Rachmaninov. Kenny was a semi-finalist at the Sussex International Piano competition. During his earlier years he was the winner of the Solihull Young Musician of the Year and a Quarter Finalist at the BBC Young Musician of the Year. His reputation as a musician has also extended internationally where he was a International Piano Competition. He has also received guidance from numerous esteemed musicians such as Dimitri Alexeev, Pascal Devoyon, Imogen Cooper, Bernard d’Ascoli and Angela Hewitt. Kenny is looking forward to his Postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music under the tutelage of Professor Tatiana Sarkissova. He is also the recipient of the ‘Myra Hess’ award from Help Musicians UK and is also sponsored by the Warwick Arts fund. 

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/06/06/kenny-fu-the-making-of-an-artist-with-poetry-and-intelligence-at-st-marys/

Lost for words for such a warm heartfelt welcome from one of the truly great artists of our time.
This regal artist here in Sicily dedicating her time and energy to helping and encouraging young musicians as she has always done in a long and distinguished career.

Oxana Yablonskaya,in Trapani as presidente of a jury that includes many distinguished colleagues all united for their friend Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti in his wish to launch his home town of Trapani as a centre of cultural excellence on the world stage.
Oxana now in her 85th year has come from Jerusalem where she lives and teaches to listen to young musicians gathered from around the world whose only wish is to be able to dedicate their lives to sharing their art.
We hear everyday about war and greed but there is also another world that is not spoken about which is our only hope for a better future.
Young musicians dedicating their youth to their art and despite differences and worldly grievances searching for the same Eutopia that we are all in the end striving for .
I have never forgotten Oxana’s Prokofiev third sonata ,that she played for Bruno Nicolai’s Edipan in Rome forty years ago,in the theatre that my wife and I had built and run just next door to St.Peter’s Square.
And only twenty years ago playing again in Rome a magnificent Rachmaninov Third Concerto where her regal presence and command allowed her to take over from a conductor overcome by emotion.
She not only played magnificently but also conducted the performance from the keyboard!
It is we that should thank you dear Oxana for the honour of wanting still to share with aspiring young artists your vast experience and legendary musicianship with such humility and humanity.

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

First day for me of the 2nd International piano competition Domenico Scarlatti

https://www.scarlattipianocompetition.it

Some superb playing from Ekaterina Chebotareva where she was able to bring the same extraordinary clarity to Ravel’s La Valse as she had done to Scarlatti K 47 or Rachmaninov op 33 etude tableaux in D minor .

Playing of extraordinary involvement and conviction from Rongrong Guo brought vividly to life a really sizzling Scarlatti K 24 and a deeply felt Scriabin with the passionate outpouring of this most romantic of studies op 42.
Her 12th Hungarian Rhapsody would have got an ovation in the concert hall for its theatrical vividness and conviction.What she missed in detail was made up for with passionate involvement .

The surprise was the young Russian in refuge in Weimar like Liszt .Mikhail Kambarov ignited and illuminated this Yamaha concert grand with the ravishing colours that only a born artist could discover .A Scarlatti Sonata K 87 that owed more to Chopin than Scarlatti but was imbued with ravishing subtlety.Colours that were strangely missing from Chopin’ s own double third study where his technical command and ingenious fingering brought a smile even to Oxana’s up until now rather serious demeanour. Scriabin fifth that was just the ideal piece for a passionate young artist of his calibre.
I missed seven earlier candidates but this jury of serious distinguished musicians had decided to allow all ten competitors to return to the second round where they will give an hour long recital including a classical sonata which will certainly demonstrate their artistry and musicianship to the full .

The second day for me in Trapani and what a surprise it has been.The day started with a student of the artistic director Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti taking advantage of this magnificent CF 3 Yamaha whilst awaiting the arrival of the candidates and the jury.

Matteo Pierro just turned twenty gave a performance of Scriabin’s 9th Sonata that would have won him a top prize in the competition if a conflict had not stopped him from entering into the circus arena.

Vincenzo’s staunch advocacy of the Tobias Matthay school allows for a range of sounds that most pianists today do know exist! This young artist was humbly placed at the service of the distinguished jury and just managed to snatch a few minutes to indulge in the sumptuous sounds that lay within this instrument that have mostly remained undiscovered.

It was one of those mornings because the jury was seated now and Jeongro Park took his place at the piano and proceeded to give a series of performances of such mastery and conviction that time stood still as he kept us in his spell for over an hour.
His Davidsbundler reminded me of Murray Perahia playing it in the Leeds competition and reducing the jury to tears.As if that was not enough after the desolate final waltz he played his own transcription of the fourth movement of the Resurrection Symphony .The organisers had put this before the Davidsbundler but a great artist is known by his programmes and this young man knew exactly where it should be placed.With baited breath we were now treated to an astonishingly masterly display of fireworks in a performance of Liszt’s diabolical Totentanz that I have never heard played with such total mastery even from Arrau.
Follow that !

It was the young Italian pianist Federica Reale who treated us to a musicianly performances of five Scarlatti’s Sonatas ,Clementi’s Sonata op 26 n.2 and the Eight pieces that make up Brahms op 76.This certainly calmed the air as we listened to the refined and intelligent performances that were played with beauty and colour as she shaped the music with such loving care and restrained passion.

The final pianist before the lunch break was the Japanese pianist Kiana Reid.Stylish playing of sonatas by Scarlatti K.450 and Haydn Hob VI .23 both played with great character and clarity.But it was the Schumann Fantasie op 17 that showed off her true musicianship and considerable artistry.An architectural shape to the great outpouring of love for the composer’s future wife Clara.Fussy meticulous indications by the composer can be distracting for lesser musicians but Kiana was able to steer her way through the beautiful trees to show us the power and sweep of the entire wood.If the second movement was a little overpowering at the beginning ,as it is marked only mezzo forte ,she managed even here to give a coherent shape to Schumann’s rather tiresome dotted rhythms as she built up the tension to the final coda .Many lesser pianist can fall at this last notorious hurdle but Kiana played with controlled passion where maturity and mastery can allow youthful exuberance to be always kept under control.The last movement was played with ravishing beauty and delicacy and the final pages were played with aristocratic authority following impeccably the composers wishes to allow the work to come to rest only on the final three consiliatry chords.

A remarkable performance especially coming after the Davidsbundler where these two more mature contestants could show us how maturity can tame youthful passion.And like her colleague she finished with the pianistic fireworks of the Tarantella from Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli. A breathtaking performance but one that should be linked to the previous ‘Canzone’ as Liszt very clearly indicated.His very precise pedal indications make his wishes quite clear but that almost no one observes thinking of Liszt as merely a juggler of notes rather than the most visionary composer and precise editor of his own and his colleagues scores .
As Nadia Boulanger was fond of quoting from Shakespeare 12th Night :’words without thought no more to heaven go’.

After the lunch break Zukhra Sharpova gave very crisp and clear performances of Scarlatti and Beethoven Sonatas.One or two mishaps very professionally disguised obviously made her feel very uncomfortable but she went on to give a musicianly performance of another Schumann masterwork op 22.She was obviously not happy with her performances and this was a disappointing off day for a very fine pianist.

The final contestant was Changyu Yin,a 23 year old pianist from China.He was down to play the ‘Hammerklavier’ but it had been changed to yet another master work of Schumann with the Etudes Symphoniques op 13.
Beginning with two Sonatas by Scarlatti and Haydn that were played with clarity and precision but just missing a natural sense of style.
The Schumann showed off impeccable preparation and musicianship but whereas Schumann himself had described Chopin ‘s Mazurkas as ‘canons covered in flowers’,these are studies that should also blossom and we should not be aware of the considerable technical hurdles that are being attempted.

It was in the five posthumous studies (published by Brahms after Schumann’s untimely death) that Changyu allowed the music to bloom with great style and beauty.The finale can seem very repetitive and some pianists like Changyu today look maybe unnecessarily to the first edition to bring a little variety to what can seem monotony to less imaginative hands.
A fine well prepared performance but missing the natural artistry that had taken us so by surprise this morning.
And so another five pianists to hear tomorrow but not before two jury members give a concert together tonight.

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/04/11/daniel-rivera-and-misha-dacic-take-trapani-by-storm/

The end of the semifinal as we wait for the result to see which out of the ten contestants will take part in the final tomorrow morning

In the meantime tonight a much awaited recital by Oxana Yablonskaya

The day started with the Japanese pianist Kazumitsu Ujisawa with the Scarlatti Sonata K.101 played with sparkling brilliance and clarity.This was followed by Beethoven’s penultimate Sonata op 110 that we were to hear three times today.An intelligent musician and there were moments of great beauty but I did not really feel he penetrated the deep inner meaning of one of Beethoven’s most poignant compositions.There was an unexpected change of programme as instead of the Schumann Fantasie we suddenly heard a sublime performance of Chopin’s F sharp major Nocture op 15 n.2.A refined performance that will long be remembered for it’s delicacy and aristocratic poise.This was followed by the Andante spianato op 22 that we were also to hear three times today.A beautiful performances of refined delicacy ,brilliance and style.

Maria Efenesia Baffa,a doctor from Florence ,started her recital with Beethoven’s last Sonata op 111. With tiny hands but such a passionate heart she played with the temperament and drive of someone who is in love with music.I remember when I was teaching at the Royal Academy in London ,next door to Harley Street,a doctor came asking for lessons.I was the youngest teacher then and was sent to a sumptuous studio with a grand piano that would have been the envy of many professional musicians.This charming overworked doctor admitted after an hour of talking but not actually performaing music that it was me or the psychiatrist and I was a bit cheaper !
It is this love for music that came across so vividly today and if there were blemishes in the longer works by Beethoven and Chopin due obviously to having to divide her time between her passion for medicine and music it was in the shorter Scarlatti Sonatas that her temperament and agile fingers brought the music vividly to life.

Ekaterina Chebotareva I had already heard and admired in the first round,in particular playing a crystal clear ‘La Valse’.Today she showed much more authority and character and it was this that came across in theatrical performances of Scarlatti and Haydn Sonatas.There was scintillating brilliance to the second movement of the Haydn Sonata in G that she played with crystalline clarity.Brahms’s 8 pieces op 76 were played with fluidity and luminosity that she combined with mastery and musicianship.

Rongrong Guo I had heard too in the first round when her performances were more of a good impression than perfect in detail.So it came as a surprise to hear such a fine performance of Scarlatti with well controlled and detailed playing with a natural musicality of someone who loves the music that is pouring from her agile fingers.Beethoven’s op 110 was given a very well prepared and controlled performance only getting slightly out of hand as she lost her head allowing her heart full reign for the passionate finale outpouring.However an impressive performance that I was not expecting from someone with a natural but sometimes untamed temperament.There were many beautiful things in her Carnaval even though this was more a good impression than a detailed interpretation.She feels the music so intensely and it is this love which she communicates with such immediacy to the public.

Having lifted an eyebrow at Mikhail Kambarov’s Scarlatti in the first round I was bowled over by his superb performance of the two Scarlatti Sonatas that opened today’s programme.K8 was dynamic,rhythmic but above all refined and scintillating.The Sonata K 487 was played with such fantasy that he revealed the genius of this little Sonata which was a true tone poem in his refined poetic hands.There was beauty from the very first note of Beethoven’s op 110 where there was weight mixed with gossamer lightness.A sound world of whispered confessions of ravishing beauty and showed a sensitivity to sound that I remember startled us in the west on the first visits from Richter.One critic of his performance of Beethoven’s op 22 Sonata said that the slow movement had been in existent such were its secrets revealed in whispered undertones by a Master. There were so many beautiful things today too and a Scherzo that was shaped as a real musician with scrupulous attention to Beethoven’s detailed indications.The sublime Adagio was allowed to gradually grow in intensity until the final passionate explosion of triumph as Beethoven ,like Scriabin a century later ,had envisaged his star.

Chopin too was elegant and refined maybe trying a little too hard to ‘do things’ instead of letting the music speak simply and eloquently for itself but it was of such ravishing beauty with the scintillating beguiling jeux perlé of another age.
Ten exceptional performances over two days but the circus aspect of a competition is the decision now to choose only four to take part in the final tomorrow morning.
After an hour long deliberation the four chosen to go ahead are Jeongro Park,Kiana Reid,Ekaterina Chebotareva and Mikhail Kambarov.
Mikhail,this poet of the piano was awarded unanimously the Scarlatti Prize today too.

And today was the final round of the International Piano Competition in Trapani .Four pianists had been chosen for this final round and it was a morning of sumptuous music and scintillating piano playing.Such was the high standard that the distinguished jury could do no better than award two tied prizes.

First Prize was awarded to Jeongro Park and Mikhail Kambarov and Second Prize to Ekaterina Chebotareva and Kiana Reid.A happier result could not have been bettered from the sumptuous music making that all four had offered us today.
It had all been streamed live at http://www.memassociation.org

Jeongro Park had opened today’s final round with a scintillating account of the Scarlatti Sonata K.20 that he played with an infectious rhythmic drive that did not exclude refined phrasing of delicacy and style.A kaleidoscope of sounds and colours was opened up in the magic box that is Kurtag’s Homage to Scarlatti .Jeongro showed us his mastery of sound from the whispered barely audible to the rich full sounds that this wonderful instrument can reveal .There was never any hardness but always with full sounds of seemingly infinite reverberations.A truly masterly performance of Schubert’s Drei Klavierstucke revealed an intelligent musicianship allied to a poetic fantasy always at the scrupulous service of the composer.There was a wonderful sense of balance that allowed the melodic line to sing without any forcing but also to be sustained by Schubert’s miraculous harmonic invention.
Rachmaninov’s Chopin variations have long been neglected because thought of as overlong and drawn out.This was not the case today in Jeongo’s masterly hands where his sense of colour and transcendental piano playing showed a work of great invention and variety .Chopin’s C minor prelude was subjected to Rachmaninov’s fantasy world of scintillating pianistic invention from the hands of a master who could show us so clearly the musical line in a work where there are so many notes that it takes a real musician to sort out the wood from the trees.
Jeongro’s own trascription of Dreams ,one of Rachmaninov’s six romances op 38 , was a masterly reworking of a rarely heard song.

The second to play in this final round was the Japanese pianist Kiana Reid whose beautifully florid C sharp major prelude lead so beautifully into the opening of Beethoven’s Sonata op 109. Playing where beauty and intelligence combined as Beethoven’s first of his final trilogy was given the space and freedom as meticulously noted in the score.There was dynamic drive to the Prestissimo second movement where the melodic line was finely drawn also here.The final theme and variations were played with great weight and authority as the quartet quality of the theme was gradually transformed into ever more vigorous variations until the return of the theme and Beethoven’s miraculous use of seemless trills on which his vision of Eutopia is revealed as the theme is allowed to float on this wonderful stream of sounds.This was playing of remarkable technical control but also of poetic understanding and intelligence.

It was the same intelligence combined with breathtaking virtuosity that made for overwhelming performances of Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata and Ravel’s own transcription of “La Valse’. There was a sense of colour and transcendental virtuosity that was a continual outpouring of sumptuous beauty and overwhelming power.
The range of colour that she found in La Valse was quite remarkable and her glissandi in both hands were just streams of gleaming sounds that shone in this rather sultry atmosphere with a build up in tension that was hypnotic and breathtaking in it’s mastery of control and daring.

The third of our quartet of finalists was Ekaterina Chebotareva who saved her finest performances for today’s final round. Playing of intelligence and authority with a poetic understanding that could bring Schubert’s three movement Sonata in A minor D.537 vividly to life .It is a sonata that can seem rather disjointed in lesser hands but Ekaterina made the music speak eloquently and with such subtle colouring .The seemingly ungrateful rather heavy handed chords were given a new life and meaning that I have rarely heard from others. She had started with Soirée de Vienne n 6 by Schubert in Liszt’s teasingly tantalising transcription and she played it with subtle charm and a lightweight jeux perlé of great character and style.A Scarlatti Sonata K.82 was played with a scintillating lightness and clarity before Puccini’s ‘Crisantemus’.

A work I have never heard in concert before and it was a real curiosity inserted in a programme by this discerning young artist.It was a sumptuous interlude before Agosti’s famous transcription of Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’.Her transcendental technique and musicianship brought this famous transcription vividly to life.After the extraordinary gymnastics of the opening there were moments of purity and beauty before the magic entry of the Firebird and the tumultuous build up to the final breathtaking ending.Some remarkable playing for it’s intelligence and musicianship allied to a clarity and technical mastery.

The fourth of the pianists today was another Russian pianist this time transferred to Weimar and was the youngest of the four competitors .Mikhail Kambarov’s performance today was for me the highlight of a very special morning of music making.
Everything he played was so convincing and full of temperament as he lived every moment of the works he played.I was brought up on the Bach of Rosalyn Tureck and would often stick the pages on the aide memoire that she would use in her old age when she was no longer the High Priestess that had reigned in the world’s great concert halls for generations.But Mikhail played a different type of Bach ,more streamlined and certainly faster but it had the same unrelenting pulse that Rosalyn would bring to all she did.Mikhail today brought a sense of colour to his Bach that showed a phenomenal technical control allied to an intelligence and a personality that were for me totally convincing.The range of sounds that he brought to the slow movement were quite remarkable where legato and staccato somehow in his hands could live together without any smudging from the pedal.
It was Anton Rubinstein who said that the pedal was the soul of the piano and Mikhail certainly realised that.He had a total mastery of them which just gave him the same range of sounds of the different manuals that Bach would have had.But Mikhail also had the modern piano with it’s range of sounds and possibilities that Bach could never have imagined!
The Messiaen brought tears to my eyes as the stillness and whispered sounds of heart rending significance struck deep and the pungent harmonies ,sometimes like broken glass,were of searing intensity.
Rameau’s ‘La Poule’ was played with the same amazing dexterity and clarity as Sokolov and it was a lesson in refined playing of great artistry.
The control of sound in Scriabin’s Prelude for the left hand was nothing short of miraculous.I have never heard it played with such golden luminosity and delicacy but there was also an unbridled passion as this little prelude was monumental in the way that Mikhail managed to tell a story in sound that was really quite remarkable for its control and poetic understanding.
There was a magical luminosity and purity to the ‘Follia’ that Rachmaninov chose for his variations.Even a very subtle addition of ornaments ,as he had done in the Bach Italian Concert too , brought a smile to my face at the cheek of daring to hint at such a thing!
But this was a true artist where one felt anything was possible on a true voyage of discovery.The sounds and colours that he found together with the sudden rhythmic impulse that he would add to some of the variations were astonishing in their daring and total conviction.Using his whole body to obtain a rhythmic energy where his devil may care daring was totally at the service of the music ,as he plunged into the octaves or the menacing chords that fill many of the final variations.Like Alfred Cortot the poetic content and musical meaning made any little technical slips on the way completely irrelevant in performances of such overwhelming authority and vision.The searing intensity of the coda and the final return of the theme was one of those magic moments that will remain in my memory for long to come.

At 23 this is an artist to watch and the Jury quite rightly awarded him first prize together with the more mature mastery of Jeongro Park who is though more than ten years his elder.

The final concert and prize giving was for me an occasion to hear a remarkable pianist from Palestine who had been having lessons from Oxana Yablonskaya on line as travelling to her home in Jerusalem was not possible.Mohammed Alshaikh aged 21 was awarded the young Emerging Pianist Category Prize and I was astounded by his performance at the concert tonight of the Danse Macabre by Saint Saens in the diabolical transcription of Vladimir Horowitz .

My wish to hear a young man who I was told had taken the competition by storm,had come true .But then Trapani is that sort of place where dreams can become reality thanks to the vision and hard work of Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti and his team intent on bringing,to the world’s attention, culture in their beloved city of Trapani

It is only right that a Jury should be given the chance to perform themselves after having given so generously of their time to listen to their younger colleagues.

And so it was tonight the turn of two jury members Daniel Rivera and Misha Dacic to give a duo concert together of works by Rachmaninov at the end of the 150th anniversary celebrations of this much loved composer.

An impeccable sense of balance from Misha Dacic in the bass, who was also in control of the pedals, allowed Daniel Rivera to play with chiselled beauty.Ravishing penetrating sounds from a pianist who knows what real weight means squeezing golden sounds out of every note from pianissimo to forte.Misha too would suddenly illuminate sounds in the heart of the keyboard that would light up a phrase while Daniel would immediately accomodate the entry of this new instrument from their sumptuous Philadelphian orchestra.

Starting with the six little pieces op 11 for four hands on one piano.They really are not such little pieces as these two artists showed us,turning each one into miniature tone poems.

And a Philadelphian orchestra there certainly was when each pianist had his own instrument to play the Simon Callaghan transcription of Rachmaninov’s much loved Second Symphony.
A kaleidoscopic sense of colour as the demonstrative Daniel played with passion and technical mastery equalled but not outwardly visible by Misha Dacic.It was interesting to watch Misha as his eyes devoured the music but without any physical effort whatsoever.

Playing as one with a clarity and beauty that was never overpowering but as sumptuous and golden as Rachmaninov’s favourite orchestra .It is interesting to note that just before Rachmaninov’s death in 1943 he and Horowitz’s had become neighbours in Beverley Hills and often used to play at home for fun.

If only I phones had been invented then but I imagine the conviction and mastery of the performance we heard tonight may have been similar to what the neighbours in Beverley Hills might have experienced as the Second World War was in full devastating force in Europe.

Oxana Yablonskaya at 85 the undisputed Queen of the Keyboard
A superb recital during her gruelling schedule as president of the Jury in Trapani.Having spent the entire day listening to five young pianists and as President supervising the votes of her much younger colleagues before having a cup of tea and appearing on stage with a solo recital and a programme that would have tired a pianist even half her age.

Here this regal lady appeared on stage and proceeded to create the magic that she has been sharing with her public for the past four decades.It was the same authority and presence that I remember from the first time I heard her in Rome forty years ago or as she suggested even more than that !

Lost for words for such a warm heartfelt welcome from one of the truly great artists of our time.
This regal artist here in Sicily dedicating her time and energy to helping and encouraging young musicians as she has always done in a long and distinguished career.
Oxana Yablonskaya,in Trapani as presidente of a jury that includes many distinguished colleagues all united for their friend Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberti in his wish to launch his home town of Trapani as a centre of cultural excellence on the world stage.
Oxana now in her 85th year has come from Jerusalem where she lives and teaches to listen to young musicians gathered from around the world whose only wish is to be able to dedicate their lives to sharing their art.
We hear everyday about war and greed but there is also another world that is not spoken about which is our only hope for a better future.
Young musicians dedicating their youth to their art and despite differences and worldly grievances searching for the same Eutopia that we are all in the end striving for .
I have never forgotten Oxana’s Prokofiev third sonata ,that she played for Bruno Nicolai’s Edipan in Rome forty years ago,in the theatre that my wife and I had built and run just next door to St.Peter’s Square.
And only twenty years ago playing again in Rome a magnificent Rachmaninov Third Concerto where her regal presence and command allowed her to take over from a conductor overcome by emotion.
She not only played magnificently but also conducted the performance from the keyboard!
It is we that should thank you dear Oxana for the honour of wanting still to share with aspiring young artists your vast experience and legendary musicianship with such humility and humanity.

I had heard her twenty years on take over the reigns of a performance of Rachmaninov Third Concerto that was at risk of falling apart in the hands of an ‘elderly’ Turkish conductor overcome with emotion from such a towering performance as Oxana’s.

Today the moment she sat at the piano she became another person as the serenity and simplicity she unfolded in C.P.E Bach’s Rondo espressivo from his B minor Sonata H.245 seemed to give her the vigour and stamina to contemplate a programme that included two major Sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart.
The rondo was played with a delicacy and a ravishing sense of colour but above all a simplicity that allowed the music to speak for itself with disarming beauty.It is the same simplicity that Rubinstein was to share with his public when he too had reached Oxana’s age.It is a simplicity born of total mastery not only as a musician but also being able to play with such natural movements that it is like a great sage seated before us ready to recount the most wondrous stories.

Relaxation in tension because to play the piano is also a physical exercise and Oxana’s technical mastery allows her to place her hands on the keys like a swimmer floating in water.The physical effort is reduced to a minimum with no superfluous crowd pleasing gestures .She like Rubinstein is there at the service of the music with the disarming simplicity of Art that disguises Art.
The Mozart Sonata in F K 280 she told me afterwards she had learnt as a child .The little Polka by Tchaikowsky played as one of three encores she had first played when she was seven!

It was Schnabel who said that Mozart is too difficult for adults and too easy for children as it must be played with simplicity and style where every note has been placed by a Genius in its proper place.There is also a theatricality in Mozart that is apparent in his sonatas and it was this that Oxana made so apparent and which brought her performance vividly to life as the characters entered onto the scene with dynamic drive and individuality.The years just disappeared as she too became one of those characters enjoying acting a part with such vitality .A slow movement that was of etched beauty and the last movement played with buoyancy and a scintillating ‘joie de vivre’ where the years just seemed to disappear as she became once more the child prodigy discovering the genius of Mozart for the first time in this early F major Sonata .The Beethoven she had chosen to play is one of the first major sonatas of the 32 that were to span the composers entire life.Breaking away from the model of his illustrious mentor Haydn it is in the Sonatas op 2 n 3 , op 7 and this op 10 n 3 that the composer reveals his revolutionary spirit in opening new paths into the future.It is in all three of these early sonatas that the slow movements become of great poignancy and beauty and show the depth of feeling and orchestral thinking of Beethoven.

From the very first notes Oxana took us into a world of dynamic drive and suprising contrasts with the opening octaves shaped with her great artistry into a wind that blew in from a far to arrive at a light where the beautiful second subject could flourish with greater beauty but without ever sacrificing the drive that was to guide us from the first to the last note of this remarkable sonata .The dark sombre string quartet texture of the extraordinarily poignant Largo and mesto was followed by the wonderful way Oxana just allowed the minuet to float in like a ray of sunlight after such sombre brooding .The wonderful expression on this great artist’s face as Beethoven’s question and answer in the Rondo became ever more insistent .There was an ethereal ending with jeux perlé scales accompanying the still questioning left hand as it disappeared so peacefully into the depths of the keyboard .
A remarkable performance of mastery and musicianship that will long be remembered.

An all too short break brought her back on stage to play the two Rhapsodies by Brahms.I don’t know what happened in the Green Room but she attacked the first Rhapsody with a force and drive that were breathtaking and overwhelming .There were great orchestral sounds where this great black beast was aflame with passionate outpourings of great intensity.There were moments when the music dissolved to leave a heart melting mellifluous outpouring of nostalgia and beauty. Not allowing herself a break between the two Rhapsodies she burst into the second with a kaleidoscope of colour and sumptuous richness.A breath of fresh air blew over the keys as she brought simplicity and purity to the contrasting central episode.

Three Chopin Mazurkas were indeed ‘canons covered in flowers’ and became miniature tone poems in Oxana’s poetic hands.There was searing beauty full of nostalgia in the barely whispered A minor op 17 which was the bridge between two boisterous folk dances of Chopin’s native homeland.
It was though the Barcarolle that will be long remembered where Chopin’s greatest outpouring of song is united in one continuous work.Oxana played it with the same aristocratic ease as Rubinstein where the music was allowed to unfold with sumptuous beauty and ravishing colour.There was passion too but always with every strand of counterpoints allowed to sing as it built to the final beautiful bars where the tenor melodic line is accompanied by a florid accompaniment ,that was Ravel’s favourite passage, as it rose to the top of the keyboard only to cascade to the final four chords and the end of a dream.

Our Queen of the Keyboard was submerged with bouquets of flowers and a standing ovation from a public who knew no other way to thank her for coming to their city.Three encores were her way of repaying their kindness with a Scarlatti Sonata ,a Polka by Tchaikowsky and another Mazurka by Chopin.

She even had enough energy to make a little speech together with the artistic director Vincenzo Marrone d’Alberto with her only thought being to publicise the concert the next day of the young musicians that she had been listening to all week.

After such a long day one might have thought that Madam Yablonskaya would want to to get home to rest.This indomitable great artist had other ideas and was happy to enjoy the hospitality of her colleagues and friends way into the early hours!

With fellow jury members Anna Chiara D’Ascoli and Daniel Rivera

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