Angela Hewitt’s triumph with Bach and Brahms on the 152nd anniversary of the first performance of Brahms D minor Concerto op 15 in England on 9 March 1872 at the Crystal Palace .A certain Miss Baglehole was the soloist who was obviously not up to the job being criticised for not having the strength to play such a modern work where the piano is pitched against the orchestra .
Angela promised that would not be the case today and the power she gave to the great black beast before her shook the beautiful St Andrew Holborn to the rafters.There was lyrical radiance and searing intensity too as Angela was like an animal unleashed at last able to show us that not only Arrau could stand his own against the orchestra.
This was after another D minor concerto ,that of Bach, where Angela conducting from the keyboard showed us what a High Priestess can really do by turning Bach’s sublime knotty twine into moments of ravishing beauty and dynamic drive with breathtaking contrasts in dynamics and a rhythmic buoyancy that was hypnotic with its subtle refined insistence .
Angela’s generosity towards helping young musicians is well known and culminates in Masterclasses wherever she may be performing or living :
Tonight she was supporting the Fidelio Orchestra that has been created by Raffaello Morales with ‘the purpose of creating opportunities for young musicians to get orchestral experience and to collaborate with outstanding soloists’.Similar to the Southbank Sinfonia in London and the Roma Tre Orchestra in Rome and to some extent the Oxford Philharmonic of Marios Papadopoulos.
I expect and hope that there are also many other ensembles created to give this invaluable experience to graduate musicians, often superb young soloists hoping for a career, but just lacking the experience of working together and learning to listen and breathe with others in a chamber music environment.
Angela has also played solo recitals in the nearby Fidelio Cafe as have many of her illustrious colleagues ,which is a fun and unsophisticated environment with a commitment to bringing people together offering superb music combined with cordon bleu cuisine!
No ‘cuisine’ tonight but two master works by Bach and Brahms.One conducted by Angela who has played and conducted the Klavier Concerti of Bach with many of the major ensembles worldwide .Her experience and musicianship will be of lasting benefit to these young musicians as making music with a ‘High Priestess’ will remain with them as an informed and unforgettable experience for the rest of their professional careers.Brahms of course requires much larger forces and whilst the strings produced a luscious sometimes ravishing sound the winds and brass will have learnt to listen more closely to the overall line that Raffaello was depicting with his beautifully fluid gestures.It gave us the public,though, a chance to hear a pianist ,who is world renowned for her Bach and classical playing, in a different more Romantic repertoire .We should not forget that her programmes this season have included the Brahms F minor Sonata and Schumann Sonata op. 11 as well as completing her Bach Odyssey in many parts of the globe and final recordings of Beethoven 32 Sonatas and Variations as well as complete Mozart Sonatas .I well remember her performance of the Liszt B minor and Dante Sonatas in Rome ,as well as the Goldberg Variations,of course ,shortly after winning the one and only Glenn Gould Competition in Canada in the 80’s.She has also recorded much of the French repertoire including complete Ravel and also major works by Fauré, Chabrier and Messiaen.
Angela writes : I miss my friend the late Michael Steinberg who was Artistic Advisor to both the San Francisco Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra back in the 80s/90s. He wrote the most wonderful programme notes (many published by OUP) and he was the person who got me to start talking and writing about music. The dearest of friends. Well, I was reading his wonderful note on Brahms’ First Piano Concerto this morning and he mentions that the first performance in England was on March 9, 1872 at Crystal Palace, London, and the pianist was a Miss Baglehole (no joke). I’ve found a review of the concert, an extract of which is below. It’s the usual thing: how a lady can’t play Brahms. So in celebration of International Women’s Day which is tomorrow, I’m posting this and saying that I shall play the Brahms D minor with more balls than a lot of men–believe me!!! And I see we’re performing it on Saturday on the 152nd anniversary of its first performance in England.
Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf 13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903 was born in Windischgratz in the Duchy of Styria (now Sloveni Gradec,Slovenia ), then a part of the Austrian Empire . Herbert von Karajan was related to him on his maternal side.He spent most of his life in Vienna , becoming a representative of a “New German” trend in Lieder , a trend which followed from the expressive, chromatic and dramatic musical innovations of Richard Wagner .Though he had several bursts of extraordinary productivity, particularly in 1888 and 1889, depression frequently interrupted his creative periods, and his last composition was written in 1898, before he suffered a mental collapse caused by syphilis.
A wonderful voyage of discovery into the world of Hugo Wolf Graham Johnson recounting in his inimitable way the many phases of a genius who was to produce such wonders in the span of only 13 years
Friday 8 March 2024 6pm Milton Court Concert Hall Graham Johnson Song Guild Graham Johnson director
Harriet Cameron soprano Manon Ogwen Parry soprano Gabriella Noble mezzo-soprano Sebastian Hill tenor Jacob Cole tenor Zheng Tu baritone Sooyeon Baik piano Toby Stanford piano Valentina Wang piano Charlie Woof-Byrne piano
The Paul Hamburger Prize presented by his son on the 20th Anniversary of his death .The prize awarded annually is for Voice and Piano and was awarded to Manon Ogwen Parry and Charlie Woof-Byrne
Paul Hamburger 3 September 1920, Vienna – 11 April 2004, London ) was born in Vienna in 1920, and studied at the Vienna State Academy before emigrating to England in 1939. In 1941, he received a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Music , London, studying with Frank Merrick,Gordon Jacob and Vaughan Williams . From 1945, he started on a career as an accompanist, chamber musician and teacher, and was associated in concerts and on disc with many distinguished singers and instrumentalists, including Dame Janet Baker,Elisabeth Söderström,Max Postal and Pierre Fournier. He performed both in Britain and abroad, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. Malcom Arnold dedicated his Concerto for Piano Duet and Strings, op. 32 of 1951 to Hamburger and his piano duet partner, the composer pianist Helen Pyke . He taught singers and accompanists at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and gave masterclasses and annual seminars in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Sweden and Finland. His literary works include an edition of Mozart Lieder (Oxford University Press), contributions to books on Mozart songs, Mahler’s Wunderhorn songs, Chopin and Britten, and translations, notably of bruno Walter and Alfred Brendel . He was a Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy , London, and was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art in 1991 ,upgraded to 1st class in 2000.
The four books of Iberia by Albeniz are considered his masterpiece and Rondeña that Hao Zi played today is from the second book .A famous New York critic writing about Alicia de Larrocha’s performance simply said : “There is really nothing in Isaac Albeniz’s Iberia that a good three-handed pianist could not master, given unlimited years of practice and permission to play at half tempo. But there are few pianists thus endowed.” Hao Zi has no need for three hands because she has a sense of style and colour allied to excitement and passion that brought this beautiful piece vividly to life.A technical command that allowed the music to flow so naturally with a subtle sense of rubato and beguiling sense of character.The beautiful ending suddenly capriciously springing to life with a typical Spanish click of the heels and stamp of the feet.
I have heard her play the Scriabin early Fantasy Sonata many times but today she played with an authority and sense of colour that can only come from a long association with a work that is loved and deeply felt.There was from the very first notes a sumptuous sense of colour and a beguiling rubato of insinuating delicacy.A melodic line in the tenor register of rich beauty as it was embellished by beautiful sounds that just glowed with wonderfully subtle colours as it gradually built to a climax .The opening gentle chords suddenly became imperious and noble only to dissolve into a world of ravishingly beautiful waves of sound.The second movement was breathtaking with its dynamic rhythmic drive bursting into melodic life with passionate ecstasy.A technical command and fluidity of sound and movement that allowed the music to weave its way with simplicity and brilliance.
The Corelli Variations by Rachmaninov I have not heard her play before as she had decided to change her programme a year ago due to some muscular problems.She now tells me that these problems have been resolved simply by ensuring that her hands are kept warm before playing.These Rachmaninov variations are based on a popular traditional melody called La Follia (a madness) incorrectly attributed to Corelli .It was written in 1931 in Rachmaninov’s country home in Switzerland and was dedicated to his friend, the violinist Fritz Kreisler. Rachmaninov wrote to the composer Nikolai Medtner , on 21 December 1931: ‘I’ve played the Variations about fifteen times, but of these fifteen performances only one was good. The others were sloppy. I can’t play my own compositions! And it’s so boring! Not once have I played these all in continuity. I was guided by the coughing of the audience. Whenever the coughing would increase, I would skip the next variation. Whenever there was no coughing, I would play them in proper order. In one concert, I don’t remember where – some small town – the coughing was so violent that I played only ten variations (out of 20). My best record was set in New York, where I played 18 variations. However, I hope that you will play all of them, and won’t “cough”.
The theme was played by Hao Zi with delicacy gently coming to life with the first variations.The delicate legato and staccato of the second was answered by the almost too serious third and fourth only to contrast with the dynamic rhythmic energy of the fifth and sixth .An outpouring of continuous movement over the long held pedal note of D was brought to a conclusion with thunderous cascades of notes .A beautifully inquisitive Adagio misterioso was played with exquisite delicacy as it expanded with a sumptuous build up of delicate arabesques only to explode into three variation of dynamic rhythmic energy and technical finesse.The agitato before the half way cadenza that leads from minor to major was played with unusual grace.What poignant beauty Hao Zi brought to the major key of D flat with the exquisite luminosity of the fifteenth variation leading to a tumultuous build up to the twentieth variation of triumphant octaves spread over the entire keyboard.Over the long held pedal note of D suddenly the clouds cleared and the beautifully expansive coda was revealed with real artistry as Hao Zi allowed the music to unfold with beautiful enticing counterpoints before the final beautifully placed two chords in the home key.
Alborada del gracioso I have heard Hao Zi play many times and it always astonishes me her superb technical control and how she manages to play the double glissandi with such sumptuous ease and mastery.She even manages to convey the hot boiling passion that is concealed in the recitativi.
I very much look forward to her major London debut for the prestigious Kirckman Concert Society at Kings Place on the first of July.
Hao Zi Yoh is a Malaysian pianist based in London. She is a top prize winner in many international piano competitions including Rome International Piano Competition. She has performed around Europe, USA, China, Japan and Malaysia both as a soloist and chamber musician, in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Southbank Royal Festival Hall, Salle Cortot,Steinway Hall London, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Dewan Filharmonik Petronas and Teatro Quirino. She also performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Nova Amadeus and Baleares Symphony Orchestra. Most recently, she has given concert tour in Northern Italy organised by the Keyboard Charitable Trust, and has been selected as an Artist for the Kirckman Concert Society 2023/24. Hao Zi also participated in creative outreach projects led by the Open Academy for children and elderly with Dementia, where she performed in Music for Moment Concerts at the Wigmore Hall. She collaborated with author-illustrator David Litchfield and improvised to his award-winning book “The Bear and the Piano”. Hao Zi remains in close contact with the music scene in Malaysia. She has given talks, performances and masterclasses to the students of University of Malaya, Bentley Music and Persatuan Chopin in hope to share her experiences and help the younger generation. Hao Zi continues to develop her performing career in addition to tutoring at King’s College, London. Apart from giving masterclasses, Hao Zi also organised livestreams and charity fundraisers during the London-lockdown 2021.Currently she is studying with Martino Tirimo, after being awarded full scholarship to pursue an Artist Diploma at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, generously supported by the Bagri Foundation, Gladys Bratton and TCL Scholarship. Her previous teachers include Elza Kolodin at Music University of Freiburg, Germany and later at Royal Academy of Music under Christopher Elton.
Some things just cannot be taught .When music becomes your life blood and you live every moment with joyous abandon ……just such a girl Yuri Yasui has been blessed by the Gods and the very distinguished jury had no doubt in awarding her the special Grand Prize for a scintillating performance of Rondo a la Mazur op 5
Yuri Yaqui with Artur Haftman and Jenny Lee looking closely on
A wonderfully trained student of Dinara Klinton Deva Mira Sperandio was awarded the audience prize for a very professional performance of the Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise op 22.
Dinara Klinton writes :Cannot be more proud to be called their teacher… Deva Mira Sperandio , student of The Yehudi Menuhin School, has just won the 1st prize in the highest category, as well as the Audience prize of the London International Chopin Competition for Young Pianists. Here with one of the highly esteemed jury members, Piotr Paleczny.
I have been privileged this week to assist at performances by two other musical geniuses that makes one wonder where does this total dedication to music come from …………….it is very rare but when you are in their presence it is immediately instinctively apparent .
No words or comments are necessary as they fill the air with their mystical genius.A timelessness where the only thing that matters is their hypnotic music making.
It may well be that some children at a very early age are attracted by the sounds that appeal to their senses and this starts a process of recreation- the birth of genius? Each child absorbs unconsciously what surrounds them long before they can actually express themselves in words or actions.I remember Yuanfan Yang’s parents with their young son who was at a friends sixth birthday party and one of the other parents asked for the name of their child’s piano teacher because he had played so wonderfully on the piano that he found at his friends birthday party. ‘ But he does not play the piano….we do not have a piano at home!’ exclaimed his mother .
This is one of the many mysteries of life !A musical paradise indeed !
The contestants selected for the final round
Listening to this junior piano competition everyone played well – they were all well trained and dressed in their ‘Sunday best’ but then suddenly one of them shines brighter than all the others.
Artur Haftman with Taige Wang and Christopher Axworthy
I also remember Vanessa Latarche as the prize pupil of Miss Rowe in Ealing who has now grown up and promotes young musicians in such a caring and professional way via the RCM and the Lang Lang foundation not to mention the Hastings International and much else besides.
She quite rightly praised all the competitors for their performances knowing what courage is needed to play in the ‘Circus arena’ of competitions ……….a necessary evil which can give the much needed experience to young musicians who may decide when they grow up to take the very arduous path towards a career in music.
It was Artur Rubinstein at his first competition in Tel Aviv who told the contestants that they should be like the bees creating their own unique honey from the choice of flowers that attracted them.Musicians listening to music good,bad and indifferent and making their own choice of what pleases them and thus creating a thing called taste! Taste and style,imagination and intelligence are just some of the ingredients that can help and even sometimes contaminate great natural talent.
Teachers have a great responsibility to nurture and encourage natural talent and not to destroy it with general rules and regulations because each child has very specific needs that must be helped and nurtured with infinite care.
I saw Vitaly Pisarenko and Dinara Klinton in the audience to encourage the young musicians in their care.Both had themselves been child prodigies at the Gnessin school in Moscow where now we in the UK have the Menuhin and Purcell schools which can nurture and encourage great natural talent from a very early age – is it ever early enough though! Vitaly and Dinara are both now great pianists with International careers but they still find time to help these young musicians progress through their youthful journey of ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’ knowing from their own experience what hurdles may lay ahead.
Playing of simplicity and chiselled beauty from Matthew Mc Lachlan one of the three young siblings of Murray McLachlan .A family of remarkable musicians who have all performed many times at St Mary’s.Matthew had surprised even himself when only in his second year at the Royal College of Music in London he was awarded the coveted Chappell Gold Medal for an extraordinarily beautiful performance of Scriabin’s elusive twenty four preludes op 11.Today it was in particular his beautifully lyrical and committed performance of Prokofiev’s somewhat neglected fifth sonata that captured his imagination .A performance of such simplicity as Prokofiev in lyrical mood could show us that there is a side to his compositions that is not always hard driven with canons being fired.The beautiful second movement in particular showed off Matthews control as he allowed the melodic line to shine above a relentless pizzicato left hand .A refined kaleidoscope of sounds that Prokofiev had revealed so poetically in his Visions Fugitives .It had followed performances of Bach where there was a pastoral calm as the voices were allowed to converse with each other creating a knotty twine of tranquility and peace.He had chosen too the two movement Sonata by Beethoven ‘A Thérèse ‘ where the gentle lyricism of the first beautiful phrases opened onto a fluidity and playfulness of beguiling charm and character.The hauntingly beautiful Etude Tableau by Rachmaninov was shaped with rubato and ease just as the beautiful little piece by Alicia de Larrocha was played with simple mellifluous style.Mompou’s beautifully atmospheric Cancion was an ideal partner for such delectable flowing sounds full of radiance and colour.The Butterfly Dream by Petar Dimov was indeed the ideal introduction ,as Matthew had explained ,for the beautiful lyricism of the opening of the Prokofiev Sonata .This was a pianist in poetically lyrical vein today with playing beauty and radiance.
Chetham’s School of Music alumnus Matthew McLachlan was awarded the C. Bechstein scholarship to continue his studies at the Royal College of Music with professor Dina Parakhina. Recipient of numerous awards, Matthew has performed as concerto soloist and recitalist in Poland, Serbia, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and throughout the UK. In July of 2021 Matthew was awarded 1st prize in the Royal College of Music Chappell Medal piano competition and the Esther Fisher prize for best undergraduate performance. Last year, Matthew was a finalist in the Isidor Bajic International Piano Competition and awarded 1st prize in the Bromsgrove International Musicians Competition
It was clear from the very first notes of this early Mozart Sonata that we were in the hands of a real artist.A refined tone palette of clarity and style with ornaments that sparkled like jewels with delicate precision.But this was no clock work precision because every note spoke so eloquently with a subtle sense of rubato that was both enticing and ravishingly beautiful.Rests and pauses that were as eloquent as the notes that came before and after in a musical conversation that brought this sonata vividly to life .An exquisite Andante cantabile with a kaleidoscopic range of sounds like the human voice where the ending was pure whispered magic.The brilliance of the Allegretto was tempered with elegance and style where everything was given the just time to breathe with delicate and delectable ornaments that just added to the civilised dance of its age.
And style there certainly was in Kreisler’s Liebesleid in the beguiling transcription by Rachmaninov.We just held our breath as Pedro placed the notes with daring timelessness.It was as though he was improvising such was the spontaneity of invention as we followed hypnotically his every move.Scales and ornaments that were like streams of gold and silver just adding a glow to the delectable old style Viennese waltz that Kreisler had invented with such charm and grace.It was the same charm and grace as Kreisler’s golden toned violin but with the unmistakeable harmonies of his friend Rachmaninov.Two great artists but there is a saying that there are never two without three and the third was sharing with us tonight his refined artistry and bringing us again the magic of this old world bonbon.
We were immediately taken into a different world with the dynamic drive of De Fallas’s Fantasia Bética.The savage excitement of Andalusia with it’s constant changing of character.Glissandi and swirls of notes gave way to an almost inaudible murmuring of atmospheric sounds.Pointing his finger to a note that shone like a jewel in the mists of sound.A note that then became an anguished cry as Pedro knew how to illuminate the piano with ravishing vehemence.The final notes placed deep in the piano with an downturned left hand thumb pummelling with savagery a note that was to be joined by the right hand in a stand up fight as Pedro brought this fantasy to its ultimate exciting close.
Peace was restored with the charm of Soler’s G minor Sonata that like with Mozart,Pedro played with elegance and style with an exquisite range of colours.Even the scintillating brilliance of it’s twin in D major was shaped with the beauty that only a true musician could find in seemless scales and arpeggios.
Yisha Xue of the Asia Circle at the National Liberal Club welcoming Leslie Howard co artistic director of the Keyboard Trust
It was in Chopin’s Sonata op 35 that Pedro showed us what real artistry can mean. It transformed Chopin’s well worn masterpiece into a living thing as though the ink was still wet on the page.Such was his musicianship and sensitivity that the monumental opening was quite overwhelming as the opening chords immediately became a whispered living wave on which Chopin places his gasping fragmented melody that will be transformed with menace and grandeur in the development.This was a performance of aristocratic musicianship where there was a rubato that was so imperceptible and with such refined good taste that even the second subject was allowed to breath and speak so naturally.I was missing the weight of a Rubinstein or Perlemuter but Pedro’s ravishingly beautiful playing allowed the counterpoints to be an integral part of this beautiful melody in a way that was totally new to be and so convincing.Like many great pianists Pedro ignored the much debated repeat and entered the mysteriously menacing world of the development.Chopin’s genius allowing the opening Grave to combine with the doppio movimento in an outpouring of aristocratic grandiloquence .In Pedro’s hands it was breathtaking for its passionate sweep but above all for the sumptuous beauty and fullness without any hardness that he coaxed out of this magnificent Steinway concert grand.I have never heard the ending of this movement played with such passionate control. Chopin marks accelerando on the final bars but Pedro realised that this was more an inner intensity than a helter skelter race to the finish! The scherzo that follows was played with fantasy and again scales that became washes of sound played with enviable precision.It was Rosalyn Tureck who once said that she did not play wrong notes- meaning that every note has a significance and is an essential link in a chain.A sentence where every word has it just weight and meaning – an artist who paints a picture in sound.In Pedro’s hands today I heard the Trio as if for the first time such was the wondrous artistry of counterpoints that were whispered with magical golden clarity and with an improvised freedom.In lesser hands this would have broken the overall architectural shape but Pedro managed to hold us in his spell as I have rarely heard before.The final two drops in the ocean at the end were followed by a silence that held us all with baited breath as he took his time before playing the relentless left hand march with unusual pointed colour.The Funeral March was allowed to float on these constant and unflinching steps.A trio that was whispered and drew us in to eavesdrop on such intimacy.An extraordinary control of sound where every note was a perfect gem and even the hint of passion before the end just made the entry of the Funeral march even more poignant than before.A last movement that was indeed like a wind blowing over the graves .But within this perpetuum mobile of washes of sounds there was a heartbeat that was revealed through the mist with devastating effect and searing intensity as the wind howled all around before the final triumphant flame that brings this masterpiece to it’s conclusion.
After such a monumental performance our young Spanish prince offered us a scintillating performance of Lecuona’s Malagueña where his style ,colour and even showmanship all came together in an exhilarating outpouring of this famous Cuban showpiece.
Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 10 K.330 / 300h, is one of the three works in the cycle of sonatas K.330-331 – 332. The sonata was composed in 1783 when Mozart was 27 years old and was published, with the other two sonatas by Artaria in 1784. There are three movements :
Allegro moderato
Andante cantabile in F major
Allegretto
It was probably written in 1783, either in Vienna, or during the course of Mozart’s first visit home to Salzburg, bringing with him a wife of whom his fatherstrongly disapproved. It is clearly one of the sonatas mentioned by the composer in a letter to his father written in June 1784, identified with K. 330, K. 331 and K. 332, and now sent for publication to Artaria, but already known to his sister.Mozart repeatedly mentioned piano sonatas in his correspondence of the years 1778–1783, but he most likely never alluded to the three Sonatas K. 330 – 332. It is not until June 1784 that we find an unequivocal mention of these three works. It is Mozart’s communication to his father that he had “given Artaria, to engrave, the three sonatas for clavier only, which I once sent to my sister, the first in C, the second in A, and the third in f.” The printing progressed quickly, and on 25 August of that year the WIENER ZEITUNG advertised the pieces with the words: “The following new publications can be purchased from the art dealers Artaria Comp. …: “Three clavier sonatas, Opus 6, by Herr Kapellmeister Mozart, 2 fl. 30 kr.” The three sonatas are indeed designated as “Op. VI” in the title of the first edition. As occurs frequently in prints by Artaria, this edition contains a considerable amount of inaccuracies and errors in all three sonatas; nevertheless, it remains an important source as it features a number of dynamic markings that are not found in the surviving autograph but which had most likely been added by Mozart in the lost engraver’s master.
Sergei Rachmaninov and Fritz Kreisler
Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen (Old Viennese Melodies ) is a set of three short pieces for violin and piano composed by Austrian-American violinist Fritz Kreisler .The three pieces are titled Liebesfreud (Love’s Joy), Liebesleid (Love’s Sorrow), and Schön Rosmarin (Lovely Rosemary).
The legendary violinist Fritz Kreisler and Sergei Rachmaninov performed frequently together. On one occasion, as the story goes, Kreisler had a memory slip during a performance. Fumbling around the fingerboard and attempting to improvise his way out of the predicament, he inched his way towards the piano, whispering helplessly, “Where are we?” Rachmaninov answered, “In Carnegie Hall.”
As a tribute to their friendship, Rachmaninov created piano arrangements of three of Kreisler’s violin miniatures, including Liebesleid (“Love’s Sorrow”), and Liebesfreud (“Love’s Joy”). Kreisler’s original compositions are charming slices of pre-war Vienna. In Rachmaninov’s hands they become thrilling new music…variations on the original themes, infused with Rachmaninov’s distinct sound and spirit.
It is not known when the pieces are written, but they were published in 1905, deliberately misattributed to Joseph LannerKreisler often played these pieces as encores at his concerts, though the pieces are usually performed separately. In 1911, he published solo piano arrangements of the pieces as Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen and they have since appeared in numerous settings for other instruments, or orchestrated.
Two of the pieces, Liebesfreud and Liebesleid, were the subject of virtuoso transcriptions for solo piano by Kreisler’s friend Sergei Rachmaninov (1931),who also recorded these transcriptions.
Someone said to Rachmaninov that this transcription seemed difficult. Rachmaninoff replied, “Difficult! It is impossible!”
Fantasía bética, or Andalusian Fantasy, was written by in 1919 evoking the old Roman province of Baetis in southern Spain, today’s Andalusia. It was commissioned by Artur Rubinstein ,who planned to perform it in Barcelona that year but did not learn it in time and so wound up giving the premiere in New York on 20 February 1920; as it turned out, he would play it only a few times before dropping it from his repertory without recording it and years later he explained to the composer that he found it too long … It was Falla’s last major piano work and the only one that belongs to the virtuoso tradition in which Falla the pianist had been trained. ‘Guitar figurations transformed into pianistic terms abound … other passages evoke the harpsichord, Scarlatti as it were, rewritten by Bartók.’ Beyond that are the smoky, heavily ornamented lines of flamenco singers and the tightly controlled gestures of Andalusian dancing, the whole work adding up to a marvellously varied and vigorous portrait of Spain. From the structural point of view Falla’s ‘internal rhythm’, which he explained as ‘the harmony in the deepest sense of the word born of the dynamic equilibrium between the sections’. Any attempt to shorten the work would have blunted its impact.
The abstract, large-scale work is a celebration of Andalusian culture and history, but not an historical evocation. Its influences draw from Falla’s knowledge and experience of the the flamenco culture that evolved in Andalusia.
Provinicia Baetica was the old Roman name for Andalusia and so a translation of the title might be “Andalusian Fantasy.” Although the materials used are original with Falla, they strongly evoke the folk music of southern Spain: the strident, sombre cante jondo sung in oriental-sounding scales, chords derived from guitar tunings, and a harsh percussive quality reminiscent of castanets and heel stamping.
The tonal originality of the Baetica is a result of Gypsy, ‘Middle Eastern’, Sephardic, Indian and subtle French influences woven into the harmonic language.
Manuel de Falla was born in 1876 into a reasonably affluent family in Cádiz, where music was confined to annual performances of Haydn’s The Seven Last Words, occasional visits by grand opera companies, and folk songs—not as museum pieces, but as living elements of Spanish life. By 1896 the family fortunes had diminished and they moved to Madrid, where Falla entered the conservatoire and began to compose zarzuelas, the Spanish form of operetta. But his eyes were set on Paris and in 1907 he began a seven-year stay, making friends with Debussy, Ravel and Dukas. He had already begun the Cuatro piezas españolas in Madrid, but they were brought out in 1909 by the Parisian publisher Durand on the recommendation of the three above-named composers. Despite the obvious debt to Albéniz, also in Paris at the time and the dedicatee of the pieces, Falla’s mixture of harmonic invention and elegant counterpoint is unfailingly captivating, banishing any hint of the boredom that might otherwise accrue from the insistent Spanish dance rhythms. His tunes too recall Spanish folk music with its repeated notes and small intervals, but his textures are in general more economical than those of Albéniz.
The opera La vida breve was written in 1904–5 but not performed until 1913. It includes two Spanish dances which have subsequently achieved a life of their own. The first, which opens the second act, was published in a variety of settings, including transcriptions for piano solo and four-hand duet by the composer, and with the music from the end of the scene as Interludio y Danza for orchestra. It was also arranged by Fritz Kreisler for solo violin and piano (as Danza española) in 1926.
Antonio Francisco Javier José Soler Ramos, usually known as Padre Antonio Soler, known in Catalan as Antoni Soler i Ramos baptized 3 December 1729 – died 20 December 1783 He is best known for his many mostly one-movement keyboard Sonatas although he composed more than 500 sacred choral musical pieces in his native Spain. Today, though, it is his 200-or-so keyboard sonatas that are arousing the curiosity of performers . In 1761 Soler wrote a music-theory treatise in which he sketched out methods of quickly modulating to remote keys; these techniques are also found in his keyboard sonatas with the subtlety and speed of modulation between keys, and a brilliant lightness occasionally darkened by moments of pathos.Padre Soler’s most celebrated works,the keyboard sonatas, are comparable to those composed by Domenico Scarlatti (with whom he may have studied) but are more varied in form than those of Scarlatti, with some pieces in three or four movements; Scarlatti’s pieces are in one (mostly) or two movements. Soler’s sonatas were cataloged in the early twentieth century by Fr. Samuel Rubio and so all have ‘R’ numbers assigned.His appointment in 1757 as maestro di capilla and organist at the Escorial, the royal palace established by Philip II of Spain, allowed Antonio Soler to mix with fellow court musicians, among whom was Domenico Scarlatti, whose influence was to remain profound. Soler wrote some 200 sonatas, his greatest compositional memorial, most for the young prince, Don Gabriel.
Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin 1 March 1810 Zelazowa Wola, Poland
17 October 1849 (aged 39). Paris, France
Some time after writing the Marche funèbre,(1837) Chopin composed the other movements of the Sonata op 35 ,completing the entire sonata by 1839. In a letter on 8 August 1839, addressed to Fontana, Chopin wrote:
I am writing here a Sonata in B flat minor which will contain my March which you already know. There is an Allegro, then a Scherzo in E flat minor, the March and a short Finale about three pages of my manuscript-paper. The left hand and the right hand gossip in unison after the March. … My father has written to say that my old sonata [in C minor, Op. 4] has been published by Haslinger and that the German critics praise it. Including the ones in your hands I now have six manuscripts. I’ll see the publishers damned before they get them for nothing.
Haslinger’s unauthorised dissemination of Chopin’s early C minor sonata (he had gone as far as engraving the work and allowing it to circulate, against the composer’s wishes) may have increased the pressure Chopin had to publish a piano sonata, which may explain why Chopin added the other movements to the Marche funèbre to produce a sonata.It was finished in the summer of 1839 in Nohant in France and published in May 1840 in London,Leipzig and Paris.
The sonata comprises four movements:
Grave – Doppio movimento
Scherzo
Marche funèbre: Lento
Finale: Presto
The first major criticism, by Schumann , appeared in 1841. He described the sonata as “four of [his] maddest children under the same roof” and found the title “Sonata” capricious and slightly presumptuous.He also remarked that the Marche funèbre “has something repulsive” about it, and that “an adagio in its place, perhaps in D-flat, would have had a far more beautiful effect”.In addition, the finale caused a stir among Schumann and other musicians. Schumann said that the movement “seems more like a mockery than any [sort of] music”,and when Felix Mendelssohn was asked for an opinion of it, he commented, “Oh, I abhor it”. Franz Liszt, a friend of Chopin’s, remarked that the Marche funèbre is “of such penetrating sweetness that we can scarcely deem it of this earth”.It was Anton Rubinstein who said that the fourth movement is the “wind howling around the gravestones”.When the sonata was published in 1840 the London and Paris editions indicated the repeat of the exposition as starting at the very beginning of the movement (at the Grave section). However, the Leipzig edition designed the repeat as beginning at the Doppio movimento section. Although the critical edition published by Breitkopf & Hartel (that was edited, among others, by Franz Liszt, Carl Reinecke , and Johannes Brahms ) indicate the repeat similarly to the London and Paris first editions, almost all 20th-century editions are similar to the Leipzig edition in this regard with the repeat to the Doppio movimento ,Charles Rosen argues that the repeat of the exposition in the manner perpetrated by the Leipzig edition is a serious error, saying it is “musically impossible” as it interrupts the D♭ major cadence (which ends the exposition) with the B♭ minor accompanimental figure.Karol Mikuli’s 1880 complete edition of Chopin contained a repeat sign after the Grave in the first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 2. Mikuli was a student of Chopin from 1844 to 1848 and also observed lessons Chopin gave to other students – including those where this sonata was taught – and took extensive notes.Many great artists including Barenboim,Horowitz,Rachmaninoff,Rubinstein,Ohlssohn,Kissin and Pedro tonight exclude the repetition altogether!
Malagueña” is a song by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. It was originally the sixth movement of Lecuona’s Suite Andalucía (1933), to which he added lyrics in Spanish. In general terms, malagueña’s are flamenco dance styles from Málaga, in the southeast of Spain.The melody that forms the basis of “Malagueña” was not of Lecuona’s invention. It can be heard in 19th-century American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s solo piano composition Souvenirs d’Andalousie Based on Gottschalk’s international renown, it is reasonable to assume Lecuona heard it and either wittingly or unwittingly co-opted it in composing his most famous piece.
Sensational and breathtaking .It took Shunta Morimoto just twenty minutes to cast a spell in Hastings that will long be remembered . There may have been an enthralling performance from this years obvious winner Curtis Phill Hsu
Curtis Phili Hsu
but the excitement that Shunta Morimoto generated with the imperious opening of Schubert’s C minor Sonata will go down in history.Shivers were sent down our spine as the web of barely audible chromatic scales were punctuated by the ominous menace of what was to burst forth like a volcanic eruption .The ravishing fullness of the slow movement where Shunta was never afraid to show us what passion and turbulence there was in Schubert’s almost spent soul . If only we could have had the other two movements I am sure the tarantella finale would have wound even the rather staid Hastings pensioners into delerium as Richter did in that other seaside town of Brighton many years ago.
But it was Scriabin’s obsessive Vers La Famme that ignited the piano with almost obscene obsessive decadence .This 19 year old master showed us how two notes could mean so much over a cauldron of swirling mists ominously reaching boiling point .An unbearable tension was created that almost managed to ignite the proceedings in Hastings and certainly anyone listening from afar would have been cheering this young artist as the world is starting to do already.
We’re delighted to announce that the overall winner of the 17th Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition is Curtis Phill Hsu. He won the coveted Sophia Guo First Prize with a scintillating performance of Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor Op.23, convincing the international jury, chaired by Professor Vanessa Latarche, that he was the fitting overall winner of the competition.
First Prize to Curtis-Phill Hsu The Sophia Guo Award: £15,000, donated by Dayu & Ling Guo, plus The Hastings Fellowship, an artist development and professional coaching package supported by Arts Council England that gives opportunities to start and sustain professional careers in the creative industries. Professional engagements including concerts in Hastings and London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Second Prize (£7,000) to Harmony Zhu
Third Prize (£3,000) to Chengyao Zhou
Fourth Prize (£1,500) to Derek Wang
Fifth Prize (£1,000) to Hyelim Kim
The Sussex Prize (£2,500) to Curtis Phill Hsu Awarded for the best performance in the semi-finals
The Orchestra Prize (£500)to Harmony Zhu Awarded by members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
The Hastings Prize (£500)to Chengyao Zhou Awarded for the best performance of the new commission by Lera Auerbach
The Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise Prize to Harmony Zhu and Curtis Phill Hsu An engagement at the 2025 Festival, awarded by Juror Pascal Escande to the finalist/s of his choice
What a family! Absolutely bowled over by the superb musicianship and subtle artistry of Matthew McLachlan having been ravished,seduced and astonished by his family in the past. Matthew who is a guest in my house in Kew I often hear practicing but more often see jogging,boxing or training at the gym.I had no idea until hearing his public performance today of the heart that beats inside that seemingly simple exterior.A Beethoven played with a loving fluidity and sparkling cantabile that it is easy to imagine that the Countess Thérèse must have been his distant beloved.But such playful high jinks too in the Allegro vivace played with a true ‘joie de vivre.’ Chopin’s Fantasy played with a nobility and sensibility that is rare.Sound that is both full and at times heartbreakingly sensitive.But it was the Scriabin Preludes that showed off his Kaleidoscopic sense of colour with ravishing sounds that ranged from the fullest passionate outpourings to the almost inaudibly whispered.Reams of mellifluous notes that seemed like streams of gold and silver poured effortlessly from his fingers but with a strong personality that kept him on the high wire without ever fearing to fall . The final passionate outpouring in D minor was enough as he closed the piano lid and made a charmingly modest thank you speech to Hugh Mather and Roger Nellist for all they do to give a platform to young artists like himself and his family.A deeply felt dedication to Donald Page -one of the best men he knew – just showed what sensitivity beats inside that ‘lad’ from Manchester. So now they are five – the youngest by the way,the sixth,is a professional footballer but his father tells me when not saving goals even he plays a mean prelude and fugue.Bewitched ,bothered and bewildered.I am indeed amazed
The Piano Sonata No. 24 in F sharp, Op. 78, nicknamed “à Thérèse” because it was written for his pupil Countess Thérèse von Brunswick who,with her sister Josephine was his pupil.According to her diary Beethoven had stronger feelings than just for her intellect and sisterly tenderness .For sometime it has been thought that the famous letters from Beethoven to his ‘distant beloved’ were indeed to her.Composed in 1809 and consisting of two movements:According to Czerny,Beethoven himself singled out this sonata and the ‘Appassionata’as favourites together later with the ‘Hammerklavier’Wagner found it ‘profoundly personal’ but D’Indy said :’What sort of artist or man could admit that the only work dedicated to the Countess of Brunswick is the insipid Sonata in F sharp,the same recipient of the passionate letters that all the world has read’
There was a beautiful naturally flowing tempo from the very first notes..A great sense of contrasts as his fluidity of sound was allied to a scrupulous attention to Beethoven’s intentions.There was a real ‘joie de vivre’ in the Allegro vivace as he playfully swept up and down the keyboard with jeux perlé,dynamic contrasts and Beethoven’s own pedalling giving such a brilliant sparkle to the innocence of this bagatelle.
The Chopin F minor Fantasy had such beauty of sound with the opening legato and staccato and tempo di marcia united to carry us forward on a magical journey indeed.It was played with great nobility and passion and the beautiful Lento sostenuto was filled with subtle colour and flexibility.A very subtle addition of a bass d flat on the justly triumphant final return of the main theme just gave more depth to the sound .It was his aristocratic holding back of the bass notes in the passionate build ups that was so thrilling.The long held pedal in the final Adagio sostenuto like in Ravel’s Ondine created a magic out of which wove a wave of sounds that took us to the final imperious chords.
Scriabin’s 24 preludes were modelled on Chopin’s 24 Preludes op 28: They also covered all 24 major and minor keys and follow the same key sequence: C major, A minor, G major, E minor, D major, B minor and so on, alternating major keys with their relative minors, and following the ascending circle of fifths .They were composed in the course of eight years between 1888–96,being also one of Scriabin’s first published works in 1897,in Leipzig, together with his 12 Études, Op. 8 (1894–95).It is considered an outstanding set among Scriabin’s early works.Here are one or two personal thoughts as the preludes unwove.
No.1 in C major – Immediately entering into the special world of Scriabin with fluidity and passion.
No. 2 in A minor – Allegretto -Beautifully nostalgic and wistful,played with beguiling luminous sounds of purity and clarity
No. 3 in G major – Vivo -Flowing streams of notes like Chopin’s 8th prelude.
No.4 in E minor – Lento -Beautiful left hand melodic line played with very subtle rubato and nobility of sound.
No. 5 in D major – Andante cantabile- Languid melodic line played with subtle flexibility and shape with some magic bell like sounds at the end.
No. 6 in B minor – Allegro -Passionate Chopinesque octaves in an outpouring of romantic sounds played with a great sense of grandeur.
No. 7 in A major – Allegro assai-wistful melodic line on a stream of beautifully shaped fluid sounds.A wonderfully controlled passionate climax.
No. 8 in F♯ minor – Allegro agitato-A meandering melodic melody over a rumbling bass disappearing to a mere whisper.
No.9 in E major– Andantino-An almost improvised melodic line shaped so sensitively
N0.10 in C sharp minor– Andante-Great beauty of the tenor melody with a magical accompaniment and ravishingly deep bass note to end.
No. 11 in B major – Allegro assai -Such freedom allied to a sense of direction
No. 12 in G♯ minor – Andante -Luminous sounds of great delicacy.
No. 13 in G♭ major – Lento -beautiful melodic line with the left hand counterpoint just underlining the sentiment of the right.
No. 14 in E♭ minor – Presto-Agitated passionate outpouring in constant movement.
No. 15 in D♭ major – Lento – A beautiful left hand solo played with sensitivity until the right hand enters with such clarity and radiance
No. 16 in B♭ minor – Misterioso -as Matthew had said there is a similarity with Chopin’s Funeral March rhythm disguised in Scriabin’s clothes building to a sumptuous climax before melting to nothing.
No. 17 in A♭ major – Allegretto-Scriabin’s melodic invention seems quite endless.
No. 18 in F minor – Allegro agitato-A passionate outpouring to the final chord
No. 19 in E♭ major – Affettuoso- Beautiful mellifluous outpouring of sumptuous sounds
No. 20 in C minor – Appassionato-A melodic line in octaves with an ever more passionate outpouring of subtle colouring to it’s magical ending.
No. 21 in B♭ major – Andante-Capricious meanderings with such flexibility and beauty.
No. 22 in G minor – Lento -Deeply melancholic.
No. 23 in F major – Vivo- The same liquid flow as Chopin’s penultimate prelude with the ending just thrown off.
No. 24 in D minor – Presto-The final passionate outpouring of repeated chords played with fluidity and passion .It brought this multi coloured performance to a tumultuous end.The only thing to do after a performance like that is to shut the piano and pray that when it is reopened some of today’s magic might still be in the air !
Matthew McLachlan was born in 2000 and started piano lessons with his father in 2008. At 11 years of age he passed grade 8 and entered Wells Cathedral School as a specialist musician, studying with John Byrne. After two years in Somerset he entered Chetham’s in Manchester where he studied piano with Dina Parakhina and Cello with Gill Thoday. After gaining the ATCL and LTCL recital diplomas with distinction in 2014 and 2015, Matthew was awarded the FTCL in 2016. This followed on from winning third prize in the senior division of the first Scottish International Youth Prize Competition, held at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in July 2016. In 2014 Matthew’s performance of Ravel’s G Major Piano Concerto was commended in the Chetham’s Concerto competition and in the same year he was a prizewinner at the 2014 Mazovia Chopin Festival in Poland. As a result of his performance in Mazovia, he was selected to perform a 60-minute solo recital at the 2015 World Piano Teachers’ Conference (WPTC) in Novi Sad, Serbia. In 2016 Matthew gave many recitals and was a finalist in the Chetham’s Beethoven Piano Competition for the second year running. In March 2017 he was awarded first prize in the Chetham’s Senior Bach competition. In August 2017 he performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1 in the Paderewski Festival in Poland. In Autumn 2017 he had a tour of concert performances featuring Brahms’ Sonata no. 1 in C major. Before leaving Chetham’s, Matthew won the school’s Bosendorfer competition, playing Stravinsky’s ‘Three movements from Petrushka’. In 2018 he performed Mozart’s 13th concerto in Trieste, Haddington and Rhyl as well as Tchaikovsky’s first and Beethoven’s fourth concerto in Buxton with the orchestra of the High Peak. In the winter of 2018, the Knights of The Round Table awarded Matthew with a full scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London, where he now studies. Although 2020 saw many concerts cancelled, Matthew gave online performances and has recently been taken under the wing of Talent Unlimited, thanks to Canan Maxton.
Some superb playing of great weight and authority from a pianist I have known and admired always for her intelligent musicianship and beauty of sound .But today there was a different dimension to her playing of a velvet richness where her limpet like fingers seemed to suck the very lifeblood from the keys.There was passionate playing of great exhilaration and excitement but there was never a sharp edge or ungrateful sound in the entire recital.Catherine admitted that there were two of them on the stage today as it was obvious that she was shortly to give birth to her second child.
It was last summer that I had listened to the live stream performances from Duszniki where Piotr Paleczny presents the top prize winners of many of the most important International Competitions.Anna Geniushene had just won an important prize at the Van Cliburn Competition when she was eight months pregnant with another child waiting for her in the wings?I had heard Anna many times when she was perfecting her studies at the RAM with Christopher Elton in London .She was a player with a very strong Russian preparation and could play that repertoire with fearless virtuosity and strength . I was happy to listen to her in a line up of international stars in the making : Lukas Geniusas,Kevin Chen,Illia Ovcharenko and Federico Colli.I listened to Anna expecting the explosion of Russian pianism but was so overwhelmed by the transformation of what I now heard that I wrote to Paleczny to say that I did not know what to say but thought that this was pure genius.Prokofiev Fourth and Fifth Sonatas where I had expected Anna to come out with guns firing with a pianism that was more vertical and percussive than horizontal and beautiful.Motherhood had so transformed her playing that where she used to hit the keys she now caressed them with a sumptuous kaleidoscope of colours.She now convinced me of the melodic beauty in Prokofiev’s music that is so often concealed by pianistic fireworks. Caterina has never been a big Russian virtuoso and coming from the school of Alexeev there has always been a style and colour to her playing but today her playing had taken on an authority and richness of sound where her hands caressed the keys with the same loving care of a mother with her child.
The Arabesque had immediately established her playing of authority ,beauty and simplicity with a freedom and sense of colour that brought a work to life with ravishing beauty where in lesser hands it can sound very repetitive.Each time the rondo theme was repeated it had different inflections and colours as the intervening episodes were played with great character.The coda was like the ending of a song where words are just not enough and it is up to the piano to take us into a world of timeless beauty.
The Symphonic Studies were allowed to unfold so naturally from the sumptuous theme of Baron von Fricken played with subtle colour and beguiling shape.There was the sumptuous rich sounds of the second and the fleeting lightness of the third with great flourishes before the even more beautiful repeat.The measured playfulness of the fifth-scherzando-after the rather obstinate chattering chords of the fourth.A great outburst of romantic sounds with the sumptuous tenor melody emerging with passionate commitment and the great rhythmic energy of the seventh before the appearance of the five beautifully etherial posthumous variations.The first was with some unusually pointed counterpoints of great effect before the beauty and simplicity of the second played with enticing freedom before the swirling of notes on which appeared the theme like a star shining in the distance.The third was unusually lugubrious but contrasted with the lyricism of the fourth that was played with simplicity with its pleadingly delicate gasps.The fifth is really the jewel in this set of posthumous studies and was of the ravishing delicacy of jewels shining brightly.A very forceful final cadence was Caterina’s way of leading back to the original studies and the one that Agosti used to liken to a Gothic cathedral which Caterina played with great architectural shape and authority.The ninth study with its Mendelssohnian fleetness is one of the most technically challenging but which Caterina played with mastery and style.The tenth was played with sumptuous full sound before the ravishing beauty of the beautiful chopinesque outpouring and the nobility of the finale.There was great clarity and rhythmic precision in this study based on Marschner’s theme and the build up in sound and intensity was masterly .I am not sure that I agree with adding some of the variants that she chose to do from the first edition but she played them so convincingly that it did infact add an extra dimension to what can sometimes seem a rather repetitive and overlong farewell.There was grandeur and nobility and Schumann’s astonishing surprise change of key was ennobled by her superb sense of timing as she brought her performance to an exciting and sumptuous conclusion.
I have never been a great admirer of Medtner which I have often described as Rachmaninov without the tunes but today Caterina convinced me that I was wrong.Her authoritative performance of sumptuous beauty and dynamic drive held me spell bound with admiration for Caterina’s mastery but above all for the beauty of the music.A Fairytale that indeed was a wondrous story of a haunting melodic line with intricate, ever more passionate harmonies.
A ‘Canzona Matinata’ full of radiance and colour,beautifully shaped with beguiling rubato lost within a sumptuous web of embellishments of scintillating jewel like perfection.
The drama that she brought to the opening of the ‘Sonata Tragica’ was quite overwhelming as was her whole performance with a range of colours and an architectural shape that at last for me made sense of a work that had seemed meandering and without any cohesion.Remarkable performances of great beauty and authority – the miracle of birth indeed.
An encore dedicated to her husband with his favourite work was a sumptuous feast of poetic sounds as Schumann’s Intermezzo from his ‘Carnaval Jest from Vienna ‘ op 26 brought this magnificent concert to a brilliant end with a well earned rest for a mother to be!
German-Japanese Pianist Caterina Grewe, born in Tokyo, has performed to great critical acclaim throughout the UK, continental Europe and Asia as a Steinway Artist. She has given recitals in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Steinway Hall London, Hamburg and Tokyo, Cadogan Hall, Fairfield Halls, Mozartsaal and Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, Dublin National Concert Hall, Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona , the Rachmaninoff Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire and the Toppan Hall in Tokyo amongst others. Caterina has also given recitals which were broadcasted by the BBC, the NDR in Hamburg and France Musique in Paris. She appeared alongside Lang Lang on Sir Micheal Parkinson’s TV Show Parkinson Masterclass which was aired on Sky TV in 2013. As a concerto soloist, she has appeared with the Classic Philharmonic Orchestra Hamburg, the Lüneburg Symphony Orchestra, the Oldenburg State Orchestra, the RCM Symphony Orchestra, Jove Orquestra Nacional de Catalunya and the RTE National Symphony Orchestra. Caterina studied at the Hamburg Conservatory, Chetham’s School of Music and completed her studies at the Royal College of Music in 2013 where she studied with the late Yonty Solomon, Ian Jones, Professor Vanessa Latarche and Professor Dmitri Alexeev. She has won numerous prizes at world-renowned piano competitions such as third prize at the Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona and the Dublin International Piano Competition where she was a finalist and prize winner in 2015. Other prizes include First Prizes at the 2010 Lagny-Sur-Marne International Piano Competition in Paris, 2010 Norah Sande Award in Eastbourne, 2011 Mayenne International Piano Competition, 2014 Rhodes International Piano Competition in Greece , 2018 Changhsa International Open Piano Competition in China and Second Prize at the 8 th Lyon International Piano Competition in 2016. During her time at the Royal College of Music, Caterina won all major prizes including First Prize (Kendal Taylor Beethoven Piano Prize) at the annual RCM Beethoven Piano Competition in 2009 and First Prize at the Concerto competition in 2012 . Caterina was also awarded the HRH Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Rose Bowl by the former Prince of Wales (now King Charles III) for her outstanding achievements during her studies at the Royal College of Music. Described by Gramophone Music Magazine as ‘an artists to watch’, Caterina is recognised for the beauty, poetry, and temperament that her playing displays and the depth and maturity in her interpretations. She has always been especially drawn to the music of German Romantic composers. Schumann is one of her favourite composers and it is only suitable that her debut CD for KNS Classical (which was released in April 2016) features two of his major works. Caterina joined the piano faculty of the renowned Purcell School in 2013 and was appointed as a piano professor at the Royal College of Music in 2019. She regularly gives many masterclasses across Europe and abroad and has been a jury member of several international piano competitions.
In our latest collaboration with the Keyboard Trust (UK), we are thrilled to present the brilliant young Malaysian pianist Magdalene Ho. For her concert in the Library she will play Bach, Brahms and Schumann.
Sometimes words are superfluous ! Magdalene Ho making her Florentine debut last night. From Bach of surprising beauty and eloquence to the intimate whispered confessions of Brahms and finally the sublime poetic outpourings of eternal love of Schumann.Even the pianistic fireworks of Saint Saens were tempered by a soul of exquisite finesse and noble style . ‘The real thing’ exclaimed Jed Distler just a week ago as he awarded her the coveted Chappell Gold Medal at the RCM
She will be covered in medals and awards but the greatest gift of all is to be endowed with a musical genius that will enrich all our lives for years to come .
The Bach D major Toccata was played with superb clarity and character .The noble opening giving way to an Allegro of simple ease as she changed colour from one layer of sound to another before the Adagio of poignant beauty.All within a certain framework of subtle colour done almost entirely with a refined touch of infinite sensibility.The gentle fugato just seemed to appear as if by some miracle growing out of this Adagio and became an outpouring of searing intensity.Almost imperceptibly discovering a hidden passion before dissolving into a fascinating search for a way out to the final Toccata.What buoyancy and ‘joie de vivre’ she brought to this final outpouring and her ability to make the piano sing almost without the use of the sustaining pedal was a remarkable technical feat that for her was simply the only way she knew how to transmit the music to us her eager eavesdroppers.
The Brahms Variations were a lesson in delicacy and colour with an infinite variety of sounds all barely whispered.This was a performance that like Richter drew the audience in to her private world rather than projecting it out to us.An intimate world of secrets and bitter sweet utterances shared to those that were prepared to listen with her via a secret ear.There were moments too of extraordinary jeux perlé streams of notes just thrown off with the ease of someone who is swimming free through a sea of fleeting sounds sailing across the keyboard.
This was followed by a truly masterly performance of Schumann .Recently I had commented that I found her performance a little hard driven more of the irascible world of Beethoven than the refined elegance of Chopin.Today she combined both elements to play this elusive outpouring of love for Clara with sensitivity and poetry but above all an architectural mastery that held us spellbound through the many faces of love as experienced by Florestan and Eusebius. The last waltz was barely whispered as she played with beguiling sensitivity even tittivatingly provocative.A final sparkling jewel in a performance crowned by sumptuous sounds and a technical mastery that passed unnoticed as this was a story that Magdalene wanted to share with us of a wondrous voyage of discovery to a world of dreams.
An encore from an audience rarely held captive as they had been today,mesmerised by the sounds that they overheard from this young artist’s sensitive hands.Saint Saens Etude en forme de Valse a famous encore of Alfred Cortot but rarely heard in the concert hall these days.
Maybe because you need a sense of style and a jeux perlé of another age.A nonchalance , thrown off with elegance and a sense of improvisiation as streams of notes are just spun like gold and silver shimmering and sparkling with natural ease.Magdalene had let her hair down but like all great artists it was a moment to cherish like the great Belcanto singers of the past who could hold their audience with baited breath as they followed every golden note.
The Harold Acton LibraryA room not only with a view Sir David Scholey in conversation with Magdalene After the concert fine wine is offered from this season’s partners Basilica Cafaggio.Piano tuner and composer Michele Padovano who has turned a bauble into a gem After concert dinner hosted by Sir David Scholey Beethoven 4th Piano Concerto Final of the Clara Haskil Competition https://youtu.be/wu3qYQ25iP0?feature=shared
Magdalene Ho in Milan on a wonderful new Steinway D thanks to Maura Romano and her team.
The wonderful bass notes gave such poignant meaning to Brahms’ barely whispered ephemeral farewell to Schumann as the intimate secrets in the last waltz for Clara were of heartrending simplicity.The Adagio and fugato of the opening Bach Toccata were given a new significance on a piano that can sing with seemingly endless reverberations. We were robbed of Saint Saens,though, as our genial pianist thought they had had enough music.
She had struggled like the great professional she is with under age children and mobile phones and was happy to finish with the sublime outpouring of her exquisitely passionate performance of Schumann ringing in our ears.
As Liszt once said when the King talks even Liszt should be silent !
Yuja Wang’s yellow Steinway D used for fashion week performances of Chopin Four Ballades earlier this month .Magdalene played her heart out ……..genius knows no better !Maura’s superb young team: Alessandro,Carlotta and Ignazio, all old school friends now professionally involved with SteinwayA sumptuous after concert drink A full house for Magdalene in Milan inspite of Mozart at La Scala
J.S.Bach Toccata in D major BWV 912 is one of the seven pieces for clavier BWV 910-916 written between 1703 1713 and although they were not originally organized into a collection by Bach himself (as were most of his other keyboard works) they share many similarities with them and are frequently grouped and performed together under a collective title.Though the specific instrumentation is not indicated for any of the works, they are all strictly manualiter, as none of them call for pedal parts .
The beginning of the BWV 910 F♯ minor Toccata – from the Andreas Bach Book, in the hand of Johann Christoph Bach.
The relationship between Robert Schumann ,Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms started out as a student who comes to work with his mentor but evolves into something more complex. Brahms had been introduced to the Schumanns in October 1853 with a letter of introduction from the violinist and composer Joseph Joachim. Brahms was then 20 and Schumann praised him in print in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik as ‘fated to give expression to the times in the highest and most ideal manner.’
One of the first things that the young Brahms did to thank Robert was to write a set of 16 variations on a theme taken from a work written in 1841. The Funf Albumblätter: I. Ziemlich langsam, published as part of Schumann’s Bunte Blätter, Op. 99.
The Schumann’s children in 1854, before the birth of Felix: From left: Ludwig, Marie, Felix, Elise, Ferdinand and Eugenie.
What’s unusual about this theme is that it’s in the minor – most variation sets have major-key themes, which opens the possibility of exploring more keys. If we look behind this, we might find some explanation.In February 1854, 4 months after Brahms’ arrival, Robert attempted suicide and was placed in a mental sanatorium in Bonn. Brahms moved to Düsseldorf to support the Schumann family, which consisted not only of Clara but also her 7 children: Marie (1841-1929), Elise (1843-1928), Julie (1845-1872), Ludwig (1848-1899), Ferdinand (1849-1891), Eugenie (1851-1938), and Felix (1854-1879), the last born in June 1854 after his father was sent into the sanitorium.
Brahms with a student of Joachim and two members of her quartet – she was the first woman violinist to play his violin concerto
Brahms handled the family finances and visited Robert in the sanitorium; Clara was not allowed to visit him in the two years he was there except for just towards the end.The explanation, now, for the minor-key theme for the variation set that was begun in early summer 1854 may be clearer: Robert was institutionalized and Clara was with a new born child with already six others at home , the eldest only 12 or 13 years old.Brahms worked on the variations in the spring and summer of 1854 and presented a corrected version of the manuscript to Clara on 15 June, four days after Felix was born, and dedicated the work to her. He wasn’t done at that point and added the completed variations 10 and 11 in August.
How he signed the manuscript indicates how he thought of the work in relationship to Schumann’s theme. Variations 4, 7, 8, 14, and 16 each end with a ‘flourish ending with the letter B’; Variations 5, 6, 12, and 13 are signed Kr. The cryptic Kr refer to E.T.A .Hoffman’s antihero, the Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler who was a character in 3 novels by Hoffmann: Kreisleriana (1813), Johannes Kreisler, des Kapellmeisters Musikalische Leiden (1815), and The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper(1822).
Where Schumann, in his music that he signed with his alter egos Florestan and Eusebius. ‘Florestan the wild’ and ‘Eusebius the mild’ were two aspects of Robert’s own character. In the same way, Brahms used the B and Kr to indicate those works that were Brahmsian and those that were Kreiserlian, i.e., ‘less conventional and further removed from the theme’.
Robert Schumann Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David), op 6, is a group of eighteen pieces composed in 1837 by Robert Schumann , who named them after his music society Davidsbundler. The low opus number is misleading: the work was written after Carnaval op 9 and the Symphonic Studies op.13.
Original manuscript first page
Robert Schumann’s early piano works were substantially influenced by his relationship with Clara Wieck . On September 5, 1839, Schumann wrote to his former professor: “She was practically my sole motivation for writing the Davidsbündlertänze, the Concerto , the Sonata and the Novelettes .” They are an expression of his passionate love, anxieties, longings, visions, dreams and fantasies.
Clara’s Mazurka printed in the 1997 urtext edition of Davidsbundler
The theme of the Davidsbündlertänze is based on a mazurka by Clara Wieck.The intimate character pieces are his most personal work and in 1838, Schumann told Clara that the Dances contained “many wedding thoughts” and that “the story is an entire Polterabend (German wedding eve party, during which old crockery is smashed to bring good luck)”.
The pieces are not true dances but characteristic pieces, musical dialogues about contemporary music between Schumann’s characters Florestan and Eusebius. These respectively represent the impetuous and the lyrical, poetic sides of Schumann’s nature. Each piece is ascribed to one or both of them. Their names follow the first piece and the appropriate initial or initials follow each of the others except the sixteenth (which leads directly into the seventeenth, the ascription for which applies to both) and the ninth and eighteenth, which are respectively preceded by the following remarks: “Here Florestan made an end, and his lips quivered painfully”, and “Quite superfluously Eusebius remarked as follows: but all the time great bliss spoke from his eyes.” The suite ends with the striking of twelve low Cs to signify the coming of midnight.
The first edition is prefaced by :
Old saying In each and every age joy and sorrow are mingled: Remain pious in joy, and be ready for sorrow with courage
Etwas hahnbüchen: Somewhat clumsily (Un poco impetuoso) (1st edition), Mit Humor: With humor (Con umore) (2nd edition), Florestan (hahnbüchen, translates as “cockeyed” )
Sehr rasch und in sich hinein: Very quickly and inwardly (Molto vivo, con intimo fervore) (1st edition), Sehr rasch: Very quickly(Molto vivo) (2nd edition), , Florestan;
Nicht schnell mit äußerst starker Empfindung: Not fast, with very great feeling (Non presto profondamente espressivo) (1st edition), Nicht schnell: Not fast (Non presto) (2nd edition), Eusebius;
Frisch: Freshly (Con freschezza), Florestan;
No tempo indication (metronome mark of ♩ = 126) (1st edition), Lebhaft: Lively (Vivace) (2nd edition), , Florestan;
Balladenmäßig sehr rasch: Balladically very fast (Alla ballata molto vivo) (1st edition), (“Sehr” and “Molto” capitalized in 2nd edition), (ends major), Florestan;
Einfach: Simply (Semplice), Eusebius;
Mit Humor: With humor (Con umore), Florestan;
Wild und lustig: Wildly and merrily (Selvaggio e gaio), Florestan and Eusebius;
Zart und singend: Tenderly and singing (Dolce e cantando), Eusebius;
Frisch: Freshly (Con freschezza), – Etwas bewegter: With agitation (poco piu mosso),with a return to the opening section (with the option to go round the piece once more), Florestan and Eusebius;
Mit gutem Humor: With good humor (Con buon umore) (in 2nd edition, “Con umore”), – Etwas langsamer: A little slower (Un poco più lento); leading without a break into
Wie aus der Ferne: As if from afar (Come da lontano), (including a full reprise of No. 2), Florestan and Eusebius; and finally,
Nicht schnell: Not fast (Non presto), Eusebius.
Magdalene playing the 1890 Bechstein in the Harold Acton Library
Magdalene 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. Magdalene has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the RCM since September 2022, where she is a Dasha Shenkman Scholar supported by the Gordon Calway Stone Scholarship. She is also sponsored by the Weir Award via the Keyboard Charitable Trust.
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 