Categoria: Senza categoria

Bartók 14 Bagatelles, Op.6

Liszt Bagatelle without tonality, S.216a

Beethoven 15 Variations and Fugue on an original theme
in E flat (Eroica), Op.35

Interval

Bach Chorale-prelude, Nun freut euch, lieben Christen gmein, BWV.734 arr. Kempff
Bach Chorale-prelude, Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland, BWV.659 arr. Busoni

Dowland In darkness let me dwell (a recording for voice & lute)

Thomas Adès Darknesse visible

Beethoven Sonata in A flat, Op.110

It was a sign of the esteem that Imogen Cooper has earned over her long career ,in which musical standards have reigned sovereign over the transcendental pianism that has taken centre stage over the past forty years ,to see so many illustrious musicians in the audience on this particularly cold last month of the year.
In the audience was Alfred Brendel who with great difficulty negotiated the freezing temperatures and endless steps to salute one of his greatest protégées.Dame Janet Baker ,Dame Jane Glover ,Gyorgy Pauk and many young musicians from the Imogen Cooper Music Trust ,including the now distinguished pianist Cristian Sandrin,that she has so generously helped to advance in their musical understanding.

It was Imogen who after her much criticised studies in Paris as her father ,Martin Cooper,the great musicologist and critic advocated the great British Musical Institutions for study rather than the almost obligatory period ‘abroad’. He had sent his daughter to study with Yvonne Lefebure ,though,in Paris .On her return after hearing Brendel play she told him that she would commit suicide if he would not become her mentor.
In the very first lesson twenty minutes were spent on perfecting just one chord !
I remember Imogen who had just returned from Paris and delighted Vlado Perlemuter in his Dartington Masterclass in 1967 not only with her superb playing of Ravel ‘Valses’ but also on her perfect French.
In the audience tonight there were also many young pianists including the winners of the Leeds ,Alim Beisembayev and Ariel Lanyi , where Imogen has taken over the reigns from that other great Dame: Fanny Waterman.
At the end of the recital it was Lady Weidenfeld who exclaimed to me what marvels had been heard and she should know having known two of the greatest musicians of our time .She has for long been associated with the Rubinstein Competition of which Janina Fialkowska had been a top prize winner in the very first edition.

Rubinstein himself had supervised a career that she was not expecting.She just wanted to meet her idol before taking up a career in law but had studied in Paris too with the remarkable Yvonne Lefebure and she and Imogen became lifelong friends.
They both have something in common ,that Rubinstein and Brendel had noted: they think more of music than themselves.
A humility and integrity and above all their artistry is placed at the service of the composer.’Je sens ,je joue je trasmets.’
It was this that came across today and left the many musicians present moved to crowd to the green room to thank our adored Dame for her unflinching dedication to values that are fast evaporating .Quantity rather than quality is the name of the game these days.Instant communications where a photo on a mobile device can be seen instantly the other side of the globe and where a recording of a performance can be kept forever.It was Gilels who said that the difference between a recorded performance and a live one was the difference between fresh or canned food.Mitsuko Uchida refused (gracefully) an enthusiastic fan who wanted her to pose for a ‘selfie’ and exclaimed so astutely that it is the memory of a performance or an encounter that is so much more important than having a printed copy of it.

Imogen Cooper Heart to Heart at the Wigmore Hall

The most remarkable parts of the recital for me were those that are not really associated with Imogen.Dame Imogen has long been associated ,as one would expect from the class of Brendel ,with Schubert and Beethoven.So it came as a surprise to hear Bartok with a kaleidoscopic range of sounds and a chameleonic sense of character.There was the precision of Webern with the feeling that every one of the notes had a fundamental part to play in a musical discourse.They were reminiscent of Prokofiev’s early Vision Fugitives or dare I say Beethoven Bagatelles, largely written towards the end of his life, where so little can say so much.Imogen had distilled the very essence from each of these fourteen miniature jewels that kept her audience in rapt silence of wonderment.The Liszt Bagatelle just entered on the trail of the Bartok which was immediately apparent by the sudden jeux perlé brilliance and scintillating sense of dance of what was the originally projected Fourth Mephisto waltz.

Plunged into pitch darkness as we listened with baited breath to Dowland’s ‘In Darkness let me dwell’ in a recording of voice and lute.The curtain was gradually raised to the pungent multicoloured sounds of Thomas Adès’s atmospheric ‘Darknesse visible’.Here again Dame Imogen had a range of colours helped by a masterly use of the pedals that made the music speak just as eloquently as her Beethoven.And it was Beethoven this time that crept in on these magic sounds and they gave a golden glow to the opening of a work that Dame Imogen has made very much her own over the years.There was a warmth to the sound of the whole Sonata that seemed to be sheltered under a dome that contained within its walls a world of intimate beauty and as Dame Imogen so eloquently said in words and even more in music ‘affirms the return to life that gives us hope and strength to go forward’.It was the same sound world that the Eroica variations had inhabited where even the more strenuous variations were incorporated into an architectural sound world and not played as gymnastic exercises. If she missed the ravishing sense of elegance and sheer physical exhilaration that Curzon brought to the variations – that he too played from the score as time and tide wait for no man in long and illustrious careers – It was though the beauty of the sound that was so convincing as Imogen ,like her illustrious predecessors Dame Myra and Dame Moura both from the class of Uncle Tobbs,has like those of the Matthay school an infinite variety of sounds in every note that can make the music speak with such eloquence.The two chorale preludes by Bach -Kempff and Busoni I well remember Kempff playing in this very hall fifty years or more ago……Busoni unfortunately I never heard live but I have heard his recording and quite frankly what we heard tonight was even more enlightened as I am reminded of what Dame Mitsuko said about printed photos!Moved by the audience reaction and overwhelming ovation Dame Imogen gave an even more convincing performance of Bartok with his Durge op 9 n. 1.

There is obviously nothing like a Dame !

Dame Imogen writes:

“The construction of this programme has two strands to it, clearly in each half. The Bartók /Liszt group is a little teaser around tonality; the Liszt Bagatelle sans tonalité is a fantastic piece but difficult to programme as very short and not really belonging anywhere. After choosing the Bartók Bagatelles Op.6 – a masterpiece so rarely heard – it occurred to me that Bartók too was playful with tonalities and keys – the first bagatelle is written with the right hand in C sharp minor and the left hand in C minor (fairly novel for 1908) and in the successive bagatelles, he hardly stays in the keys he initially chooses. It seemed the obvious work into which to insert the Liszt, not least as, surprisingly, there were only around 25 years between the two compositions – and both composers were of course from Hungary. I like the idea of a certain aspect of destabilisation when listening, and my insertion of the Liszt in the body of the Bartók work is randomly placed in the sequence.
I hope that this does justice to the wit and originality of both composers.
It certainly makes the return to full tonality in the Beethoven Eroica Variations all the more startling, with the call to arms of the opening E flat major chord. There is wit aplenty in this work too, as so often in this particular form of Beethovenian composition – a certain wild energy too, and little melancholy.
In the second half of the recital, I have an image of a descent from joyfulness into dark depths followed by
a kind of triumphal resurrection. The first of the Bach chorales is ebullient and optimistic, the second reflective and sombre. Dowland then takes us into real blackness with his extraordinary poem, from which Adès’ glittering rejoinder emerges, with its final two lines a direct quote of Dowland’s music. Somehow the only exit from there has struck me as being Beethoven’s Op.110 Sonata, which comes as balm to the soul as it starts on its own journey, not without profound grief in the two great Ariosi, but terminating in an affirmative return to life that gives us hope and strength to go forward.”

Béla Bartók (1881–1945)
14 Bagatelles, Op.6
i Molto sostenuto
ii Allegro giocoso
iii Andante
iv Grave
v Vivo
vi Lento
vii Allegretto molto capriccioso
viii Andante sostenuto
xi Allegretto grazioso
x Allegro
xi Allegretto molto rubato
xii Rubato
xiii Elle est morte. Lento funebre
viv Valse: Ma mie qui danse. Presto.

Béla Bartók was 27 when he composed his Op.6 Bagatelles in 1908, and reeling from romantic rejection by violinist Stefi Geyer, who’d infatuated him for quite some time. He vents his despair and anger in the last two of the 14 pieces: No.13 is a sinister funeral march named ‘Elle est morte’, while the final bagatelle, ‘Valse (ma mie qui danse)’ is a bitter, grotesque waltz. The rest of the set of pithy miniatures, however, are similarly forward- looking, and daringly experimental, from the pianist’s hands playing in two unrelated keys in No.1 to the bracing folk tunes of Nos.4 and 5, from the bare unisons of No.9 to the driving rhythms of No.10.

Franz Liszt (1811–86)
Bagatelle without tonality, S.261a

At a later stage in his life Liszt experimented with “forbidden” things such as parallel 5ths in the “Csárdás macabre”and atonality in the Bagatelle sans tonality (“Bagatelle without Tonality”). Pieces like the “2nd Mephisto-Waltz” are unconventional because of their numerous repetitions of short motives. Also showing experimental characteristics are the Via crucis of 1878, as well as Unstern!, Nuages Gris and the two works entitled La lugubre gondola of the 1880s.

Bagatelle sans tonalité was written by in 1885. The manuscript bears the title “Fourth Mephisto Waltz”and may have been intended to replace the piece now known as the Fourth Mephisto Waltz when it appeared Liszt would not be able to finish it; the phrase Bagatelle ohne Tonart actually appears as a subtitle on the front page of the manuscript.

While it is not especially dissonant, it is extremely chromatic becoming what Liszt’s contemporary Fétis called “omnitonic”in that it lacks any definite feeling for a tonal center.Like the Fourth Mephisto Waltz, however, it was not published until 1955.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
15 Variations and Fugue on an original theme in E flat (Eroica), Op.35
From supposedly lightweight bagatelles to something far weighter, and more heroic. Beethoven clearly loved the theme he used as the basis for his 1802 Op.35 Variations: it began life entertaining Viennese dancers as one of the 12 Contredanses he composed in 1801 for the Austrian capital’s ballrooms, and he went on to use it in his ballet
score The Creatures of Prometheus, and, most famously,
in the finale of his Eroica Symphony (the piece that gives today’s piano work its nickname). Perhaps it’s the tune’s very simplicity that inspired him, or the way he could explode it and explore its potential across a whole range of moods and settings – something he did in the Symphony, and something he similarly does in tonight’s Variations. Beethoven opens with just the theme’s bassline, offering three variations, before moving on to 15 contrasting settings of the tune
as a whole, ending with a richly decorated slow section, a mind-bending fugue, and a dazzling conclusion. With hand- crossings, athletic runs across the length of the keyboard, and free-flowing cadenzas, it’s a piece that’s clearly designed to show off the skills of its performer.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Chorale-prelude, Nun freut euch, lieben Christen gmein, BWV.734 arr. Kempff
Chorale-prelude, Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland, BWV.659 arr. Busoni
After pioneering bagatelles and virtuosic variations, there’s
a slightly more sober, even spiritual mood to the concert’s second half. JS Bach wrote no fewer than 46 chorale preludes for organ, works that take well-known hymn tunes and elaborate them with rippling accompaniments, unusual harmonies and more – often to prepare a congregation to sing the hymn in question itself. A tradition of reworking these organ pieces for piano has continued since the 19th century, bringing Bach’s creations out of the church and
into concert halls and even private homes. Pianist and composer Wilhelm Kempff made his piano version of Bach’s ‘Nun freut euch, lieben Christen gmein’ (Now rejoice, dear Christians) in 1926, reimagining the original organ piece from Bach’s Weimar years between 1708 and 1717 as a brisk and joyful piano creation. Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni – a devoted admirer of Bach – saw transcribing, adapting and freely composing as part of the same musical continuum, and one that Bach himself had also explored. The original Chorale Prelude ‘Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland’ (Come, saviour of the nations) weaves a web of sometimes anguished lines around its 1524 hymn tune, with words by Martin Luther. Busoni’s piano version maintains the original’s poignant interplay of melody and accompaniment voices in music that’s sometimes dramatic and despairing, other times moving and meditative.

John Dowland (1562/3–1626)
In darkness let me dwell (a recording for voice & lute)
Composer, lutenist and singer John Dowland was a musical superstar in the 16th and 17th centuries, with an output of often deeply troubled, melancholic lute songs that charmed and captivated admirers across a growing English middle class, who’d even take up the instrument to emulate him (Henry VIII, for example, insisted that his three children
– who’d become Edward VI, ‘Bloody’ Mary and Elizabeth I – each learned the lute). Published in 1610, ‘In darkness let me dwell’ is one of Dowland’s most bleakly beautiful creations,
a setting of an anonymous poem (see below), included in
the 1606 Funeral Teares collection by John Coprario, whose writer abandons light, music, or any sense of consolation, preferring the peace of the grave. The song’s grinding dissonances, halting structure and apparently premature, cut-off ending only serve to emphasise its overall despair and resignation.

In darkness let me dwell
In darknesse let mee dwell
the ground shall sorrow be,
The roofe Dispaire to barre
all cheerfull light from mee,
The wals of marble black
that moistened still shall weepe, My musicke, hellish, jarring sounds to banish friendly sleepe.
Thus wedded to my woes, and bedded to my Tombe, O let me living die,
till death doe come.

Thomas Adès (b.1971)
Darknesse visible

Thomas Adès is one of the world’s most celebrated musicians. A composer, pianist, and conductor, Adès’s comfort in thinking through his works both structurally and pragmatically (though his personal virtuosity often begets scores with an unforgiving level of difficulty) yields music that is not only smart but incredibly moving and communicative. While he is definitely a British composer, Adès has spent a great deal of time on both coasts of the United States, both in his ad- opted second hometown of Los Angeles and in Massachusetts, where he serves as the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s artistic partner as well as director of the Tanglewood Music Center’s Festival of Contemporary Music.
Darknesse Visible is Adès’s “explosion” of a lute song by the composer John Dowland, “In Darknesse Let Mee Dwell,” composed in 1610. Adès writes:
No notes have been added; indeed, some have been removed. Patterns latent in the original have been isolated and regrouped, with the aim of illuminating the song from within, as if during the course of a performance.
In darknesse let mee dwell,
the ground shall sorrow be,
The roofe Dispaire to barre
all cheerful light from mee,
The wals of marble blacke
that moistned still shall weepe, My musicke hellish jarring sounds to banish friendly sleepe.
Thus wedded to my woes, and bedded to my Tombe, O let me living die
till death doe come.
Dowland ends the song with a restate- ment of the opening line.

His austerely powerful work is a far more radical transformation than Kempff and Busoni’s piano reimaginings of Bach, though its piercing accents, its wavering tremolos and its ghostly, blurred harmonies provide a compelling contemporary perspective on Dowland’s deep melancholy.The World premiere: October 1992 at the Franz Liszt House, Budapest, Hungary, with the composer as piano soloist

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Piano Sonata in A flat, Op.110
Moderato cantabile molto espressivo
Allegro molto
Adagio ma non troppo – Fuga allegro ma non troppo
From darkness and death to spiritual transcendence. Beethoven the young pioneer, out to demonstrate his compositional and pianist prowess in the earlier Eroica Variations, had become a very different composer two decades later, when he came to write his final trilogy of piano sonatas: more contemplative, philosophical, even otherworldly. Op.110 is the middle sonata in the trilogy, composed in 1821 and published the following year, and it packs a huge amount of drama, insight and innovation into its relatively brief 20-minute span. A prayer-like theme (marked ‘amiable’) opens its tender first movement, whose ethereal beauty is quickly dispelled
by the boisterous, earthy second movement, based on two German folksongs. To end, Beethoven effectively combines two separate movements: first a tragic, song-like lament (you might even hear certain resonances from Dowland), and second a vigorous, life-affirming fugue that builds to a shattering climax. The lamenting song returns, exhausted, only for the music to gather confidence (Beethoven indicates ‘little by little gaining new life’) as it heads towards its joyful, transcendent climax.

The legendary Guido Agosti held summer masterclasses in Siena for over thirty years.All the major pianists and musicians of the time would flock to learn from a master,a student of Busoni,where sounds heard in that studio have never been forgotten.He was persuaded by us in 1983 to give a public performance of the last two Beethoven Sonatas.The recording of op 110 from this concert is a testament,and one of the very few CD’s ever made,of this great musician .

In the summer of 1819, Adolf Martin Schlesinger from the Schlesinger firm of music publishers based in Berlin sent his son Maurice to meet Beethoven to form business relations with the composer.The two met in Modling,where Maurice left a favourable impression on the composer.After some negotiation by letter, the elder Schlesinger offered to purchase three piano sonatas for 90 ducats in April 1820, though Beethoven had originally asked for 120 ducats. In May 1820, Beethoven agreed, and he undertook to deliver the sonatas within three months. These three sonatas are the ones now known as Op. 109,110, and 111 the last of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.

The composer was prevented from completing the promised sonatas on schedule by several factors, including his work on the Missa solemnis (Op. 123),rheumatic attacks in the winter of 1820, and a bout of jaundice in the summer of 1821.Op. 110 “did not begin to take shape” until the latter half of 1821.Although Op. 109 was published by Schlesinger in November 1821, correspondence shows that Op. 110 was still not ready by the middle of December 1821. The sonata’s completed autograph score bears the date 25 December 1821, but Beethoven continued to revise the last movement and did not finish until early 1822.The copyist’s score was presumably delivered to Schlesinger around this time, since Beethoven received a payment of 30 ducats for the sonata in January

Some of the young musicians who have been so generously helped by The Imogen Cooper Music Trust :

Cristian Sandrin – The Imogen Cooper Music Trust

Nothing like a Dame!Aidan Mikdad ignites the Imogen Cooper Music Trust – part 1 and 2

Ignas Maknickas fluidity and romance for the Imogen Cooper Music Trust

Ariel Lanyi – Imogen Cooper Music Trust The trials and tribulations of a great artist

Some superb playing from the Trio Lalique in an unusually full St Olave’s Tower Hill.Gathered to hear Trios by Brahms,Schubert and Shostakovich played by three refined chamber music players.An interesting juxtaposition of works from a Schubert that sounds like Beethoven and a Shostakovich that sounds like Brahms and of course Brahms …………..that sounds like ………….Some beautiful playing with the piano lid fully opened that helped integrate the sound so well with the violin and cello.It was very interesting to hear this very early work of Schubert that although obviously influenced by Haydn and Beethoven even at this early age shows a mastery and an individual voice.It was played with charm but also with the solidity where the harmonic polyphony became so much part of its structure.It was in the Brahms Trio though where the three artists were able to play with grandiosity and eloquence.The Andante con moto with the unison between violin and cello producing a mellow outpouring of searing intensity.There was a fleeting urgency to the Scherzo as the piano seemed to be taking wing only to be thwarted by the soaring melodic line of the violin and the sumptuous full sounds of the trio.The insinuating urgency of the Allegro giocosa lead to an ending of grandeur and nobility.The Shostakovich was like the Schubert a very early work written when only sixteen .It already has an unmistakable voice that was exulted by the passionate virtuosity of Ilya matched by the equally inspired Yuri and Julia .All three united with passionate sounds that filled this beautiful church and brought an ovation from a public that had followed these fine performances with rapt attention.

Ilya Kondratiev moving testimony at St Mary’s

The triumph of Kulibaev and Kondratiev Beethoven alive and well in Capua the city of dreams.The complete Piano and Violin Sonatas

Benjamin Grosvenor piano Hyeyoon Park violin Timothy Ridout viola
Kian Soltani cello

Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
Phantasie Piano Quartet in F sharp minor (1910)
Andante con moto – Allegro vivace – Andante con moto
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor Op. 15 (1876-9, rev. 1883)
I. Allegro molto moderato • II. Scherzo. Allegro vivo • III. Adagio • IV. Allegro molto
Interval
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor Op. 25 (1861)
I. Allegro • II. Intermezzo. Allegro ma non troppo – Trio. Animato • III. Andante con moto • IV. Rondo alla Zingarese.

The Phantasie Quartet a rhapsodic piece by Frank Bridge (1910) that his pupil Benjamin Britten would later describe as ‘Brahms tempered with Fauré’
Music making by the Magnificent Four …..we know that Benjamin Grosvenor is one of the finest young pianists – the presence of Stephen Kovecevich just underlined that – but what stood out for his equally animal like passion was the viola of Timothy Ridout as he with such glee in his eye courted first Hyeyoon and then Kian before soaring into the heights together with endless streams of sumptuous sounds.
Ben crouched over the keyboard about to pounce into any crevace that needed filling …the magnificent violin of Hyeyoon crooning with Tim Ridout before passing it over with a knowing smile to the aristocratic golden sounds of Kian Soltanti.
Memorable the solo cello of Fauré’s adagio played with such golden nobility.
But it was the soaring searing passion that enveloped the west wind that had carried them along in the Allegro molto that was breathtaking as it reached an almost unbearable intensity .
Four magnificent players united as one …what a privilege to be able to evesdrop on such X certificate stuff ….the butler never saw anything like this and neither has this hall for a long long time……..and there was more to come ……..
Brahms with the breathless heart beat of the cello while the violin and viola embraced each other engulfed by the sumptuous sounds of the piano
There was a burning intensity to the Adagio that left Timothy Ridout visibly overcome with emotion but his fellow brethren left him no time to dally as The Gypsy Rondo just shot out of their hands with demonic glee. It was only matched by the tingling coda when all four threw caution to the wind as they were united in their intent -now we know the real meaning of strepitoso !

The usually sedate ‘Wiggies’ were reduced to animalesque cat calls as if they had received an electric shock of unimaginable intensity.
By insistent demand Kian announced they would play the Andante Cantabile by Schumann from the Quartet in E flat.

Here they reached truly sublime heights as all the rich layers of sound of Brahms were left long behind and only the deeply intense love that Schumann and Clara were to know was shared with an audience visibly moved by such naked passion ….minutes of aching silence spoke much louder than any words could do.
I had just stepped off the plane from Eindhoven and am in two minds to step back on to hear them all over again when they repeat the programme there on Thursday
Some marriages are made in heaven and it is so so rare as to be truly unique.Surely this is married bliss

Bridge’s Phantasy Piano Quartet in F sharp minor built on his success in the first two of Walter Willson Cobbett’s Phantasie competitions, promoted under the auspices of The Worshipful Company of Musicians. The archaic spelling reflected Cobbett’s intention of establishing a new British chamber music genre, combining the ingredients of a standard chamber work into a single span, that would pay homage to the Fantasies and Fancies for viols that flourished in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. In 1905 Bridge was runner-up in the first competition, with a Phantasie for string quartet, and he won the second in 1907, with his Phantasie in C minor for piano trio. A few years later, in 1910, Bridge was one of a group of eleven British composers Cobbett commissioned to write a chamber music Phantasy: among them, Vaughan Williams contributed a Phantasy Quintet for strings, and Bridge the Phantasy Piano Quartet.His pupil Benjamin Britten revealed the essence of this work perfectly: ‘Sonorous yet lucid, with clear, clean lines, grateful to listen to and to play. It is the music of a practical musician, brought up in German orthodoxy, but who loved French romanticism and conception of sound—Brahms happily tempered with Fauré.

In 1877, after wooing her for five years, Fauré had finally become engaged to Marianne Viardot, daughter of the well-known singer Pauline Viardot . The engagement lasted for less than four months, and Marianne broke it off, to Fauré’s considerable distress. It was in the later stages of their relationship that he began work on the quartet, in the summer of 1876.He completed it in 1879, and revised it in 1883, completely rewriting the finale. The first performance of the original version was given on 14 February 1880. In a study dated 2008, Kathryn Koscho notes that the original finale has not survived, and is believed to have been destroyed by Fauré in his last days.It is considered one of the three masterpieces of his youth, along with the first violin sonatas and the Ballade in F sharp for piano

The Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor op 25 was composed between 1856 and 1861. It was premiered in 1861 in Hamburg, with Clara Schumann at the piano. It was also played in Vienna on 16 November 1862, with Brahms himself at the piano supported by members of the Hellmesberger Quartet^.In January 1863 Brahms met Richard Wagner for the first time, for whom he played his Handel Variations op 24 which he had completed the previous year. The meeting was cordial, although Wagner was in later years to make critical, and even insulting, comments on Brahms’s music.Brahms however retained at this time and later a keen interest in Wagner’s music, helping with preparations for Wagner’s Vienna concerts in 1862/63,and being rewarded by Tausig with a manuscript of part of Wagner’s Tannhäuser (which Wagner demanded back in 1875).The Handel Variations also featured, together with the first Piano Quartet, in his first Viennese recitals, in which his performances were better received by the public and critics than his music.^.

I have followed Ignas’s career over a number of years since I was invited by Alim Baesembaev’s teacher Tessa Nicholson to hear him play the Mozart Double Concerto together at the Royal Academy Piano Festival .Alim has gone on to win the Gold medal at the Leeds International Piano Competition having had a strong task master behind him to guide his remarkable talent winning first the Junior Van Cliburn Competition and going on to the most highly prized goal of all aspiring pianists.When I first heard them together of course I noticed the remarkable talent of Alim that already had been channelled into a disciplined highly professional performance.Ignas on the other hand I had noticed what remarkable gifts he had but he was still like a wild horse waiting to be tamed.

Piano playing , as Curzon would often say, is 90% hard work and 10 % a God given talent of the blessed few.Ignas has that talent and through the years although I have never actually met him I feel as though I got to know him ever more through his performances.As he mentions me in his very open and honest interval discussion (which can be seen in the link here :https://youtube.com/live/RkpJGXuzQ0c?feature=shared). I feel I can also reply in kind.His interval discussion revealed the same open and innocent person of youthful humility that I have come to know through his music.I hope one day that we will meet in person and add a few well chosen words to our musical acquaintanceship.It was lovely to hear about his musical family and the trio he has formed with his brother and sister who are also studying at my old Alma Mater.Another brother too studying Liberal Arts in California where brother and sister have been to perform Brahms violin sonatas.It has left me curious to know more about their mother and father.

I have known quite a few Lithuanian musicians studying in the UK Rokas Valutuonis,Milda Daunoraite and Gabrielé Sutkuté all blessed with an openness ,simplicity and all playing with a wonderful natural fluidity that gives such luminosity to their playing.I am reminded too of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra under Saulius Sondekis playing in my Euromusic Season that I organised for thirty years in Rome.I have never heard an orchestra play so quietly or musically as in Shostakovich 10th Symphony or as colourfully as in Busoni’s arrangement of the Spanish Rhapsody with Mikhail Petukhov playing also as an encore with strings of gossamer lightness in the Wedding Cake Caprice by Saint Saens.

Since coming to London Ignas has realised the responsability he has to his talent and has begun to dedicate all the hours necessary and it has been a huge privilege to see his talent blossom and to hear the arrival of a great artist at the Wigmore Hall just a few months ago.It was with pleasure that in his open discussion he had interpreted my words of ‘responsability to his great talent ‘ as meaning maturing from a carefree student in the great metropolis to a mature artist aware of the burden that he bears and the sacrifice he has to make as he dedicates his youth to his art.

Hats off dear Ignas I am full of admiration for you as a person and as an artist ….onwards and upwards the world awaits ! Sacrifice it may have been but what rewards await you !

Saturday 25 November 2023 

THE LISZT SOCIETY ANNUAL DAY 2023

William Bracken ,winner of the 2022 Liszt Competition revealed only a year on to be a musician of mastery and remarkably committed artistry.I have heard this young artist over the past few years as his studies progressed at the Guildhall and was astonished and delighted today to hear how he has developed into a mature artist of stature .With a kaleidoscope of sounds he brought a fluidity and luminosity to the ‘bells’ as portrayed by Liszt and Debussy.It was a very interesting juxtaposition to hear Liszt’s rarely played ‘Les Cloches de Genèvre’ with Debussy’s bells from Images Bk 2 and as William very eloquently said they were both at different times in history painting pictures through music.Liszt in a more formal way whereas Debussy was more fragmented and improvisatory.

The two Liszt opening pieces were revelations of simplicity and beauty. ‘Au Bord d’une source’ is a miniature masterpiece and obviously was the inspiration for Ravel’s ‘Jeux d’eau’, but has been neglected in the concert hall since the famous recording of Horowitz .It is a perfect miniature tone poem and a continuous flow of jewels glistening over a constant stream of gentle sounds like water flowing over a mountain stream.Williams sound world was of a clarity and cleanliness never hard but always luminous even in the gently exciting climax.It was a sound that reminded me of Tamas Vasary and the very fluid Hungarian school of playing of Anda ,Kocsis or Ranki.

William has some strange rather eccentric ways though of taking his hands off the keys and leaving the sounds to finish the piece with the pedal still on or throwing his hands in the air like a cat on a hot tin roof ( better than last time I heard him but wonder if they are really necessary).He would do good to take Brendel’s own advice to himself as he said he did not sing or moan like Gould but he did make grimaces that he too was aware of and tried to cure by having a mirror next to the piano in the practice studio. A small point when a young artist actually listens to himself with sensitivity and intelligence and at times great passionate involvement.His passionate vehemence was especially noticeable in ‘Les Cloche de Genèvre’ where his magical embellishments and sense of balance also allowed the melodic line to shine with purity and beauty.The ending of this remarkable work was pure magic as he had endowed this tone poem with beauty combined with architectural shape.

The three Debussy Images were played with a luminosity and bathed in pedal but still managing to keep the utmost clarity with a wondrous sense of balance and superb use of the pedals .The moon shone as never before as it illuminated so magically the remains of the distant temple and it was a true jewel box of sounds as William’s touch was so varied with gong like precision as he struck the keys with such sensitivity.The ‘Poissons d’or’ were allowed to flitter fleetingly in absolutely clear waters unimpeded and at ease ,at times in very suave French style.

In the Chopin Fourth Scherzo he brought a sense of discovery and living a story to every strand.The quicksilver changes of character were revealed with virtuosity and passion – some strange pianistic jiggery pokery in fast passages but always with the musical meaning uppermost in mind.The mellifluous central episode unwound with simplicity and aristocratic fluidity and contrasted with the subtle refined virtuosity that surrounds it.The grandeur and nobility he brought to the final pages was quite breathtaking.

‘En rève’’ a late piece by Liszt that ends on a question mark pointing into the distance with such optimistic uncertainty .It was a piece that my old teacher Gordon Green used to enthuse about and insist that we all play – it is only a page long and is of the same simplicity of Mozart such had Liszt distilled his musical thoughts into a few essential notes of such poignant meaning.

The Variations on ‘Weinen,Klagen,Sorgen,Zagen’ were given a monumental performance where Williams mastery both technical and musical were exposed to the full as this work unfolded with its beseeching descending chromaticism .His astonishing virtuosity contrasted with the simplicity of the chorale melody before the triumphant ending in the blaze of glory of a fervent believer.

 

Liszt is alive and well and today in Perivale

1. Cheuk Kin Neo Hung (China, b 2003) 3rd Prize

‘Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este’
from Années de pèlerinage – Troisième Année – Italie, S163

Variations on a theme from Bach’s ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’ S180

2. Spencer Klymyshyn (Canada, b.1999) 2nd Prize

Petrarch sonnet no 104
from Années de pèlerinage – Deuxième Année – Italie, S161

‘Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude’
from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S173

3. Hedong Li (Hong Kong, China, b.2004) Highly Commended

Rigoletto concert paraphrase S434

‘Après une lecture de Dante – Fantasia quasi sonata’
from Années de pèlerinage – Deuxième Année – Italie, S161

 

4. Fang-Lin Liu (Taiwan, b. 2001) Highly Commended

La lugubre gondola (I) S200/1

‘Chasse-neige’
from 12 Études d’exécution transcendente, S139

Hungarian Rhapsody no 12 in C sharp minor S244

5. Letian Yu (China, b.2008). First Prize

Valses oubliées, S215
No. 1 in F sharp major
No. 2 in A flat major
No. 3 in D flat major

‘La Campanella’
from Études d’exécution transcendante d’après Paganini, S140

‘Danse macabre’ – transcription of Saint-Saëns Op 40 S555

Performances will be followed by Jury Deliberation and Winner Announcement
Jury:
Melvyn Cooper, Leslie Howard, Minkyu Kim and Mark Viner.

It was a unanimous decision to award first prize to the fifteen year old Letian Yu

Minkyu Kim – mastery exults to the glory of Liszt

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.wordpress.com/2019/12/01/liszt-comes-to-perivale/

I had heard this young artist in the remarkable masterclasses of Angela Hewitt that she holds near her home by Lake Trasimeno in Perugia https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/08/24/angelas-generosity-and-infectious-song-and-dance-inspires-her-illustrious-students/

Some musicianly playing from Jeremy Chan with a programme of two of the pinnacles of the keyboard repertoire.The Liszt B minor Sonata and Beethoven’s op 110. In both he allowed the music to unfold naturally with an architectural sense of shape and a scrupulous attention to the detailed indications of both composers.It was fascinating to hear the opening of Beethoven immediately after the visionary final pages of the Liszt Sonata. Liszt had been kissed by the master when he was a pupil of Czerny who had been a pupil of Beethoven.Of course the last three Beethoven Sonatas are visionary as the composer had at last found peace at the end of a tumultuous life. Now completely deaf he could hear the celestial sounds that awaited just around the corner ,very similar to Schubert who found solace in the most mercurial outpouring of song in his final months on this earth.

In the Liszt Sonata it was Jeremy’s musicianship that allowed the music to unfold naturally without any rhetoric or unnecessary showmanship.There was a rhythmic energy and nobility and above all a sense of balance that allowed the musical line to shine out so clearly even in the most transcendentally difficult passages.The single movement unfolded naturally from the opening three motifs that are then developed and incorporated into a quasi sonata form but in which the three characters from Faust are clearly defined and developed.Liszt was searching like Schubert in his Wanderer Fantasy for a new less classical form that eventually would be transformed into the Symphonic poem or by Wagner into the leit motif of the Ring cycle.

Jeremy at key moments would add deep bass notes that obviously opened up the sound of the piano and just showed his versatility and musicianship as he looked for the sounds that are not always easy to find on some difficult instruments.But they are there for those that seek! It created an atmosphere of serenity and religious fervour that was to build into a passionate outpouring beautifully balanced and shaped ,incorporated as it was into the entire overall form of this monumental work.Bass notes added too at the end of the Sonata as the visionary final pages opened up new vistas for music .Liszt himself had realised this and crossed out with the same vehemence as Beethoven his original ending in flaming virtuosistic glory.The knotty twine of the fugato was kept beautifully under control as the music moves inexorably to the climax and the recapitulation.Not sure that his rearranging between the hands of fast passage work is a good musical idea but it was done discreetly and in any case there was no way of cheating with the tumultuous final octave passages that he played with virtuosity and wonderfully controlled passion.

There were so many beautiful things in his Beethoven performance with a deeply felt sensitivity to the mellifluous sound world of the masters last thoughts.The magical change from the E flat to the D flat for the development was beautifully played and if the left hand was sometimes in muddy waters it was because the melodic line was uppermost in Jeremy’s sensitive fingers .There was a rhythmic energy to the Scherzo and the treacherous trio held no terror fo such a musician who endowed the whole movement with the same mellifluous sound of the entire sonata.The Adagio just floated on the long held chordal link between the movements and the Arioso dolente was shaped with poignant beauty as the pulsating left hand was merely a heart beating from within.There was a gossamer glow to the fugue that returns in inversion as it leads to the glorious affirmation of hope that Beethoven declares with passionate conviction.

And it was with this passionate conviction that Jeremy ended a memorable hour of masterworks played with great intelligence and sensitive artistry .

Liszt noted on the sonata’s manuscript that it was completed on 2 February 1853,but he had composed an earlier version by 1849.The Sonata was dedicated to Robert Schumann in return for Schumann’s dedication of his Fantasie in C op 17 (published 1839) to Liszt.A copy of the work arrived at Schumann’s house in May 1854, after he had entered Endenich sanatorium. Pianist and composer Clara Schumann did not perform the Sonata despite her marriage to Robert Schumann as she found it “merely a blind noise”.The original loud ending crossed out by Liszt and replaced with the visionary afterthought of a genius

The Sonata was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1854and first performed on 27 January 1857 in Berlinby Hans von Bulow.It was attacked by Eduard Hanslick who said “anyone who has heard it and finds it beautiful is beyond help”.Brahms reputedly fell asleep when Liszt performed the work in 1853,and it was also criticized by the pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein .However, the Sonata drew enthusiasm from Richard Wagner following a private performance of the piece by Karl Klindworth on April 5, 1855.Otto Gumprecht of the German newspaper Nationalzeitung referred to it as “an invitation to hissing and stomping”.It took a long time for the Sonata to become commonplace in concert repertoire, because of its technical difficulty and negative initial reception due to its status as “new” music.

No other work of Liszt’s has attracted anywhere near the amount of scholarly attention paid to the Sonata in B minor. It has provoked a wide range of divergent theories from those of its admirers who feel compelled to search for hidden meanings. The one generally recognised is :

• The Sonata is a musical portrait of the Faust legend, with “Faust,” “Gretchen,” and “Mephistopheles” themes symbolizing the main characters.

The Liszt Sonata and the Chopin fourth Ballade are together with the Schumann Fantasie pinnacles of the Romantic piano repertoire

Beethoven’s A flat major Sonata, Op 110, was his penultimate sonata, written in 1821, 

The outward gentleness of the opening movement belies its tautness of form, and the contrast with the brief second, a scherzo marked Allegro molto – capricious, gruffly humorous, even violent – is extreme. Beethoven subversively sneaks in references to two street songs popular at the time: Unsa Kätz häd Katzln ghabt (‘Our cat has had kittens’) and Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich (‘I’m dissolute, you’re dissolute’)!

But it’s in the finale that the weight of the sonata lies, and it begins with a declamatory, recitative-like passage that starts in the minor, moving to an emotionally pained aria-like section.Beethoven introduces a quietly authoritative fugue, based on a theme reminiscent of the one that opened the sonata. Its progress interrupted by the aria once more, its line now disjunct and almost sobbing for breath. The way in which the composer moves into the major via a sequence of G major chords is a passage of pure radiance, that Edwin Fischer described as ‘like a reawakening heartbeat’. This leads to a second appearance of the fugue in inversion culminating in a magnificently triumphant conclusion.

In the summer of 1819, Adolf Martin Schlesinger from the Schlesinger firm of music publishers based in Berlin sent his son Maurice to meet Beethoven to form business relations with the composer.The two met in Modling,where Maurice left a favourable impression on the composer.After some negotiation by letter, the elder Schlesinger offered to purchase three piano sonatas for 90 ducats in April 1820, though Beethoven had originally asked for 120 ducats. In May 1820, Beethoven agreed, and he undertook to deliver the sonatas within three months. These three sonatas are the ones now known as Op. 109,110, and 111 the last of Beethoven’s piano

The composer was prevented from completing the promised sonatas on schedule by several factors, including his work on the Missa solemnis (Op. 123),rheumatic attacks in the winter of 1820, and a bout of jaundice in the summer of 1821.Op. 110 “did not begin to take shape” until the latter half of 1821.Although Op. 109 was published by Schlesinger in November 1821, correspondence shows that Op. 110 was still not ready by the middle of December 1821. The sonata’s completed autograph score bears the date 25 December 1821, but Beethoven continued to revise the last movement and did not finish until early 1822.The copyist’s score was presumably delivered to Schlesinger around this time, since Beethoven received a payment of 30 ducats for the sonata in January 1822.

Wednesday 15 November 2023, 6.30pm

Ayane Nakajima

Bach Prelude & Fugue in F minor, BWV 881
Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111
Chopin Andante Spianato et Grand Polonaise Brillante in E flat major, Op. 22

‘A performance of noble grace and clarity combined with emotional warmth and celestial lyricism. Bach Prelude and Fugue in F minor- the Prelude was flowing with natural agogics, embellished with passing notes and trills, a gentle rendering with beautiful colouring of parts. A brisk start to the fugue, dry and clear articulation contrasted to the more smoothly sustained prelude. Characterful voice leading and precise articulation together with a fast tempo created a driven character. Beethoven Sonata op 111- the monumental scope of this monolith sonata was evident from the grand opening gestured by Ayane. Powerful virtuosic passages interchanged with atmospheric and well judged pauses and lyrical episodes. Rhythmic drive and clarity of the playing, once again, brought the character to the surface but more appropriately to the style, waves of emotional charge streamed through the playing. The Adagio was as beautifully paced, full of rich well-voiced sonorities with inner voices creating perfect harmony. Noble expression unveiled the rolling narrative passing through moments of perfect celestial stillness and contemplation and through moments of utter determination and emotional intensity. One felt that the sonata was too short in the hands of Ayane- so emotionally harmonious and balanced was her interpretation of this gigantic masterwork. The Chopin Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise Brillante confirmed Ayane as a brilliant virtuoso as well as stylistically aware interpreter. Flawless passages intermingled with seductive micro rubato and Polonaise pacing to make the audience wish they were able to dance. The great dynamic contrasts threw light and shade onto the piece from powerful octave runs to gentlest harp-like arpeggios of the Andante Spianato.’

It was a most enjoyable recital, which left the audience mesmerised, excited and clear that they had witnessed a real artist at work.Elena Vorotko C/O Artistic Director Keyboard Trust

Japanese-American pianist Ayane Nakajima is the prize winner of several international competitions including Young Texas Artists, the International Keyboard Odyssiad and Festival, and YoungArts.

Ayane was born in New York and began studying the piano at the age of three at the Kaufman Music Center. From the age of six until she was eighteen, she studied privately with Dr. Hiromi Fukuda.

Ayane is currently a Royal College of Music Scholar and is studying for her Master’s degree with Danny Driver. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston, Texas where she studied with Dr. Jon Kimura Parker.

Ayane has given performances at prestigious venues across the United States such as Steinway Hall New York, Scandinavia House, Alice Tully Hall, Rose Studio at the Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and the New World Center. She also participates in summer festivals, most recently at the Académie Internationale d’Eté de Nice, where she studied with pianist Akiko Ebi.

Alongside many top honours, Ayane was selected as a recipient of the 2023 Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts by the Dean of Undergraduates at Rice University, awarded since 1983 to a graduating senior who exhibits ‘promise in the arts’. She was also nominated as a semi-finalist for the 2019 United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts. In 2018, she had her concerto debut performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Eugene Muneyoshi Takahashi and the Lucidity Chamberistas.

As a chamber musician, Ayane has won multiple chamber music competitions including the 2019 Young Musicians Competition at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing Faure’s Piano Quartet No. 1 at Alice Tully Hall. She was also invited by euphonist Demondrae Thurman, Chair of the Department of Brass at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, to perform alongside him and other brass musicians in Port Washington, NY. She has worked closely with notable chamber coaches such as Paul Kantor, Desmond Hoebig and Kathleen Winkler, and has participated in masterclasses with distinguished teachers and performers such as Roberto Plano, Jeremy Denk, Logan Skelton, Nina Lelchuk, Akiko Ebi and Marina Lomazov.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Piano Sonata in B minor HXVI/32 (by 1776)
I. Allegro moderato • II. Menuet • III. Finale. Presto

Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)Etude in E flat minor Op. 10 No. 6 (1830-2) Etude in E Op. 10 No. 3 (1832)
Fantasy in F minor Op. 49 (1841)

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)Pictures from an Exhibition (1874)
Promenade 1 • The Gnome • Promenade 2 •
The Old Castle • Promenade 3 • Tuileries • Bydlo • Promenade 4 • Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks • “Samuel” Goldenberg und “Schmuÿle” • Promenade 5 • The Market Place at Limoges • Catacombs (Sepulchrum Romanum) •
Cum mortuis in lingua mortua •
The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba-Yaga) •
The Great Gate of Kiev

An ovation for Alexander Gavrylyuk after performances that recall Cherkassky for their refined multicoloured tone palette.
An exquisite Haydn B minor with such refined phrasing and delicacy of sound.A rare sensibility as he shaped the music with loving beauty allowing it to speak so simply and eloquently.Ravishing beauty of the Minuet where even the contrasting Trio was played with a rare sensibility .The Finale was played with scintillating character and spirit. Chopin’s two most lyrical studies from op 10 were played with the same aristocratic style of Cherkassky (who used to play Godowsky’s left hand version of n.6 in E flat minor too ).A chiselled beauty even rather monumental at times but a whole world in so few pages that was of an inspired artist sharing his thoughts with us.A Fantasy op 49 of dramatic contrasts and the same impetuosity as his temperament was occasionally unleashed by his red hot temperament
But it is Mussorgsky ‘Pictures’ that will resound around these walls for long to come with a breathtaking recreation of an old war horse given miraculous new life. The opening promenade I have never heard phrased so beautifully with a wondrous legato and a quite unique sensibility to balance .At times like a cat on a hot tin roof with the astonishing character that he brought to each picture but also harmonies and inner counterpoints that only a magician could find.I doubt ‘Gnomus’ or ‘Bydlo’ have ever been so terrifyingly portrayed as he seemed to wade through the mire like a monster in some devilish quicksand .The frenzy of “Baba Yaga’ that was attacked so violently but then astonished us with sudden changes of colour that took us by surprise.There was the sedate nobility of Goldenberg and the luminosity of Schmuyle and a Limoges Market Place of breathtaking activity .Chicks that just vanished into thin air with a chuckle and Catacombs that would give you nightmares .If the ‘Great Gate’ was rather too fast for the majesty and significance that it especially holds for us today the layers of sound and sense of balance I have only ever heard from Cherkassky.A true master of balance and colour and truly a Cherkassky look alike in so many memorable ways.I remember Shura playing ‘Pictures’ in the vast space of the Albert Hall and playing with such vehemence that he dislodged the soft pedal that made such an unearthly twang but just added another colour to his kaleidoscopic palette.
But it was the two encores by enormous insistence that showed his great artistry with a ravishing sense of balance that could allow the ‘Vocalise’ to sing as never before .It was this that I had heard on the radio a few years ago that stopped me in my tracks for its crystalline velvet beauty.The Scriabin Study op 2 was played with the beguiling sense of insinuation and aristocratic nobility of another age when pianist were magicians who could conjure up sounds that shone like jewels glistening on a sumptuous velvet plate .

A plate fit for a King and it was indeed a Prince who had enchanted,seduced and entranced us today as rarely before.

The 55 Haydn Sonatas are perhaps the least-known treasures of the piano repertoire. In them one can hear Haydn virtually inventing the classical style, from the early, somewhat tentative beginnings, through the bold experiments of the 1770s, to the adventurous late works. As with Beethoven (Haydn’s somewhat recalcitrant student) each sonata is a new exploration, and the element of surprise is ever present. Haydn delights in abrupt transitions, twists and turns, sudden pauses, and apparent non sequiturs; listening to him demands a constant alertness.

The 1770s, when Haydn’s Sonata in B minor was composed, was the age of Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) in German culture, an age when aberrant emotions were all the rage in music; and what better tonal avouring than the minor mode to convey these emotions? 

It is also important to note that the 1770s was the period in which the harpsichord was gradually giving way to the new fortepiano, precursor of the modern grand, and there is much in this sonata to suggest that it still lingered eagerly on the harpsichord side of things, at least texturally. 

This cross-over period between harpsichord and fortepiano plays out in the nature of the first movement’s two contrasting themes. 

In place of a lyrical slow movement, Haydn offers us a minuet and trio which features thematic material as dramatically contrasting as the first and second themes of the first movement. The minuet is in the major mode, set high in the register, sparkling with trills 

The trio is daringly in the minor mode, set low, and grinds grimly away in constant 16th-note motion.

Haydn wouldn’t be Haydn if he didn’t send you away with a toe-tapping finale and such a movement ends this sonata. To that end, Haydn’s go-to rhythmic device is repeated notes, and this nale chatters on constantly at an 8th-note patter, interrupted at random, it would seem, by surprising silences and dramatic pauses – as if to allow the performer to turn sideways and wink at his audience.

Pictures at an Exhibition is based on pictures by the artist, architect, and designer Viktor Hartmann. It was probably in 1868 that Mussorgsky first met Hartmann, not long after the latter’s return to Russia from abroad. Both men were devoted to the cause of an intrinsically Russian art and quickly became friends. They met in the home of the influential critic Vladimir Stasov, who followed both of their careers with interest. According to Stasov’s testimony, in 1868, Hartmann gave Mussorgsky two of the pictures that later formed the basis of Pictures at an Exhibition.

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION Promenade l
The Gnomes
Promenade ll
The Old Castle
Promenade lll
The Tuileries: Children’s dispute
after play
Bydlo
Promenade IV
Ballet of the unhatched chicks
Two Polish Jews: Rich and poor
Promenade V
The market at Limoges
Roman Catacombs – With the dead
in a dead language
Baba Yaga: The Witch
The Heroes Gate at Kiev

Hartmann’s sudden death on 4 August 1873 from an aneurysm shook Mussorgsky along with others in Russia’s art world. The loss of the artist, aged only 39, plunged the composer into deep despair. Stasov helped to organize a memorial exhibition of over 400 Hartmann works in the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in February and March 1874. Mussorgsky lent the exhibition the two pictures Hartmann had given him, and viewed the show in person, inspired to compose Pictures at an Exhibition, quickly completing the score in three weeks (2–22 June 1874).Five days after finishing the composition, he wrote on the title page of the manuscript a tribute to Vladimir Stasov, to whom the work is dedicated.The music depicts his tour of the exhibition, with each of the ten numbers of the suite serving as a musical illustration of an individual work by Hartmann.Although composed very rapidly, during June 1874, the work did not appear in print until 1886, five years after the composer’s death, when a not very accurate edition by the composer’s friend and colleague Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was published.

Mussorgsky suffered personally from alcoholism, it was also a behavior pattern considered typical for those of Mussorgsky’s generation who wanted to oppose the establishment and protest through extreme forms of behavior.One contemporary notes, “an intense worship of Bacchus was considered to be almost obligatory for a writer of that period.”Mussorgsky spent day and night in a Saint Petersburg tavern of low repute, the Maly Yaroslavets, accompanied by other bohemian dropouts. He and his fellow drinkers idealized their alcoholism, perhaps seeing it as ethical and aesthetic opposition. This bravado, however, led to little more than isolation and eventual self-destruction.

Alexander Gavrylyuk (born 19 August 1984) is a Ukrainian-born Australian pianist whose first concert performance was at the age of nine. He moved to Australia at the age of 13.A stunningly virtuosic pianist, Alexander is internationally recognised for his electrifying and poetic performances. His performance of Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.3 at the BBC Proms was described as “revelatory” by the Times and “electrifying” by Limelight. For the 23/24 season, Alexander will be Artist in Residence at Wigmore Hall, performing three recitals across the season.

Highlights of the 2023-24 season include debuts with NDR Hannover, Bochum Symphoniker and Amsterdam Sinfonietta, as well as return visits to Sydney Symphony, Adelaide Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony, Aarhus Symphony & Rheinische Philharmonie. Recent highlights also include Detroit Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Polish Baltic Philharmonic, Sao Paolo Symphony & Rhode Island Philharmonic.

Born in Ukraine in 1984 and holding Australian citizenship, Alexander began his piano studies at the age of seven and gave his first concerto performance when he was nine years old. At the age of 13, Alexander moved to Sydney where he lived until 2006. He won First Prize and Gold Medal at the Horowitz International Piano Competition (1999), First Prize at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition (2000), and Gold Medal at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition (2005).

He has since gone on to perform with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including: New York, Los Angeles, Czech, Warsaw, Moscow, Seoul, Israel and Rotterdam Philharmonics; NHK, Chicago, Cincinnati and City of Birmingham Symphony orchestras; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia, Wiener Symphoniker, Orchestre National de Lille and the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker; collaborating with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alexandre Bloch, Herbert Blomstedt, Andrey Boreyko, Thomas Dausgaard, Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Kirill Karabits, Louis Langrée, Cornelius Meister, Vassily Petrenko, Rafael Payare, Alexander Shelley, Yuri Simonov, Vladimir Spivakov, Markus Stenz, Sir Mark Elder, Thomas Søndergård, Gergely Madaras, Mario Venzago, Enrique Mazzola and Osmo Vänska.

Gavrylyuk has appeared at many of the world’s foremost festivals, including the Hollywood Bowl, Bravo! Vail Colorado, Mostly Mozart, the Ruhr Festival, the Kissinger Sommer International Music Festival, the Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam.

As a recitalist Alexander has performed at the Musikverein in Vienna, Tonhalle Zurich, Victoria Hall Geneva, Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series, Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw Master Pianists Series, Suntory Hall, Tokyo Opera City Hall, Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Cologne Philharmonie, Tokyo City Concert Hall, San Francisco, Sydney Recital Hall and Melbourne Recital Centre. Alexander also performs regularly with his recital partner Janine Jansens throughout Europe.

Alexander is Artist in Residence at Chautauqua Institution where he leads the piano program as an artistic advisor. He supports a number of charities including Theme and Variations Foundation which aims to provide support and encouragement to young, aspiring Australian pianists as well as Opportunity Cambodia, which has built a residential educational facility for Cambodian children.

Alexander Gavrylyuk is a Steinway Artist.

Tuesday 21 November 2.00 pm

  

It was the minutes of silence at the end of this momentous journey that said it all.A quite remarkable performance because Milosz did nothing and in so doing allowed Bach’s wondrous work to speak for itself Keeping the tempo constant like a great wave on which these monumental variations could float with authority and purity.

This is Bach’s Monument written in stone.This was the authority of Rosalyn Tureck who was known as the High Priestess of Bach.There are others that play it with the song and the dance in mind like Tatyana Nikolaeva or Angela Hewitt. The wonder of Bach’s Universal Genius is that it can be played in so many different ways and on so many different instruments but the message is always the same.Bach the glorification of the spirit.

There was poignant purity to the long slow 25th variation and Milosz did not fall into the rather conventional habit of adding ornaments but just let the music speak for itself .With the possibility of the piano to sustain notes it makes the performing practices of the harpsichord superfluous.It was the chiselled perfection of Milosz that was like Tureck so extraordinary.Tureck had more variation of sounds as her sense of touch was quite unique and even a speck of dust on the keys could unbalance her. Often she would come on stage and see the lid of the keyboard had been left open and with a smile would take out her handkerchief to clear away any specks of dust that might have appeared while she had been in the green room.

The only evident sense of personal participation from Milosz was actually at the end of this 25th variation when the final notes he played with a pointed finger that gave a just weight to each of the final notes.There was a wonderful rhythmic control to the 29th where so often ( even with Tureck) the virtuoso notes can be like a cat and mouse chasing each others up and down the keyboard .The Quodlibet was played with weight and seriousness that belied the actual words that Bach had set to music:’I have not been with you for so long’ and ‘Cabbages and turnips have driven me away’! The long wait before the return of the aria was beautifully judged by Milosz – it was here that André Tchaikowsky used to hold the final G of the Quodlibet and magically float the aria on it as if suspended in space.

A remarkable performance from this young musician not surprisingly from the class of Norma Fischer I am pleased to note.

I had heard Rosalyn Tureck play the Goldberg Variations in London in the RFH at 6.45 on the harpsichord and at 9 on the piano.I had never forgotten it when I invited her to play in Rome and she decided that she would come out of her enforced retirement to once more take centre stage in her Indian Summer .She became the diva of Italy at the age of 80!I had also invited Tatyana Nikolaeva to play the Goldbergs a month later and got greatly criticised for not varying the programmes in my Euromusica Concert Series.Now the programmes that I promoted are looked at in disbelief that all those great musicians could play in the same hall in the same season .

Milosz Sroczynski is a Polish pianist based in Zurich, Switzerland. He completed his education in Hannover, Geneva with Cédric Pescia, Zurich with Konstantin Scherbakov and Christoph Berner, and London, where he obtained the Artist Diploma at the Royal College of Music, as a scholar and student of a legendary British pianist and distinguished teacher Prof. Norma Fisher. Additionally he has worked with Janina Fialkowska, Pierre-Laurent Aimard to name a few. Milosz performed giving solo and chamber music recitals in Switzerland and in many European countries – in Germany, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, UK, Italy, France, Spain. His performances had been broadcasted live on Polish Radio where he also made archival recordings. He frequently appeared performing a high-demanding Goldberg Variations by J.S.Bach across Europe in London, Berlin, Hamburg, Gothenburg, Zurich and Warsaw. He is a versatile pianist with a wide-ranging classical repertoire, encompassing Bach, the Viennese Classics, German Romanticism, and Chopin, as well as the works of French modernists. With an enthusiastic embrace of contemporary pieces, he creates interesting crossover concert programs that seamlessly blend classical and modern compositions, captivating audiences with his innovative and dynamic performances. Milosz is a prizewinner of several piano competitions and was awarded prestigious Swiss, Polish, British and Israeli scholarships. He teaches at the Conservatory of Zurich.

Goldberg -Ferrucci to be or not to be

Angela Hewitt for the glory of Bach.The pinnacle of pianistic perfection

Some remarkable playing from Leonardo Pierdomenico who after a week of concerts in London solo and with the distinguished ‘cellist Erica Piccotti was able to produce such a memorable final recital in Perivale.From the very first notes of Respighi’s atmospheric ‘Notturno’ there was a dynamic range of sounds with a wondrous sense of balance.A way of caressing the keys that no matter how intricate or tumultuous ,the sound was never hard but always luminous and fluid .A kaleidoscope of sounds that allowed his remarkable musicianship to delve deep into the scores and reveal secrets that are rarely shared with others.A musicianship that allowed him to make a piano transcription of one of Respighi’s best known works for full orchestra which has never been attempted on the piano before.Respighi was very precise about the multicoloured sounds he wanted from the orchestra and to bring this to a single instrument was a tour de force of musicianly craftsmanship .Just as Agosti in 1928 had miraculously been able to transcribe Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ to a single instrument .It has become an important part of the piano repertoire just as this transcription will become for all those that can attempt the gargantuan technical difficulties as Leonardo could with such masterly ease.The ‘Firebird’ too is a showpiece only for the greatest of pianists requiring not only a technical mastery of the instrument but above all a range of sounds and sense of architectural shape that is only for the greatest musicians to contemplate.The build up of sonority in the final piece of the ‘Appian Way’ was done with the same mastery that Agosti brings to his transcription.It is done with a masterly use of pedal and a sense of balance allied to the superhuman dexterity of someone who is a true illusionist and can turn this box of hammers and strings into an orchestra of such overwhelming power.The build up to the final few bars was truly masterly both as transcriber and as performer.

It was an interesting combination with Liszt’s rarely heard ‘A la Chapelle Sixtine’ and ‘Les Jeux d’eau a la Villa d’Este.’Obviously Leonardo had in mind a voyage to Rome with Respighi and Liszt.Rachmaninov was not just a filler as the composer had begun working on the sonata whilst living for a brief period in Rome.A tour de force of playing of transcendental technical mastery allied to a sense of colour and architectural form that was quite remarkable .The clarity he brought to all he played gave a luminosity and glow to the sound whether in the whispered seductive intricacies or passionate outbursts.It was less hysterical than Horowitz but the technical mastery was the same.Like Horowitz ,Leonardo barely moved but was listening carefully to the sounds he was producing as we were able to watch his hands that seemed to squeeze every ounce of sound out of the keys in such a natural way that made it all look so easy.But behind the notes there was also a great artist with a heart that beat with passionate commitment and dynamic energy.Rachmaninov too used to appear on stage as though he had just swallowed a knife but the sounds he made at the piano ,according to Vlado Perlemuter, were the most ravishingly romantic sounds he had ever heard!

Having ravished and seduced us with his multicoloured playing,as an encore he chose a Scarlatti Sonata of refined purity and simplicity.Ornaments that unwound like springs with playing of a clarity and buoyancy of infectious good humour .A driving rhythmic energy that was like rays of light shooting in all directions from a prism.An exhilarating performance that was a breath of fresh air after the sumptuous seductive sounds of Rachmaninov.

Leonardo Pierdomenico A master at St Mary’s A memorable recital by a great artist

Fun and games on and off stage last night ……but what music !
Thanks again to Hugh Mather and his team Leonardo can still be heard in every corner of the globe via St Mary’s superb streaming Impeccable,dynamic,astonishing were just some of the comments from various parts of the world but above all it was the intelligence and beauty of a complete artist that he shared with us that was so remarkable.
E pure semplice e simpatico ……che non guasta!

Winner of the “Raymond E. Buck” Jury Discretionary Award at the 2017 Van Cliburn international piano competition , Leonardo Pierdomenico is described by the critics as “a pianist where highly developed technique and cultivated sound are combined with imagination and thoroughgoing, scrupulous musicality”. He is also the first prize winner, aged 18, of the “Premio Venezia” piano competition, held in Teatro La Fenice: hence the collaboration with orchestras such as the Fort Worth Symphony , Orchestre Royal De Chambre de Wallonie, Teatro La Fenice Symphony Orchestra, LaVerdi Orchestra in Milan, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Wuhan Philharmonic Orchestra, North Czech Philharmonic and with conductor like Yves Abel, Diego Matheuz and Nicholas McGegan , among the others. In the 2022 season he makes his debut in the chamber music season of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with the italian premiere of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms in Shostakovic’s arrangement for piano duo and choir. He has already released three albums with the label Piano Classics : his debut album, dedicated to works by Liszt, earned him an Editor’s Choice from Gramophone UK magazine and a nomination for recording of the year at the Preis der DeutschenSchallplattenkritik. Born in Abruzzo, Italy, Leonardo completed the piano master’s degree with honors at the Accademia di S. Cecilia in Rome in the class of M° Benedetto Lupo and then continued his studies at the Foggia Conservatory, under the guidance of M° Alessandro Deljavan . Leonardo is currently a student of William Grant Nabore’ at the Lake Como International Piano Academy

All week in London with Leonardo Pierdomenico – Friday 17th streamed live from Perivale with Fidelio cafe on 14 ;St Mary’s Ywickenham on 15 ; Bob Boas 16;Dukes Hall RAM 19.

Rachmaninov worked on his Second Sonata over several months in 1913, commenced whilst in Rome and later completing it in Russia and including it in his concerts that Autumn prior to its publication the following Spring.Although conceived in three movements (Allegro agitato, non allegro, Allegro molto), the Second Sonata flows as one astonishing piece, its bravura technical demands matched by that dark emotional intensity which runs through so much of Rachmaninov’s music. The movements are bound together by thematic cross-references and transformation; in particular, the opening descending passage pervades all three movements in different guises.The original version is not without its problems however; not only is the scale of the work daunting, so too some of the passage-work makes very significant demands on the performer.

Rachmaninov’s own thoughts were expressed when he himself later wrote:”I look at some of my earlier works and see how much there is that is superfluous. Even in this Sonata so many voices are moving simultaneously, and it is so long. It was no doubt to address these points that Rachmaninov set about revising the Sonata in the summer of 1931, just as he was also composing his final solo piano work, the Corelli Variations.In this revised version Rachmaninov makes significant changes to the piano writing throughout, both giving the piece a cleaner, more transparent texture and at the same time making the piece easier to play. In addition to these changes, he reduced the overall length of the Sonata by some 120 bars, tightening the structure considerably.

The question of whether Rachmaninov really altered the Sonata to its advantage is disputed to the present day among pianists and music critics. While many authors consider the significant cuts as a successful tightening up and elimination of unnecessary virtuoso ballast, the opposing faction criticises this intervention as a mutilation that upsets the Sonata’s formal balance and thematic conception.While the revised version is the one frequently heard, some such as Zoltán Kocsis have advocated a return to the unaltered first version, while many others (notably Horowitz and Van Cliburn) have produced their own composite versions, based on their preferred elements from both.

Années de pèlerinage ( Years of Pilgrimage) (S.160/161/162/163) is a set of three suites for solo piano by Franz Liszt .Much of it derives from his earlier work, Album d’un voyageur, his first major published piano cycle, which was composed between 1835 and 1838 and published in 1842.The title Années de pèlerinage refers to Goethe’s famous novel of self-realization, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, and especially its sequel Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years.Liszt writes: ‘Having recently travelled to many new countries, through different settings and places consecrated by history and poetry; having felt that the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights did not pass before my eyes as pointless images but stirred deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication, I have tried to portray in music a few of my strongest sensations and most lively impressions.’

“Troisième année” (“Third Year”), S.163, was published 1883; Nos. 1–4 and 7 composed in 1877; No. 5, 1872; No. 6, 1867.Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este (The Fountains of the Villa d’Este) in F♯ major – Over the music, Liszt placed the inscription, “Sed aqua quam ego dabo ei, fiet in eo fons aquae salientis in vitam aeternam” (“But the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life,” from the Gospel of John ). This piece, with its advanced harmonies and shimmering textures, is in many ways a precursor of musical Impressionism

Leslie Howard the renowned Liszt expert writes :”A la Chapelle Sixtine is a very unusual work, inspired by Liszt’s hearing two very different motets in the Sistine Chapel: the famous Miserere mei Deus by Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652), and Mozart’s last work of this kind—the Ave verum corpus, K618, of 1791. The story of Allegri’s work is well-known: composed for the papal choir at the time of Urban VIII, the work was not permitted to be published, and it circulated for centuries in a handful of written copies. The fourteen-year-old Mozart copied the piece from memory. Although the original piece is famous for its antiphonal chorus with high Cs, Liszt concentrates on the marvellous harmonies of its beginning, and uses them to generate a passacaglia in G minor whose variations come to a stormy climax before the Mozart piece is revealed in the simplest transcription in B major. By way of one of Liszt’s finest modulatory passages, the variations return, much shortened, before the Mozart reappears, this time in F sharp—incidentally, it is this passage which Tchaikovsky used as the basis for the slow movement of his fourth orchestral Suite, opus 61, ‘Mozartiana’. Liszt extends Mozart’s music to allow a gentle modulation to G major, and the piece finishes with distant hints of the Allegri in the bass. Liszt made an orchestral version of the piece which has, at the time of writing, never been published or performed, a version for piano duet, and a rather more frequently performed version for organ—with the title improved by the adding of the initial word ‘Évocation’.”

The Sei pezzi per pianoforte (“Six pieces for piano”), P.044, is a set of six pieces written between 1903 and 1905. These predominantly salonesque pieces are eclectic drawing influence from music of earlier periods, and demonstrate Respighi’s neoclassical compositional style. A more mature compositional technique brought on from studying abroad with the composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Max Bruch is also seen.The set contains various musical forms: waltz,canon,nocturne,minuet,etude and intermezzo and were composed separately between 1903 and 1905, and then published together between 1905 and 1907 in a set under the same title. Although they were published together, Respighi had not composed them as a suite , and therefore did not intend to have uniformity among the pieces; thus, publishing them together was merely an editorial decision

1. “Valse Caressante” – (“Tempo lento di Valzer.”)
2. “Canone” – (“Andantino”)
3. “Notturno” – (“Lento. (. = 50)”)
4. “Minuetto” – (No tempo marking)
5. “Studio” – (“Presto”)
6. “Intermezzo-Serenata” – (“Andante calmo”)

Pines of Rome P. 141, is a tone poem in four movements for orchestra completed in 1924 by Ottorino Respighi . It is the second of his three tone poems about Rome , following Fontane di Roma (1916) and preceding Feste Romane (1928). Each movement depicts a setting in the city with pine trees , specifically those in the Villa Borghese , near a catacomb on the Gianicolo , and along the Appian Way . The premiere was held at the Teatro Augusteo ( cruelly pulled down by Mussolini in the name of archaeologial excavations) in Rome on 14 December 1924, with Bernardino Molinari conducting the Augusteo Orchestra (later renamed S.Cecilia Orchestra ), and the piece was published by Casa Ricordi in 1925.The four movements are :

1. I pini di Villa Borghese” (“The Pines of the Villa Borghese”) –
2. “Pini presso una catacomba” (“Pines Near a Catacomb”) – Lento
3. “I pini del Gianicolo” (“The Pines of the Janiculum”) – Lento
4. “I pini della via Appia” (“The Pines of the Appian Way”) – Tempo di marcia

I pini di Villa Borghese”

This movement portrays children playing by the pine trees in the Villa Borghese , dancing the Italian equivalent of the nursery rhyme “Ring a Ring o’Roses”and “mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows”.The Villa Borghese , a villa located within the grounds, is a monument to the Borghese family , who dominated the city in the early seventeenth century. Respighi’s wife Elsa recalled a moment in late 1920, when Respighi asked her to sing the melodies of songs that she sang while playing in the gardens as a child as he transcribed them, and found he had incorporated the tunes in the first movement.

“Pini presso una catacomba”

In the second movement, the children suddenly disappear and shadows of pine trees that overhang the entrance of a Roman catacomb dominate.It is a majestic dirge, conjuring up the picture of a solitary chapel in the deserted Campagna ; open land, with a few pine trees silhouetted against the sky. A hymn is heard (specifically the Kyrie ad libitum 1, Clemens Rector; and the Sanctus from Mass IX, Cum jubilo), the sound rising and sinking again into some sort of catacomb, the cavern in which the dead are immured. An offstage trumpet plays the Sanctus hymn. Lower orchestral instruments, plus the organ pedal at 16′ and 32′ pitch, suggest the subterranean nature of the catacombs, while the trombones and horns represent priests chanting

I pini del Gianicolo”

The end of the third movement features this recording of the song of a nightingale which Respighi incorporated into the score.

It is a nocturne set on the Janiculum Hill and a full moon shining on the pines that grow on it. Respighi called for the clarinet solo at the beginning to be played “come in sogno” (“As if in a dream”).

The movement is known for the sound of a nightingale that Respighi requested to be played on a phonograph during its ending, which was considered innovative for its time and the first such instance in music. In the original score, Respighi calls for a specific gramophone record to be played–“Il canto dell’Usignolo” (“Song of a Nightingale, No. 2”) from disc No. R. 6105, the Italian pressing of the disc released across Europe by the Gramophone Record label between 1911 and 1913.The original pressing was released in Germany in 1910, and was recorded by Karl Reich and Franz Hampe. It is the first ever commercial recording of a live bird.Respighi also called for the disc to be played on a Brunswick Panatrope record player. There are incorrect claims that Respighi recorded the nightingale himself, or that the nightingale was recorded in the yard of the McKim Building of the American Academy in Rome , (The Medici Palace where Liszt also performed ) also situated on Janiculum hill.

I pini della via Appia”

Respighi recalls the past glories of the Roman empire in a representation of dawn on the great military road leading into Rome. The final movement portrays pine trees along the Appian Way in the misty dawn, as a triumphant legion advances along the road in the brilliance of the newly-rising sun. Respighi wanted the ground to tremble under the footsteps of his army and he instructs the organ to play bottom B♭ on the 8′, 16′ and 32′ organ pedals. The score calls for six buccine – ancient circular trumpets that are usually represented by modern flugelhorns, and which are sometimes partially played offstage. Trumpets peal and the consular army rises in triumph to the Capitoline Hill . One day prior to the final rehearsal, Respighi revealed to Elsa that the crescendo of “I Pini della Via Appia” made him feel “‘an I-don’t-know-what’ in the pit of his stomach”, and the first time that a work he had imagined turned out how he wanted it.