‘Un sacco vuoto non sta in piedi’ is a well know Italian saying which certainly does not apply here to this superb young Italian pianist. An intelligence and sensitive artistry combined with a technical mastery that held us spellbound at St Martin’s today.

With a Masters and Fellowship from the Royal Academy she also holds a degree in Physics from Padua , one of the oldest universities in Italy.
It was not surprising then that everything she played made such musical sense but it was allied to a beauty of execution where she looked as though she was swimming in the sumptuous sounds that were pouring from her movements.

She was like an artist in front of his canvas. Except of course in the Turkish piece by Fazil Say where she is required to make the sound of the ‘Ud’ by dampening a string with her palm whilst the strings are then struck percussively but muted as with a leather covering. She created the most atmospheric sounds of insinuating colour and subtle inflections as the insistent haunting chant continued unabaited . It reminded me of the extraordinary effect that Bartok creates in his ‘Out of doors suite.’

The only difference being the explosive central episode where our Sacco really let rip in jazz style alla Gulda or should I say Say ! Of course Bartok too created the sounds that he found in the countryside of his homeland as indeed Say does. Only Fazil Say has paid dearly for his honesty on behalf of the simple people of his country !

Sofia had started with ‘Baroque Splendour’ ( viva the PR boys that can invent titles that can entice an innocent public into titivation and temptation. If only Mozart or Schubert had known about them they would not have died paupers !)
What was programmed were three of the most famous pieces for harpsichord by Couperin and Daquin together with a Bach Toccata. ‘Les Barricades Mysterieuses’ immediately showed how the fluidity of Sofia’s playing could mould these simple harmonies into a beguiling magical amalgam of sounds. The famous ‘Cou cou ‘ was allowed to sing her heart out with ravishing piecing beauty as she jumped from branch to branch of this beautiful tree, blissfully happy to be in such a landscape full of streams of gold and silver murmurings. But Sofia also gave an architectural shape to this disarmingly simple piece with a kaleidoscope of sounds and a subtle range of dynamics . A rhythmic drive to ‘Le Tic Toc Choc’ with a beauty and delicacy that rarely we hear from others. Single notes that were spun as blocks of shifting harmonies played with an exhilaration and ‘joie de vivre’ that created a tone poem of delight (not Turkish as that came later in the untitled part !)

Bach of course was monumental with its opening so nobly stated by Sofia with a delicate fugato of extraordinary beauty and clarity followed by a deeply expressive recitativo before the Toccata where our Sacco was like a woman possessed of hysterical relentless energy.
An untitled second half opened with a Clementi sonata of dynamic drive and a passionate outpouring of streams of notes from one of the first virtuosi of the keyboard. A chiselled beauty of the Andante with long expressive lines played with poignant significance even if they were more of a craftsman than a genius.There was scintillating energy and technical assurance with the knotty twine of the final Presto played with breathtaking brilliance .

Say’s ‘Black Earth’ followed and I was so pleased that it was linked probably unintentionally, through lack of applause, to Respighi’s beautiful Nottorno. In this way it seemed to inhabit the same magic world of wondrous sounds and delicate atmospheres .
Playing of ravishing beauty and an extraordinarily poetic sense of balance .
No applause again allowed Liszt’s F minor transcendental study to enter in a whisper as it built to a tumultuous climax and romantic fervour. Intelligence too as the rests gave magnificent phrasing to a melodic line that too often is played with passion at the expense of intelligence and control.
Of course spontaneous applause after the animal excitement that our beautiful Sacco had generated and two encores one Baroque as per title and a Shostakovich Prelude as without.

A triumph that this ‘bag’ was not empty and could happily stand triumphantly in front of this capacity audience.

Sofia Sacco at St Mary’s

Italian pianist Sofia Sacco has performed extensively throughout Europe and Asia. She appeared as soloist in more than 80 recitals in Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, and China with latest appearances at prestigious venues including Teatro la Fenice in Venice, Gohliser Schlösschen in Leipzig, Pushkin House in London, Villa Reale in Monza, Fazioli Concert Hall and Centro Cultural Retiro in Madrid among others.She recently toured China giving recitals in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Changsha, Changchun, Hangzhou and Shenzhen. Passionate about Baroque and polyphonic music, she will release her first CD featuring Dimitri Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues Op.87 in 2025.She has also made appearances with the Pollini Symphony Orchestra, the Audentia Ensemble, Orchestra delle Tre Venezie and the Timía Chamber Orchestra under the batons of G. Medeossi, Ryan Bair, Otis Lineham. Sofia is the recipient of the Francis Simms Prize and first prize winner of the Bach International Music Competition and A. Baldi International Piano Competition.Sofia began playing the piano at the age of 6 in Padua with A. Silva and M. Ferrati, and moved to the UK in 2019 to study at the Royal Academy of Music as a scholarship student with R. Hayroudinoff. After completing her Master of Arts and Professional Diploma, Sofia was appointed Hodgson Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music for two consecutive years, and has recently been awarded the Aud Jebsen Fellowship for 2024/2025.Inquisitive and widely curious, she is also a Physics graduate from the University of Padua. Alongside her performing career, Sofia is an enthusiastic teacher, and she currently holds a teaching position at Trinity Music School and Queen’s College in London as well as teaching at the Royal Academy of Music as part of her fellowship.

The enigmatic maestro Magill astonishes and informs us again, this time with simple grand Beethoven. The last thoughts on the piano with his six bagatelles op 126 and then the longest and most complex of all his 32 Sonatas ,the ‘Hammerklavier’ op 106. Beethoven of course from one extreme to another as his lifelong journey as depicted in 32 steps comes to an end and the paradise that awaits is in sight after a long and turbulent life .It is this contrast between turbulence and serenity that Ronan Magill brought out with astonishing clarity not only of playing but above all of thought.

Six Bagatelles that were six tone poems where the few simple notes had such a significant and poignant meaning as the Andante unfolded with a ravishing sense of balance that gave a radiance to the serene calm that Beethoven was able to depict. Ronan built it gradually to a fleeting climax that gave great architectural shape before dissolving into the calm whispered ending.Ready to burst into a turbulent irascible outburst but this time with Beethoven bursting into a lyrical outpouring which rode on this turbulent undercurrent that was sure to explode again.Ronan was living every moment of these quasi theatrical scenes as you could see him throw his arms up in surprise as he waited for the calm to be so miraculously restored. In fact all through Ronan’s world of Beethoven there was a theatricality added of course to an intellect that made Beethoven’s surprises so actual as they took us all unawares.The beautifully etched Andante in E flat with long melodic lines of prayer like intensity was with a beautifully judged pedal effect at the end.The extraordinary thing is that Ronan had understood the intention of Beethoven but translated onto a modern instrument with intelligent sensibility. Great rhythmic drive to the fourth played with such clarity that even the drone bagpipe effect had a great architectural shape and the dramatic contrasts were even more overpowering.Ronan brought a simple pastoral beauty to the Allegretto before the explosion of the last Bagatelle that dissolves into just fragments floating in the visionary paradise that Beethoven could envisage and that awaited him before long.A great sense of drama ,surprise and poignant meaning all played with a simple mastery where it was enough to allow these last words to the genius of Beethoven.

What to say of Ronan’s Hammerklavier with a performance of such clarity and overwhelming theatricality allied to moments of deeply moving intensity and poignant significance .Beethoven’s fantasy too was revealed rather than stated by a pianist who was truly living every moment of such a monumental statement. Even after the final mighty chord Ronan was an anxious to talk about his discoveries and thoughts .But time was against us and in the end anyone who had ears to listen carefully will have found that Ronan’s playing spoke far more clearly than any words ever could. There used to be an advertisement for Heineken beer in which it said Heineken refreshes parts you did not know you had!

It may be sacrilege to talk about beer and Hammerklavier in the same breath but the effect of both is very similar! I will never forget Serkin playing it in the Royal Festival Hall and even holding the final chord having created such tension that he was literally shaking and in a hysterical state as we were too in the audience.

A famous critic once remarked that he had gone to hear a remarkable pianist play the Beethoven Trilogy at the end of a complete cycle of the 32 Sonatas .There was such a request for tickets that the concert was repeated live a couple of hours later.I had heard the broadcast of the first performance and had the score beside me and a glass of wine as I sat in my garden ready for the worst from the latest ‘wizz kid’. I was overwhelmed by the authority and fidelity as well as beauty and mastery .I asked the critic if the second performance was as good.’Oh yes’ said he ,’but you know Christopher when I went to hear Arrau play the same trilogy live ,not only he was completely drained and exhausted but so was the audience.He could never have just had a quick cup of tea and gone out to do it all over again!’ I think this is very significant for the meaning of live performance as recorded or as Gilels used to say the difference between fresh meat and canned !

I was completely won over ( after swearing I would never listen again to a pianist who could butcher Schumann op 2o) by Sokolov’s Hammerklavier as I was also by a reborn Kissin. Murray Perahia of course was monumental just as Beatrice Rana was recently at the Wigmore Hall. https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/10/12/beatrice-rana-a-tornado-ignites-the-wigmore-hall/

It is interesting to note that she like Ronan approach the opening declaration in the same way. Great discussions always about playing with one hand or splitting with two or should it be A or A sharp later on in the bass.All details because it is the intention that is so important as Richter so often showed us ( his Hammerklavier was memorable but as he was not happy with the way he played the fugue knowing it was being recorded he played it all over again !) Annie Fischer has gone down in history as standing in at the last minute for Louis Kentner in the Festival Hall when she played the fugue as an encore !

It was indeed the intention behind the notes in Ronan’s performance that was so arresting .For him and for us it was as though we were listening to a work where the ink was still wet on the page. The theatricality of the Allegro was followed by the fleeting precise rhythmic drive of the scherzo with its crazy hysterical interruption before going gently on it’s way .Taking us on a path and into a world that only in the last quartets was Beethoven able to express so much with so little. There was the improvised transition to the fugue that was quite remarkable for the way that Ronan seemed to be discovering the way, just as Beethoven surely would have improvised on the piano. Ronan played the impossible fugue with dynamic drive and fearless abandon just as Richter had done ….this is not play safe music but music brought to the limit and beyond of what is humanly possible on one instrument. This is in fact music to test human endurance and intellectual understanding whilst entering an inner territory that some call ‘soul’.

I t is for a chosen few and today we were privileged to hear such a performance.

The pianist and composer RONAN MAGILL (born Sheffield 1954) was, as a nine year old, chosen to be one of the founder pupils of the Yehudi Menuhin School. Later after a period at Ampleforth College, and on the advice of Benjamin Britten, he went to the Royal College of Music working with David Parkhouse and later John Barstow, and winning all the major prizes for piano and composition. After his Wigmore and South Bank debuts (Brahms 2 nd Concerto) in 1974, and again on Britten’s advice, he moved to Paris to study with Yvonne Lefebure at the Conservatoire, and then remained in Paris for a number of years, performing regularly both in concert and on TV and radio, and also receiving advice from Pierre Sancan, and Nikita Magaloff and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in Switzerland. In 1985 Magill won ist Prize in the 1 st “Milosz Magin” International Competition for Polish Music, followed by a European tour, and then after returning to the UK , he won the 3rd British Contemporary Piano Competition which a UK tour and concerts on BBC Radio 3. In recent years Magill has been  performing in the UK, USA (Rachmaninoff 3 rd Concerto) and most recently in Japan where he has been living since 2013 performing in many cities. He returned to the UK in April 2021 and has given three memorable recitals at St Mary’s Perival

The enigmatic Ronan Magill astonishes again at St Mary’s who are in celebratory mood with the Critic’s circle accolade

Ronan Magill Mature Mastery at St Mary’s

 

Víctor Braojos with an eclectic programme of music from his fellow countryman Enrique Granados
Romantic Scenes is an early work that owes much to Chopin or even in places early Fauré and was followed by two pieces from his masterpiece ‘Goyescas’ whose success in New York signalled the composers untimely death by a German torpedo in the English Channel.

The Escenas Romanticas is from Granados’s early period with the lilting melancholy of the Mazurka with its passionate central outburst before returning to the Mazurka again but with poignant insistence.There was the purity of the long solo recitativo and the the gentle strum of the guitar as an opening to the mellifluous radiance of the Berceuse. A passionate outpouring of sumptuous full sounds in the Lento con extasis and a folk melody of simple grace and beauty of the Allegretto.An Allegro Appassionato with a luminous outpouring of passionate romantic sounds and scintillating playing of great assurance.The Epilogo the best known of the set is a ravishing outpouring of Fauré type song of great beauty.

The Maiden and the Nightingale is one of the works by Granados most played and loved , and is a miniature tone poem of sumptuous subtle sounds. Victor played it with languid beauty allowing the sounds to envelope us with the Spanish warmth of nobility and strength.Even the nightingale was enchanted with Victor’s playing as it flew off into the distance on wings of song.

There was great drama from the opening notes of El amor y la muerte as Victor played with great authority and knowing intensity.A deep brooding and contemplation with a gentle final disintegration and a similar melodic outpouring as the Maiden but the nightingale this time was nowhere to be seen!

Very convincing performances of authority ,passion and simple beauty as one might expect from the artistry of a Spanish pianist whose progress at the Guildhall under Martin Roscoe I have followed and admired over last five years or so.From a very talented student Victor is now a distinguished artist ready to reveal many of the works from his native Spain that are still virtually unknown .

Goyescas, op 11, subtitled Los majosenamorados  (The Gallants in Love), is a piano suite written in 1911 and was inspired by the work of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. The piano pieces have not been authoritatively associated with any particular paintings with two exceptions:

• El amor y la muerte (Love and death) shares its title with one of Goya’s prints from the series called Los caprichos
• El pelele (The straw man) is one of Goya’s paintings.
  This piano suite was written in two books. Work on Goyescas began in 1909, and by 31 August 1910, the composer was able to write that he had composed “great flights of imagination and difficulty.” Granados himself gave the première of Book I at the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona  on 11 March 1911. He completed Book II in December 1911 and gave its first performance at the Salle Pleyel  in Paris on 2 April 1914.
  
  Book I:
  Los requiebros (The Compliments)
  Coloquio en la reja (Conversation at the Window)
  El fandango de candil (Fandango by Candlelight)
  Quejas o La Maja y el Rui senior  (Complaint, or the Maiden and the Nightingale)
  
  Book II
  El Amor y la muerte (Balada) (Ballad of Love and Death)
  Epilogo: Serenata del espectro (Epilogue: Serenade of the Spectre)
  El Pelele: Escena Goyesca (The Puppet/Straw Dummy: Goya Scene)
  (El Pelele is technically not part of the suite, but very often played with it.)

Victor Braojos at St Mary’s The intelligence and aristocratic authority of a true musician

Víctor Braojos at St Mary’s authority and intelligence illuminates ‘Shreds of light’

Victor Braojos at Steinway Hall. New Artist’s Series for the Keyboard Trust

Victor Braojos at Wesley’s Chapel – Passion and Poetry united

The Keyboard Charitable Trust in collaboration with Steinways present Mikhail Kambarov
Ist Prize Winner Trapani International Piano Competition April 2024 and La Mayenne International Competition May 2024
Wednesday 16th October 18.30 Steinway Hall 44 Marylebone Lane -Bond Street free admission but reservation essential

‘The Messiaen brought tears to my eyes as the stillness and whispered sounds of heart rending significance struck deep and the pungent harmonies ,sometimes like broken glass,were of searing intensity.’ Christopher Axworthy

Trapani the jewel of Sicily where dreams can become reality – The International Piano Competition – Domenico Scarlatti

PROGRAMME:
Scarlatti Sonata in B minor, K. 87
Rachmaninov Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42
Messiaen “Le Baiser” from “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus”
Beethoven Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111

The Keyboard Charitable Trust in collaborazione with Steinway Hall
44 Marylebone Lane, London W1U 2DB

Mikhail Kambarov at Steinway Hall for the Keyboard Trust from the whispered delicacy of Scarlatti with a kaleidoscope of colours of intimate confessions to Rachmaninov Corelli Variations of nobility and ravishing beauty.

Fantasy musicianship and mastery combined in a performance where Mikhail took us to wondrous lands of sometimes even oriental mystery such was the poetic artistry he shared with us on a piano that I have never heard played so quietly.

Messaien with a kiss to end all kisses that was inspired and monumental as the clashing dissonances were imbued with aching beauty. A technical mastery that could make the piano roar as it could whisper but always in an architectural bubble that contained and never strained to reveal the wondrous beauty of all he played.

A poet of the piano but also of great intelligence who could bring such monumental importance to Beethoven’s last Sonata.The burning cauldron of the first movement was immediately calmed by the serenity and passionate conviction with which he revealed Beethoven’s most intimate thoughts as he reached for that paradise that he could visualise already in the not too distant future.

It was fascinating to learn from Leslie Howard over a glass of wine or two that Rachmaninov had turned hell into redemption too. The penultimate variation of Corelli being a quote from his opera Francesca da Rimini of 1906 with a depiction of the ‘Inferno’ leading after the final variation to the sublime reappearance of ‘La Folia’ transformed into a thing of glowing palpitating beauty.And the similarity does not finish there either because the Corelli variations are the last work that Rachmaninov wrote for piano solo too!

Francesca da Rimini  op 25, is an opera in a prologue, two tableaux and an epilogue by Rachmaninov to a Russian libretto by modest Tchaikowsky . It is based on the story of Francesca da Rimini in the fifth canto of Dante’s epic poem The Inferno   (the first part of the Divine Comedy ). The fifth canto is the part about the Second Circle of Hell(Lust) . Rachmaninoff had composed the love duet for Francesca and Paolo in 1900, but did not resume work on the opera until 1904. The first performance was on 24 January (O.S. 11 January) 1906 at the Bolshoi Theatre , Moscow, with the composer himself conducting, in a double-bill performance with another Rachmaninoff opera written contemporaneously, The Miserly Knight .

The ghost of Virgil leads the poet Dante to the edge of the first circle of the Inferno. They descend into the second, where the wordless chorus of the damned souls is heard. Virgil tells Dante that this is the realms where sinners given over to lust are punished, buffeted by an eternal whirlwind. Dante asks two such souls, Francesca and Paolo, to tell their story. Paolo and Francesca recede into the whirlwind of the second circle. Dante is overcome with pity and terror, and he and Virgil remain with the thought: ‘There is no greater sadness in the world than to remember a time of joy in a time of grief’.

The extraordinary class of Michail Lifits.Nine young pianists of artistic integrity and refined musicianship who illuminated the beauty of Chopin’s 21 nocturnes

Mikhail Kambarov was born in 2000 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia and had his first piano lessons at the age of five. At eight, he made his orchestral debut with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Nizhny Novgorod. At sixteen, he moved to Germany to continue his musical studies at the Hochbegabtenzentrum Schloss Belvedere Weimar with Christian Wilm Müller. Since 2023, he has been studying with Michail Lifits.
He has won prizes at many international competitions including First Prize at the 24th International Alexander Scriabin Piano Competition in Grosseto (Italy). He also won First Prize at the eleventh International Chopin Competition for Young Pianists in Estonia, (and the prize for the best J.S. Bach interpretation); Second Prize at the seventh International Piano Competition in Fribourg, Switzerland; First Prize at the International Piano Competition “Citta di Moncalieri”; Third Prize at the tenth International Piano Competition for Young Pianists “A Step Towards Mastery” in St. Petersburg, in addition to an EMCY Prize; First Prize at the International Piano Competition in Wiesbaden; and First Prize, the Audience Prize and the Special Prize for the best interpretation of a sonata by Domenico Scarlatti at the second International Piano Competition Domenico Scarlatti.
As a soloist, Mikhail has worked with many renowned orchestras including the Philharmonic Orchestra of Nizhny Novgorod, the Orchestra Sinfonica Città di Grosseto, the Youth Symphony Orchestra Algirdas Paulavičius, the Nizhny Novgorod Soloists and the Thuringia Philharmonic Orchestra Gotha/Eisenach. He has performed in prestigious venues in Russia, Austria, Germany and Italy.
In addition to his extensive solo activities, Mikhail is also a passionate and experienced chamber musician and “lieder” pianist. With the Trio Fulminato, he has won numerous prizes, including the First National Prize at the Jugend Musiziert, combined with a sponsorship prize from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben. The Trio has also won the WDR Klassikpreis, the MDR Special Prize, as well as the Hermann Abs Special Prize of the Beethovenhaus Bonn for the best interpretation of a work by Ludwig van Beethoven.
In 2018, the Trio Fulminato toured the USA with concerts in Boston, Nelson and Washington DC. The Trio’s concerts have been recorded several times and broadcast on MDR Kultur and WDR 3.

https://www.concourspianomayenne.fr/cat/actualites/le-concours-et-son-organisation/

A video of the celebration concert in which Sir Antonio Pappano plays Bach and Michail Lifits who is Mikhail Kamberov’s teacher at the Liszt Academy in Weimar plays Chopin

To celebrate the 80th birthday of the visionary pianist,
fortepianist and harpsichordist Alexei Lubimov, whose
influence spans the 20th and 21st centuries, three
outstanding pianists and the master himself come
together for a programme which starts and ends with
Mozart but encompasses a wide range of repertoire in
between

Kapellmeister Lubimov leads us to the very heart of music with simplicity and mastery

Celebration of a master.
Alexei Lubimov at 80

A celebration for a legendary figure from his illustrious disciples.It was with great love that Alexander Melnikov had organised an eightieth birthday for his mentor who far from our shores is a revered master
It was obvious from the first notes of Mozart’s D minor fantasy on a modern day fortepiano that here was a master able to bring to life with an improvisatory freshness such a well know masterpiece .A timeless simplicity where every note was a living glowing presence that held us spell bound as a whole opera opened up before us .The mystery of the opening Andante set the scene for the poignant crystalline beauty of the Adagio played with the freedom of a stage personality in an opera with beseeching sighing semiquavers that were heart rending .The cadenzas were thrown off with nonchalant ease as the simple Allegretto entered like a breath of fresh air with ornaments that just brought even more sunshine to such radiance.

The whispered jeux perlé of the early A flat impromptu of Schubert was played with a clarity and even more so as the pedal stop was changed and we had to strain to hear such whispered beauty .The answering chords were given all the time they needed to make the music talk as never before .The subtle passion of the central episode was played with the same aristocratic timelessness that I remember from Rubinstein.
Infact Lubimov belongs to those very special memories in this hall that I have of Perlemuter Tagliaferro ,Del Peyo and of course Rubinstein who could all play with the real weight of artists who had digested the music and made it their own. A sense of communication where musical meaning and values were more important than stale perfection.
It is to Rubinstein we have to thank for saving the old Bechstein Hall from demolition in the 70’s .A hall reborn under William Lyne’s inspired programming having been renamed Wigmore after the First World War’s confiscation of all things German.

It is interesting to note that a new Bechstein Hall is about to be reborn just a stone’s throw from the old one almost 100 years on!
Some magnificent playing from Lubimov ‘s disciples in Stravinsky Beethoven and the dissident Volkonsky.But it is the master that we have come to celebrate tonight and it was a joyous occasion where the musical chairs in Schubert’s Divertissement allowed us another glimpse, if all too brief, of their master as he took his turn . And of course the master himself includes always in his programmes the music of the Ukrainian composer Silvestrov as a statement of protest and solidarity and tonight he included his Kitsch Music of 1977
A final glimpse of Mozart from Lubimov’s hands in duo with Olga Pashchenko illuminated this heartfelt tribute .
It concluded with three short Moments Musicaux specially written for the masters birthday celebration.

Hats off to Alexander Melnikov for honouring London with such a celebration of a giant of our time.

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/08/29/kapellmeister-lubimov-leads-us-to-the-very-heart-of-music-with-simplicity-and-mastery/
P.S
Dear Chris,
‘ Talking about the extreme rubato , it bothers me in Schubert slightly also! I loved Lubimovs playing very much except those strange slowing down every time he had chords in the impromptu. It breaks the flow of the line right from the beginning. Schubert is like pure water which needs to flow. But he sure had a magical touch and imagination.’

Dear illustrious colleague,
I agree about Schubert but when it is done with such conviction and communication from the hands of a master it does open a door like in Mozart that we take for granted too often. Listen to Cortot for example but only in small doses and never to be copied but to understand the poetic intent. Boulanger would always quote Shakespeare :’words without thought no more to heaven go ……..,’ not to copy but to open a gate……

Jonathan Ferrucci returns after his outstanding 2022 Norden Farm solo recital to play one of the greatest of all Mozart’s piano concertos.Followed by the charming and virtuoso, Saint-Saens Havanaise; an entrancing showpiece for local young violinist Elena Tomey.Concluding with the Beethoven symphony cycle (21-25) which continues with the radiant and witty Second.

Jonathan Ferrucci (piano)
Elena Tomey (violin)
Nigel Wilkinson (conductor)

Faure Pavane 
Mozart Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor, K.491
Saint-Saens Havanaise
Beethoven Symphony No.2

Courtyard Theatre

Jonathan Ferrucci at Norden Farm Arts Centre with the St John’s Chamber Orchestra under Nigel Wilkinson playing Mozart’s Concerto in C minor K 491.

Jonathan playing with refined good taste and colours that can illuminate such a well loved work with beguiling simple fantasy but allied to a sense of style and intelligence that even a great flourish in the slow movement made such musical sense. A crystalline clarity to the Larghetto was played with a disarming simplicity where the delicate embellishments he added later made such sense in a conversation of exquisite beauty.The cadenza too,his own, in the Larghetto was a consequence of all that had gone before and although a surprise it was a very pleasant one.

The cadenza in the first movement made a refreshing change from Hummel too , when played with such fantasy and radiance.A brilliant scale passage at the end was remarkably well caught by the very attentive conductor Nigel Wilkinson.In fact he had brought out the best throughout the concerto from his well prepared amateur players.

Drama and scintillating brilliance from Jonathan in the Allegro first movement were given a sparkling ‘joie de vivre’ in the Allegretto finale where yet another of his cadenzas was beautifully integrated into Mozart’s genial concerto that was to be such an inspiration for Beethoven. Infact Hummel’s cadenzas are usually played but today Jonathan chose to play his own adding a breath of fresh air and new life to a work that like his mentor Robert Levin continues a tradition of improvisation and embellishing the bare outlines left by the composer. There are many cadenzas for this concerto and Murray Perahia played a lot of them including one of his own. When on tour with the St Martin in the Fields Orchestra he would have fun surprising them each night,not telling them which he was going to play- sadistically keeping them on their toes!

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A History Of Norden Farm Centre For The Arts

Norden Farm is built on the site of an ancient Dairy Farm. The site includes two original, listed buildings; a Georgian Farmhouse and 18th Century Long Barn. The plan to have an arts centre in Maidenhead had been a long held dream. Lobbying for such a space had begun in the 1970’s when a strong demand for an arts centre for Maidenhead began to emerge. Maidenhead Arts was set up in 1978 as an umbrella organisation of local arts groups committed to this vision.

The site had been received by the RBWM Council as planning gain for housing development on the farmland in 1992, and the first Norden Farm Board raised funds from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts to develop the buildings and build a small scale theatre (where the current studio lives today) starting work in 1994. Norden Farm Centre Trust applied to the Arts Council for lottery funding to complete Norden Farm.

Following an intensive and detailed design and public consultation phase, planning approval was granted in September 1997. The Arts Council carried out a full assessment during autumn 1997, prior to an announcement of support and approval for the finished scheme with a Lottery award of £5,295,000 in January 1998. The assessment changed the original vision for Norden Farm. In order to receive lottery funds, the design needed to change to a much larger arts centre plan that would serve the wider community and be able to present a larger range of professional touring work. This meant that a new theatre, now known as The Courtyard, with a 280 capacity, joined The Studio theatre, with a 100 capacity, together with other spaces.

The final design stage of the project was completed in late 1998 and Norden Farm Centre for the Arts finally opened its doors to the public on the 17 September 2000 with Director, David Hill at the helm. Annabel Turpin took over in 2003, followed by the current custodian, Jane Corry.

Today, Norden Farm presents a performance and participation programme of film, theatre, music, visual arts, comedy and classes. It is also a venue for conferences, seminars, meetings and social functions.

Commissioned Artwork at Norden Farm

The new design for Norden Farm, had a radical plan to incorporate visual artists into the design team from the outset, ensuring that art was literally at the heart of the arts centre. At the same time, a poet in residence.

Mozart triumphs at Torlonia with Jonathan Ferrucci -Pietro Fresa -Sieva Borzak with encore at Teatro Vespasiano in Rieti

Goldberg -Ferrucci to be or not to be The crowning Glory in London Kings Place

Jonathan Ferrucci KCT American Tour – Goldberg – A voyage of discovery

The Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor K 491, was composed in the winter of 1785–1786, finishing it on 24 March 1786, three weeks after completing his Concerto in A K.488 . As he intended to perform the work himself, Mozart did not write out the soloist’s part in full. The premiere was in early April 1786 at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Chronologically, the work is the twentieth of Mozart’s 23 original piano concertos which Mozart composed in the winter of 1785–86, during his fourth season in Vienna. It was the third in a set of three concertos composed in quick succession, the others being n. 22 in E flat and 23 in A. Mozart finished composing the C minor concerto shortly before the premiere of his comic opera  The Marriage of Figaro ; the two works are assigned adjacent numbers of 491 and 492 in the Kochel catalogue Although composed at the same time, the two works contrast greatly: the opera is almost entirely in major keys while the concerto is one of Mozart’s few minor-key works.The pianist and musicologist Robert Levin suggests that the concerto, along with the two concertos that precede it, may have served as an outlet for a darker aspect of Mozart’s creativity at the time he was composing the comic opera.

The premiere of the concerto was on either 3 or 7 April 1786 at the Burgtheater in Vienna; Mozart featured as the soloist and conducted the orchestra from the keyboard.

In 1800, Mozart’s widow Costanze sold the original score of the work to the publisher Johann Anton André  of  Offenbach am Main . It passed through several private hands during the nineteenth century before Sir George Donaldson, a Scottish philanthropist, donated it to the Royal College of Music in 1894.

The College still houses the manuscript today. The original score contains no tempo markings ; the tempo for each movement is known only from the entries Mozart made into his catalogue. The orchestral parts in the original score are written in a clear manner whereas the solo part is often incomplete: on many occasions in the score Mozart notated only the outer parts of passages of scales or broken chords. This suggests that Mozart improvised much of the solo part when performing the work.The score also contains late additions, including that of the second subject of the first movement’s orchestral exposition.There is the occasional notation error in the score due to Mozart having “obviously written in great haste and under internal strain”.

The concerto is divided into the following three movements

1. Allegro
2. Larghetto in 
3. Allegretto ( variations with the eight variations and coda )
   

The concerto is scored for one flute , two oboes , two clarinets , two bassoons, two horns , two trumpets , timpani  and strings . This is the largest array of instruments for which Mozart composed any of his concertos.

It is one of only two of Mozart’s piano concertos that are scored for both oboes and clarinets (the other, his concerto for two pianos K.365 has clarinets only in the revised version). The clarinet was not at the time a conventional orchestral instrument. Robert Levin writes: “The richness of wind sonority, due to the inclusion of oboes and clarinets, is the central timbral characteristic of the concerto : time and again in all three movements the winds push the strings completely to the side.”

The solo instrument for the concerto is scored as a “cembalo”. This term often denotes a harpsichord , but in this concerto, Mozart used it as a generic term that encompassed the fortepiano , an eighteenth-century predecessor of the modern piano that among other things was more dynamically capable than the harpsichord.

Beethoven admired the concerto and it may have influenced his own Piano Concert n. 3 ,also in C minor. After hearing the work in a rehearsal, Beethoven reportedly remarked to a colleague that ” we shall never be able to do anything like that.” Brahms also admired the concerto, encouraging Clara Schumann  to play it, and wrote his own cadenza for the first movement.Brahms referred to the work as a “masterpiece of art and full of inspired ideas.”

Simon Gammell OBE director of the British institute writes : ‘It was an exceptionally good concert.  Giuliano has extraordinary sensibility aligned to his flawless technique – I have rarely been part of an audience so completely absorbed in the music.  Truly fabulous!  As he lives quite near Florence, it should be practical to invite him back sometime next year, which I would be happy to do .Thanks so much to all at KT for such a special evening.’

 

Giuliano writes :The concert was amazing!! Mister Simon was very kind and so happy to ask me to come and play again, even without the support of the kct. I attach screenshots. He said exactly with his own words: “one of the best concert of this year”. I am really very happy! also the audience filled me with compliments and bought some of my cds. I attach some photos thanks!!!

Diamonds are forever at Steinways – Giuliano Tuccia for the Keyboard Trust

Not only a fine pianist but Giuliano also recorded his concert while he was playing ! Here as some screen shots of the concert and although I was not able to be present this time Giuliano had sent me the recording so I too could enjoy a sumptuous feast of music making from afar.

He may be a rough diamond but he is a diamond through and through as was demonstrated yet again in this recital .A performer in public must be able to communicate emotions ,atmospheres and delve into the audience’s soul to reveal feelings that even they did not realise they had. This young man from Forlì has this power to communicate and already has quite a baggage of technical preparation.As he performs more and more before a doting public he ,like Rubinstein, will continue to polish and look at some rough corners where emotions have taken precedence over cerebral note picking accuracy. I remember an anecdote ,that Rubinstein was happy to share, about a debut concert in Paris as a teenager ,where he cared more about life than sitting for hours at the piano. He played the Saint Saens second piano concerto which was more of a good impression than an example of precision . It did though also impress the composer – and for an encore he played the Chopin Winter Wind study op 25 n. 11 bringing out the march like rhythm in the left hand and leaving the right to fend for itself. An ovation from a public who had come to be seduced and not just to count the eggs in the basket . Myra Hess used to come on stage after playing late Beethoven with two carrots and an orange to play the ‘Black Key ‘ study op 10 n. 5 by Chopin!

All this to say that Giuliano Tuccia has been born with the gift to communicate and although still perfecting his studies in Rovigo and Imola he can already hold an audience far better than many winners of International Competitions. Music is about communication and where words are not enough music can take us into a world of fantasy,colour and emotion where only the greatest of poets dare to tread.

Two Scarlatti’s Sonatas played with a freedom and sense of fantasy with the whispered secrets of poignant beauty and almost improvised inner feelings of the first and the scintillating brilliance and delicacy of the second. Mendelssohn again with an improvised freedom allied to a musical intelligence and fearless technical panache. There were moments of ravishing beauty as there were of breathtaking brilliance.A deep contemplation of the 14th and 15th variation before the final explosion of the Allegro vivace . Dynamic drive combined with astonishing immediacy as we reached boiling point.

Liszt’s Second Ballade from the very opening a great drama was about to unfold from the hands of an artist who had seen a vision of this tragic world of Hero and Leander.Playing of aristocratic nobility and heartrending contrasts with Liszt the greatest showman on earth but also one of the most original composers of his day. Playing the second version that finishes in a dream not in triumph as Giuliano made us wait for the final resolution of the appoggiatura where peace and silence once more reign.Moments Musicaux that like Rachmaninov’s Etudes Tableaux are miniature tone poems of aching nostalgia and brooding intensity combined with sumptuous sounds and driving exhilaration.The simple beauty of the first with a stream of wondrous sounds out of which a single voice appears smothered by a gleaming trail of golden jeux perlé sounds.The deeply reflective brooding of the third was played with full rich sound with deeply felt participation of real intensity from Giuliano.The left hand footsteps crept about with sinister intent as the melodic line was etched above.The fourth Moment is a glorious outpouring of romantic sounds and pyrotechnics that was played with burning intensity and fearless abandon.

An ovation from an audience deeply moved to be part of such an uplifting musical experience were awarded with the most famous of all Chopin’s 19 Nocturnes.The one in E flat op 9 n. 2 that was played with the rubato and ravishment of the true Bel Canto and a delicacy and artistry of pianists of another age .

Giuliano not only a superb pianist but also an impresario of a concert series started in Forlì in memory of the illustrious but forgotten Genius, Guido Agosti, born and buried there

Forlì pays Homage to Guido Agosti

D.Scarlatti: K32-K1

F.Mendelssohn: Variations Serieuses Op.54

F.Liszt: Ballade in si minore n.2 S 170

S.Rachmaninov: Moments Musicaux Op 16 n1-3-4 

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/04/14/nicolo-giuliano-tuccia-a-true-musician-with-something-important-to-say-from-the-city-of-the-legendary-guido-agosti/

Variations sérieuses – Theme and 17 variations op 54, was completed on 4 June 1841.

It was written as part of a campaign to raise funds for the erection of a large bronze statue of Beethoven in his home town of Bonn ^1]The publisher Pietron Mechetti  asked Mendelssohn to contribute to a ‘Beethoven Album’, published in January 1842, which also included pieces by Liszt,Chopin,Moscheles  and others, of which the proceeds would go to the Monument.Schumann’s Fantasie op 17 was the final result of a work originally intended for the same purpose

Mendelssohn is known to have written three sets of piano variations, but only this one was published during his lifetime.The work consists of a Theme and Coda and 17 variations

1. Theme: Andante sostenuto
2. Variation 1
3. Variation 2: Un poco più animato
4. Variation 3: Più animato
5. Variation 4
6. Variation 5: Agitato
   Variation 6: A tempo
   Variation 7: Con fuoco
   Variation 8: Allegro vivace
   Variation 9
   Variation 10: Moderato
   Variation 11: Cantabile
   Variation 12: Tempo del Tema
   Variation 13: Sempre assai leggiero
   Variation 14: Adagio
   Variation 15: Poco a poco più agitato
   Variation 16: Allegro vivace
   Variation 17
   Coda: Presto

The Ballade No. 2 in B minor S. 171 was written in 1853.

Claudio Arrau , who studied under Liszt’s disciple Martin Krause , maintained that the Ballade was based on the Greek myth of Hero and Leander , with the piece’s chromatic ostinati representing the sea: “You really can perceive how the journey turns more and more difficult each time. In the fourth night he drowns. Next, the last pages are a transfiguration”.

The ballade is based largely on two themes: a broad opening melody underpinned by menacing chromatic rumbles in the lower register of the keyboard, and a luminous ensuing chordal meditation. These themes are repeated a half-step lower; then march-like triplet-rhythms unleash a flood of virtuosity. Eventually, Liszt transforms the opening melody into a rocking major-key cantabile and reiterates this with ever-more grandiose exultation. The luminous chords provide a contemplative close.

Leslie Howard writes about the original version S 170 a : ‘To be honest, Liszt never expected the original version of his Ballade No 2 to be published, but the original form has long been known—differing from the final version by the absence of two eight-bar phrases in the closing B major section, and by having a fast coda which recalls the central martial development material—this coda being itself a second draft of another cancelled fast ending. The original coda has appeared in several editions, although most of them fail to remark that, if it is performed, two eight-bar cuts need also to be made to restore the original text. It goes without saying that the beautiful quiet coda of the later version is a stroke of genius, but the present ending is not without its merits’

Six moments musicaux op.16, were written between October and December 1896.Each Moment musical reproduces a musical form characteristic of a previous musical era. In an interview in 1941, Rachmaninoff said, “What I try to do, when writing down my music, is to make it say simply and directly that which is in my heart when I am composing.” Even though Moments musicaux were written because he was short of money,the pieces summarize his knowledge of piano composition up to that point.

By the autumn of 1896, 23-year old Rachmaninoff’s financial status was precarious, not helped by his being robbed of money on an earlier train trip.Pressed for time, both financially and by those expecting a symphony, he “rushed into production.” On December 7, he wrote to Aleksandr Zatayevich , a Russian composer he had met before he had composed the work, saying, “I hurry in order to get money I need by a certain date … This perpetual financial pressure is, on the one hand, quite beneficial … by the 20th of this month I have to write six piano pieces.”^[10]Rachmaninoff completed all six during October and December 1896, and dedicated all to Zatayevich

Andantino opens the set with a long, reflective melody that develops into a rapid climax. The third Andante cantabile is a contrast to its surrounding pieces, explicitly named ‘funeral march’ and ‘lament’ The fourth Presto draws inspiration from several sources, including the Chopin Preludes with an explosion of melodic intensity.

It was just a few weeks ago that I heard Ryan at the Windsor Festival and was astonished at the mastery and maturity of a sixteen year old.So when I received this recording of a year previously I was so overwhelmed that I just had to write some thoughts and impressions of a young master.

Ryan Wang takes Windsor Castle by storm

I had heard Ryan for the first time at the final of the Montecatini Competition in Florence a year ago .The moment he touched the piano I was immediately struck by his artistry as he played a selection of Chopin’s 24 Preludes. I sent a message down to Sofya Gulyak saying ‘At last an artist’.

Montecatini International Piano Competition Final in the historic Teatro Niccolini in Florence.

I met his mother and brother Michael and learned that both the boys of fourteen and fifteen were on music scholarships to Eton where the whole family had transferred from Canada to pursue a dream. I later heard Ryan in the National Liberal Club invited by the indomitable Yisha Xue to play in her Chinese New Year celebrations.He played the Liszt ‘Don Juan fantasy’ in between the various courses of a sumptuous feast. Needless to say the highlight of the evening was this young man giving a masterly performance of one of the most notoriously difficult of all Liszt’s funabulistic Operatic paraphrases

Ryan Wang ‘A star is born on the Wings of the Dragon’ at the National Liberal Club

I asked Iris Wang how Michael was coping with a brother being celebrated as such a star? ‘Oh but Michael is a happy boy and loves it!’ Genius is never easy to live with and Ryan has been blessed with a talent that is so extraordinary suffering to find perfection in his art and this is how I interpreted a loving Mothers simple remark.

Listening to this remarkable recital one is aware of an artist who lives every note as he moves and weaves with the music that he is creating. Some things can never be taught but are gifts born by early experiences that no one is aware of but reveal themselves later on as an early aptitude is translated into mastery. Of course as George Fu so aptly stated in a recent interview for the radio before embarking on a performance of the Messiaen 20 regards a good teacher has to know how to push but also let go.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?mibextid=WC7FNe&ref=watch_permalink&v=1676184196290175&rdid=MVikD3k1B3H9jxo8

Ryan has obviously had the good fortune to have teachers who have given him the means to allow his natural talent to grow and flower.

There was remarkable clarity and simplicity to the Haydn Sonata that was full of character and colour but always within stylish good taste.Haydn’s genial pedal indications were scrupulously noted but even more they were interpreted for the music box carillon that the piano with pedals could at last allow in that period . Every moment of the sonata was full of vital energy but with extraordinary sensitivity to Haydn’s sound world.The Adagio had a chiselled beauty and a radiance of colours and emotions where the deeply brooding minor key was played with searching intensity looking for a way back. A moment that Ryan found with the magic of barely whispered contemplation.There was an extraordinary clarity to the Allegro molto with phrasing that allowed the music to take wing with exhilaration and extraordinary fantasy.

The Norma Fantasy I have never heard played with such mastery.This is a work that needs enormous reserves of technique to allow the music to unfold with a continual forward movement no matter what technical difficulties are involved. It was just this wave of sound that this young man created from the first note and never let go. Sumptuous sound and great characterisation as the drama unfolded in Liszt’s masterly paraphrase correcting Bellini’s own order as an architectural shape is unfolded with breathtaking brilliance and sumptuous beauty. Thalberg and Liszt were both accused of having three hands such was the illusion that they like Paganini could create on their chosen instrument. Ryan was not only a poet but also a showman as indeed Liszt himself was. Liszt though ,like today’s a pop stars, with aristocratic ladies reduced to a hysterical rabble trying to get souvenirs of their idol to take back home perchance to dream! Ryan today showed us the masterly control of tension that held us on the edge of our seats as pyrotechnics and ravishing beauty were united under one glorious roof with breathtakingly fearless abandon.

Sublimely beautiful Chopin from the three Mazurkas op 59 played with beguiling rubato and fearless abandon to the senses and a timeless grandeur to the opening of one of Chopin’s last Nocturnes op 62 n. 1 .A Fourth Ballade that was indeed the pinnacle of the Romantic piano repertoire and played with remarkably mature aristocratic musicianship of searing intensity.

La Valse in Ravel’s own transcription was full of subtle insinuations erupting into naked abandon.A tour de force of technical perfection where streams of notes were thrown off as the musical meaning of decadence and passion were absorbed by this young man and thrown at us with fearless abandon as a kaleidoscope of sultry sounds filled the torrid air.

A standing ovation for a master of only fifteen! It was rewarded as Rubinstein would himself have done with Chopin’s ‘Winter Wind’ study where every note was absorbed and played with depth and meaning ( Rubinstein himself had told how as a lazy young man in Paris he had faked it but played with such character that it earned him an ovation ) .

The Chopin Héroique Polonaise played every bit as I remember Rubinstein and with the same reaction of an audience on their feet to applaude and feast such genius.

But Ryan had even more up his sleeve as with a slight laugh of recognition from the audience he played Beethoven’s much maligned ‘ Fur Elise’. But this was not the work that every music student has struggled with but a boogie woogie study of a masterly showman where I feel Volodos or Hamelin had got his hands on Beethoven to devastating effect but learn it is infact by Ethan Uslan

What a recital and only fifteen …………hard to believe but the link is there to behold for yourself .Q.E .D.

Ryan Wang ‘A star is born on the Wings of the Dragon’ at the National Liberal Club

Ryan Wang takes Windsor Castle by storm

Montecatini International Piano Competition Final in the historic Teatro Niccolini in Florence.

Sensational is the only way to describe the performance today and I have heard Ursula Oppens who commissioned it and Kholodenko in London recently. Both magnificent performances but today this impossible piece took wing as we sat mesmerised by a kaleidoscope of chameleonic colour and character that kept a rapt audience hypnotised by a tour de force of unbelievable mastery .A true mastery that of musical communication no matter what the odds
And after almost an hour a simple song without words to calm the earth shattering atmosphere .
Rzewski liked Mendelssohn Emanuil told me in the green room .
Of course but would Mendelssohn have like Rzewski !

Commissioned and first performed in 1975 by Ursula Oppens who passed by Siena to play to Agosti in 1968 before catching the train to Bolzano where she won the Busoni Competition.Emanuil won the Busoni Competition in 2019

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

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

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

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

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

The Bulgarian pianist Emanuil Ivanov attracted international attention at the age of 21 after receiving the First Prize at the 2019 Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition. Known for his elegant performances of late Romantic music, he presents one of the most ambitious keyboard works of the 20th Century. The People United Will Never Be Defeated! builds its 36 glittering variations from a celebrated Chilean protest song, encompassing triumph and despair, intricate abstraction alongside jazzy improvisation – an unforgettable musical journey.

Frederic Anthony Rzewski
April 13, 1938 Westfield Massachusetts USA 
June 26, 2021 (aged 83) Montiano Italy 

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

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

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

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

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

Emanuil Ivanov a great pianist of humility and intelligence takes St.Mary’s by storm

Emanuil Ivanov premio Busoni 2019 Al British in the Harold Acton Library A room with a view of ravishing beauty and seduction

Emanuil Ivanov ‘Sensational’ recital of technical assurance and refined intelligence

Emanuil Ivanov in Capua the bells of their 100 churches tolling brightly -ignited by his mastery and dedication

Emanuil Ivanov at La Scala to the Glory of God and beyond

Vadim Kholodenko today of all days reminds us with artistry and mastery that ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated’

Happy Birthday Deniz Arman Gelenbe.
Say it with music takes on a different significance when a very special occasion is treated to such sumptuous music making.
The simple unadorned beauty of Mozart contrasted with the dynamic drive of Dvorak.
Surrounded by friends and admirers what better way could there be to celebrate for a much loved musician of such stature.
With illustrious colleagues from the English Chamber Orchestra this beautiful Lloyd George Hall in the National Liberal Club resounded with music making of refined elegance in Mozart and Dvorak’s sumptuous homage to his native Bohemia.

Mozart’s late violin sonata in G opened the concert with almost Beethovenian vehemence but also the refined elegance and genial outpourings that could only be from the age of Mozart. Variations in which the piano shone through with a purity and style as the superb artistry of John Mills allowed our ‘birthday girl’ Mozart’s own spotlight

The G minor Quartet already opens with a Beethovenian call to arms immediately replied by the beseeching sigh from the piano before bursting into outpourings of mellifluous buoyancy.

The Andante opening with Deniz’s beautiful simple prayer of thanksgiving was taken up by her superb colleagues with stylish playing of disarming simplicity. If the Rondo could have taken flight more and was a little earthbound for the fun that Mozart allows himself even in G minor it allowed the continual genial outpouring of melodic effusions to sing with unusual clarity and refined good taste.

It was in the Dvorak and the addition of the second violin of Ofer Falk that the music making really took wing .

A sumptuous performance enhanced by the ravishing cello playing of Bozidar Vukotic but also the supreme musicianship of Deniz who could weave in an out of the sumptuous string sounds looking and listening ready to pounce and enhance.

The superb viola of Lydia Lowndes – Northcott looking and waiting as she listened so attentively to her colleagues, completing and supporting the voluptuous sounds from her colleagues. John Mills inspired and inspiring as Deniz played with passionate abandon but also the intelligent mutual anticipation of a seasoned chamber music player.

It is nice to remember Gyorgy Sandor the mentor of Deniz and great friend of ours in Rome on such a joyous occasion.

The Arman Trio at the Chopin Society Sublime music making of weight and intimacy to ravish the soul

All About Mozart -Deniz Arman Gelenbe and friends at St John’s Smith Square

Violin Sonata No. 27 in G K.379/373a)was composed in Vienna in 1781 and first published in the same year.

It consists of two movements.

1. Adagio – Allegro
2. Theme : Andantino cantabile, with variations :
   • Variation 1 (piano without violin)
   • Variation 2
   • Variation 3
   • Variation 4 in 
   • Variation 5: Adagio
   • Allegretto (Thema da capo – Coda)

On 12 March 1781 Mozart was summoned by his employer, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, to join him and his retinue in Vienna, where they were staying during the celebrations marking the accession of the Emperor Joseph II. Mozart had been in Munich since the previous November, preparing for the premiere there of his opera Idomeneo, and he arrived in the Austrian capital on 16 March. That evening he found himself obliged to organize a private concert centred around the talents of some of the Salzburg court musicians. Mozart’s deep resentment towards the Archbishop, who refused to grant him permission to perform in public, can be discerned from his letters of the time to his father.Three weeks after his arrival in Vienna, Mozart had to provide pieces for the leader of the Salzburg orchestra, Antonio Brunetti, for whom he wrote a Rondo for violin and orchestra (K373), and the Sonata in G major, K379. The latter was so hurriedly composed (Mozart claimed to have completed it within the space of a single hour) that there was no time to write out the piano part, and Mozart had to play it out of his head at the work’s premiere the following day. Despite the circumstances in which it was written, this is one of the most beautiful and original of all Mozart’s violin sonatas. It is one that was well known to Schubert, who based his only song in variation form, Im Frühling, D882, on a theme very similar to that of Mozart’s variation finale.

Mozart received a commission for three quartets in 1785  from the publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister .who thought this quartet was too difficult and that the public would not buy it, so he released Mozart from the obligation of completing the set. (Nine months later, Mozart composed a second quartet anyway, in E flat K. 493).

Hoffmeister’s fear that the work was too difficult for amateurs was borne out by an article in the Journal des Luxus und der Moden published in Weimar in June 1788. The article highly praised Mozart and his work, but expressed dismay over attempts by amateurs to perform it:

“( as performed by amateurs] it could not please: everybody yawned with boredom over the incomprehensible tintamarre of 4 instruments which did not keep together for four bars on end, and whose senseless concentusnever allowed any unity of feeling; but it had to please, it had to be praised! … what a difference when this much-advertised work of art is performed with the highest degree of accuracy by four skilled musicians who have studied it carefully.^”

The assessment accords with a view widely held of Mozart in his own lifetime, that of a greatly talented composer who wrote very difficult music.

At the time the piece was written, the harpsichord was still widely used. Although the piece was originally published with the title “Quatuor pour le Clavecin ou Forte Piano, Violon, Tallie [sic] et Basse,” stylistic evidence suggests Mozart intended the piano part for “the ‘Viennese’ fortepiano of the period”

The work is in three movements :

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Rondo Allegro

Dvorak’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A op 81 B 155, was composed between August 18 and October 8, 1887, and was premiered in Prague  on January 6, 1888.

The work was composed as the result of the composer’s attempt to revise an earlier work, the first Piano Quintet in A Op. 5.Dvořák was dissatisfied with the Op. 5 quintet and destroyed the manuscript not long after its premiere. Fifteen years later, he reconsidered and retrieved a copy of the score from a friend and started making revisions. However, he decided that rather than submitting the revised work for publication, he would compose an entirely new work.The new quintet is a mixture of Dvořák’s personal form of expressive lyricism with elements from Czech folk music. Characteristically, those elements include styles and forms of song and dance, but not actual folk tunes; Dvořák created original melodies in the authentic folk style.

The music has four movements :

1. Allegro, ma non tanto
2. Dumka : Andante con moto
3. Scherzo (Furiant) : Molto vivace
4. Finale: Allegro

.