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NO.25 MAY/JUNE 2014
5.50
www.international-piano.com
RISING STARS
The top
30 pianists
under 30
JOHN OGDON
Remembering
his talent,
25 years on
HISTORIC
KEYBOARDS
Inside Finchcocks
musical museum
INCLUDES MUSIC
TO DOWNLOAD
HENRI
DUTILLEUX
Essential
works
PLUS
Marielle
Labque
John Law
Nicolas
Hodges
INSIDE
SHEET
MUSIC
POLONAISE IN A FLAT
MAJOR OP 53 BY CHOPIN
PUBLISHED BY WIENER URTEXT NEW EDITION
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The Luxembourgian pianist
on recording Liszts
Transcendental Etudes
JEAN MULLER
IP0514_01_cvr.indd 2 14/04/2014 08:00:57
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IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 2 11/04/2014 18:26:33
May/June 2014 International Piano 3
21
Contents
66
32
82
17 COVER STORY
IP meets Luxembourgian
pianist Jean Muller
21 30 UNDER 30
Artists of the future
24 SWISS SUPPORT
Lucernes debut series
26 SOUNDS OF JOY
Henri Dutilleux
(1916-2013)
30 HANDS ON
Finchcocks Musical
Museum in Kent
32 PIANO MAN
Remembering John Ogdon
38 ANDREW LITTON
On Oscar Peterson


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42 MASTERCLASS
Learning to linger by
Murray McLachlan
45 HELPING HANDS
Tips for efective use
of the fourth and
fh ngers
47 SYMPOSIUM
Internationally renowned
experts discuss the world
of Grieg
53 SHEET MUSIC
Polonaise in A at major
Op 53 by Chopin, from
Wiener Urtext
58 IN RETROSPECT
Bach specialist and
musical analyst
Rosalyn Tureck
40 ANDRS SCHIFF AT 60
Birthday celebrations
7 LETTERS
Your thoughts
and comments
8 NEWS
The latest news and events
from the piano world
13 COMMENT
Fashion and pianists
15 DIARY OF AN
ACCOMPANIST
In which Michael Round
learns to back-phrase
37 TAKE FIVE
John Law
REGULARS
62 PROFILE
Nicolas Hodges
66 WISHLIST
Favourites from the
Frankfurt Musikmesse
68 LETTER FROM AMERICA
The end of memorisation?
70 REVIEWS
The latest CDs, books
and sheet music, plus
recital roundup
78 SHEET MUSIC
Reminiscences of Childhood,
Op 54 by Nimrod
Borenstein
82 MUSIC OF MY LIFE
Marielle Labque shares
her favourite recordings
IP0514_03_Contents_CJ.indd 3 14/04/2014 08:04:42
For information on Steinway & Sons pianos or to arrange a private appointment to visit our London showrooms,
please call 0207 487 3391 or email info@steinway.co.uk
WWW.STEINWAYHALL.CO.UK
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 4 14/04/2014 12:36:25
May/June 2014 International Piano 5
I
N THE FOREWORD TO HIS
book Piano Man, Charles Beauclerk
recalls John Ogdons extraordinary
performance of Kaikhosru Sorabjis four-
hour Opus Clavicembalisticum in 1988. The
work, ferociously complex and physically
demanding, contains enough technical
hurdles to dissuade even the virtuosic pianist,
but Ogdon delivered and was rewarded with
an 11-minute standing ovation. This was the
tip of the iceberg of Ogdons piano prowess;
but his gifs were accompanied by intense
psychological dif culties, which contributed
to his death the following year.
Beauclerks book ofers an astonishing,
uninching account of musicianship and
mental illness. In this issue, Jeremy Nicholas
speaks to Beauclerk and Ogdons widow,
Brenda Lucas, in the hope of reigniting
interest in this talented pianist, who died 25
years ago in August (see pp32-35).
R
HINEGOLD PUBLISHING, PUBLISHER OF IP, HAS LAUNCHED A NEW
concert series near to our of ces in Bloomsbury, London, and we would like invite
all our readers to attend. The recitals, hosted by Conway Hall, are free of charge
and include a glass of wine and a Q&A with the artist afer the concert.
The next event sees conductor Andrew Litton put away his baton and share a special
piano recital dedicated to his jazz hero Oscar Peterson. The performance will be based on
transcriptions undertaken by IP favourite Steven Osborne and promises to be a fantastic
evening. I will be speaking to Litton afer the concert and taking questions from the
audience. Do join us for this wonderful and free! event. For more information, turn
to page 38.
Finally, may I extend a warm welcome back to our esteemed US correspondent Stephen
Wigler, who has returned to his column afer a dif cult year of illness. His latest letter from
America is on page 68.
CLAIRE JACKSON
EDITOR
Editor Claire Jackson
Sub Editor Femke Colborne
Contributors Nimrod Borenstein, Michael
Church, Colin Clarke, Michael Dervan, Andy
Hamilton, Benjamin Ivry, Joseph Laredo, Sarah
Lambie, Graham Lock, Malcolm Miller, Murray
McLachlan, Jeremy Nicholas, Guy Rickards,
Michael Round, Jeremy Siepmann, Stephen Wigler
Head of Design & Production /
Designer Beck Ward Murphy
Production Controller Gordon Wallis
Advertising Sales Louise Greener
louise.greener@rhinegold.co.uk
Marketing Manager Frances Innes-Hopkins
Managing Director Ciaran Morton
Publisher Derek B Smith
Printed by Advent Colour Ltd
Distributed by Comag Specialist Division
Tel: +44 (0)1895 433800
International Piano, 977204207700507, is
published bi-monthly by Rhinegold Publishing,
20 Rugby Street, London, WC1N 3QZ, UK
Advertising
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Twitter: @IP_mag
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No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the
prior permission of Rhinegold Publishing Ltd. The
views expressed here are those of the authors and
not of the publisher, editor, Rhinegold Publishing
Ltd or its employees. We welcome letters but
reserve the right to edit for reasons of grammar,
length and legality. No responsibility is accepted for
returning photographs or manuscripts. We cannot
acknowledge or return unsolicited material.
Welcome
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IP is available as an interactive
digital magazine from
pocketmags.com, iTunes and
GooglePlay read on your
iPad, iPhone, Android device,
Kindle Fire or computer.
App FREE, single issues 2.49
Copyright Rhinegold Publishing 2014
www.international-piano.com
www.international-piano.com
NO.25 MAY/JUN 2014 5.50 www.international-piano.com
RISING STARS
The top
30 pianists
under 30
JOHN OGDON
Remembering
his talent,
25 years on
HISTORIC
KEYBOARDS
Inside Finchcocks musical museum
INCLUDES MUSIC TO DOWNLOAD
HENRI
DUTILLEUX
Essential
works
PLUS
Marielle
Labque
John Law
Nicolas
Hodges
INSIDE
SHEET
MUSIC
POLONAISE IN A FLAT MAJOR OP 53 BY CHOPIN
PUBLISHED BY WIENER URTEXT NEW EDITION
MAY/JUNE 2014
International Piano
www.international-piano.com
The Luxembourgian pianist
on recording Liszts
Transcendental Etudes
JEAN MULLER
International Piano is proud to be a
media partner of the International
Piano Series at Southbank Centre
IP0514_05_Editorial_CJ.indd 5 14/04/2014 15:04:25
Piano Sonata in B fat major
Du bist die Ruh (transcr. Liszt)
Ungeduld (transcr. Liszt)
Wandererfantasie in C major
CHAN 10807
Barry Douglas
Schubert
plays
Also Available
CDs available from www.chandos.net
and all good record stores
MP3s, lossless and 24-bit studio quality downloads
from www.theclassicalshop.net
FOLLOW US ON
IRR Outstanding
International Record
Review
Brahms playing of the
utmost integrity and
authority
International Record
Review
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NEW PIANO RELEASES
CDA67996
STEPHEN HOUGH
In the Night
This latest recital album by the
thinking persons virtuoso: an
extraordinary pianist (The New
York Times) takes the listener on a
journey through that most intense
and absorbing of nineteenth-century
obsessions, the night. Stephen
Houghs thoughtful programming
creates a new aural sphere for some
of the most celebrated piano works in
the repertoire.
STEPHEN HOUGH piano
HANDEL
The Eight Great Suites
Danny Drivers recordings of CPE
Bachs keyboard works have been
much admired: praised by critics
as deeply stylish and revelatory
accounts of eighteenth-century
works on a modern piano, with
Drivers impeccable pianism
constantly present. Now he turns to
Handels Eight Great Suites, largely
written when the composer was
resident in Cannons, near London.
DANNY DRIVER piano
SCHUMANN Kinderszenen
& Waldszenen
JANC
V
EK On the
overgrown path I
A new album from Marc-Andr
Hamelin is always a cause for
celebration. Here he presents three
sets of miniatures (all masterpieces
in which their emotional impact is
quite out of proportion to their
dimensions); a fascinating
juxtaposition of two composers who
are not obviously musically related,
but who are proved on this album to
be a felicitous combination.
MARC-ANDR HAMELIN piano
TCHAIKOVSKY
The seasons
Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov
became Laureate of the Honens
Prize for Piano in 2012 and gave
his Wigmore Hall debut at the
beginning of 2013, where the critics
delighted in his outstanding pianism
and intelligent programming.
Hyperion is delighted to present this
brilliant young artist in an album of
Tchaikovskys Les saisons and Six
morceaux.
PAVEL KOLESNIKOV piano
CDA68041/2
(2 compact discs)
CDA68030
Available from 2 June 2014
CDA68028
Available from 2 June 2014
CDs, MP3 and lossless downloads of all our recordings are
available from www.hyperion-records.co.uk
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 6 11/04/2014 18:27:04
May/June 2014 International Piano 7
L E T T E R S
SCARLATTI SPEAKS
Dear IP,
The recent article on Scarlatti was
most interesting (issue 23, January/
February 2014), but it did not raise one
performance issue that could be relevant,
most notably the applicability of notes
ingales to this music. There are certainly
pieces where the application of some
inequality enlivens things, for example
the Fugue in G minor K 93. What do your
experts think?
Francis Cox (UK)
This is an interesting question. The practice
of applying notes ingales was a style
peculiar to the French and although many
performers apply the system to foreign music
occasionally, I believe it should be added with
great care and as the French say, in bon gout.
I think that one should beware of
applying notes ingales merely to enliven
things. Varied articulation where there are
continuous quavers is always preferable and
K 93 is a case in point. This can be achieved
either by slurring or detaching, or by using a
combination of both. Historically speaking,
the French practice of applying notes ingales
to Italian or Spanish music would be
inappropriate and possibly confusing.
However, a treatise entitled Varii
Esercitii published in 1614 by Antonio
Brunelli ofers advice for singers on how
to vary an even row of quavers or
semiquavers by introducing diferent
rhythms. We know that this practice was
also adopted by instrumentalists, including
keyboard players, during the Renaissance
and early Baroque periods, but again I
would avoid it in Scarlattis music, which
stands up quite well on its own merit.
I hope this helps.
Richard Lester, noted Scarlatti interpreter
and IP Symposium participant
SUGGESTIONS
Dear IP,
Thank you for a wonderful magazine!
I would like to inform you that the great
piano composer Anatol Lyadov passed
away exactly 100 years ago (1914). I think
some kind of tribute would be apt in IP.
Also, it would be very nice to read
something about improvisation in the
classical style in your magazine. Sadly,
this skill has fallen into oblivion among
todays classical pianists, although it was
seen as mandatory in olden times.
Fredrik von Schele (Sweden)
A NEED FOR SPEED?
Dear IP,
It was interesting to read your portrait
of Eugen dAlberts life in celebration
of his 150th birthday (Remembering
Eugen dAlbert , issue 24, March/April
2014). However, I disagree with the
comment that dAlberts Waldstein
Sonata is adamant and stolid, omitting
a chunk of the music. If you are referring
to the recording of the Rondo on The
Centaur Pianist, then this observation is
unjustly made: when these recordings
were made between 1910 and 1928,
the long-playing record had not been
invented, so it was common practice
to make cuts and reduce pieces to ve
minutes or less to t the time limit
of the disc (dependent on whether it
was 10-inch or 12-inch). All the other
pieces recorded on the CD are also
short; the Waldstein Rondo runs for
ve minutes and 11 seconds, probably
the longest possible time that dAlbert
could take to record it.
Busoni aptly sums up the problem
of his rst recording experience in 1919:
They wanted the Faust waltz (which
lasts a good ten minutes) but it was only
to take four minutes! That meant quickly
cutting, patching and improvising, so
that there should still be some sense
lef in it. (From Larry Sitskys Busoni
and the Piano.)
This issue could also explain dAlberts
fast tempos is he playing faster just to t
the piece (with its cuts) onto the record?
Another medium for recording
back then was the piano roll, which
also had its limitations but allowed for
longer recordings. Both dAlbert and
Teresa Carreo made recordings of the
Waldstein on piano rolls, at around
the same time. Carreos, from 1905, is
available on CD, while dAlberts, from
1906, can be found on YouTube.
Nat Ng (Singapore)
CORRECTION
Dear IP,
Sorry to see that Guy Rickards thinks
Hyperion has not been generous with
the playing time of Stephen Houghs
Brahms Piano Concertos, reviewed in
your last issue (issue 24, March/April
2014). As he points out, we have put
the two concertos on separate CDs,
but he neglects to mention that we
have priced the album as two CDs for
the price of one for all retailers it
is printed on the front of the box
so to accuse us of ungenerosity
seems particularly misplaced! Were
acknowledging the short playing time
in the price, and then some.
Anna Kenyon
Press manager
Hyperion Records


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LETTERS
Write to International Piano, 20 Rugby Street, London, WC1N 3QZ, email
international.piano@rhinegold.co.uk or tweet @IP_mag. Star letters will receive
a free CD from Hyperions best-selling Romantic Piano Concerto series
SPONSORED BY
HYPERI ON RECORDS
IP0514_07_Letters_CJ.indd 7 10/04/2014 11:30:08
8 International Piano May/June 2014
ALICE HERZ-SOMMER, CONCERT PIANIST
AND OLDEST KNOWN SURVIVOR OF THE
HOLOCAUST, DIES AGED 110
P
IANIST ALICE HERZ-SOMMER,
the survivor of Nazi concentration
camps who became an icon all over
the world thanks to her positive outlook
on life, died on 23 February.
Born in Prague in 1903, Herz-Sommer
sufered four years of oppression afer the
Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, followed
by two more in Terezn, the garrison
town turned concentration camp outside
Prague. There, Herz-Sommer gave well
over a hundred concerts. When liberation
was followed by further oppression
under the Communists, she and her
son, later to make his own name as the
cellist Raphael Sommer, moved to Israel,
where she established a reputation as an
outstanding teacher.
A CD of private recordings made by
Herz-Sommer in her 60s, 70s and 80s
was released on AHS Recordings with
the German edition of her biography in
2006. They revealed that, hidden behind
this story of miraculous survival, she was
also one of the great pianists of the past
century. She was a grand-student of Liszt,
having studied with Conrad Ansorge, one
of Liszts later disciples.
Alices basic philosophy Life is
beautiful enabled her to draw strength
even from the many adversities that
confronted her over the years. In an
interview with Herz-Sommer published
recently in IP, Martin Anderson observed:
You come away from a visit to Alice
feeling younger yourself, with a spring
in your step: she is not religious, but she
radiates gratitude for being alive and her
conversation is infused with a profound
human decency.
Andersons interview was published in
issue 23 of IP magazine.
news events


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Were giving you more ways to stay
in touch with International Piano
magazine. Sign up to our monthly
e-newsletter and you will receive
news and details of reviews, offers and
competitions ahead of the crowd.
NE WS & E V E NT S
news events
STAY IN TOUCH
CHARLES IVES STUDIO
RECREATED FOR
SPECIAL EXHIBITION
A
STUDIO DESIGNED TO BE AN
exact replica of the room used
by composer Charles Ives has
opened to the public in the galleries of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters in
New York City.
The newly recreated Charles Ives Studio
mimics the room on the ground oor of
the Ives home in Redding, Connecticut,
where the composer worked for 40 years.
It was there, on the studios modest
upright piano, that Ives composed and
nished several of his major works,
including Three Places in New England,
the Fourth Symphony, the Second
Orchestral Set, the Fourth Violin Sonata
and around 40 songs.
In 2012, Ives grandson, Charles Ives
Tyler, donated the entire contents of the
studio to the academy for permanent
exhibition. The studio had been largely
untouched since Ivess death in 1954.
More than 3,000 objects have been
catalogued and restored, including the
studios furnishings and double doors, to
which Ives himself had pinned clippings,
photos and keepsakes.
The exhibition will be open to the public
22 May-15 June; Thursday-Sunday, 1-4pm.
Closed 24 and 25 May. Future dates to
be announced.
HOW TO SIGN UP:
Online: www.international-piano.com | Email: news@rhinegold.co.uk


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IP0514_08_09_News_CJ.indd 8 14/04/2014 12:09:30
May/June 2014 International Piano 9
NE WS & E V E NT S
news events
RHINEGOLD PUBLISHING TO HOST FREE SERIES OF CONCERTS
R
HINEGOLD PUBLISHING,
publisher of IP, has launched
a new series of free rush-hour
concerts at Londons Conway Hall.
The free Rhinegold Live series will ofer
a unique take on the recital experience.
Concerts will be held in the round at
6:30pm and will be followed by an
informal Q&A with the artist plus a
complimentary drinks reception.
Cellists Julian and Jiaxin Lloyd Webber,
with pianist Pam Chowhan, opened the
series on 3 April, fresh from their recent
A Tale of Two Cellos tour. The event was
sponsored by law rm Teacher Stern.
Keith Clarke, consultant editor of Classical
Music magazine, took charge of the follow-
up Q&A session.
On 2 June, Andrew Litton, best
known as a conductor, will put away his
baton and give a special piano recital
dedicated to Oscar Peterson. Featuring
transcriptions by pianist Steven Osborne,
the programme will launch Littons new
CD on the BIS label, A Tribute to Oscar
Peterson. Claire Jackson, editor of IP, will
speak to Litton afer the concert and take
questions from the audience.
Peregrines Pianos provided a
Schimmel Konzert grand piano for the
rst performance and will also provide
an instrument for Littons recital. The
organisation, based in central
London, sells and hires a range of
upright and grand pianos, as
well as providing a specialised
working environment for the
music profession.
Rhinegold Publishing will host
six concerts a year featuring a range
of artists, from emerging talents
to world-famous performers. In
a period of increasing pressure
to justify the value of the arts,
Rhinegold, in conjunction with
its partners, has curated the series
in the belief that music should be within
the reach of all people.
Live classical music is too ofen a
remote and impersonal experience, said
Ciaran Morton, managing director of
Rhinegold Publishing. We are seeking
to personalise the recital experience,
enlightening and welcoming a new
audience while delivering artistically to
our existing readers. I believe this new
concert series is a logical extension of all
the good work Rhinegold has done for the
classical music sector over the years.
Readers can register for their free tickets
at www.rhinegold.co.uk/live. Each ticket
includes a complimentary drink at the
reception. There are around 150 tickets
available to the public for each concert
and seats are allocated on a rst-come,
rst-served basis.
Follow International
Piano on Twitter:
@IP_mag


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Congratulations to IP
reader Mircea Nestor, who
won the Stephen Hough
competition advertised in
our November/December
edition (issue 22).
The prize which
comprised a pair of
tickets to Houghs recital
in Malvern in February,
luxury accommodation
and the opportunity to
meet the pianist was
provided by Yamaha.
Winner Mircea Nestor, right,
pictured with Stephen Hough
Andrew Litton, best known as
a conductor, will give a special
piano recital dedicated to Oscar
Peterson on 2 June
Peregrines Pianos,
sponsor of the series,
provided a Schimmel
Konzert grand for
the rst recital
British pianist James Rhodes is heading
up a three-part series for UK television
company Channel 4 which will encourage
Britain to engage with music by launching
the countrys biggest ever instrument
amnesty . The programmes will be
accompanied by a major campaign to
get instruments currently languishing in
cupboards and attics to the musicians and
potential musicians who need them.
JAMES RHODES
TO ORGANISE
INSTRUMENT AMNESTY
IP0514_08_09_News_CJ.indd 9 14/04/2014 16:54:53
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AVAILABLE FROM ALL GOOD STORES, ALTERNATIVELY VISIT MARIINSKYLABEL.COM
Released in association with LSO Live. Distributed by harmonia mundi UK
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PIANO CONCERTO NO 3
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VALERY GERGIEV, DENIS MATSUEV
MARIINSKY ORCHESTRA
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 10 11/04/2014 18:27:06
C OMP E T I T I ONS , AWA R DS S I GNI NGS
May/June 2014 International Piano 11
&
Simon Passmore, a student of Murray
McLachlan at the Royal Northern
College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester,
has won the Grand Prix Pianos Maene
of 1,000 at the 12th edition of the
Rencontres Internationales des Jeunes
Pianistes in Brussels. The biannual
competition had an international jury
of nine pianists and featured 24
contestants aged 18 to 24 from China,
Russia, the US, Japan and Europe.
Passmore is the rst UK winner of the
under-24s category. His success follows
on from his win last November at the
International Chopin Festival in Mazovia,
held in Sochaczew.
American pianist Garrick Ohlsson has
been named as the 2014 recipient of the
$50,000 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano
Performance. The award also includes a
residency at the Northwestern Universitys
Bienen School of Music and a public recital
at the Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in 2016.
The biennial award honours pianists who
have achieved the highest levels of national
and international recognition. Previous
winners include Richard Goode (2006),
Stephen Hough (2008), Yem Bronfman
(2010) and Murray Perahia (2012).
A former student of Claudio Arrau,
Ohlsson is renowned for his performances
of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert as well
as the Romantic repertoire. He is a prolic
recording artist and can be heard on the
Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel,
Bridge, BMG, Delos, Hnssler, Hyperion,
Nonesuch, Telarc and Virgin Classics labels.
Boosey & Hawkes has signed publishing
contracts with three new composers:
Johannes Boris Borowski, Bernd Richard
Deutsch and Mike Svoboda. German
composer Borowski has seen his work
premiered under the batons of Pierre
Boulez, Susanna Mlkki and George
Benjamin, and has written for the likes
of the Ensemble Intercontemporain. His
piano works include Variation for Piano
Four Hands (2010), a Piano Concerto
(2010/11) and a Piano Trio (2013).
Viennese composer Deutsch was
featured at last years Wien Modern
festival and his Mad Dog which he
describes as a zoomorphic play tracking
24 canine hours in three movements
is becoming a popular favourite with
leading ensembles.
American trombonist and composer
Svoboda is best known for his
collaborations as a performer with
Karlheinz Stockhausen in the 1980s and
1990s, and for his premieres of more
than 400 works for trombone. Current
commissions include an ensemble work for
the Eunoia Quintet and a new triple brass
concerto for the Cottbus Philharmonic.
The annual Rhinegold Charity Fund,
which ofers 10,000 worth of advertising
across magazine publisher Rhinegolds
range of classical music and education
titles, has been awarded to the Pro Corda
Trust for the 2014/15 nancial year.
The fund, established by the publisher
of IP, will also provide Pro Corda
with marketing, design and account
management support.
Pro Corda is a music and educational
charity established in 1969 to provide
education in the art, philosophy and
theory of music to young people across
the UK.
Following applications from a large
number of worthy charities, Pro Corda
was selected as the recipient of the fund
by Rhinegolds board of directors and
the newly appointed chairman of the
Rhinegold Charity Fund, Stephen Turvey.
Applications for the 2015/16
Rhinegold Charity Fund will open
in autumn 2014.
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Garrick Ohlsson
Johannes Boris Borowski
A masterclass held at
Pro Cordas 2013 amateur
piano weekend in Suffolk
US
$50,000 PRIZE FOR
GARRICK OHLSSON
BELGIUM
BRITISH STUDENT
WINS IN BRUSSELS
UK
NEW SIGNINGS AT
BOOSEY & HAWKES
UK
RHINEGOLD CHARITY
FUND AWARDED
IP0514_11_News_CJ.indd 11 14/04/2014 16:47:18
Academos
Irish Chamber
Orchestra Academy
ACADEMOS Irish Chamber Orchestra Academy
in association with
Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick
Presents

Master of Arts in Classical String Performance
Applications are invited for the following instruments: Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Piano, Harpsichord
Further information: Dr. Ferenc Szcs (Course Director) E: Ferenc.Szucs@ul.ie T: + 353 61 202918
www.irishchamberorchestra.com www.irishworldacademy.ie www.ul.ie
ACADEMY
SOUNDI NG FORWARD
LI STENI NG BACK
24 29 NOVEMBER 2014
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK
The competition is open to pianists aged 18 to 30
The final will be accompanied by the
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
All applicants are eligible to be considered for scholarships to the RNCM
To find out more, please visit www.rncm.ac.uk/jmipc
or contact Andy Macauley on (+44) 161 907 5339
jmipc@rncm.ac.uk
Supported by the James Mottram Bequest
THE JURY
Michael Lewin USA
Piotr Paleczny Poland
Matti Raekallio Finland
Martin Roscoe UK
Graham Scott UK chair
Nelita True USA
Dan-Wen Wei PR China
Eleanor Wong Hong Kong
First prize of: 10,000 plus concert engagements
Second prize 5,000 | Third prize 2,500
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 12 14/04/2014 12:37:14
W
HEN INTERNATIONAL
concert pianist Yuja Wang
performed at the Hollywood
Bowl in 2011 wearing gasp! a short
dress, columns were duly written debating
the merits of her choice in clothing, or
lack thereof. (Her dress Tuesday was so
short and tight that had there been any less
of it, the Bowl might have been forced to
restrict admission to any music lover under
18 not accompanied by an adult.) Concert
wear is a popular topic for discussion in
classical music circles: should the orchestra
dress in black? Are jeans ever acceptable
for audience members? And should soloists
prepare a change of outt for afer the
interval, like their pop contemporaries?
At the time, Wang patiently answered
the inane questions about her outt: yes,
it was very short; yes, she felt comfortable
wearing it; and yes, she may wear
something similar at some point in the
future. And then she probably considered
the matter closed.
But three years later, it is impossible
to read an article or review relating to
Wang that does not mention The Dress.
Last month, a piece appeared in the Daily
Telegraph under the headline, I can wear
long skirts when Im 40. It referred to her
fondness for riskily short, clingy dresses,
which have generated even more comment
than her fabulous playing. The article also
mentioned Wangs sadness at the passing
of much-admired conductor Claudio
Abbado, who had died the day prior to
the interview. Surely an internationally
renowned musicians comment on rst-
hand experience playing with a legendary
conductor is of greater importance than
what she chooses to wear on stage? The
subs obviously didnt think so, and led
with the fashion angle.
Sadly, Wangs experience relates to wider
issues with sexism in the classical music
world. How ofen does Lang Lang have
to justify his equally alternative choice in
concert wear? Wangs decision to wear a
short dress on stage is as about as interesting
as James Rhodess decision to wear jeans;
that is to say, relevant in the context of a
conversation about stagecraf, but irrelevant
in all other circumstances. Wangs technical
brilliance, her highly charged readings of
Rachmaninov, her studies with pedagogue
Gary Grafman, are all far more interesting
than her hemline.
The piano world is not immune to
this obsession with image, and it is our
responsibility to challenge it; the buck
must stop somewhere. We have featured
a range of artists on the cover of IP, from
much-loved stars (Stephen Hough, issue
22) to up-and-coming artists (Katya
Apekisheva, issue 15), elder statesmen
(Menahem Pressler, issue 23) and those
in mid-career (Shai Wosner, issue 18).
Sometimes, we even have pianos on the
cover (issues 19 and 24).
We featured Wang on the cover in 2010,
pre-dressgate (issue 1, May/June 2010).
Then, she was interviewed as part of a
discussion on the gender gap in pianism.
She spoke about the expectation that
women are supposed to be lyrical players.
Perhaps this is why she excels at works by
Rachmaninov, going against the grain in
her repertoire choices. (In these pages,
Michael Church has observed her rousing
Rachmaninov and scintillating Scriabin.)
When researching for this piece I was
disgusted to nd an online video clip that
refers to Wang as the pianist who dresses
like a street walker. This is the treatment
she receives for simply wearing a short
skirt. I have seen many women wear far
more revealing outts; Wangs penchant
for a shorter dress is not particularly
unusual, never mind warrant this level
of vitriol.
Many people, including pianists, enjoy
experimenting with fashion and expressing
themselves through their clothes. It is
understandable that soloists may want to
dress for the stage, be it in a freshly pressed
suit, ball gown or short cocktail dress. But
fashion and music are not inextricably
linked; and our opinions of the former
should not afect our impression of
the latter.
Wang is now 27 and, although she has
the support of a major label, Deutsche
Grammophon, she is not yet at the
pinnacle of her career. Her Barbican recital
in February conrmed her position as
a pianist of enormous promise. She is
an artist on the world stage and deserves
media coverage that praises her technical
and musical nesse everything else,
including her dress sense, is peripheral. e
C OMME NT
May/June 2014 International Piano 13
Pay attention to a
pianists artistry, not
their taste in fashion,
writes Claire Jackson
Musician or clothes horse?
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IP0514_13_Comment_CJ.indd 13 14/04/2014 08:13:14
Mikhal Pletnev
Anne Quefflec
Grigory Sokolov
Daniil Trifonov
...
Leif Ove Andsnes
Nicholas Angelich
Yulianna Avdeeva
Boris Berezovsky
Nelson Freire
Nikola Lugansky
w w w. f e s t i v a l - p i a n o . c o m
B o o k i n g s : + 3 3 ( 0 ) 4 4 2 5 0 5 1 1 5
Pianism
at its best
Preliminary Selections
20.08. 29.08.2014
Finals
25.08. 04.09.2015
Highly esteemed pianists
perform in honour of the
60
th
Busoni Competition
FERRUCCIO BUSONI
International Piano Competition Foundation
Piazza Domenicani 25 | 39100 Bolzano (I) | T (+39) 0471 976568 | info@concorsobusoni.it
wwww.cooncoorsobbusooni.itt
Internatiionall Pianno Festivaal
20.008. 300.08..20144
th

Inteernatioonal Piiano Coompettition
220114 2015
Bo olzano Bozen Itaaly
Competition Jubilee
Jan Jiracek von Arnim
Fabio Bidini
Alfred Brendel
Roberto Cappello
Arnaldo Cohen
Alexander Kobrin
Louis Lortie
Alexander Madzar
Bruno Monsaingeon
Vladimir Selivochin
Alexander Shtarkman
Nina Tichman
Dubravka Tomsic
Lilya Zilberstein
and many more!
PARTICIPAATING AARTISTS
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 14 14/04/2014 11:30:30
May/June 2014 International Piano 15
DI A RY OF A N AC C OMPA NI S T
MONDAY Busy day ahead. Afernoon
and evening: Young Composers chamber-
music forum. Music not available in
advance: happy nevertheless to tackle
anything idiomatically written, if not too
impossibly difcult. Pack standby drum-
sticks, blu-tack, dusters, nail-brush and
erasers all items required in previous
contemporary music scores, possibly not
needed today though preparedness always
helpful. But rst, accompany two theatre
auditions in morning.
Slight hiatus in rst audition. Singer
stops in mid-song. Falter, stop, exchange
glances. Keep going, she hisses, Im
back-phrasing ah, that extreme-
rubato trick used by Peggy Lee and
others, starting a phrase more than a bar
late and catching up en route. Blush,
continue. Coincidentally, second
auditionee also stops en route. Exchange
glances: am ready for back-phrasing this
time, carry on regardless. Singer scowls,
approaches piano. Cue me, she snarls,
sotto voce. Ive forgotten the **** words.
Blush, stop. Anticipate ultimate put-down
remark from audition panel, Thanks
anyway fortunately not forthcoming.
Morning ends.
AFTERNOON Young Composers rehearsal.
Greeted on arrival by mentor. Hands over
piano part with evil grin. Quite a concerto
for you, ha-ha. We told composers to write
music as hard as they liked, cos youre all
great professionals and can play anything,
ha-ha. Whoopee, ha-ha. Wistfully recall old
composition-tutor warning: Easy music
will be played well: difcult music may not
get played at all.
Piano part is on three staves, mostly full,
many notes prefaced by up to eight grace-
notes, each with diferent dynamic and
articulation, and all about three octaves
apart. Tempo-marking manic. Quick
glance at other players music: seems just
as hard. Recall similar work from long ago,
rehearsal prefaced by conductor saying,
I heard [world-famous group] do this
piece. They just made it up. V comforting,
though had been poor preparation for
impromptu pre-performance talk, at
which was suddenly asked to demonstrate
virtuoso piano part from bar 50. Busked
something in approximate same contour.
Now well hear the same again, with
violin part added. Panic. Had already
forgotten what had just played. Had
prayed that second busk sounded not too
unlike rst.
Today, glad to notice big percussion
section, promising much covering re.
Also spot intermittent celeste-part, in
bass clef and marked ff. Only way to
get ff sound from celeste is to push
it of platform, presume not intended
by composer though provocation
considerable. Rehearsal begins. Composer
has mistakenly written horn part at actual
pitch, rather than properly transposed.
No way am transposing ad hoc, declares
player. Will play as written. Does so, a fh
away from intended pitches. Composer
only notices in very last bar, meant to be
in unison. Meanwhile, have been playing
anything, save for two whole pages skipped
by accident through hasty page-turn.
Finish before anyone else. Will claim it
as front-phrasing if asked, but composer
apparently satised. Move on.
Next piece minimalist: notes easy,
keeping count harder. Repeat same bar
for three minutes non-stop while various
uninteresting things happen elsewhere.
Ponder that Beethoven & Co could get
through a whole scherzo in that time.
Catch eye of pretty girl cellist, roll eyes
heavenwards in sympathy. Receive glare
in reply: turns out to be girlfriend of
composer. Most interesting moment is
query from clarinettist. What are these
squiggles in bar 20? Reply, Standard
notation for key-rattling, of course.
Of course.
Rehearsal ends. Meal break denite
high spot of day. Reassemble for concert
run-through. Bar 20 of minimalist piece
approaches: no sound from clarinettist,
whether key-rattling or not. Look over:
clarinet chair empty. Ah. Player either still
on meal break, lost way back, lost interest
or else indulging in some extreme form of
back-phrasing, with plans to arrive shortly.
Fortunately, composer oblivious. Funny
old business, music. e I
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In which Michael
Round learns to
back-phrase
Pack standby drum-sticks, blu-tack, dusters,
nail-brush and erasers all items required in
previous contemporary music scores
Diary
o an
accompanist
IP0514_15_Diary_CJ.indd 15 14/04/2014 16:55:19
The Ninth National Chopin Piano Competition
February 21 - March 1, 2015
MlAMl FLORlDA
Open to U5A pianists born between 1985 and 1999
The Iargest FlR5T PRlZE
cash award of any piano conpetition in the United 5tates
$75,000
AppIication DeadIine
November 3, 2014
Chopin Foundation of the U.5.
TeI: {305} 868-0624 Fax: {305} 865-5150
E-naiI: info@chopin.org
www.chopin.org
b
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Joaqun Achcarro
Martha Argerich
Rudolf Buchbinder
Evgeny Kissin
Steven Kovacevich
Menahem Pressler
Grigory Sokolov
Daniil Trifonov
TICKET OFFICE
OPENS
10 MARCH 2014
FROM
18 JULY TO
3 AUGUST
2014
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 16 11/04/2014 18:27:09
RU NNI NG HE A D C OV E R S T ORY
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Music is like
sculpture i n time
Afer several years of intense preparation,
Jean Muller has nally recorded Liszts
Transcendental Etudes. Sarah Lambie went
to Luxembourg to meet him eventually

IP0514_17_19_CoverStory_CJ.indd 17 14/04/2014 13:07:32
18 International Piano May/June 2014
C OV E R S T ORY
O
N BOARD MY FLIGHT TO
Luxembourg to interview Jean
Muller, I read IPs last interview
with the pianist. At the time February
2013 he was preparing to record Liszts
Transcendental Etudes. Ive been working
on them for two years, he said. Im still a
little nervous but I now know what I want
to do with these pieces.
A year later, in February 2014, Mullers
CD Transcendence was launched with a
recital in the Grand Auditorium of the
Luxembourg Philharmonie. Muller wrote
in his own programme notes for the
concert that in Liszts works, a limitless
physical, mental and spiritual engagement
is demanded of the interpreter.
The concert began with a work that
doesnt feature on the recording: Liszts
Dante Sonata, Aprs une Lecture du Dante:
Fantasia quasi Sonata. More than one could
ever be while listening to a recording, I was
struck by the businesslike assurance with
which Muller approached the piece. There
is a precision to his playing that appears at
nger level to be entirely throwaway, and
yet at the transitions between the most
frenetic passages and the calmer moments,
his engagement with the instrument
became enormously delicate seemingly
caring, as if for a fragile living thing.
This deference to the music
characterised Mullers entire recital. In the
Transcendental Etude No 5, Feux follets
which the pianist described in his notes
as perhaps the most difcult work ever
written for the piano he combined
a quite extraordinary agility and speed
with a delicacy of touch that made several
audience members around me smile. As in
No 7, Eroica, there was a delightful humour
to be found in moments of the music,
with its comic efect further enhanced by
Mullers po-faced execution.
Though some commentators have
remarked on Mullers apparent disregard
for any need to be diferent, his
performance of Etude No 9 stood out for
me as a very individual interpretation.
The whole piece carried an air of gentle
hesitancy, augmented by his creative use
of the sustaining pedal. In fact, it was this
respect for space that most stood out: the
audiences faith in Mullers rubato was
unerring and he was able to stretch certain
moments achingly and beautifully.
We saw all facets of composer and
performer in these pieces: Etude No
10 was perhaps the most passionate of
Mullers performances, with the enormous
intensity of the repeated high octaves in
the nal third of the piece. Etude No 11,
Harmonies du soir, brought a sonorous
warmth, and in Etude No 12, Chasse-neige,
the expertly painted snow urries in some
of the lef-hand passages were executed
with extraordinary virtuosic pace.
The audience gave Muller a much-
deserved standing ovation and, though
he is relatively unknown internationally,
it is testament to his enormous success at
home that my post-concert interview was
deferred to the next morning to allow
him to be congratulated by the family
of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. The
countrys royal family have already made
Muller a Chevalier de lOrdre de Mrite
Civil et Militaire dAdolphe de Nassau and
had unexpectedly attended the recital.
I spoke to Muller the morning afer his
concert, and my rst question took us back
to IPs last interview with him: had he
managed to do what he wanted with the
pieces? I think Im actually quite happy
with what happened during the recording,
even though of course back then I was
still in the working process, he says. Its
really difcult to play these pieces, but I
think its even more tricky to record them,
because when you record something you
want to create an interpretation that can
stand multiple listenings. I took ve days
here in the Philharmonie to record them.
It was quite exciting, and very tiring too.
The piano was tuned every 45 minutes.
At a certain point, you need to be able
to identify so much with the music that
you dont really have to think about what
you play you just play it and it comes out
of you without the need for you to think
about any potential problems. Since these
pieces are packed with problems, it takes a
long time to get to that point. I think the
musical content in these pieces is somehow
hidden behind the wall of technical
difculties. Ultimately, however, he says:
These pieces are like symphonic poems
for the piano, so thats where I wanted to
get to.

I took ve days here


in the Philharmonie
to record it. It was
quite exciting, and
very tiring too. The
piano was tuned
every 45 minutes
At the Chopin Monument in
Royal Lazienki Park, Warsaw


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IP0514_17_19_CoverStory_CJ.indd 18 14/04/2014 08:15:38
May/June 2014 International Piano 19
I suggest to Muller that he seems to
have a particular respect for space, and
thankfully he agrees with me: Thats
part of what I want to do with music in
general. Music is like sculpture in time,
somehow. The interesting part is that you
only have a certain amount of time, but
you have to ll that time well. You have
to live and breathe every fraction of
a second of it, and I think thats the
challenge. You need to make the time
somehow longer. Ideally, while you play,
you should make people forget there is
time running. Thats my goal when Im
working on pieces.
A
LONGSIDE HIS FATHER AND
mentor Gary, Muller is now a
professor at the Conservatoire de
Luxembourg. I ask him what he gets out
of this job. When you have to explain
something to a student, that makes it
clearer for yourself, he says. Sometimes
I think I learn more from my pupils than
they do from me but I hope they learn
something nevertheless!
Once, I had a student who was
playing the same piece as me, and when
I play something for a long time I tend to
somehow neglect to look at the score. With
this student, I found myself looking at the
score and discovered a reading mistake: not
with the student, but with me. I ask Muller
if he owned up. Yes I looked at it and
said, Ah no, its correct. Usually I do look
at the score once again before concerts,
and sometimes its quite interesting what
I nd there!
Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt are Mullers
favourite composers, and hes now released
recordings of all three, so I ask him whats
next on the logical trajectory. Well, I
have a few interesting projects, he says.
Im working on a Russian programme
with Rachmaninov, Prokoev, Scriabin and
Tchaikovsky. Thats music I love and which
I performed a lot when I was a teenager,
but then I lost sight of it and now I really
feel I want to do it again with a little more
distance not only the raw emotion. In
the meantime, however, hes touring the
Liszt concert internationally, nishing at
Londons Cadogan Hall in October. e
Jean Mullers new album Transcendence is
out now via JCH Productions
C OV E R S T ORY


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IP0514_17_19_CoverStory_CJ.indd 19 14/04/2014 08:15:45
new CHANNEL CLASSICS release
WWW.CHANNELCLASSICS
complete discography and high res. downloads: www.channelclassics.com
distribution in UK: RSK Entertainment info@rskentertainment.co.uk
Music for children can be of two kinds. It may be intended
for children to play or for children to hear. Both kinds of
music are characterized generally by brevity and ease of
comprehension, and often by characteristic titles related to
fairy tales or songs. This cd offers old and new examples
of this tradition, performed by nine -years old Serena
Wang, the most conspicuous music prodigy under the di-
rect tutorship of well-known and highly respected piano
teacher Professor Dan Zhao Yi.
Youtube: http://bit.ly/1gaLcZL
Gathering standing ovations she amazes the world with
her deep emotional and brilliant play, her extraordinary
music talents and the way she comminutes through music
and with people.
debut recording
Serena Wang
Prepare to
be amazed!
Jared Sacks,
producer, sound engineer
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 20 14/04/2014 09:21:24
T
HE MUSIC WORLD IS A
paradoxical place. It has a fervent
interest in young prodigious talent,
yet simultaneously warns that early fame
rarely leads to keyboard greatness. The
30 pianists outlined below are proof that
youth can be equated with brilliance.
Each has achieved the impossible dream: a
combination of technical excellence and a
passion for pianism strong enough to base
a career on. No doubt there are others, not
listed here, who also deserve our attention.
This list is not intended to be exhaustive,
but to provide an overview of young
players who look set to sparkle.
THE SUPERSTARS
A septet of 20-somethings have been lucky
enough to harness support from major
record labels. Dazzling on disc and on stage,
they are slated as the next generation of
super-pianists. Deutsche Grammophon has
snared the lions share of them: Yuja Wang
(27), Daniil Trifonov (23), Alice Sara Ott
(IP cover artist, issue 6, March/April 2011,
now 26) and Sunwook Kim (26) have
all recorded for the yellow label. Wang, a
charismatic soloist, has won praise for her
unbridled virtuosity (see her YouTube clip
of Flight of the Bumblebee, 3.5 million hits
and counting) no technical challenge
is too great for her dexterous ngers. In
recent years critics have questioned her
musicianship, but nearly all agree that the
best is yet to come. The same could be said
of Ott. When she gave her Proms debut
in 2011 Ott was relatively unknown, and
wowed the audience with her performance
of the Grieg Piano Concerto, returning to
the stage for several encores. Today, she is
an international soloist par excellence and
recently recorded Mussorgskys Pictures at
an Exhibition.
Sunwook Kim has impressed both
on record hes recorded the Emperor
Concerto with the Seoul Philharmonic
and on stage, also with Beethoven,
performing with the Philharmonia
Orchestra. But the jewel in Deutsche
Grammophons crown has to be Daniil
Trifonov. Beloved by fellow pianists and
critics including IP writers Trifonov
won Moscows Tchaikovsky Competition
in 2011 and has not put a pedal wrong since.
His Carnegie Hall debut last February was
released on disc, to critical acclaim.
Former BBC New Generation Artists
Khatia Buniatishvili (26) and Igor Levit
(27) are both signed to Sony. Buniatishvili,
who has been supported by Martha
Argerich, divides critics with her penchant
for extremes in rubato. In 2011, the Liszt
bicentenary year, her interpretations stood
out as both poetic and individual, and
her lunchtime Lisztian Prom at Cadogan
Hall was a festival highlight. Her Chopin
recording was equally divisive, but those
that admire her playing and there are
many do so for its condence and ery
temperament. Levit (IP cover artist, issue
21, September/October 2013) is a pianist
with a burning intellect and a lively
interest in wider repertoire. He has taken
harpsichord lessons and champions the
work of Frederic Rzewski, as well having
an afnity with Beethoven. Levits recent
Southbank debut was universally hailed a
success, with ve-star reviews across the
broadsheets.
The nal artist in the super-pianist group
is HJ Lim (IP cover artist, issue 11, January/
February 2012, now 27). Signed by EMI
Classics, now Warner Classics, Lim released
the complete Beethoven sonatas in 2012
as four two-CD sets grouped into eight
themes, such as The Eternal Feminine
NE X T GE NE R AT I ON
May/June 2014 International Piano 21
Its impossible to predict the future,
particularly with regard to pianistic talent.
Claire Jackson tentatively selects
30 pianists under 30 who are likely to
dominate the world stage in years to come

30
30
UNDER
IP0514_21_23_30under30_CJ.indd 21 14/04/2014 12:28:47
22 International Piano May/June 2014
NE X T GE NE R AT I ON
and Destiny, with a box set now available.
The recordings have a Marmite love/hate
quality; some claim the interpretations
will turn younger musos on to Beethoven,
while others dislike the sheer force behind
her playing.
THE ELUSIVES
While the super-pianists ll the concert
halls, another smaller group of world-class
musicians are quietly honing their art.
Benjamin Grosvenor (21) is busy studying
at the Royal Academy of Music and rarely
gives public performances. When he does,
they are extraordinary concerts such as
his performance of Liszts Second Piano
Concerto to open the 2011 Proms season,
or his more recent Wigmore Hall recital.
Ever since he won the piano category of the
BBC Young Musician of the Year
competition at the age of 11, Grosvenor has
been marked for great things. Shunning the
opportunity of a meteoric rise to fame, he
has kept out of the limelight, recording
but not over-promoting for Decca (two
discs so far). An astonishing talent and a
very nice man, Grosvenor will no doubt rise
to the very top of the pianistic ranks hes
practically there already.
The second pianist in this category also
records for Decca. Behzod Abduraimov
(24) is not yet a household name, but
his Wigmore Hall debut was a triumph
and subsequent performances have been
unanimously praised. (Michael Church
once dubbed him a new Horowitz.) Both
Abduraimov and Stefan Ciric (28) remain
lesser known, with Cirics debut recording
soon to be released under Hedone Records.
These pianists, though at the start of their
careers, have built very strong foundations
from which to sustain a long and successful
life at the piano stool.
THE ONES TO WATCH
The phrase up and coming is a magazine-
friendly term for artists who are yet to
be properly dened. These are pianists
who have proved themselves exceptional
in many ways and are reaching pivotal
moments in their pianistic lives. Supported
by Classic FM, Chinese pianist Ji Liu (24)
also an accomplished breakdancer
recently reached number one in the UK
classical chart with his debut solo album
Piano Reections. But dont let that put you
of Liu studied at the Royal Academy
of Music and is currently undertaking a
practical PhD project at Kings College,
London. Other artists on the brink of
international success include Alexandra
Dariescu (29) who won a Women of the
Future Award in 2013, Joyce Yang (28),
who has subbed for Lang Lang and received
the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant;
Joseph Moog (26), whose 2013 Scarlatti
disc (via Onyx) impressed; Dutch pianist
Hannes Minnaar (29), whose debut album
(on Etcetera) was dubbed sensational by
IP critic Eric Schoones; and Wu Qian (30),
pianist with the Sitkovetsky Trio, which
has been favourably compared to the
Beaux Arts Trio.
London-based piano fans will have
the opportunity to see some new names
perform at Cadogan Hall this summer as
part of a new initiative to give young pianists
a London platform. Pianoworks, launched
by the Music Incubator and supported
by Vladimir Ashkenazy, culminates in a
special concert on 11 June that features solo
repertoire, new transcriptions and works
for six hands on one piano. The pianists are
Julian Clef (23); Salih Can Gevrek (22) and
Arsha Kaviani (23). The more established
Grace Francis will also perform. Each come
with dazzling recommendations from
artists such as Stephen Hough and all have a
clutch of awards to their name. Expect eye-
watering technique and musical maturity
beyond their years.
THE COMPETITION WINNERS
While securing a prize at a piano
competition does not automatically
guarantee long-term career success, it can
be a useful stepping stone to super-pianist
status, particularly if the competition is one
of the big hitters. For example, Sunwook
Kim came to international attention when


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Daniil Trifonov Alexandra Dariescu
Conrad Tao
Alice Sara Ott
IP0514_21_23_30under30_CJ.indd 22 14/04/2014 12:28:55
May/June 2014 International Piano 23
NE X T GE NE R AT I ON
he won the prestigious Leeds International
Piano Competition in 2006, aged just 18.
Pianists with recent wins include Federico
Colli (26), who won the Leeds prize in
2012 and will be giving his Southbank
Centre recital debut as we go to press;
Alexej Gorlatch (26), winner of the 2009
Dublin International Piano Competition;
and Pavel Kolesnikov (25), who took
rst place at the Honens International
Piano Competition in 2012. Kolesnikov
and Gorlatch both garnered rave reviews
of the Wigmore Hall recitals they gave as
part of their competition prize packages.
Sean Chen (25) has just won the American
Pianists Associations DeHaan Classical
Fellowship (having also won third prize
at the 14th Van Cliburn International
Piano Competition), which provides him
with numerous high-prole recital dates
in between his studies at Yale School of
Music.
Another pianist who has given herself
a head start thanks to her success on the
competition circuit is Beatrice Rana
(20). Rana impressed at the Montreal
International Musical Competition in 2011,
where she was awarded rst prize. She then
won second prize and the Audience Award
at the Van Cliburn competition, was
picked up by an agency, released her rst
disc on ATMA (to universal praise) and
hasnt looked back.
Similarly, Boris Giltburg (30) thought
his chances of winning the Queen
Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels
were over when he blacked out during the
semi nals, but the Russian pianist went
on to take the much-coveted rst prize and
his prole has since rocketed. He gave a
superb Southbank recital last year (dubbed
the outstanding event of the season by the
ever-discerning Michael Church).

THE PRODIGIES
There are many issues to consider when
nurturing young talent; burnout lurks
gloomily in the shadows. One key
organisation that aims to support young
artists is the Gilmore Young Artist Award,
a biennial prize for US pianists aged 22
and under that is strictly monetary and
advisory, without managerial assistance.
Each Gilmore Young Artist receives a
$15,000 stipend to further their musical
career and educational development, as
well as $10,000 to commission a new
piano composition for which they will
have exclusive performance rights for one
year. Nominations are made by music
professionals from around the world,
and an anonymous selection committee
evaluates the nominees (who do not know
they are under consideration). The most
recent recipients Conrad Tao (19) and
George Li (18) have won international
acclaim for their extraordinary pianism.
Tao, who is also a Davidson Fellow
Laureate, is a composer, artistic director
and recording artist (last year he released
two records: Voyages, via EMI; and Gordon
Getty: Piano Pieces on the Pentatone Classics
label). Unlike his British contemporary
Grosvenor, Tao has continued to perform
extensively while undertaking his studies at
Juilliard. Li, whom IP critic Stephen Wigler
noted has everything needed to achieve
pianistic greatness , keeps a lower prole,
focusing on his dual-degree programme at
Harvard University and the New England
Conservatory. Both pianists and the newly
announced 2014 Gilmore Young Artists,
Andrew Hsu (19) and Llewellyn Sanchez-
Werner (16) have all the elements
required for glittering careers; the next ve
years will be crucial in their development.
And if these high-achieving young
pianists cause us to wince at our own
comparative musical shortcomings, spare a
thought for friends of Serena Wang. The
nine-year-old is clocking up competition
wins across Asia and has caused jaws to drop
across the world. Channel Classics Records
has just released Wangs rst recording,
Dances of the Dolls; it features childrens
music by Chinese composers, including her
tutor Dan Zhao Yi, plus works by Schubert
and Chopin. Those anticipating a technically
brilliant but robotic performance, prepare
to be amazed. Listening blind, it would be
virtually impossible to tell that this was a
nine-year-old. Aware of the challenges such
prodigious talent brings, Serenas parents
who are not musical themselves limit the
number of concert performances she gives.
The disc, brought out by an independent
label, is intended for children.
With the right support from fans and
promoters alike this impressive pool of
talent could move us into a new golden age
of pianism. Watch this space. e
Igor Levit Serena Wang


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IP0514_21_23_30under30_CJ.indd 23 14/04/2014 12:29:02
24 International Piano May/June 2014
NE X T GE NE R AT I ON
L
UCERNE IS A SMALL CITY BY
international standards, with a
population of just over 76,000. But
its also a place where music festivals grow.
The worlds greatest orchestras, conductors
and soloists congregate there every summer,
and under Claudio Abbado the concerts
of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra became
occasions of fabled music making.
There has long been a smaller-scale Easter
ofshoot of the main festival, and since 1998
theres also been a specialised piano festival
every November. This annual celebration is
centred around the KKL, Lucernes 1,840-
seat lakeside concert hall, but also typically
spills out into its foyer where a Ferrari-
red Steinway concert grand grabs lots of
attention and beyond that into bars and
hotels in the form of a free jazz programme.
The festival also provides a platform
for emerging young artists, with midday
concerts given in the airy, modern, clean-
lined Lukaskirche, just a few minutes
walk from the KKL. Last November, Alexej
Gorlatch, Nareh Arghamanyan and Adam
Laloum presented themselves on days
when the main attractions were Evgeny
Kissin, Gabriela Montero and Murray
Perahia. The seasonal timing seeped into
Monteros programme: afer performing
improvisations on themes sung by audience
members, she asked for a non-musical theme
and ended up celebrating the winters rst
snow, which had arrived earlier that day.
I took time out to meet up with each
of the young players and asked all three
the same set of questions, from when they
The Lucerne Festival
series features some
of the biggest names
in the piano world,
but its debut strand
showcases the names
of the future. Michael
Dervan reports from
Switzerland
SWISS
SUPPORT
Nareh Arghamanyan
IP0514_24_25_Lucerne_CJ.indd 24 14/04/2014 15:10:31
May/June 2014 International Piano 25
NE X T GE NE R AT I ON
realised that being a concert pianist was
their destiny (Gorlatch and Laloum not
until they nished school, Arghamanyan
from the moment she grasped that her great
passion, the piano, could also be a career)
to what alternative careers might have
interested them (architecture for Laloum,
medicine for Gorlatch and something with
art or a doctor for Arghamanyan) and their
views on whether the early 21st century is
a golden age for pianism (denitely not,
said Arghamanyan; ask me in 40 years, said
Laloum; and maybe, said Gorlatch, because
of the knowledge of all the various piano
schools thats now so readily accessible).
Their backgrounds could hardly be
more varied. Gorlatch was born in 1988
in Kiev and has lived in Germany since
1991. Arghamanyan was born in Vanadzor,
Armenia, in 1989 and began studying in
Vienna at the age of 15. Laloum was born in
Toulouse in 1987, began the piano at the age
of ten and completed his studies in Paris.
Gorlatchs recital included the complete
Chopin Op 10 Etudes in a knockout
performance, musically thoughtful,
technically masterful. Arghamanyan
showed herself a player of exceptional
facility, getting around the keyboard with
grace at astonishing velocity and always
conjuring unexpected colours, as if the
idea of playing anything in the most direct
way would be deadly boring. Her Bach,
the Partita in A minor, was dreamlike,
magical, mysterious, not quite real.
Laloum devoted his 75-minute slot to just
two works: Schuberts Moments musicaux
(always considered and carefully balanced)
and Schumanns F sharp minor Sonata
(full of the excitement of youthful stress).
They were all very clear when I asked
about the pianists they admire: Alfred
Cortot, Sviatoslav Richter, and among the
living I really enjoy Radu Lupu and the
young Daniil Trifonov, who plays like a
god (Laloum); Anyone who makes me
interested to continue listening and keeps
my full attention, making it impossible for
me to go and switch of or even turn up the
volume, because I might miss something
while doing that (Gorlatch); and, The old
generation, Claudio Arrau, Artur Schnabel,
Wilhelm Kempf, Mieczysaw Horszowski,
Vladimir Horowitz, and among living
pianists I like Martha Argerich, Ivo
Pogorelich (Arghamanyan).
When asked about the best advice theyd
had, Laloum said, Never be afraid. Gorlatch
pointed to audience feedback, especially
in the form of letters. I read them and I
understand what music means for other
people. I get something from outside that I
would never have expected. Arghamanyan
recalled playing Dvok for Mitsuko Uchida
at the Marlboro Festival. She told me, when
youve got a melody, pet it, carry it, care for it,
live with it, put it under your pillow. You will
wake up the next morning and you will play
it diferently.
A
LTHOUGH YOUNG, THEYRE
already experienced enough to have
amazing stories about some of the
pianos theyve had to perform on. Laloum
recalled one that made his Mozart sound like
Prokoev at an audition in Lyon. Gorlatch
described another being three times as heavy
as normal for a programme that included
Beethovens Op 110. And Arghamanyan
played Liszt and Chopin on a synthesizer in a
French church. The organisers had to source
it at the last minute they had assumed she
would be bringing her own.
The most difcult aspect of the art for
Gorlatch is, Having to make music develop
at this one point in time, in a concert. You
dont get a choice. You go on stage and
the audience is there, and it will happen
in that moment. Arghamanyans response
was related. The most difcult thing is to
really go into the exact character when you
play a piece. We are a little bit like actors.
You have to really become the character of
the piece in order to reveal it. And as we
play diferent pieces during a recital, we
have to change very quickly.
I ended each interview by asking what
they would do if I gave them enough money
to live of comfortably for the next ve years.
Laloum said he would practise more and
enjoy the luxury of spending long periods
with just one piece. Gorlatch would go to
places Ive never been before, or to places
Ive been before but where there should be
more classical concerts. Playing for people
who have not been in touch with music until
now would be a major matter for me. And
Arghamanyan said, I would buy a piano!
I have a very bad one, and having the right
tool is like half of your work. Its a cry Im
sure many a young colleague would echo. e
The 2014 Lucerne Festival at the Piano runs
from 22 to 30 November. The line-up includes
Maurizio Pollini, Pierre-Laurent Aimard,
Leif Ove Andsnes, Evgeny Kissin, Paul Lewis,
Martin Helmchen and Marc-Andr Hamelin,
with debut recitals from Vestards Simkus,
Sophie Pacini and Benjamin Grosvenor.
www.lucernefestival.ch
When youve got a melody, pet it, carry it,
care for it, live with it, put it under your pillow.
You will wake up the next morning and you will
play it differently


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Alexej Gorlatch Adam Laloum
IP0514_24_25_Lucerne_CJ.indd 25 14/04/2014 13:14:01
26 International Piano May/June 2014
HE NR I DU T I L L E U X
French composer Henri Dutilleuxs (1916-2013) lifelong
devotion to the piano was bolstered by his marriage to
the pianist Genevive Joy, writes Benjamin Ivry
Sounds of joy
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IP0514_26_29_Dutilleux_CJ.indd 26 14/04/2014 12:05:59
May/June 2014 International Piano 27
T
HE FRENCH COMPOSER
Henri Dutilleux, who died in
May 2013 aged 97, had a special
relationship with the piano. Although
famed for writing symphonic works
and concertos commissioned by such
superstars as the conductor George Szell,
violinist Isaac Stern, and cellist Mstislav
Rostropovich, from the 1940s through
the 1990s, Dutilleux also composed
fascinating piano works, usually without
being commissioned to do so. As Dutilleux
told the French journalist Claude Glayman
in 1993: I love the piano and tell myself
that it must still be possible to express
oneself, to make further discoveries, even
if we feel ourselves and this afects young
composers too to be somewhat trampled
by a repertory of extraordinary richness.
For Dutilleux, that extraordinary richness
included works by his two favourite
composers, Debussy and Beethoven,
although when asked what desert island
choices he would bring by those greats, he
chose Debussys opera Pellas et Mlisande
and Beethovens last string quartets.
Dutilleuxs lifelong devotion to the
piano was proven by his six decades-long
marriage to the splendid French pianist
Genevive Joy (1919-2009), whom he rst
met in 1942. Before they married in 1946,
Joy, the daughter of an Irishwoman and a
French father who served in the British
Army during the First World War, was a
brilliant student of the great French pianist
and teacher Yves Nat (1890-1956). Nat,
who also taught such notable pianists as
Reine Gianoli, Jrg Demus, Jean-Bernard
Pommier and Pierre Sancan, was a specialist
in Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and
Beethoven. In the 1950s, Nat recorded the
last-mentioned composers complete piano
sonatas, a set which is still exemplary today.
Eschewing virtuosity for its own sake, Nat
was noted for saying about his interpretive
approach: Tout pour la musique; rien pour
le piano (Its all about the music, not the
piano). Joy, and by extension Dutilleux,
shared this viewpoint completely.
A
FTER GRADUATING FROM
the Paris Conservatoire in 1942,
Joy taught sight-reading and
chamber music there, and formed a
lasting performing duo with the pianist
Jacqueline Robin. Dutilleux relished
Joys ability to sight-read even the most
complex orchestral scores, a talent which
served him well as a composer. They
shared an accepting, encouraging stance
towards pianists, piano composers and
other musicians. When Joy died in 2009,
Dutilleux told the Agence-France-Presse:
At the very start of my career, the path I
chose owed much to her curiosity, talent,
youth, and joy, making a deliberate
pun with the French word joie and its
translation into English, his wifes maiden
name Joy. In January 2013, Dutilleux
may have had the same word-play in mind
when he announced: Ive had the joy [joie]
to live for a long time, adding in thanks
for a new recording of his work by the
French Radio Orchestra, Youve given me
innite joy.
I well recall visiting a serenely merry
Dutilleux 20 years ago at his central Paris
apartment on the le Saint-Louis. Despite
the crowds of tourists noisily bustling
by, Dutilleuxs windows were wide open
to the street, and our conversation was
punctuated by the sonorous noise of Joy
practising in an adjacent room. While
Dutilleux used a somewhat quieter room
in an adjoining building for composition
work, he nevertheless seemed in his
element amid a din which another
composer might have found of-putting.
This attitude may have had its roots
in his childhood. Dutilleux was brought
up in the northern French city of Douai,
where his father ran a printing shop, and
the cacophonous presses, and the eerie
silence when they stopped on weekends,
made a lasting impression on the young
Dutilleux. As a resident of Douai, Dutilleux
developed a lifelong attraction for that
citys enduring tourist attraction, its
carillon bell. Douais 80m high 600-year-
old belfry contains 62 bells spanning ve
octaves. This bell tower, praised by Victor
Hugo, features a massive bell weighing
5,550kg. Frequent concerts still create a
deafening tintinnabulation, and Dutilleux
would cheerfully admit using imposing
bell-like sonorities throughout his piano
works, as he told Glayman: The carillon
in the belfry sounds the hours, the half-
hours, and so on. In addition, a bell-ringer
used to come on Sundays and those sounds
excited my imagination. They have very
individual timbres, full of rich harmonics.
I used to try and reproduce them on the
piano and that was stimulating for me.
As a boy, imitating carillon bells at the
keyboard and trying out chords were only
natural, since Dutilleuxs mother, Thrse
Koszul, was an amateur pianist whom he
described as a discerning musician[who]
knew how to nd the deeper meaning of a
work. His sister Paulette was also a gifed
pianist. This family background, added
to his wife-to-bes interest in pianism as a
social activity, as opposed to a ashy solo
virtuosic occupation, made Dutilleux
dene piano works as intensely personal,
yet shared experiences. When he decided
to compose for the piano, he therefore
focused on intimate works. In 1944-1945,
Dutilleux was commissioned by French
radio to compose brief piano interludes for
broadcast. He wrote six of them, grouped
under the title Au gr des ondes, (wherever
the airwaves take you). Although these
were published in 1946, the highly self-
critical Dutilleux later decided they were
too imitative of Debussy, Ravel, and other
early inuences, and withdrew them from
his ofcial work list. In 1997, he was not
pleased when the French pianist Anne
Queflec insisted on recording them
against his wishes.
Despite Dutilleuxs own reservations,
these are delightfully characteristic works,
many dedicated to noted pianist/teachers.
The rst piece, Prlude en berceuse, has
a nave, gently cradling rhythm akin to
Debussys Childrens Corner along with some
of the insouciance of Francis Poulencs early
work. The fh piece is more Teutonic,
a Hommage Bach, showing profound
understanding of counterpoint as well
as emotional lyricism which is in no way
miniaturised. In Dutilleuxs view, JS Bach
was a passionately intimate composer, not
just the creator of massive church works.
A nal tude, dedicated to Joy, is a hyper-
kinetic ballet of dazzling virtuosity.
Another early work with extraordinary
writing for piano was Dutilleuxs Oboe
Sonata (1947). Dutilleuxs Oboe Sonata
has a compellingly varied piano part
of considerable sophistication, clearly
reecting the chamber music ideal
exemplied by Joys artistry. Its second
movement, redolent of Stravinskys
LHistoire du soldat, yet less astringent,
marches along with lyric vigour before a
HE NR I DU T I L L E U X
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IP0514_26_29_Dutilleux_CJ.indd 27 14/04/2014 12:06:01


Finchcocks
M U S I C A L M U S E U M
Fine Baroque Georgian manor
in a beautiful garden. Over 100 period keyboard
instruments, 40 in full playing order.
Open days, Concerts, Group visits,
wide range of educational events & courses.
Finchcocks
M U S I C A L M U S E U M
Finchcocks Musical Museum
Goudhurst Kent TN17 1HH Telephone: 01580 211702
www.finchcocks.co.uk email: info@finchcocks.co.uk
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21
ST
INTERNATIONAL
JOHANNES BRAHMS
COMPETITION
PRTSCHACH AM WRTHERSEE, AUSTRIA
As an important cultural centre the Wrthersee region had its peak
time from the mid 19th century to the 1930s. The beauty of the land-
scape also attracted a variety of composers, like Johannes Brahms,
Gustav Mahler and Alban Berg. Consequently, many internationally im-
portant pieces of music were inspired by this lovely scenery.
for piano and
chamber music
held annually - no age limit
30.08.2014 - 07.09.2014
Application deadline:
July 1, 2014
for more information:
info@brahmscompetition.org
www.brahmscompetition.org
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: J
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(
3
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Prtschach am Wrthersee Brahms summer residence in 1877-78
2014
HILTON HEAD INTERNATIONAL PIANO
COMPETITION FOR YOUNG ARTISTS
MARCH 9 14, 2015
PIANISTS AGES 13 17
phone (+1) 843.842.2032
email pianocomp@hhipc.org
www.hhipc.org
Application available online:
June 1, 2014 at www.hhipc.org
Application deadline:
September 30, 2014
Three Rounds: Finals with
the Hilton Head Symphony
Orchestra
Over $13,000 in cash prizes
Summer Music Scholarship
Return Engagement with HHSO
Air transportation up to $500;
accommodations with
host families
Cover Art by Leta Tsai,
Student at Savannah College of
Art and Design
Cllc|o| Compet|t|on l|ono
Alink-Argerich Foundation
Mem6et s|nce 2005
The 5th Manchester International Piano
Concerto Competition for Young Pianists
Chethams School of Music & University of Manchester
August 2015
ENTRY CATEGORY
- 22-and-under
EMINENT JURY OF
INTERNATIONAL
CONCERT PIANISTS
under the Chair of
Murray McLachlan
PRIZES
Participants perform
for prize money,
scholarships, and
an impressive series
of engagements in
the UK.
Further information -
call: (+44) 1625 - 266899
email: info@pianoconcertocompetition.com
www.pianoconcertocompetition.com
In association with
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IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 28 11/04/2014 18:27:13
May/June 2014 International Piano 29
HE NR I DU T I L L E U X
nal movement turns into a more Gallic
promenade. Like other early works,
this ne composition would later incur
disfavour from the composer, who felt
it was not fully representative of his
mature compositional style. In 1985, when
Dutilleux was honoured as composer-in-
residence at the Aldeburgh Festival, he
was irritated when the Oboe Sonata was
programmed for performance without
asking his permission beforehand.
Also in 1947, Dutilleux made an
arrangement for two pianos of Debussys
Clair de lune, the third movement of
that composers Suite bergamasque. The
absolute cohesion of the two pianists in
Dutilleuxs arrangement is such that the
question never arises of whether Clair de
lune really needs a second piano to convey
its message. This emotional tribute not just
to Debussy, whom he worshiped, but also
the art of duo piano, is yet more evidence
of Joys lasting impact on Dutilleuxs
creative imagination.
In Dutilleuxs own view, the
aforementioned compositions paled before
the work which he dubbed his own Opus
No 1, his Piano Sonata (1948), dedicated
to Joy. This substantial work, which has
become widely popular, starts out in a
deceptively insouciant, breezy Parisian
fashion, before a second movement more
reminiscent of Mussorgsky, with bell-
sounds betting Boris Godunov, even if
their original inspiration was the Douai
belfry. The Sonatas third movement,
with its open display of virtuosity, displays
utter certainty in chords, unlike the
searching, interrogative nature of other
early Dutilleux piano works. The Sonatas
solidity and assurance, especially in its nal
movement, surely reect the dauntless Joy.
As a coda to his large-scale Sonata,
Dutilleux produced a short work, Blackbird
(1950), intended as a didactic work for
an anthology series of contemporary
music for young pianists. At the time,
Dutilleux owned a pet bird, an Indian or
Common Shama (Copyschus Malabaricus)
with black and orange feathers. Many
birdwatchers relish the richly melodious
song of this species, apparently the rst
birdsong to be recorded (when using
an Edison phonograph, Ludwig Koch
preserved a wax cylinder of the sound in
1889). Marked Vif, clair et prcis (fast, clear
and precise) at the beginning of the score,
Blackbird displays witty intelligence and
captivating charm with a kind of musical
pointillism. The birds apping wings and
ying provided as much inspiration as its
song. The concentration of a powerfully
orchestral scale of expression in Blackbird
makes the listener wonder if it might not
have been intended as a sort of self-portrait.
Such a highly personalised approach
to writing for piano may explain why
Dutilleux chose to create piano works
when healing from various illnesses.
This may have been both because of the
restorative powers of working with and
for his wife, as well as the fact that piano
compositions required less heroic physical
force to write than massive symphonies.
Whatever the reason, afer a series of eye
ailments, in 1970 a case of ophthalmic
shingles in his lef eye obliged Dutilleux
to resign from teaching posts and in
1972, he underwent a corneal transplant.
While confronting these challenges,
Dutilleux still managed to work on a two-
piano composition, Figures de resonances
(Resonant Faces) to celebrate the 25th
anniversary of the piano duo founded
by Joy and Jacqueline Robin. This work,
premiered in 1970 and expanded in 1976,
boldly present the resounding bells of
Douai with an unhurried monumentality
of crashing chords. Figures de resonances is
a work of substantial mystery, asking more
questions than it answers. It investigates
the play of echoes and exchanges
of sounds in a partnership between
pianists, plumbing the depths of the duo
piano relationship.
The restorative power of piano
composition was again evident in 3
Prludes pour piano, published in 1994,
but begun in 1973, afer Dutilleux had
nally recovered from eye surgery.
Initially planned as ve separate pieces,
the Prludes were nally only three in
number, heavily revised over the decades:
Dombre et de silence (On Shadow and
Silence); Sur un mme accord (On a Single
Chord); and Le jeu des contraires (Game of
Opposites). Dombre et de silence resounds
with solid, round bell sounds in a lofy,
yet not arid, way. 3 Prludes are not to
every music-lovers taste. One commenter
to a recording on YouTube.com furiously
noted: Thats NOT music, thats noise
made with a piano. Listening to this just
[gave me the urge] to hit [Dutilleux] in
the face, hard. Unfortunately hes already
dead. This extreme reaction may be
due to the fact that 3 Prludes is by far
Dutilleuxs least French-sounding work.
Its blocky chords make a bold statement
with no urge to ingratiate. Its Spartan
assertions soberly indicate what modern
piano writing can and should sound like,
especially when played with authoritative
assurance by Joy.
Even at his most uncompromisingly
stern, Dutilleux as composer for the piano
was a nurturing spirit. During the Second
World War, he served as a stretcher-bearer,
and in modern music, Dutilleux was more
of a consoling stretcher-bearer than a
combattant. Perhaps in part because of his
conciliatory stance, he was scorned by some
taste-makers such as Pierre Boulez, who
never conducted any music by Dutilleux,
wrote about him, or even mentioned
his name in public, although the two
composers were on civil terms privately
since Joy diligently performed Boulezs
piano compositions. No pushover despite
his ingrained mannerly nature, Dutilleux
made his feelings known when he told the
New York Times in 1986, alluding to Boulez
and his ilk: I dont support aesthetic
terrorism. A contemporary composer
for piano of delectable gifs, Dutilleux
deserves ample performances as centenary
commemorations, which are due only two
years from now. e
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30 International Piano May/June 2014
S
OME WEEKS AGO, I PLAYED
a movement from a Haydn sonata
at a local music festival and was
reprimanded by the adjudicator (who
shall remain nameless) for using the
sustaining pedal. And yet the pianos
Haydn himself played and wrote for had
this mechanism. Did the adjudicator
believe it was purely for decoration?
Such misconceptions about early
keyboard instruments are still widespread;
yet they are also easy to dispel. To see for
yourself the instruments of times gone by,
you need only pay a visit to the Finchcocks
Musical Museum near Tunbridge Wells in
Kent, where over 100 instruments dating
from 1668 to 1875 are on display and
almost half of them can be played.
The collection includes everything
from spinets, virginals, harpsichords
and clavichords to barrel and chamber
organs (theres even a euphonicon and a
crystallophone, if you please) and pianos of
literally all shapes and sizes: square (actually
rectangular), transverse, upright, lyre,
pyramid and, of course, grand. The range
of grands includes all the famous names you
can think of and quite a few you probably
cant: Fritz, Stodart, Lengerer, Rosenberger,
Jakesh, Henschker and Mathushek, anyone?
Even if you dont play the piano, you
will marvel at the ingenious and elaborate
designs of the instruments, where art and
crafsmanship joined forces in the tireless
pursuit of beauty. But the real joy of the
Finchcocks collection is in hearing how
the music of the past would have sounded
when it was rst played which is ofen
utterly diferent from the way it sounds on
a modern piano.
Hearing the original instruments can
also help us to understand why some
composers wrote as they did. Gary Branch,
the museums educational co-ordinator,
says: Have you ever wondered why some
original pedal markings in works by the
great classical and Romantic composers
seem soridiculous? We can reveal with an
instrument of the period why the composer
made such markings and discover other
details while we play.
Indeed, pedalling is an area where you
will make a number of revelatory discoveries.
To begin with, early Viennese instruments
had knee levers, not pedals, and these were
ofen the wrong way around, so you had
to raise your lef knee instead of depressing
your right foot. Then there is the fact that
the una corda pedal really does enable you to
play on a single string unlike the lef pedal
on a modern grand, which lets the hammers
strike two strings. But some instruments
also had a due corde pedal as well as a
moderator (which introduces a piece of cloth
between hammer and string), a rasping
bassoon pedal and sometimes a swell or a
Turkish pedal, complete with bells perfect
for Mozarts famous Rondo K 331!
As far as the keyboard mechanism is
concerned, you will be confronted with
leather hammers, split keys, assorted
pitches, varying compasses, English and
Viennese actions more than enough to
occupy your ngers and ears while your
feet (and knees) are busy down below.
In fact, perhaps the most striking thing
about these instruments is that each one
is completely diferent; they all behave in
diferent ways and produce quite diferent
sounds. So getting to know them is rather
like getting to know people: each has its
own characteristics and idiosyncrasies
some delightful, others surprising and
even shocking. Which means that however
many times you visit Finchcocks, there is
always something to discover, something
to learn, new sounds to produce and enjoy.
The museum, which occupies a palatial
Georgian manor house set in equally
impressive grounds, can be visited on
Sunday and bank holiday Monday
P I A NO MA K E R S
Finchcocks Musical Museum in Kent holds
a diverse collection of historical keyboards,
featuring household names like Pleyel and
Erard as well as rare models such as Fritz
and Henschker. Joseph Laredo pays a visit
Hands on
Harpsichordist Steven
Devine (right) with Richard
Burnett, who, with his wife
Katrina, owns the
house and museum


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May/June 2014 International Piano 31 May/June 2014 International Piano 31
afernoons throughout the spring and
summer, as well as on Wednesday and
Thursday afernoons in August. On most
days, you will be treated to demonstrations
and recitals, as well as having the chance to
try out the instruments yourself.
Finchcocks has also hosted concerts by
world-famous artists such as Melvyn Tan, but
for me the best time to go is on the annual
Open Day for Pianists, which this year takes
place on 12 October. On the open day, you will
be introduced to the instruments by experts
including Branch, leading harpsichordist
Steven Devine and period piano specialist
Richard Burnett, who, with his wife Katrina,
owns the house and museum. This in itself is
an experience not to be missed, but the core
of the day is two sessions of personal tuition
and guidance from these authorities on the
instrument of your choice in whatever piece
or pieces you wish to play. The day ends with
a participants concert, in which you may be
invited to perform. And, of course, you will
meet like-minded people young and old,
from beginners to professionals.
I rst attended the open day in 2012
and it is now one of the highlights of
my musical calendar. Both educational
and enjoyable, the event should be
compulsory for all piano students, whatever
their level and ambitions. The day is
guaranteed to reform, revise and revitalise
your playing. e
P I A NO MA K E R S
FINCHCOCKS FACTS
Finchcocks Musical Museum,
Goudhurst, Kent, TN17 1HH
Phone: +44 (0)1580 211 702
Website: www.nchcocks.co.uk
Open for visits without appointment
from Easter to the end of September on
Sundays and bank holiday Mondays; also
on Wednesdays and Thursdays in August.
The house is open from 2pm to 6pm, the
garden and restaurant from 12.30pm.
A selection of recordings made on
the instruments at Finchcocks can
be downloaded from our website:
www.rhinegold.co.uk/ipdownload
The museums next Open Day for
Pianists will be held on 12 October
A grand piano by Michael
Rosenberger, circa 1800
The museum is set in a
Georgian manor house


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32 International Piano May/June 2014
J
OHN OGDON DIED 25 YEARS
ago this August. He was just 52. The
direct causes of his death were a
diabetic coma and bronchial pneumonia
but he was also obese, sufered from gout,
smoked 60 cigarettes a day, liked his wine
and whisky, and was in constant pain.
He had kidney failure and had lost all
his teeth, both due to the heavy doses of
lithium carbonate he had been taking for
16 years. Lithium carbonate is a drug used
for depression, mania, bipolar disorder,
self-harming behaviour and treating
aggressive behaviour. It rescued Ogdons
career from oblivion.
In the 1960s, Ogdon was a high-ying,
high-prole international virtuoso, hailed
as the greatest pianist Britain had ever
produced. And despite his wavering career
thereafer, interest in this gigantic gure
physically, mentally and pianistically
has never dimmed: pianophiles admire
him for his fabulous gifs, while the
general public is fascinated by the story
of a tortured musical genius. The 1989
BBC lm Virtuoso told his story (Alfred
Molina memorably played Ogdon) based
on the partial account of his life written by
Michael Kerr and his widow Brenda Lucas.
Now, the rst full biography of Ogdon has
been published. Piano Man: Life of John
Ogdon by Charles Beauclerk is a much-
needed denitive study that lays to rest the
myths surrounding Ogdon and reassesses
his extraordinary contribution to music.
This piece does not attempt to duplicate
that reassessment, nor analyse his recorded
legacy or compositions. But it might,
hopefully, reignite interest in this genius of
enormous sensitivity and very great humour
(Peter Maxwell Davies). For those who
have not encountered him before, a brief
overview is in order. John Andrew Howard
Ogdon was born on 27 January 1937 at
Manseld Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire.
From 1945 he studied at what was then the
Royal Manchester College (now the Royal
Northern College of Music) and was only 21
when he was invited to play the mammoth,
rarely performed Busoni Piano Concerto
with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
under John Pritchard. His made his BBC
Proms and Wigmore Hall debuts in 1959, and
the following year made his rst recording
(for HMV) as well as marrying the pianist
Brenda Lucas. Two years later, he became a
national gure when he was declared joint
winner with Vladimir Ashkenazy of the
Tchaikovsky Competition.
That was when his hectic international
career took of. For the next 11 years,
Ogdon was one of the worlds most sought-
afer pianists. What set him apart from
almost all his contemporaries were the
astonishing breadth of his repertoire, a
staggering technique and legendary sight-
reading ability. He could be presented
with the most complex score and deliver
a awless performance afer only the
briefest inspection. His main interests
lay beyond the core German repertoire
and he embraced composers from Alkan
to Yardumian, with a special emphasis
on the music of his contemporaries
and a particular afnity with Liszt,
Rachmaninov and Busoni.
A series of psychotic episodes began in
1971. Then, in the autumn of 1973, Ogdon
sufered a nervous breakdown, a victim of
the schizophrenia that had also aficted
his father. The next year he tried to kill
himself three times the nal attempt by
slitting his throat but afer a period of
recuperation he was well enough to take up
a teaching post at the University of Indiana
in 1976 from which he was dismissed in
1980. In the early 1980s he returned to the
concert platform, though he was he unable
to recapture consistently the glory of those
buccaneering days before his tragic illness.
T
HESE ARE THE BARE FACTS OF
his life. To put some esh on them, I
talked separately to Ogdons widow
and Charles Beauclerk. Brenda Lucass
elegant bijou apartment on Londons
Cheyne Walk is a shrine to her husbands
memory. Pictures of John and family
photos are everywhere; various diplomas
and certicates, including documentation
of that Moscow triumph, decorate the
small music room; a colour photo of him
and Lucas on stage at the Royal Festival
Hall is a reminder of the many two-piano
recitals they gave together.
In the period immediately afer his
death, Lucas and her close friends in the
musical world formed the John Ogdon
Foundation to promote his achievements
and provide practical assistance to young
musicians through scholarships. Did
Ogdon leave a lot of money to establish
this? Oh no. We started with donations
from the public. Somehow people got to
know about it and the money came in.
I ask Lucas how, a quarter of a century
afer Ogdons death, she remembers him.
Over the years, she has been cast as saint and
sinner in the Ogdon melodrama, praised by
some for her dedication and forbearance,
castigated by others for the damage she did
to his nances and career. Understandably,
she is cautious with a stranger and strays
J OHN OGDON
John Ogdon, who died 25 years ago this August, is ofen
presented as a tortured musical genius with a range of mental
health issues. But a new biography lays to rest some of the
myths surrounding his legacy. Jeremy Nicholas investigates


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IP0514_32_35_Ogdon_CJ.indd 32 14/04/2014 15:21:03


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He was a very ambitious
young man. It was all
carefully concealed
under this demure,
humble faade
IP0514_32_35_Ogdon_CJ.indd 33 14/04/2014 15:21:13
34 International Piano May/June 2014
little beyond what she has already revealed in
Virtuoso. He was a very mixed character, she
ventures. You see, he was a very ambitious
young man. It was all carefully concealed
under this demure, humble faade. That
driving ambition took him to Moscow.
He had a bit of nancial help from Robert
Mayer but otherwise got there under his
own steam. He had to battle with [his agent]
Emmy Tillett to go. She had concerts booked
for him which John cancelled so he could
compete. He won that. He was determined
to go. People think I forced him to go but I
had a baby. I wanted him to stay at home. He
was already a popular pianist but he felt he
had to win a major competition if he was to
have a big career.
The pair married despite many peoples
misgivings. Everyone said, why are you
marrying him? One reason was because I
respected him so much. That overpowering
intellect! He was multi-faceted: he wrote,
he composed, he played. Was it a happy
marriage? In the early years, very happy, she
maintains. How could we not be? Fted and
spoilt, meeting wonderful people, recording
together. It was a fairytale life. John loved
parties. He took time to wind down afer
concerts. He couldnt just have a cup of
cofee and go to bed. He had to get rid of
all the adrenaline and meet people. So I
organised parties for him, pushed the boat
out and served lovely food and everything.
People thought I was too extravagant and
got through too much money doing it.
Well, I did. But thats what he wanted.
As I leave Cheyne Walk, Lucas adds, very
quietly, He could be very frightening.
Just how frightening is spelled out in page
afer page of Charles Beauclerks brilliant
study of the pianist, elegantly written,
even-handed and as skilfully assembled as
it is meticulously researched. It makes for
harrowing reading because, afer Ogdons
lapse into insanity, the relationship between
the two pianists descended into the marriage
from hell, with one partner irrational and
violent, the other extravagant, jealous and
at her wits end. Beauclerks devastating
verdict is that, In a way she was Salieri
to Johns Mozart, only they happened to
be married.
The afable Beauclerk found it a difcult
story to write, especially with Lucas being
the mother of one of his childhood friends.
I do think Brenda has been demonised in the
past. On the other hand, I was determined
it wouldnt be a whitewash.
The home Ogdon was brought up in was
violent and dysfunctional. His father was
committed to an asylum when John was
only 18 months old. John was the youngest
of the ve children by almost seven years
and had a quite diferent physique and
look from the other children, almost like
a cuckoo in the nest, says Beauclerk. He
must have been aware of that. He spoke
with a lisp and had difculty with the
letters C, J and R, as can be heard on the
edition of Desert Island Discs he recorded
shortly before his death.
When he was at college with Birtwistle,
Goehr, Maxwell Davies et al, his ambition
was always to be a composer. That was
rst and foremost, Beauclerk asserts.
The pianism was second, and as his life
developed and he found himself playing the
Tchaikovsky Concerto a hundred times a
year, the yearning came back with a greater
force. I think that was one of the crises that
led to his breakdown: the sense that he
was actually failing himself, that the true
exploration of his gifs would have come as
a composer. He did do that [over 200 works
in all], but he didnt give it the dedication he
wanted to give it. Brenda denitely did not
want him to concentrate on composition.
She helped to keep him on the treadmill.
That treadmill meant a crazy 200 concerts
a year in 1973, so although his fee per
engagement was a comparatively modest 450
(Ashkenazy, by comparison, was earning 750
to 1,000) his annual income was roughly
100,000 (more than a million pounds in
todays money). Brenda liked the lifestyle that
his success had created, Beauclerk says.
J OHN OGDON


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May/June 2014 International Piano 35
He continues: Interviewing the people I
did for the book revealed an amazing fund
of goodwill. In a way I think it was because
John was a blank slate, an innocent. A lot of
his friends were in denial about this other
side to him. He could be violent. They saw
this childlike side of him gentle John
which was the face he showed to the
world. People were fond of him. Matthew
Boyden, part of the agency that looked
afer him, described him as the most
patronised man of the 20th century. I
think the only person who experienced the
demonic side of John (apart from the piano
that he pounded) was Brenda. Brenda saw
a very diferent side. If you listen to his
music and the way he ofen played the
piano you will say, Ah. Of course. If
Horowitzs bass was an explosion, Ogdons
was deeper and darker, almost like an
implosion sometimes. Theres something
so raw about his playing at times that
it could send a shiver up your spine.
Quite disturbing.
S
O WHERE DOES ONE PLACE
John Ogdon in the pantheon of the
great pianists? His oddball nature
and his preference for non-standard
repertoire contributed to him being seen
as an outsider. With a frantic schedule,
he was ofen underprepared, happy and
able to y by the seat of his pants. Socially
inept (and, thinks Beauclerk, with a
degree of autism), he never developed
special relationships with orchestras and
conductors. He was never invited by, for
instance, the Berlin Phil, the Vienna Phil
or the Salzburg Festival.
Yet there are plenty of people around
who heard him before and afer his illness
who will say that Ogdon provided them
with the most memorable recitals of
their entire concert-going lives. One very
knowledgeable pianophile friend of mine
recalls going to what turned out to be
Ogdons nal recital. It was at Londons
Queen Elizabeth Hall. The rst half
Chopins G minor Ballade, the Brahms
Paganini Variations and Balakirevs Islamey
was a total shambles and an utterly
dispiriting mess, my friend recalls. Ogdon
was submerged beneath clouds of lithium,
unable to exercise any form of control over
even the basics (such as pulse), let alone
the reams of notes in that repertoire. My
friend was minded to leave at the interval
but persevered and was grateful he did
for, by the end of the break, the efects
of the lithium had worn of. The second
half was all Liszt and was the greatest
playing I had ever heard in the esh, and
remains so to this day. I was fortunate in
hearing Horowitz once, Richter over half
a dozen times, plus many of the other
greats born early in the 20th century, but
none produced the ocean of sound, the
orchestration of sonority and whispered
delicacy of Ogdon in that second half, not
to mention the staggering vision of his
conceptions.
Nine days later, he was dead. No one
from the BBC, the Arts Council, the South
Bank or the British Council came to the
funeral. He had long since become a non-
person in the eyes of the establishment. e
Piano Man: Life of John Ogdon by
Charles Beauclerk is out now, published
by Simon & Schuster
J OHN OGDON


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IP0514_32_35_Ogdon_CJ.indd 35 14/04/2014 15:21:35
Rhinegold
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Location: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
2 June 2014
Andrew Litton
A Tribute to Oscar Peterson
Renowned conductor Andrew Litton returns
Io hIs rsI love, Ihe pIano, Ior IhIs very
specIal recIIal.
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SIeven Dsborne, Ihe programme spans Iour
decades oI Dscar PeIerson's legacy and
launches Andrew's laIesI CD release,
A Tribute to Oscar Peterson.
RecIIal Includes an InIormal 6A wIIh Andrew
LIIIon, and begIns wIIh a complImenIary drInks
recepIIon.
6.15pm drinks reception
7.00pm recital
INTERNATIONAL PIANO EDITORS PICK
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IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 36 14/04/2014 17:14:54
May/June 2014 International Piano 37
TA K E F I V E
B
EFORE HE DISCOVERED
jazz back in the 1980s, John
Law was living in Vienna,
studying with Paul Badura-Skoda
and pursuing a career as a classical
pianist. What happened? The short
answer, he tells me, is sex n drugs
n rock n roll. Literally? No, no.
Thats just a phrase, shorthand
for getting into diferent musics,
diferent ways of life. In jazz, he
says, he found the energy, the
groove hed been looking for; he
could still play piano, still compose
and I could do the music of now.
The rst jazz album he bought was by Thelonious Monk like
entering a new world, he later wrote and soon he was listening
to everyone from Oscar Peterson to Cecil Taylor. However, very
quickly, before Id got a thorough grasp of the jazz repertoire, I
somehow ended up in free improvisation, playing thrash music
with wonderful musicians like Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Louis
Moholo. I still love their music, though thats clearly not what Im
doing now.
Law, born in 1961, began playing piano at the age of four and
studied at the Royal Academy of Music before moving to Vienna.
Back in London by the late 1980s, his immersion in free improv
proved short-lived. Afer a few years, he says, he grew tired of
the volume, the intensity and coming away from the piano with
bleeding ngers. It wasnt all like that: his duo with bassist Guy
on the Extremely Quartet CD is neither loud nor bloody, but a
mutually busy yet attentive dialogue free playing with both focus
and nesse.
Thelonious Monks compositions had continued to fascinate
him, particularly their strong melodies, with little hooks to work
around, and now they helped to rekindle his enthusiasm for melody
and harmony. In 1995 Laws partner, the visual artist Melanie Day,
exhibited a series of Monk-inspired sculptures at Londons Vortex
Club; at the opening, Laws trio played their own versions of Monks
music, and later recorded them on The Oneliest CD.
I didnt really know how to play jazz then, Law remarks.
Technically, I could have been more procient in the particularities
of jazz style. Then again, what you think are your weaknesses can
also be your strengths. Theyre what make you idiosyncratic.
Absolutely. The disc still sounds fresh because Laws playing is so
unpredictable delightfully so on the two takes of Bemsha Swing.
The rst treats the tune as a gleeful round-cum-romp; the second
is acutely inventive, as Law, unschooled in the fall-back formulae
of jazz style, has to improvise from more personal, and creative,
resources.
Later albums have mostly featured original compositions,
though his classical roots keep reappearing in various guises,
from a four-disc set of solo improvisations based on plainsong
(Chants) to a jazz quartet version of a Baroque suite (Abacus).
Then theres Laws fondness for the multi-layered piano parts that
have been present in his music for over 20 years. I hear music like
that, he says, referring to counterpoint and polyphony; I can
almost see the parts happening at the same time, like a puzzle
you try to solve.
The best examples of this penchant for complexity can be
found on The Art of Sound, a series of albums that also houses the
best examples of Laws complementary gif for simple, alluring
melody. These four discs two solo, two trio, recorded between
2006 and 2008 are arguably Laws nest to date, and conrmed
his reputation as one of the UKs most imaginative and versatile
jazz pianists. He cites The Ghost in the Oak as the trickiest of his
multi-layered pieces, and his solo version is technically impressive
yet oddly plaintive, with Law astutely shading dynamics between
the diferent voices to create a haunting, densely textured
sound-world. In contrast, the solo Chorale-reprise has a spare
simplicity, its hesitant beauty enhanced by Laws rapt, lingering
performance, before it segues into a gentle township swing.
There are also trio versions of Ghost and Chorale, though I
prefer the solos tentative, more introspective probing. Several
trio pieces do exert considerable melodic charm Beguile, Song,
Look into My Eyes but my favourite trio performance is the
rhythmic power-charge of Congregation, its manic staccato beat
inspired, says Law, by the Bad Plus. Its physically demanding
to play, he adds. Asif, my drummer, likened it to a power drill.
To the listener, its a surge of elation, a joyful apotheosis, as
Law gives new impetus to the energy, the groove that had rst
spurred him to play jazz. e
IPs jazz columnist Graham Lock
outlines key works from
John Laws discography
Take Five
1. Two, Part 1, from
Extremely Quartet (hat Art)
2. Bemsha Swing 2, from
The Oneliest (FMR)
3. The Ghost in the Oak,
from The Ghost in the Oak
(33 Records)
4. Chorale-reprise, from
Chorale (33 Records)
5. Congregation, from
Congregation (33 Records)
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IP0514_37_Take Five_CJ.indd 37 14/04/2014 12:11:26
38 International Piano May/June 2014
I
WAS BORN IN NEW YORK CITY
and grew up as an only child in a
household where classical music
was listened to 24/7. At the suggestion
of my Kindergarten teacher, I started
piano lessons one month shy of my sixth
birthday. I attended my rst performance
at the Metropolitan Opera (the nal season
of the Old Met!) when I was six and saw,
thanks to my parents, every single major
classical music event of note for the next
decade. I attended recitals by star pianists
such as Horowitz, Rubinstein, Richter,
Gilels and Watts. I was also lucky enough
to see every original cast Broadway musical
from 1965 to 1982. This meant I had a
healthy exposure to the Great American
Songbook. It also meant I had yet to
discover jazz.
I had a party for my 16th birthday and
one of my friends and schoolmates, a chap
named David Frankel (who has grown
up to be a successful Hollywood director
The Devil Wears Prada, The Big Year,
Hope Springs etc), bought me an LP that
sported a teal-coloured album cover with
the words: Tracks Oscar Peterson Piano
Solo. Id never heard of the guy! When my
party was over, curiosity got the better of
me and I put on the album. The sounds of
an infectiously joyous up-tempo Give Me
the Simple Life lled my bedroom, and I
was hooked!
I became obsessed with Oscar, buying
every LP I could nd and then, when
CDs rst appeared, replicated the entire
collection in the new format. I dreamt
of hearing him live. I got a few chances
at Carnegie Hall in the late 1970s. In the
meantime, my conducting career started. I
decided I wanted to be a conductor at the
age of ten and in 1982, at the age of 22, I
won the Rupert Foundation Conducting
Competition in London. My London
debut was with the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra (RPO) in January 1983, and it
was the beginning of a long and wonderful
relationship. In the summer of 1984, I was
conducting the RPO in the Andr Previn
Festival at Londons Southbank in a
concert starring the amazing Buddy Rich.
Two nights later, Oscar was appearing with
his quartet (Joe Pass, Niels-Henning rsted
Pedersen and Martin Drew). I sheepishly
asked the then chairman of the RPO,
John Bimson (still one of the greatest horn
players I have worked with) if he would
introduce me. I wanted to meet my hero
as a conductor of the RPO, and not just as
a fan. It probably wouldnt have mattered.
Oscar was so nice to everyone who came to
meet him, and always had a smile and time
for you no matter who you were.
The same year I won the conducting
competition, I also won the job as assistant
conductor of the National Symphony
Orchestra (NSO) in Washington, DC under
Mstislav Rostropovich. Oscar came to play
every summer in the 1980s at Wolf Trap,
the NSOs summer home in Virginia. Of
course I was there, and ran backstage to
greet my hero. The CD cover photo below
was taken backstage in July 1985. Fast-
forward to summer 2003 and I was now
heading Sommerfest, my own summer
festival featuring the Minnesota Orchestra.
I introduced a jazz component to the
programming and invited Oscar and his
quartet. Imagine the incredible thrill I felt
standing on the Minneapolis Orchestra Hall
stage and saying: Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome Oscar Peterson!
A
YEAR OR SO LATER, I WAS
at a record producer friends 50th
birthday party in London, where
he had asked three of us to provide some
musical entertainment. Stephen Hough
played some Brahms and I played some
Gershwin, and when Steven Osborne sat
down, he began what I instantly recognised
as an Oscar Peterson arrangement. When
the applause died down, I asked him
where he had found the music, since I
knew it hadnt been written down. He
blithely responded that he had taken the
R HI NE G OL D L I V E
Conductor Andrew
Litton shares his love
for Oscar Petersons
pianism ahead of a
special London
recital dedicated to
the jazz great
A TRIBUTE TO
Oscar Peerson
IP0514_38_39_Litton_CJ.indd 38 14/04/2014 15:24:07
May/June 2014 International Piano 39
R HI NE G OL D L I V E


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arrangement straight from the CD! He
had done quite a few songs, in fact. When
I nervously asked whether or not he had
transcribed my all-time favourite Oscar
track, Little Girl Blue, he nodded and
said, Absolutely! At this point, I couldnt
contain my excitement and ofered him
anything he wanted for a copy (I must have
sounded every bit like Herod in Salome)!
He smiled and said he would happily
send me the music. Two days later, the
song arrived in the post, along with a few
others he had transcribed. Deciphering
Stevens musical notation turned out to
be an unexpected hurdle, but the fact that
he had actually done the hard part
putting down on paper all those brilliant
Peterson harmonies and rifs was almost
too good to be true.
Little Girl Blue became part of my
repertoire and I used it as an occasional
encore as well as playing it at my late
mothers memorial service. Eventually, I
decided to branch out and started to work
on a few other transcriptions, some of
which were actually starting to appear in
print, and that is where the idea for this
recording began.
The 12 songs Ive recorded come from
seven diferent commercial recordings and
span four decades of Oscars legacy. The
overwhelming majority of Oscars recorded
output was with his trio or quartet, but
I wanted to feature his solo piano work
because when he played alone, he ofen
eschewed his dazzling virtuosity, making it
truly possible to hear the amazing colours
and voicing in his playing, the feathering
of the sustaining pedal (only Horowitz
had such a pedal technique!), the achingly
beautiful original harmonies and the total
command of the instrument. This explains
why Oscar has proved so popular with
classical musicians. He did things daily at
the piano while spontaneously improvising
that the rest of us spend a lifetime trying
to achieve. e
This article was adapted from the liner notes
to Littons new recording, A Tribute to Oscar
Peterson, which is out now on the BIS label
When he played alone, he often eschewed his
dazzling virtuosity, making it truly possible to hear
the amazing colours and voicing in his playing,
the feathering of the sustaining pedal (only
Horowitz had such a pedal technique!)
As part of the
Rhinegold Live
concert series,
Andrew Litton will
give a one-of recital
to celebrate Oscar Petersons
legacy on 2 June at 6.30pm.
The event, held at Conway Hall
in London, is free and includes a
complimentary drinks reception
for all ticket holders. A post-
concert Q&A will be conducted
by Claire Jackson, editor of IP.
To apply for tickets please visit
www.rhinegold.co.uk/live
JULIAN & JIAXIN LLOYD WEBBER
A Tale of Two Ce llos Tour
Thursday 3 April 2014 at 6.30pm
Free rush hour concerts
in WC1s Conway Hall
Rhinegold
LIVE
2
0
1
4
-
1
5
CONCERT SPONSORED BY
ANDREW LITTON
performs Oscar Peters
Monday 2 June 2014 at 6.30pm
RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKET TODAY AT
WWW.RHINEGOLDLIVE.CO.UK
Terms: all concerts are free to attend however, tickets are strictly limited.
To guarantee your seat, and a drink at our reception, please reserve a place online at
www.rhinegoldlive.co.uk. Entry for non-ticket holders is on a frst-come, frst-served
basis: if you have not reserved a place, you may not gain entry. Only ticket holders
are eligible for the complimentary drinks reception
CLASSICAL MUSIC EDITORS PICK
INTERNATIONAL PIANO EDITORS PICK
Rhinegold
LIVE
2014-15
A RHINEGOLD EVENT
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square,
London WC1R 4RL

S
IM
O
N
F
O
W
L
E
R
FLOWERS KINDLY
PROVIDED BY
IP0514_38_39_Litton_CJ.indd 39 14/04/2014 08:18:33
40 International Piano May/june 2014
A
T THE LANDMARK AGE OF
60, Andrs Schif still radiates
youthful optimism and curiosity.
As a fully rounded musician and artist,
he is admired above all for his personal
interpretations, humanity and ability to
uplif and inspire. Hes achieved more
than most pianists could dream of, but
Schif is not an artist to rest on his laurels.
Indeed, as he observed in the notes for
the nal CD of his magisterial eight-CD
Beethoven sonata cycle (ECM 1940-9,
2008), We musicians never reach the
summit; we have to climb forever upwards.
The higher we get, the further away the
horizon becomes.
With the Beethoven cycle under his belt,
the next peak Schif set out to climb was
Beethovens 33 Variations on a Waltz by
Anton Diabelli, which he has performed,
recorded and lectured about many times.
He included the work as the second half of
his marathon 60th birthday concert at the
Wigmore Hall in December, preceded by
Bachs Goldberg Variations.
The recital (reviewed for IP online)
concluded his Bach series and underscored
the special connection between these
two famous sets of variations: Beethovens
were both inspired by and aimed to
surpass those of Bach. At the recitals
climax, Schif was presented with the
Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic
Society. It added one more gem to a
crown already adorned with honorary
membership of the Beethovenhaus Bonn
(2006), the Wigmore Hall Medal (for 30
years of devoted performance since his
1978 debut) and other major awards from
all over the world, including Germany,
Austria, Italy and France.
LECTURE-RECITAL
For his lecture-recital, Schif was
joined by Michael Ladenburger of the
Beethovenhaus Bonn. The two men spoke
enthusiastically about the autograph of the
Diabelli Variations, which was acquired
by the Beethovenhaus Bonn in 2009.
Characteristically original from the start,
A NDR S S CHI F F
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Distinguished
pianist and recent
Royal Philharmonic
Society Gold Medal
recipient Andrs
Schif marked his
60th birthday with a
Diabelli Variations
recording and
Wigmore Hall
lecture-recital, as
Malcolm Miller
reports
NDRS SCHIFF
AT
A
60
IP0514_40_41_Schiff_CJ.indd 40 14/04/2014 15:25:51
May/June 2014 International Piano 41
A NDR S S CHI F F
Schif began with a poignant account of
Schuberts inuence on Diabelli.
The lecture started with a simple
question: since Beethoven mainly
chose his own themes to vary, what had
fascinated him about this apparently
trivial waltz by Diabelli? In the course of
two hours, we heard how the 33 variations
transform various motifs. Schifs language
has a lively piquancy: he described how,
in the Variation 3, bar lines should not
be prison bars, while noting that its lef-
hand rumbling was like time standing
still. In Variations 8 and 18, he said, we
tend to forget how tender Beethoven can
be. He also noted how the composer uses
the diferent registers of the keyboard
like diferent instruments, an island of
unison in a polyphonic composition.
In Variation 13, we heard how silence is
the most essential part of music, while
in Variation 20, described by Hans von
Blow (the rst virtuoso to perform the
Diabelli Variations) as the oracle, Schif
spoke about the hairpins as monsters. He
also wittily translated the slurred sighs of
Variation 21 from von Blows O weh to a
more Hungarian-Jewish Oy vey.
Schif delved into Beethovens
relationship with Mozart, underlining
the references to the Linz Symphony in
Variation 23. He described Variation 24 as
the most beautiful of all: a homage to Bach,
a thanksgiving variation [] Right out
of the Benedictus of the Missa solemnis.
We were also reminded how, above all,
this late work is full of autobiographical
allusions: Variation 10 recalls the nale of
Op 2 No 3; Variations 16 and 17 look back
on Beethovens virtuoso past (You feel the
elan from the autograph); Variation 21
recalls the Waldstein Sonata; and by the
nal variations, the Arietta of Op 111 and
the Diabelli have joined hands.
With his gif for communication and
genial humour, Schif sustained our
attention throughout, also winning us
round to the joys of manuscript study:
while playing Variation 32, a brilliant
fugue, he stopped suddenly, pointed to
the screen depicting the autograph score
and exclaimed: Look at that! Beethoven
got so carried away that he knocked over
the whole ink pot!
Schif has recently released a double CD
(ECM481 0446) featuring two versions of
the Diabelli Variations on two distinct
early pianos: a Bechstein from 1921 that
belonged to Wilhelm Backhaus before the
Second World War (on which he also plays
Op 111); and a Brodmann Hammergel
of 1820, with six octaves (also used for the
Op 126 Bagatelles, Beethovens last solo
piano work).
The Bechstein interpretation is well
characterised and never theatrical. Schif
takes special care over rests and details of
articulation, and elicits a radiant resonance
in the slower variations, with colourful
clarity in the faster passagework. The
attractive Brodmann tone lends sweetness
and power without harshness. Here, Schif
enjoys the clarity, crystalline textures and
vibrant contrasts.
RIVETING LISTENING
In these recordings as in his birthday
recital Schifs playing makes for riveting
listening. Hearing him play is like reading
a good thriller: one does not want to
interrupt the thought ow. His biggest
achievement is his steady yet always
involving exploration of the thematic
development towards the profound and
monumental nal variations, where he
brings Diabellis cobblers patch to its
sublime realisation.
In the ornamental expanses of the slow
Variation 31, the pearly touch and glowing
colours are achieved with hardly any
pedal. Yet within this restrained almost
improvisatory eloquence is a degree of
suspense that is ready to burst into the
fugal Variation 32. Schifs playing is
tripping and racy yet always lucid, with
each strand distinctly coloured and
shaded. The Bachian ligree patterns
ow with virtuoso grace, leading to the
ery interruptions that form the dramatic
transition to the nal variation. At this
point, the colouristic palette opens up
into a luminescence as Beethoven touches
the stratospheric registers with nely
laced patterning, like a spiders web
glistening in sunlight. Finally, the last
variation comes to an ambiguous rest on
a nal lingering chord, an acute realisation
of Beethovens unusual pedal marking.
While Beethoven has been Schifs
most recent venture, his earlier Bach
interpretations remain a benchmark in
pianism. When he won the RPS Gold
Medal, the judges noted: His revelatory
readings of JS Bach have helped to
liberate his keyboard music from the
increasingly narrow connes of period
instrument performance. Alert to every
characterisation and contrast imaginable,
Schifs Bach unfolds with nuances of
colour, shading and voicing. He nds in
Bachs abstract patterning of contrapuntal
textures a multitude of moods.
S
CHIFF MADE HIS DEBUT AT THE
Wigmore Hall in 1978 with
Bachs Goldberg Variations. His
performance of the work 35 years later at
his 60th birthday concert was exhilarating;
the canonic and fugal variations, especially,
were miraculous for what Vikram Seth
has described as their equal music. The
zzing Variation 27 resembles an 18th-
century domestic farce, with subjects
entering the texture as if from diferent
doors; and the trilling, thrilling nal
Variations 28 and 29 resemble late
Beethoven. Then, nally, work returns to
the point from which our kaleidoscopic
experience started.
Schif concluded his birthday recital
with the poignant miniature Memory of a
Pure Soul: Klara Schif in Memoriam. This
work was composed in memory of Schifs
mother by Gyrgy Kurtg, his friend,
mentor and fellow RPS Gold Medallist,
who was also present in the audience.
Schif was nurtured in his native Hungary,
studying with notable teachers at the Franz
Liszt Academy including Pl Kadosa,
Ferenc Rados and Kurtg. He then came
to the UK to work with George Malcolm
in London, where he launched a brilliant
international career. He currently refuses
to perform in Hungary as a protest over its
right-wing nationalistic politics, a state of
afairs one hopes may soon change.
I also hope we can look forward to
coming decades in which to appreciate
Schifs charismatic presence on the
concert platform and in recordings, his
insights in lectures and his commentaries
to major editions of piano masterworks.
On the occasion of his 60th birthday,
we may all echo the Duke of Kents
congratulatory remarks at the Wigmore
Hall as he presented the Gold Medal,
wishing Schif many more years of
glorious music making. e
IP0514_40_41_Schiff_CJ.indd 41 14/04/2014 15:26:08
42 International Piano May/June 2014
T
HE PIANO REPERTOIRE
contains thousands upon thousands
of notes. When vast quantities of them
coexist in challenging contexts, pianists can
be stressed. This results in what Alexander
technique teachers refer to as end gaining .
Pianists will focus on how to get through
a performance rather than on enjoying
each individual moment of it. End gaining
also encourages a lack of rhythmic control,
technical, memory problems, and a feeling of
impatience that can lead to boredom.
It is important that we always remember
that music exists in the present, and
when we play, we should try to love
what we are playing. Take time to gloat
on an expressive appoggiatura or other
ornament. Lean and project sensitivity by
extending an expressive falling interval.
Voice a dominant seventh chord lovingly,
with extra weight and depth of tone on
the particular inner note that makes the
chord special. By expanding in real time
signicant features in the music we play,
we are sharing with the listener things that
we feel. Pianists can see themselves as the
musical equivalent of enthusiastic guides
at an historic site, taking time and efort to
share special things with visitors.
If we adopt too rigid an interpretation
of strict rhythm, then we risk sufocating
the music we are interpreting. Within the
discipline of a basic pulse, there are all kinds
of subtle variations at work. This can be
readily seen by setting a metronome going
at the beginning of a commercial recording
of a classical sonata slow movement from
Brendel, Barenboim or anyone else. While
the metronome and recording may start in
synchronisation, the two will part company
extremely quickly usually before several
bars have passed. The point is that music has
exibility, and that the greatest performers
are able to nd ways to linger expressively in
performance. Lets look at some examples.
The 64th note scale runs in bars 28-9 of
the slow movement in Beethovens early C
minor sonata, op 10 No 1 (example one)
can be terrifying to play, simply because
they are exposed and centred around
white and black notes. This passage
requires challenging, rapid changes in
ngering in order to get the hand into
diferent positions. By highlighting the
D-A at tritones in the scale, it becomes
much easier to cope with the technical
challenges. Instead of rattling out the
passage as though it was nothing more than
an expressionless glissando, the notes can
become vocal, highly expressive and full
of personality. Try sitting a fraction longer
on the two Ds that are played before the A
ats (i.e. the 5th and 14th notes in the run).
This will make you more aware of the two-
tritone intervals that are present. The extra
time gained by listening just that little bit
longer and more acutely will be enough to
make execution so much less of a problem.
By celebrating the inherent angularity
in the run, you can turn a pianistic mini
nightmare into a pleasurable experience
for both yourself and your listeners.
Example 2 comes from bars 41-2 in
movement one of Tchaikovskys rst
piano concerto, Op 23. Though it appears
relatively simple in theory (diminished
seventh arpeggios presented in double sixths
between the hands) in performance the
exposed nature of the passage, (combined
with the fact that the piece is so well
known!) ofen leads to lots of stress. As in
example one, creative and inspirational help
is at hand if you can remember that there
is the world of diference between pianistic
exercises and strongly characterised,
emotionally charged musical gestures
(what this concerto is all about!). Firstly,
no matter how upsetting mistakes may be
when practising these arpeggios, we should
never lose sight of the fact that the melodic
line in the passage resides in the single
quaver notes. That in itself should make
us less stressed if complete accuracy is hard
to achieve. However, within the arpeggio
ourishes themselves there is ample scope
for creativity. If you play the runs in a bland
monochrome style with generically cloned
tone, (i.e. no dynamics and a uniform sense
of articulation), then you are literally setting
the scene for errors to thrive and multiply.
However, if you try to add random mini
hairpins (crescendos and diminuendos)
through the arpeggio, experiment with
dynamics, balance the hands in a diferent
way so that the lef is louder than the
right, and sit imperceptivity on selected
notes (for example add tenutos to the C
ats in the lef hand) then you should nd
that your condence and interest level in
practice both increase in direct proportion.
In passages like these, you do need good
ngerings from teachers. You also need
LEARNING
Creative music
making is key to a
good performance,
writes IP tutor
Murray McLachlan
MA S T E RCL A S S
TO LINGER
IP0514_42_43_Masterclass_CJ.indd 42 14/04/2014 13:41:22
May/June 2014 International Piano 43
MA S T E RCL A S S
guidance about how to change position,
how to prepare and move the thumbs,
and how to work in a variety of rhythmic
variations to achieve familiarity and
eventual security. However, you will nd
that real reliability and inner condence
will only come when you are musically on
re . It therefore makes sense to experiment
by lingering on diferent notes in this
arpeggio in turn, as you practise repetitively.
Linger on the C ats certainly, but then try
sitting on the D naturals or even the Fs in
the lef hand. Exaggerate in practise so that
the rhythms become distorted, but then in
performance try more subtlety so that it is
only really yourself who is aware that you
are sitting on selected notes for just a split
second longer than you should!
Finally the big solo at bar 168-70 in the
rst movement of Brahms D minor Piano
Concerto Op 15 ofers ample opportunities
for the soloist to expand, indulge and linger
idiomatically, creatively and expressively. The
texture should be broken down into its three
basic strands and worked at melodically. In
the lowest part, this means fully projecting
the wonderful wave-like shapes that Brahms
writes. There is no point in jumping around
like a proverbial kangaroo here this style
demands rich sonority and an awareness of
string instruments. Turn your lef hand into
a glorious turbo-charged cello with extra
low notes added! To bow this passage would
require tenutos on the lowest note, and so it
follows that you can wait in performance on
the E at, D, G sharp, etc. Similarly, you can
recreate the bowing of a virtuoso violinist
in your imagination when tackling the
angular intervallic leaps in the right hand.
Its ascending sixths and octaves need to be
celebrated. Let the long notes oat over the
texture. Make the most of the expressive
potential in intervals by sitting a fraction
longer on the rst note of each one than you
may be used to. By expanding expressively,
most of the technical angst associated with
this demanding passage morphs into tactile
and expressive pleasure. e
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EXAMPLE A Bars 28-9 from Beethovens C minor sonata, Op 10
EXAMPLE B Bars 41-2 from movt one of Tchaikovskys rst piano concerto
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EXAMPLE C Bars 168-70 from the rst movt of Brahms D minor piano concerto
IP0514_42_43_Masterclass_CJ.indd 43 14/04/2014 15:30:05
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IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 44 11/04/2014 18:27:15
T
OO OFTEN, FINGERS 4 AND 5
are seen by inexperienced players
as dangerously unreliable. This is a
great shame, because each nger carries its
own strengths, personality and qualities.
It is wrong to rank ngers in order of
strength; and it is equally wrong to try and
equalise the ngers. All of your ngers
contribute something unique and valuable
to your overall technique. The secret is to
realise that they all need individual praise
and attention. It makes sense to develop
each nger as far as possible and from the
earliest stages. Unfortunately, conventional
scales make little use of the fh nger,
and perhaps that is why this nger can
remain a little undeveloped in a player
who is hovering at the Grade 5 mark. Lack
of mobility and poor articulation in the
fourth nger can be put down to the fact
that it shares tendons with nger 3. We are
built physically in a way that would seem
to discourage this particular nger from
gaining its independence! This is a shame,
as our fourth ngers have great expressive,
sensual potential and are quite diferent in
personality from our innitely stronger,
bolder third ngers.
There are still many teachers who
recommend ungainly position changes in
order to avoid using ngers four and ve
as much as possible. In passages where
clarity and strength are important, this
could perhaps be considered an option.
Fair enough, too, to adopt this approach
in passages marked fortissimo or martellato.
But when we are dealing with mezzo piano
or sofer levels, pianists really do need to
be able to use these outer ngers with
condence and ease. Begin training four
and ve by placing your right hands
ngers 1-2-3-4-5 over the ve most central
white notes on the keyboard (middle
C-D-E-F-G). Relax and enjoy stillness as
your ngers rest on each key, then quietly
begin to lif your fourth nger up. Keep the
other ngers still. If you nd this difcult,
use your lef hand to literally pick up
the right hand nger. Keeping the other
ngers silent and still on the keyboard, try
repetitions of F with your fourth nger.
Next, do the same for the fh nger alone.
Then try playing Fs and Gs with ngers 4
and 5 on their own always keeping ngers
1, 2 and 3 silent and motionless. Try to feel
looseness in the wrists. It can help to hold
onto your right sleeve with your lef hand
and literally let go so that your lef hand
is supporting your entire right side as you
continue to play F and G many times with
your fourth and fh ngers. You should
be striving for a light, hollow, tension-free
aesthetic. Always ensure that none of the
other ngers move (even slightly!) when
their weaker colleagues are working.
Of course, you should also adopt all of the
above procedure for the lef side, reversing
the instructions in mirror format so that you
place your ve ngers over the notes directly
below middle C (G-F-E-D-C). You can
practise with 4s and 5s together in each hand,
and gradually develop a gentle rocking/rotary
movement between the two ngers in each
hand so that a trill-like exercise in triplets
emerges. Above all, ensure that your wrists
remain free and unblocked . Perhaps nothing
causes more injury and frustration in piano
playing than stif wrists (a future instalment
in this series will tackle this issue).
Examples 1 and 2 show further ways of
extending condence in the use of ngers
4 and 5. The rst extract is taken from the
opening of Hanons The Virtuoso Pianist.
Begin working slowly and quietly and
aim for a sense of ease in playing before
attempting to gradually increase velocity and
loudness. Example 2 is the rst of Czernys
celebrated 101 Exercises, Op 261 and should
be tackled in a similar way to the Hanon.
Both are excellent warm-up routines for
players approaching Grades 4-5 and both
can in time be transposed into diferent
keys. As with all exercises and studies, they
open up a pathway of development that
can be further extended by the students
own exercises and variations based on the
original gurations. e
Murray McLachlan ofers some tips for efective
use of the fourth and fh ngers
When weak is strong
HE L P I NG HA NDS
May/June 2014 International Piano 45
{
mf
q = 60 to 108
2
4
2
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&
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5
1
4
2
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1
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Example 1: Hanon, The Virtuoso Pianist, opening bars
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Example 2: Czerny, 101 Exercises, Op 261
IP0514_45_HelpingHands_CJ.indd 45 14/04/2014 08:22:05
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IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 46 14/04/2014 11:50:31
JEREMY SIEPMANN: Most people hate
my compositions, even the musicians.
For a few they are undoubtedly a closed
book, and in such cases the reaction
is of course pardonable; but there are
others who understand them and to
my face express only admiration, while
have nothing good to say of them when
they walk about with others. So wrote
Edvard Grieg. Well it wasnt true then,
and it certainly isnt true now. When
they walk about with others, just as in
the pages below, the musicians gathered
together for this issues symposium
have almost nothing but good to say
about Griegs work. On the concert
platform, as in the recording studio,
they have worked (and continue to
work) unstintingly on Griegs behalf.
Among the younger members, no one
has done more for Griegs cause than
Leif Ove Andsnes and Hvard Gimse,
whose recordings are bringing his music
to a whole new generation of listeners;
Einar Steen-Nkleberg, Gerhard Oppitz,
Geir Henning Braaten and the Italian
pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi have
recorded the complete piano works;
Daniel Adni has recorded the complete
Lyric Pieces, and more, to great acclaim;
and all have nurtured a lifelong love of
Griegs music. We began by considering
its principal attractions.
LEIF OVE ANDSNES: Hes such a sincere
composer, hes never posing, theres
nothing at all pretentious about him. Hes
very, very honest. He knew his strengths
as a composer, but he also knew his
limitations. His sincerity and humanity
shine through his music, and its this, I
think, that touches peoples hearts. He said
himself that he wasnt able to build palaces
and castles like Bach and Beethoven but he
could build comfortable homes for people.
And people have bought into his world in
a special way. And then there are his very
distinctive harmonies. He himself said he
didnt know where his harmonies came
from. Sometimes, of course, they came
from Norwegian folk music, but ofen
they came from his own imagination.
So what we today think of as something
very Norwegian might simply be Griegs
imagination: he identied so much of what
became Norwegian music. That said, his
music isnt an inexhaustible world, like
Bach or Mozart. I go through periods where
I dont actually want to be in contact with
his music, but always I nd myself coming
back to it. The songs, particularly, draw me
back, again and again. I think theyre still
THE PANEL (clockwise
from top left): Daniel
Adni, Leif Ove
Andsnes, Hvard
Gimse, Einar Steen-
Nkleberg, Antonio
Pompa-Baldi, Geir
Henning Braaten,
Gerhard Oppitz
No composer, perhaps, has captured the sense of
nature or the feeling of landscape more vividly than
Edvard Grieg (ofen without recourse to mere
pictorialism). Jeremy Siepmann is joined by seven
colleagues to explore the art of a unique master
THE SOUND OF LIGHT
May/June 2014 International Piano 47
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S Y MP OS I UM
IP0514_47_51_Symposium_CJ.indd 47 14/04/2014 14:53:58
much less well known than they should
be. And theres so much thats magical in
the Peer Gynt music. Of the piano music,
the thing that always draws me back is
the folk music connection, the way he
harmonises folk-tunes for instance in Op
66, the Norwegian Folk Songs, and some of
the Peasant Dances, Op 72. Its a very, very
special world, I think.
HVARD GIMSE: A lot of it has to do with
the atmosphere in his music, and, as you say,
the part played in it by his use of harmony.
But then theres all the wonderful melodic
stuf too. I remember, when I rst started
playing Griegs pieces, when I was about
10, I felt very strongly that this music was
quite diferent from virtually everything
Id played up to that time: not only the
harmonies, but his use of chromaticism,
too, and the particular kind of melancholy
it seemed to express.
EINAR STEEN-NKLEBERG: He was
a harmonic genius! And I agree so much
about the chromaticism. There are many
examples of both, but none more striking
than the great Ballade right from the very
opening, as the bass voice descends in an
almost perfect chromatic line through the
entire eight bar passage. The whole theme
feels as though its coming from another
world. And the challenges begin right
here. When playing it, even if you manage
to produce an ethereal, delicate sound,
the theme can only really achieve its full
potential if youre aware of the descending
bass line, which warns of gloom, of despair,
of the possibility of drama. Grieg made
wonderful use of the harmonic expertise
hed acquired during his student days in
Leipzig, remoulding it and using it as a
principle of cohesion. His output was
enormous, but the Ballade brings us to the
very heart of Norwegian piano literature
and its signicant in countless ways. Its
romantic, profound, tender, introspective
yet its form is very grandly conceived
mirroring the Norwegian landscape.
GEIR HENNING BRAATEN: I love his
ability to trigger the imagination of both
young and old. Grieg was the rst composer
I became familiar with, at a very young age.
I loved reading Norwegian folk tales and in
his music I found the same atmosphere. A
few of his songs even made me cry. Today,
my approach to Grieg is more intellectual,
and I dont cry any more, no matter how
beautifully its sung or played. What
matters most to me now, I think, is the very
personal use of harmony and colour in his
music. Theres always something new to
discover and focus on every time I practice
a piece for a concert.
DANIEL ADNI: For me, its the tremendous
lyricism, the beautiful tunes full of
emotions and always evoking a feeling of
simple, honest, immediate communication.
His music never sounds complicated, but
its by no means always easy to play. Yet in
its way it is easy to understand. He conveys
his ideas and emotions very directly and
clearly.
GERHARD OPPITZ: Ive been attracted to
the charming and seductive avour of his
music ever since I was a child. One of the
things that impresses me most is his highly
individualistic sound-world, reecting
both the stimulus he received from famous
musicians of his time, especially during
his years in Leipzig, and the inuence of
his own countrys traditional music. Its a
unique blend.
ANTONIO POMPA-BALDI: I too have
been attracted to Grieg for as long as I can
remember. When I was nine, I acquired
by chance a volume of the Lyric Pieces.
I knew nothing of Griegs music and I
instantly fell in love with it: with its utter
sincerity and immediacy; its unassertive
yet powerful emotional content; the
deceptive simplicity; the endless stream of
stunningly beautiful melodies. Grieg can
rise to the occasion and produce perfectly
beautiful big works, but hes denitely at
his best in the smaller ones. Tenderness,
too, pervades his music.
JS: Is colour a prime element in his
piano music? How does he rate as
a pianistic painter?
STEEN-NKLEBERG: Oh, very high!
Prime elements of his music (and
prominent in contemporary accounts
of his playing as well), are the richness
of his palette and the ne shading of the
sound. And no composer depicted both
the landscape and the very atmosphere of
Norway more variedly, or vividly, than he
did. The weather! And the light! But words
cant describe it. One needs to hear it in
order to see it!
POMPA-BALDI: His colours, for the most
part, arent descriptive but incredibly
evocative. Griegs very special sound-world
makes me, a southerner, visualise beautiful
Nordic landscapes, which I always see
as watercolours delicate, yet radiating
pure sunlight, made all the brighter by
the reections of snow and ice, as well as
the ocean surface. Griegs use of colour, I
think, like much else in his music, reects
his attempt to free himself from his
formal academic training and follow the
promptings of his imagination.
ANDSNES: Sometimes theres a great sort
of grandeur in his colouration but most of
the time, I agree, its a very intimate sound-
world. Nevertheless, I feel that many of
these pieces have their own special, very
individual colour that you have to nd.
GIMSE: He had a tendency, particularly,
perhaps, in some of his later music, to
impressionistic tone painting, but his tonal
world is really unique; you cant label it
and there are some pianistic colours which I
think Grieg mastered better than anybody.
And as you say, he was so individual!
There are very few composers so instantly
recognisable on the basis even of a single
chord.
JS: Would you say he was a notably
polyphonic composer, for the piano?
OPPITZ: Well he didnt, like Brahms,
incorporate complex polyphonic
structures in his music, but he was very
fond of writing dialogue between two
voices, which interact like, for instance, a
soprano and a tenor in duet.
ADNI: To that extent I think theres a denite
polyphonic element in his writings, from
the very easy pieces to the very complicated.
Schumann was an early and a great inuence
on him, and although he later turned to
writing more dissonant and nationalistic
music, the romantic training he had in the
art of composition is always evident, I think.
48 International Piano May/June 2014
S Y MP OS I UM

IP0514_47_51_Symposium_CJ.indd 48 14/04/2014 14:54:00

May/June 2014 International Piano 49


S Y MP OS I UM
ANDSNES: As you and Einar have both
mentioned, one has to be very alert to
the harmony and the chromaticism in
Griegs textures. There are always things
going on in the inner voices, even in the
simplest pieces. And this is always very
much a part of the character and colour of
the composition. If you only concentrate
on the melody and the bass you seriously
impoverish the music.
STEEN-NKLEBERG: A beautiful
example of this three-dimensionality
in simple pieces is the Arietta which
inaugurates the great sequence of Lyric
Pieces. It has three independent voices,
and an important secret to its success is
to illuminate this, without being didactic.
Of course its natural to favour the
melancholy, gently murmuring soprano
voice, but theres also the arpeggio gure
in the middle voice, and the bass line as
well, which can be explored with diferent
emphases, rst practising the two outer
voices together, then the soprano and
middle voices, and lastly the bass and
the middle voices. Everything will
then come together in a unied trio in
which each voice nonetheless retains its
individual identity.
GIMSE: When he does use out and out
polyphony, though, which isnt ofen, its
generally, as Leif Ove suggests, to enhance
the character and colour rather than for any
truly polyphonic purpose for instance
in the First Violin Sonata, where he starts
of with a fugue and then abandons it
afer only eight bars! Whats important
for the player, in virtually all of Grieg, is
to approach the music from a polyphonic,
horizontal vantage point. Otherwise the
sound will be too thin. The texture needs
lling out. Each voice needs its own special
character. Thats the only way you can get
into the real depth of his music.
POMPA-BALDI: But there are some truly,
formally polyphonic works, though
none of any great signicance the early
Canon and Seven Fugues, for instance.
Many pieces present melodic fragments,
or even fully edged lines that proceed
by imitation between lower and upper
register, evoking, as Gerhard says, a tenor/
soprano duet. Then, too, theres the case of
motivic cells appearing in a non-leading
voice, which adds a splendid colouring to
the whole. And then there are those bass
lines, which can almost always be played as
a countermelody.
JS: To what extent would you say he
emulates the human voice in his piano
writing?
ADNI: His melodies in the piano music
can nearly always be translated into vocal
terms. Somehow he managed to give his
melodies in the piano writing the same
lyrical intensity and beauty as if they were
written for the voice.
ANDSNES: Hes denitely a singing
composer, but almost never in anything
like a grand or operatic style. His letters
are ofen very critical of singers, and of
so-called sopranos in particular. He used
to say that his wife was the only true
interpreter of his songs. And everyone
whos written about her has remarked on
her simplicity and directness of expression.
But its not all a question of pure melody.
In many melodic things, like the beginning


T
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Grieg can rise to the occasion
and produce perfectly beautiful
big works, but hes denitely at
his best in the smaller ones
ANTONIO POMPA-BALDI
IP0514_47_51_Symposium_CJ.indd 49 14/04/2014 14:41:24
of the Ballade, where he repeats the same
idea again and again, what gives it its rich
feeling is the harmonies. But simplicity
must always be the keyword here.
GIMSE: One mustnt put to much pressure
on the melody, so to speak; mustnt over-
project it. To do that, to treat it as a simple
song without words , risks destroying the
true texture and character of the piece. To
play Grieg like Chopin or Liszt would be
a total failure because the tension in his
melodies, on the whole, is not all that great.
But it seems were all agreed, Grieg was
essentially an intimate composer.
OPPITZ: Many of his piano pieces could
easily be imagined to be versions of songs
with piano accompaniment. And in playing
them we should denitely try to emulate
the human voice, and to avoid anything
which could remind the listener that the
piano is a percussion instrument. Griegs
solo transcriptions of some of his songs,
sometimes more like paraphrases, are
beautiful examples of his poetic sensitivity.
POMPA-BALDI: Hmmm. I seem to be in a
minority here. I actually believe that theres
a strictly pianistic quality to his melodies,
and that, with some exceptions, theyre
not actually vocally conceived at all (Im
not, obviously, referring here to his song
transcriptions!). Among the original piano
compositions, there are splendid cases
like the second movement of the E minor
Sonata, where the melody seems to me to
emulate the human voice not only singing
but speaking. Its also hard not to hear the
human voice in the melody of Op 12 no 1,
the very rst of his Lyric Pieces (the Arietta),
just as its almost impossible, for me, not to
hear human voices in the middle section
of Wedding Day at Troldhaugen. However, in
Grieg we also nd very ofen (maybe more
ofen than not) the naturalistic sounds of
chirping birds, cascading waters, and other
forest sounds. All in all, I actually dont think
he emulates the human voice more than
occasionally; certainly not systematically.
JS: Though he draws fundamentally on
national traditions, does he ultimately
transcend nationality?
ADNI: Oh denitely! No question. This is
music for all. Even things with titles like
Norsk Folkeviser , Halling and so forth,
are international in all but name.
ANDSNES: I think he does, yes. But not in
all ways. Apart from his German training,
which he was always very ambivalent about,
Norway remained his musical world, as a
composer. He knew, for instance, very little
about Russian music, apart from his friend
Tchaikovskys. But Russian music in general
was never an inuence on him. Particularly
in his later years, as Hvard mentioned, he
developed an afnity for what we would
now call impressionistic colours which
I think is a fascinating aspect of his later
piano-writing, in pieces like Bell-ringing ,
for instance). But this music is all about
sound, its not about nationality at all.
STEEN-NKLEBERG: It certainly isnt!
And its worthy of direct comparison
with Debussy. A work of true genius! And
what daring! For fully 37 bars, he calls for
nothing louder than pianissimo. And then,
later, in those wonderful minim chords
starting in bar 77, which resemble a chorale
played by a brass choir, he increases the
volume from pianissimo to a thundering
fortissimo in just ve bars.
POMPA-BALDI: By its very nature, Griegs
music transcends nationality. Im rmly
convinced that while art can originate
anywhere and be imbued with (even
fundamentally shaped by) local cultural
inuences, it becomes universal by virtue
of its own, intrinsic quality. In other words,
true art brings its local elements into the
universe for all of humankind to admire.
50 International Piano May/June 2014
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May/June 2014 International Piano 51
S Y MP OS I UM
Theres no need for the world to go local
to appreciate it.
GIMSE: Absolutely! It limits Grieg to
pigeonhole him as a nationalist. The
keyword here, for me, is humanity. What
makes Grieg great is the depth and quality
of his humanity, not his nationality, and
the proof is in the response to his music
by audiences in every part of the world.
I think weve all had that experience.
Wherever you play Grieg, people love it.
North America, Latin America, Europe,
Asia very much so in Russia. He speaks of
universal experience, with a directness that
everyone can understand.
JS: What are the biggest technical
challenges that face the pianist in
Griegs music?
ADNI: Grieg was a pianist himself and
evidently a very good one, so its no wonder
some of his music has technical challenges.
He asks for many jumps (like in the lef
hand in Wedding Day at Troldhaugen),
dexterity in fast passages (Buttery), and
most of the usual difculties we nd in
Schumann, Brahms and so on. The most
challenging thing, though, is to play his
music with the right emotions, beauty of
sound, legato, espressivo. Technique, afer
all, isnt all about speed!
GIMSE: The control of sound, of colour, of
the whole aural picture is absolutely central
- and of a certain type of lightness too. Its
a revelation to play Griegs own piano at
Troldhaugen, and to listen to his recording
of Buttery and hear that lightness, that
delicacy, that special touch. Thats the main
thing, I think.
POMPA-BALDI: I think were probably
all agreed that there are only a few
pieces where the actual mechanical
demands, in a conventional sense, are very
considerable (the Ballade, the solo version
of the Norwegian Dances Op 35, and certain
passages from the Concerto). The orchestral
pieces arranged for piano certainly present
some technical challenges, especially as
far as the pedalling is concerned, so that
the bass line, which is ofen written as
acciaccaturas, might be included in the
pedal and therefore heard as a line. This
implies some huge leaps, to be smoothed
out as much as possible, so that the upper
line can sound as naturally owing as
possible. In all of Griegs music, theres also
the need for a highly developed voicing
ability, so that the beautiful melodies can
rise up and proceed undisturbed by the
ofen rich accompaniment. Of course
Schumann and Mendelssohn present the
same kind of challenge in this respect.
OPPITZ: I certainly agree. Apart from a few
spots here and there with rapid position
changes like in the Ballade, the Sonata or
some other early compositions, I cant nd
any technical challenges which would create
serious problems for a pianist familiar with
the famous standard repertoire.
STEEN-NKLEBERG: Maybe not.
But sometimes, and in one instance
in particular, Grieg presents very great
challenges not generally found in the
mainstream repertoire. I think rst and
foremost here of the Norwegian Peasant
Dances, Op 72 (known in Norway
as the Sltter [pronounced slotter]),
which occupy a unique place in Griegs
output and in Norwegian music as a
whole. These singular, uncompromising,
beautiful, difcult, animated, miraculous,
introspective, swaggering, tender dance
tunes are so special that youd be hard-
pressed to nd anything like them anywhere
else in the world. The ancient, traditional
melodies are not the invention of any one
person. Theyre an expression of the soul
of the Norwegian people, the product of a
very lengthy process, and werent written
down until the end of the 19th century. This
is an absolutely monumental achievement,
still relatively little known, but for me its
the culminating peak of his output for
piano, for which everything else seems in
retrospect like a preparation. Its musical
language is unique, and far removed from
the Romantic language of his other work.
JS: And what briey Im afraid are the
greatest musical challenges in Griegs
piano works as a whole?
OPPITZ: In my opinion an important aim
is to nd a convincing way of portraying
the composers character with poetic
freedom and imaginative fantasy, without
ever moving his language too close to
sentimentality an ever-present danger.
His music should show a high degree of
nobility, and it should breathe in a natural
manner, without tendencies to articial
manipulations.
ANDSNES: I think his subtlety is ofen
under-recognised. The Piano Concerto
may be his most played piece but there
are many not-so-great performances of it.
In the main theme of the rst movement,
for instance, think of that one chord which
has four notes instead of three and that
dissonant A and B. Details like that are
so important in this music. What makes
it really great is when one hears all these
things. If theyre ignored, the music sufers.
And then, too, theres the subtlety of the
rubato. If you listen to the recordings
of Grieg playing, you hear tremendous
freedom, but its never sentimental.
GIMSE: I think the greatest musical
challenges for me in Grieg have to do with
structure, particularly in the larger pieces,
but in the shorter ones also.
POMPA-BALDI: In almost every piece by
Grieg, as Gerhard said, the main musical
challenge is to avoid sentimentality
without sacricing sincere expressiveness.
And this isnt as easy as it may seem. One
needs also to be able to get into the dance-
like rhythms and to read beyond the titles
to come up with a properly descriptive
rendition of many pieces.
JS: And there interpretation moves
from the objective to the subjective.
From observation to speculation. From
obedience to imagination. No wonder
we keep practising! e
The Piano Concerto
may be his most
played piece but there
are many not-so-great
performances of it
LEIF OVE ANDSNES
IP0514_47_51_Symposium_CJ.indd 51 14/04/2014 14:41:17
Frdric Chopin
Wiener Urtext Edition
Wiener Urtext Edition
Schott / UniversaI Edition
3 5 . p O r o j a m t a I f A e s i a n o I o P n i p o h C
1 0 4 0 5 T U
Chopin
Ubber
PoIonaise As-Dur op. 53
PoIonaise A fIat Major Op. 53
for piano
Editor, Fingerings and Notes on
nterpretation: Christian Ubber
UT 50401
The showpiece among Chopin's PoIonaises
Urtext based on a re-evaluation of the sources
With a detailed critical commentary
Notes on interpretation with evaluation of divergent
readings for performance
mproved page turn points
Urtext for the 21
st
century
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 52 11/04/2014 18:27:17
SHEET MUSIC
international
Polonaise in A at major, Op 53, by Chopin
Published by Wiener Urtext new edition
The A at major Polonaise Op 53 is generally considered to be
the pinnacle of Chopins Polonaise output. Indeed, seen against
the entirety of the composers works in this genre, his Op 53
stands out as a landmark work. The Polonaise was probably
written in 1843 and is rst documented in an undated letter
by Chopin to the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf und Hrtel.
The work was published by Breitkopf in Leipzig in November
1843, and by Schlesinger in Paris in December 1843; the
London edition by Wessel appeared in March 1844. Of the
three autograph engravers copies that Chopin prepared
himself, only the one for Breitkopf has survived. This makes
it the most authentic version of the work. However, the other
editions display numerous variant readings which since
they are also based on autographs are equally relevant as
sources. The French rst edition seems to have incorporated
a number of nal authorised readings, which is why it is
regarded as the principal source for certain passages, despite
numerous errors and inaccuracies. Some of these nal
authorised readings are therefore also included in the main text
of the new Wiener Urtext edition and are discussed in the notes
on interpretation.
This applies, for instance, to bar 11 (see rst sample page):
here, Chopin notates the rhythm in all three sources diferently
and not always correctly. In the autograph engravers copy
and the German rst edition, the quaver on beat 1 is notated
without the subsequent quaver rest, so that the bar is a quaver
too short. The English rst edition amends this error probably
a purely editorial correction by adding a quaver rest afer the
rst quaver. The French rst edition ofers another solution:
the chord on beat 1 is reproduced as a crotchet. Since the
French rst edition not only reproduces a crotchet instead of
a quaver but also omits the slur from bar 10, beat 3 to bar 11,
beat 1 and adds a fz to the rst note in bar 11, one can assume
a subsequent emendation according to bar 1, which also has
a fz on beat 1. This also makes musical sense because it
emphasises the shortening of the initial four-bar period to
a two-bar period.
Some of the discrepancies in the score serve to elucidate the
interpretation Chopin had in mind, particularly in instances
where his traditional method of notation was no longer fully
understood by his contemporaries. This can be seen, for
example, in bars 39-40, 71-72 and 161-162: in the French rst
edition, in contrast to the other sources, the semiquaver groups
of the lower staf are notated without legato slurs but instead
with decrescendo forks (see third sample page). The dynamic
component of two-note slurs, much in evidence in the 18th
century, was still valid in Chopins time, involving a slight
emphasis on the rst note with the following one played more
sofly. The replacement of the slurs with decrescendo forks
may have been done to take into consideration that potential
performers were no longer familiar with the old rule.
The new Wiener Urtext edition ofers information on particulars
such as these and the signicance of the diferent versions of
the musical text in the form of critical notes and detailed notes
on interpretation, with footnotes in the score providing initial
orientation. Despite all this additional information, the new
edition also presents a very clear musical text with improved
page turns.
Christian Ubber
(English translation: Matthias Mller)
About the music
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I N R E T ROS P E C T
58 International Piano May/June 2014
M
ANY EARLY 20TH CENTURY
pianists, from Harold Samuel
to Arthur Loesser, magisterially
played JS Bach on the modern piano, but
few overtly grappled with the composers
intellectual challenges to the extent that
the American Rosalyn Tureck did. Tureck,
whose 2013 centenary was fted with CD
reissues from VAI Audio and concerts
dedicated to her memory, was a powerful
thinker who embraced change.
In a letter to the editor of Music &
Letters published in 1961, Tureck observed:
A study of Bach must be taken step by
step for the very reason that it involves so
many elds of knowledge and so many
specialised aspects which can only cause
chaotic confusion to the student not yet
ready for them. For Tureck, who died in
2003, the word invention was not merely a
title for exercises written by Bach, but also
a term denoting scientic or technological
breakthroughs, which ofen provided
potential inspiration to her as an artist.
At the age of ten, Chicago-born Tureck was
introduced to the Russian musical inventor
Lon Theremin and was entranced by the
theremin, the eerie-sounding electronic
instrument that he devised. At Turecks
Carnegie Hall debut in 1932, she played the
theremin, not the piano. She would later play
and promote early synthesizers built by the
American engineer Robert Moog, and spent
decades assisting the American seismologist
Hugo Beniof (1899-1968), who built electric
musical instruments as a sideline. Afer
meeting Beniof in around 1942, Tureck
recalled in an unpublished memoir: I became
acquainted with the electronic piano almost
at its birth, when it had only one key middle
C. Through more than 20 years I was privy to
his problems of tone qualities and keyboard
action, his varied experiments and solutions,
and time and again I was his guinea pig by
playing every conceivable kind of music on
this instrument.
Turecks willingness to serve as a guinea
pig in the quest for new instrumental
possibilities was linked to her conviction
that Bachs music is not idiomatically
bound to a specic instrument in the way
that Chopin or Brahms wrote expressly
for the piano. During the post-war rise of
the early instruments movement, some
considered it heresy to play Bach on the
piano rather than the harpsichord. Having
long pointed out that Bach was familiar
with early versions of the piano, Tureck was
delighted in 1967 when the Polish music
magazine Muzyka published a receipt from
1749 for the sale of a Gottfried Silbermann
piano signed by Bach. Tureck saw this as
a powerful reply to purists who refused to
associate Bach with the piano.
Y
ET SHE COULD ALSO BE
ercely critical of some Bach
performances on the piano. Glenn
Gould praised Tureck for playing of such
uprightness, to put it in the moral sphere.
There was such a sense of repose that had
nothing to do with languor, but rather
with moral rectitude in the liturgical
sense. But the admiration was not mutual.
In 1999, Tureck told the music critic
Michael Church that Gould was talented
and clever, but his idiosyncrasies were the
result of a desperate desire to be noticed. I
cant approve [] Idiosyncratic playing has
nothing to do with art.
Turecks path towards such stern pianistic
standards began with her teachers: Sophia
Brilliant-Liven, a former assistant to
Anton Rubinstein at the St Petersburg
Conservatory; and Dutch-born Jan
Chiapusso, a student of Frederic Lamond
and Raoul Pugno whose ethnomusicological
interests led him to introduce Tureck to the
sound of the Indonesian gamelan orchestra
and other world music. In around 1929,
when Chiapusso heard the solid clarity with
which Tureck brought out all the voices
in a memorised Bach Prelude and Fugue,
he exclaimed: Good god, girl! If you can
do this, you should specialise in Bach.
However, Tureck did not adopt this advice
immediately. Instead, she went on to work
with another instructor, Olga Samarof.
For the love of Bach
American pianist
Rosalyn Tureck was
a renowned Bach
interpreter, musical
analyst and pianistic
thinker who was
frequently ahead
of her time. By
Benjamin Ivry
IP0514_58_61_Retrospect_CJ.indd 58 14/04/2014 08:26:01
I N R E T ROS P E C T
May/June 2014 International Piano 59
Turecks rst teacher, Brilliant-Liven, was
Russian, with a wide social circle which
made it possible for Tureck to play for a
galaxy of renowned Slavic keyboard artists,
including Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Alexander
Siloti, and Sergei Rachmaninov. In an
unpublished review of a 1965 biography
of the last-mentioned star, Tureck recalled
Rachmaninov the man fondly: His face
was large and generous, his expression
kind; his hands, which appeared bony and
hard from a distance, were so large and sof
that when I shook hands with him I lost
mine in the cushions of his. Yet Tureck
slated Rachmaninov the composer: The
musician and the listener who craved more
substantial stuf have continuously kept
Rachmaninovs name from the list of major
composers. And rightly so. I remember
giving up performing the Rachmaninov
concertos at the age of 24 because I became
so bored with playing them repeatedly.
Avoiding boredom was a key motivation
in Turecks artistic trajectory, as she
conded in an undated essay entitled Why
Bach?, noting: Already in my mid-20s I
began to omit from my concerto repertoire
the Rachmaninov Second Concerto, then
the Tchaikovsky and Chopin concertos. In
my student days at the Juilliard I had spent
two days on the Liszt A major Concerto
and the Mephisto Waltz. By the third day
I was so bored with them that I simply
abandoned them. Their ideas and texture
seemed so thin compared with the density
and power of the late Beethoven Sonatas,
Bach, Schoenberg and the Beethoven,
Mozart and Brahms concertos.
Tureck, who briey studied with Arnold
Schoenberg, was also a doughty interpreter
of new music by composers such as William
Schuman, Wallingford Riegger, Vittorio
Giannini and Aaron Copland, whose 1954
Sonata she premiered in the UK. In 1947,
the American composer David Diamond
wrote his Piano Sonata No 1 for Tureck,
cleverly incorporating fugues in the work,
which she performed with compelling
conviction (Turecks private recording of
the Diamond Sonata has been released on
CD through VAI Audio).
T
URECKS VARIED INTERESTS
in music continued, even if her
concert programmes gradually
centered around Bach. She expected the
same wide-ranging appetites from her
students, and gathered a series of disciples
and factotums in the early 1940s. One
of them was Miriam Kartch, a longtime
teacher at New Yorks Mannes College of
Music. Tureck ordered Kartch to read three
books which reveal the importance of the
unconscious and mythology to her artistic
approach: Sigmund Freuds Introductory
Lectures on Psychoanalysis; the Scottish
anthropologist JG Frazers The Golden
Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion; and
William Bolithos Twelve Against the Gods:
The Story of Adventure.
A lively interest in the unconscious came
naturally especially since Tureck, as she
recounted in Why Bach?, had a tendency
towards trance-like inspiration: About


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IP0514_58_61_Retrospect_CJ.indd 59 14/04/2014 08:26:09
March 28th to April 6th, 2015
Palm Desert, California USA

Solo and Concerto, Concerto Finals with Orchestra
Application Deadline / O w.vwipc.org / 760-773-2575
Steinway & Sons is the competition piano
Junior (12 and under) & Intermediate (13-17) Competitions
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 60 11/04/2014 18:27:18
May/June 2014 International Piano 61
I N R E T ROS P E C T
two months afer my rst lesson [with
Samarof], shortly before my 17th birthday,
I started on a Wednesday afernoon a new
Prelude and Fugue the A minor of Book
1. The Fugue is a particularly complex
one and, in the opinion of some theorists,
rather awkwardly difcult. Its specic
complexity triggered, I believe, an
experience which was to change my life.
In analysing the music and perceiving
the elements of the unusual subject and
its relationship with the contrapuntal
and harmonic elements, I suddenly lost
consciousness, whether for a few seconds
or half an hour, I shall never know. When I
came to, my whole being was possessed of
an insight which involved Bachs concept
of form and technique of structure.
Simultaneously came the realisation that
I must develop a new way of thinking
which would t that concept and structure,
and also create a totally new technique
on the piano in order to fulll these
with the utmost clarity and integrity on
this instrument.
Tureck was also fascinated by Bolithos
Twelve Against the Gods, a 1929 collection
of biographical essays about such
adventurers as Alexander the Great,
Casanova and Napoleon. If virtuoso
pianists were also adventurers whose
failures could result in far worse things
than merely bad concerts, all the more
reason for Tureck to relish Bolithos
comment: We are born adventurers []
One third of all criminals are nothing but
failed adventurers.
One way to avoid potential interpretive
crimes was to patiently labour in a
grounded way as a researcher. Turecks
many musicological publications, such as
An Introduction to the Performance of Bach
(Oxford University Press), were respectfully
received. She disarmed potential critics
with such sensible observations as:
Historical information, no matter how
well sifed and informative, is still far
from showing one how to play Bach
[] Musical performance is art, not
musicology. She also wrote: One of
the greatest skills required in phrasing
Bachs music is the ability to shape
the whole phrase and the inner phrase
simultaneously [] The smaller shapes
should be played with awareness; they
build up into larger shapes to form the
entire phrase. In 1960, Music & Letters
declared that in An Introduction to the
Performance of Bach, most of [Turecks]
advice is sound and clear.
By contrast, reviewers of Turecks
marathon performances sometimes
complained of fatigue. A review of her
performance at the 1955 Edinburgh
Festival in The Musical Times by Martin
Cooper and John Warrack opined: Rosalyn
Turecks performance of Bachs Goldberg
Variations was another impressive occasion.
To memorise an hour and a halfs elaborate
music is itself an accomplishment; to
play music that is in places designed for
two manuals upon one is another; but
beyond technical feats, one was gripped
and held in a vice-like concentration by
the power and insight of her interpretation.
No detail was too small for her attention,
yet she never deviated from her majestic
progress. It was a profound but exhausting
experience.
Less exhausted was Wilfrid Mellers, who
the following year in The Musical Times
favourably compared Turecks playing of
Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier with Glenn
Goulds: When Rosalyn Tureck plays Bach
on the piano she translates everything into
pianistic line, to which end the clarity of
articulation is only a means. Historical
purists may object to what she does (I
dont), but though her performances may
be rejected they cannot, being entirely
self-consistent and poetically felt, be
argued with. With Gould, whose clarity of
articulation is no less than Turecks, I nd
myself arguing every other bar.
Ultimately, the future of any musical
prophet depends on the quality of his
or her disciples. The New York-based
Tureck Bach Research Institute, which
continues to perpetuate her legacy,
produced a concert commemorating
the 100th anniversary of her birth at the
Bruno Walter Auditorium of the
New York Public Library at the Lincoln
Center in December 2013. The programme
was recorded on video and will
be made available on the Institutes
website. The site also features heartfelt
video reminiscences by loyal students
and friends, who recount their enduring
devotion to Turecks memory.
Although Turecks energy, determination
and drive were scarcely lachrymose,
she did sometimes incorporate tears as
part of the musical experience. Talking
about her performances of the Goldberg
Variations in an unpublished 1968 article
originally intended for Time magazine,
she wrote: I always weep on reaching
backstage, and continue to do so on each
return from the stage. I do not weep for
sadness, though that is present also, in
the end. I weep for the sheer experiencing
of everything that is life and death as we
know it. The knowledge, the vision and
a gratefulness for the fullness seen and
experienced bring the tears. They contain
joy, as well.
Afer her centenary year, even those
piano lovers who nd some tempos chosen
by Tureck to be too doggedly deliberate,
or her readings lacking in merriment or
terpsichorean qualities, will recognise the
weighty signicance of her achievements.
Rosalyn Turecks time-honoured eforts as
a piano virtuoso did not end in tears. e

Turecks 2013 centenary was marked with


CD reissues from VAI Audio
One of the greatest
skills required in
phrasing Bachs music
is the ability to shape
the whole phrase
and the inner phrase
simultaneously
IP0514_58_61_Retrospect_CJ.indd 61 14/04/2014 08:26:25
62 International Piano May/June 2014
B
AROQUE ON SPEED IS HOW
Nicolas Hodges describes Gerald
Barrys Piano Concerto. Hodges
premiered the maverick Irish composers
rst concerto for the instrument in Munich
in November, and I got to talk to him about
it aferwards. The performance with the
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under
Peter Rundel was in the Herkulessaal, a
traditional shoebox concert hall with an
excellent acoustic in the palace complex
known as the Residenz. Its walls covered
in Renaissance tapestries of the Greek
hero Hercules, it is an imposing venue.
The 1,200-seat hall was full if not quite
sold out, the audience clearly intrigued by
Barrys concerto, which is lled with a crazy,
quirky energy, wittily but gently mocking
Romantic concerto conventions.
But despite the works quirks, Hodges
insists that the composer should never be
mistaken for a joker: He is very serious. His
music encompasses the ow of life. [The
Piano Concerto] is full of comedy, but that
comedy is cheek by jowl with profound
tragedy the dark gestures in the piece
make the comic seem funnier. The end is
incredibly haunting, with its melancholic
warmth horn and trumpet repeating and
repeating. I never thought he would be
able to do something like that.
Comedy is not something 20th-century
composers nor, indeed, Western classical
composers as a whole have typically
done well, Hodges says. The satires of
Schoenberg arent all that funny. Theres
not much humour in Brahms But
Haydn and Barry would go well together
two great comics of music .
Hodges rst tried to commission Barry in
1991, with a project of Bach transcriptions,
but Barry politely declined. Then, the
To boldly go
Pianist Nicolas Hodges talks to Andy Hamilton about
premiering Gerald Barrys new Piano Concerto, working
with composers and his love for modern pianism


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May/June 2014 International Piano 63 May/June 2014 International Piano 63
P ROF I L E
To boldly go
pianist happened to be performing in
Los Angeles while Barry was in town for
the premiere of The Importance of Being
Earnest, an opera that was to put him on
the map in the UK and US. They met,
and Barry agreed to write the concerto.
It arrived on time, without teething
problems. Everything was beautifully
thought out and notated, says Hodges.
Gerald judged perfectly the capabilities
of all the instruments. He pushes us all to
our extremes in a very beautiful way . They
met in Dublin a week before the premiere
and corrected some metronome markings.
Things immediately click when the speed
is right, says Hodges.
For the past eight years, Hodges has
been living in Germany, where he has a
professorship in piano at the Hochschule
in Stuttgart. I love teaching and it informs
what I do at every level as a musician,
he says. He believes there is a time-lag
between the UK and mainland Europe
when it comes to acceptance of modern
compositions: Music that is considered top-
level in Germany by established gures
like Rebecca Saunders, Jrg Widmann and
Grard Pesson is presented in London as
by a new young composer , he says. On
the other hand, every time I go to London
I am thrilled by the extraordinary range of
artistic activity. Its very free, compared with
Germany. Maybe funding problems lead to
more imagination in making art happen .
Does Hodges consider himself a
specialist in contemporary music, and
did he make the conscious decision to be
one? I was composing from an early age ,
he replies. My father had scores of music
by Stockhausen and Cage. Then, at the age
of 16, I began to study composition with
Morton Feldman at Dartington Summer
School. It took me many years to digest
everything that he said I learned a lot
about Feldman, because that was how it
was with him! At that age, it was crucial
to see how profoundly serious and deeply
thought through the work of someone like
that was .
I ask him whether he regards both
classical and modern pianism as part of a
continuous tradition. A pianists technique
is expected to embrace repertoire from
Bach to Bartk, but when one gets beyond
Bartk, isnt the technique very diferent?
It is. But I dont think there should
be any problem with young pianists
encompassing modern techniques. If
everyone was introduced to contemporary
music in a relaxed way, from an early
age, there would be no problem. That is
already happening with certain areas of
the repertoire the Ligeti Etudes are now
played in conservatoires around the world,
and they were considered really hard when
they rst came out .
Would he be suspicious of someone
who claimed to be a specialist in 20th-
century repertoire, declining to play
anything earlier? Well, on the one hand,
the world is a big place and theres room
for everything, he says. But for me,
my quite late introduction to standard
repertoire made all the diference to how
I played contemporary repertoire . He turns
the question around, towards the many
performers who play only traditional
repertoire: Contemporary music is so
important in the education of young
musicians because it afects how one plays
all music. To say youre not going to engage
with it is like cutting your legs of. You dont
have to play it at the Festival Hall, but a
musician should engage constantly with all
repertoire. Everything informs everything
else for instance, there is virtually no
music written since Bach that does not have
some relation to him.
T
HE FIRST CONCERTO HODGES
performed was Cages Concerto for
Prepared Piano, in 1992. But then,
during his mid-20s, he studied for ve
years with a Russian teacher, neglecting
contemporary music. By the end of that
period, he had developed a completely
diferent technique: I had a much wider
view of the possibilities of music, he says.
For instance, Im now studying Brahmss
orchestral music very intensively, because Ive
learned that studying how orchestral sound
is notated can help you understand the
solo piano scores by the same composer.
He has programmed Beethoven and
Stockhausen together, and his US concerts
especially include earlier material his
Carnegie Hall recitals have included Debussy
and Beethoven.
Hodges has worked with the older
generation of modern composers including
Feldman, Elliott Carter, Stockhausen and
Mauricio Kagel. Hes premiered many
concertos, including those by Georges
Aperghis, Luca Francesconi and French
spectralist Hugues Dufourt he performed
Dufourts On the Wings of the Morning in
January with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
under Ilan Volkov. Ads and Birtwistle
have written for him, and hes recorded
the latters complete piano music. To mark
Birtwistles 80th birthday, he will premiere
a new work in London later this year. He
has made many recordings, and future
CDs will feature Ferneyhough, Birtwistle,
Walter Zimmermann and Rolf Riehm.
Does working with contemporary
composers in premiere performances
satisfy his early desire to be a composer? I
think being a performer actually satises
my desire to be a composer, he replies.
I still think like a composer and that
afects a lot of what I do, in terms of
an analytical understanding of things.
Working with composers directly is all part
of the same thing.
Sometimes working with a composer is
nothing but a problem, but luckily thats
not very ofen, he continues. Its a lot to
do with notation. Some composers dont
notate well, and therefore simply need
to work with performers. Then there are
some who notate very well, but dont have
condence in what theyve notated, so they
muddy the waters with explication, which
isnt helpful. Sometimes I am thinking
of specic composers that means making
all performers reproduce the interpretation
of the rst performer, when in fact the
score, which is perfectly intelligibly
notated, suggests other possibilities as well.
Thats a pity.
Wolfgang Rihm is one composer with
the condence to allow the interpreter
their own freedom, he says. He has basically
never stopped me doing anything. In a
concerto of his, I played one passage with
a certain kind of rubato, and the conductor
stopped and asked, Is he allowed to do
that? And Wolfgang replied, Nick is the
interpreter, hes allowed to do what he
wants! I learned a lot from Wolfgang being
there, but he doesnt ever tell me what Im
doing is wrong. He might say, Ive never
heard it like that before, and I would give
my reasons for doing it like that.
Another composer whose work Hodges
has performed is Salvatore Sciarrino: He
gives me a lot of input, but hes ofen thrilled


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IP0514_62_65_Profile_CJ.indd 63 14/04/2014 15:34:29
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IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 64 11/04/2014 18:27:19
May/June 2014 International Piano 65 May/June 2014 International Piano 65
P ROF I L E
to hear my interpretation. Sometimes
he just says, Thats not what I meant,
but its really beautiful, so lets leave it.
Does he mean that less secure composers
dont really understand that the work is
going to be interpreted in many ways?
But surely the best composers must
understand that? The only thing one can
really say about, say, Beethovens Fifh
Piano Concerto, is what is written on the
page. Its hard to understand what that
means sometimes some things were
not said, because they were obvious at the
time. But the more one roots ones
interpretation in the facts on the page, the
more chance one has of doing something
with integrity.
Then, youre not coming to it only
with the sound of other performances in
your ears. Its really critical to go back to
the notation. The longer you can spend
working on the details and nding the
form that grows out of that, the better.
Does he feel that by working with the
composer on a premiere, hes setting
some kind of standard? Ive never thought
of it like that. At Darmstadt, where I teach
a piano course every year, people ofen
come with repertoire that Ive worked
on with the composer. And sometimes I
simply say to them, Youve misunderstood
the notation. This is what it means.
Thats a simple correction of fact
an interpreter only has to change
the balance of a few elements in a
piece for the whole thing to change.
But I dont think I have ever made anyone
copy the way that I perform a piece,
because unless they were physically
identical to me, with an identical technique,
that would be impossible.
There are also freedoms that interpreters
need to understand , he continues. For
instance, Sciarrino told me that the
diferent materials he uses in a piece
dont always have to be at the same speed
though it is notated that they are. So
theres a freedom to characterise things in
a certain way, contrary to a strict reading
of the score. In playing Sciarrino, I have to
open up those freedoms. Teaching people
how to read scores by diferent composers
is really crucial.
Harrison Birtwistle is also surprisingly
liberal, Hodges says: He changes tempos a
lot. With Gigue Machine, we went through
the whole piece and I basically rewrote the
score, changing the tempos to what we
had ended up with. It was a very creative
collaboration. If he had worked with a
diferent pianist, they might have presented
him with diferent options and he might
have chosen diferent tempos.
Returning to the concerto performance
at Munich, I ask whether he wishes hed
had more rehearsal time with the orchestra.
What we need is not more time, but more
performances, he replies. Because as soon
as you have a second performance, the
quality is improved. The conductor will
have a recording to listen to, the score will
be there in very good time, and if you have
the same conductor, they know what all
the problems are immediately. Its so ofen
the case that the rst performance is the
worst. But we should all go to it because
the music world needs our money! Thats
why I buy CDs, too .
Its certainly a good reason to attend
the rst UK performance of Barrys Piano
Concerto in Birmingham in June, where
youll be able to see for yourself how this
pianist thinks as deeply about music in his
performances he does in words. e
Nicolas Hodges performs the UK premiere of
Gerald Barrys new Piano Concerto with the
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
and conductor Thomas Ads on 11 June at
Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Music that is considered top-level in Germany
by established gures like Rebecca Saunders,
Jrg Widmann and Grard Pesson is presented
in London as by a new young composer


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66 International Piano May/June 2014
The IP wishlist
Favourites from Frankfurts Musikmesse
1 Grotrian-Steinweg Grand Piano 225
The German makers newest model will be ready for
delivery later this summer.
Price: 84,200
www.grotrian.de
2 Yamaha Clavinova CLP-500 Series
The new CLP-500 series introduces the rst Clavinova
to feature sound samples taken from both Yamaha CFX
and Bsendorfer Imperial Grand pianos. The instruments
also boast new actions, with escapement and synthetic
ivory key tops. The user interface has been completely
redesigned to make it more user-friendly and attractive.
Price: from 1,257
uk.yamaha.com
3 Bsendorfer Opus 50.000
Austrian piano manufacturer Bsendorfer showcased
its 50,000th instrument, the Opus 50.000, which marks
its 185th anniversary. The special edition model evokes
the interior of the Musikverein, Viennas historic concert
hall. Like the hall, the instrument is bedecked with gold
leaf and caryatids. The piano is a 225 model that sports
four extra keys in the bass to contra F. The Opus 50.000
is currently on show in Harrods in the Fine Furniture
Gallery. London-based readers are encouraged to see this
ne piece for themselves but be quick, as it will only be
there until the end of April.
Price: 599,999
www.boesendorfer.com
Piano makers from across the globe gathered once again
this year at the annual Musikmesse in Frankfurt, one of
the industrys biggest and most vibrant trade fairs. This
years biennial piano salon showcased a range of new
models, from composer-inspired grands to high-tech
uprights. Here are our highlights.
2
1
3
T HE I P WI S HL I S T
IP0514_66_67_Wishlist_CJ.indd 66 14/04/2014 12:56:03
May/June 2014 International Piano 67
T HE I P WI S HL I S T
4 Blthner PH Grand in Espresso
This futuristic piano was actually designed in
1931 by Poul Henningsen. Blthner has just
released a new version of the instrument, seen
for the rst time at Frankfurt. The new colour
is espresso (read: brown). The German-made
piano has a Scandinavian air and will suit
modern interiors.
Price: available on request
www.bluthner.co.uk
5 Bsendorfer Beethoven Edition
Bsendorfer continues to impress with its
limited edition models. The Beethoven
model, released in 2013, has the opening
measures of the Presto agitato from
Beethovens Moonlight Sonata silkscreened
onto the inside of the grand piano lid, based
on the original autograph.
The Bsendorfer name and an image of
Beethoven are captured in mother of pearl.
The model on show at Frankfurt had a
chrome frame and had been specially made
for Yamaha London Music in Wardour
Street, where it can currently be seen.
Price: upon request
www.boesendorfer.com
6 Yamaha Transacoustic Upright
One of the most exciting products to be
unveiled at the Musikmesse was Yamahas
U1TA upright. Based on the classic U1
upright, this model embodies a radical
technological twist: the soundboard is
transformed into a loudspeaker, allowing
the pianist to adjust the volume acoustically
whilst also accessing a wide variety of
keyboard and instrument sounds. Confused?
We were a bit, too. Basically, until now,
this option has only been available on
digital instruments or via headphones. With
the new piano, the sounds are produced
through the soundboard, enhancing the
tone. This means that a 121cm upright can
produce the sounds of a concert grand.
Price: circa 10,600; available from August
uk.yamaha.com
4
5
6
IP0514_66_67_Wishlist_CJ.indd 67 14/04/2014 13:32:03
68 International Piano May/June 2014
A
FTER THE BETTER PART OF A
year spent in and out of hospitals,
I was nally able to resume
concert-going late in the fall of last year
and am now delighted to be returning
to these pages.
During my rst three months of
concerts, more than half the pianists I
heard used printed music. In the past few
years, it seems that the rigid protocol (rst
established in the 19th century by Clara
Schumann and Franz Liszt) calling for
pianists to play solo recitals and concertos
without sheet music has started to lose its
hold. In the 1950s, for example, I cant think
of any major pianist, except for Myra Hess,
who walked out on stage with a score and
a page-turner. By the late 1970s, there were
more exceptions, such as Sviatoslav Richter
and Cliford Curzon. But these tended to
be older pianists whod had condence-
shattering memory slips and who could
be easily forgiven because they had long
ago demonstrated how well they knew the
music they played. Nowadays, however,
it seems that more and more pianists,
considerably younger than Richter and
Curzon, have taken up the practice.
This may, at least in part, be because
most of us now get our primary experience
of listening to music on records rather than
in the concert hall. It is almost impossible
to imagine a pianist doing what Richter
did in Carnegie Hall in the autumn of
1960 (ve programmes in less than a
month without repeating a single work),
or what Rubinstein did in the subsequent
season (ten diferent programmes).
It would be impossible because their
wrong notes, while understandable and
almost inevitable when playing so much
diverse repertoire, would now because
of our repeated exposure to note-perfect
recordings be considered unacceptable.
Peter Serkin is one pianist who frequently
gives solo performances with the music in
front of him. He did not use the score when
he played Brahmss Second Piano Concerto
with conductor Rafael Frhbeck de Burgos
and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in
Symphony Hall (30 November) but
perhaps he should have. His performance
was not only littered with wrong notes, but
also the worst Ive ever heard from anyone
reputed to be a major pianist. His tempos
especially in the rst movement were
too sluggish; the Scherzo was muddied by a
technique insuf cient to meet its challenges;
and while the slow movement had some
lovely moments, the waltzing Hungarian
nale was not graceful.
This Brahms experience was so
unsatisfying that seven days later (6
December), I took the train down to New
York to hear 45-year-old Hlne Grimaud,
whom I regard as perhaps the best Brahms
player of her generation, play the same piece
in Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia
Orchestra and Yannick Nzet-Sguin.
Unfortunately, Michael Tilson Thomas
replaced Nzet-Sguin when he came
down with a cold and Grimaud decided to
play the First Concerto instead. This is a
piece that I rst heard her play more than
20 years ago. It was a great interpretation
then, and in this concert it was perhaps
even greater: as propulsive and dramatic
as ever, but with an even greater sense
of spiritual serenity particularly in the
elegiac slow movement.
I
WAS BACK IN BOSTON TWO
days later to hear Marc-Andr
Hamelins recital in Jordan Hall in
the Bank of Americas Celebrity Series (8
December). The French-Canadian virtuoso
used printed music, but, interestingly, only
L E T T E R F ROM A ME R I C A
Our US correspondent Stephen Wigler ponders whether
the protocol of soloists playing recitals and concertos
without sheet music is losing its hold
THE
END OF
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Marc-Andr Hamelin used
sheet music for one piece: his
own Barcarolle, which had been
composed a few months earlier
IP0514_68_69_LetterfromAmerica_CJ.indd 68 14/04/2014 08:37:23
May/June 2014 International Piano 69
for one piece: his own Barcarolle, which
had been composed a few months earlier
and was receiving its Boston premiere.
This nine-minute work, a kind of homage
to those in the same genre by Chopin,
Faur and others, is intended, as the
pianist wrote in a programme note, to
evoke the Venetian gondolier, the stroke
of his oar and the gondolas smooth glide
over the water. But the piece broke new
ground, with a remarkable sense of colour
and atmosphere. It contains a panoply of
difculties for the pianist: treacherous
crossings of hands, a demand for exquisite,
frequently feather-weighted sonorities and
a strict requirement for transparency of
texture; but Hamelin played it beautifully.
The rest of the difcult programme
the part played from memory was just as
impressive: Nikolai Medtners infrequently
heard Sonata in E minor, Op 25 No 2
(nicknamed the Night Wind Sonata
afer Fyodor Tyutchevs 1832 poem, which
is used as an epigraph to the score) and
Schuberts Sonata in B at major, D960.
Hamelin played Medtners dark and
explosive 35-minute sonata, written in
1911 and dedicated to Rachmaninov, as if
it were as easy for him as a Hanon exercise.
Afer the interval came the even longer
Schubert sonata, in which Hamelin used
the rst movement repeat to make the
recurring bass trill every bit as ominous
as the composer intended. He performed
the rest of the sonata with elegance
and playfulness that did not belie the
undercurrents of pain and nostalgia that
characterise so much late Schubert.
Alexander Melnikov made his Boston
debut with two successive recitals in the
Gardner Museums Sunday Concerts Series
(19 and 26 January), presenting a complete
cycle of Shostakovichs 24 Preludes and
Fugues, Op 87. If Melnikov, a student of
Lev Naumov and Eliso Virsaladze and a
protg of Richter, is not as well known
as some of his contemporaries such as
Nikolai Lugansky, Denis Matsuev and
Boris Berezovsky, who were also Moscow-
trained he is certainly as talented. His
comprehensive technique rose easily to the
virtuoso challenges of these difcult pieces
and he plays with colour and imagination.
His remarkable pianissimos made it possible
for him to make sustained, meticulously
nuanced passages almost eerily quiet, while
his playing, in the fugues particularly, could
also rise to efortlessly powerful heights.
I nd it interesting that Melnikov who
has been performing these pieces for more
than 15 years, has made a prize-winning
recording of them and clearly knows them
as thoroughly as any pianist since Tatiana
Nikolayeva, to whom Shostakovich
dedicated them played with sheet music
and a page-turner. He has a remarkable
architectural grasp of these pieces that
made the listener feel from the beginning
of the cycle that the music was headed
towards an inevitable conclusion. It comes,
of course, in the Mussorgsky-like grandeur
of the D minor Prelude and Fugue, which
Melnikov made ring out with heroic
tintinnabulation that lef the listener both
astonished and exhilarated. e
L E T T E R F ROM A ME R I C A
THE
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Myra Hess, pictured here in around
1943, frequently walked on stage
with a score and a page-turner
IP0514_68_69_LetterfromAmerica_CJ.indd 69 14/04/2014 08:37:26
REVIEWS
70 International Piano May/June 2014
LONDON RECITAL ROUNDUP
Southbank Centre Maurizio Pollini, 18 February
Wigmore Hall Grace Yeo, 27 December; Francesco Piemontesi,
16 December; Pavel Kolesnikov, 12 January; Jayson Gillham,
27 January; Angela Hewitt, 17 February; Richard Goode,
24 February; Mei Yi Foo, 13 February
Barbican Leif Ove Andsnes, 4 March
This seasons discovery had already been discovered elsewhere: Pavel
Kolesnikov, 24, won the Honens International Piano Competition
in 2012, and he lit up the Wigmore with a fascinating combination
of Rameau, Debussy and Chopin. I had already admired his
recording of Beethovens Moonlight Sonata and Schumanns
Kinderszenen, but the rened grace of his Rameau was something
else: he knew instinctively how to manipulate his Steinway to
suggest the sound world of a harpsichord. Debussys rst three
Images emerged with transcendent beauty, and Chopins Sonata No
3 had a noble spaciousness. Wisdom is rare in one so young, but
this pianist has it in spades; I suspect he wont put a foot wrong as
he goes on developing.
The same could not be said of 26-year-old Jayson Gillham. I was
initially won over by the warmth of his tone and the infectious
pleasure he brought to Beethovens two Op 51 Rondos, letting the
rst ower at its own pace and bringing out the virtuosity of the
second with easy grace. He then gave a high-spirited reading of
Beethovens Op 101 Sonata (though he hadnt yet found the key to
its mysteries), but Schumanns Etudes symphoniques proved woeful.
Gillhams performance portrayed none of the works sense of
poetry and was unremittingly coarse-grained. Whenever he got the
green light from Schumann to go fast, he galloped at break-neck
speed; those variations that should have been ethereal remained
earthbound, while the inner melodies in the bass were crudely
thumped out.
All the established gures heard during the period under review
remained true to form. Maurizio Pollinis famous nerves got
him so badly in the rst two big Chopin works of his Southbank
recital that they communicated themselves to us through smudged
passagework and strikingly joyless lyricism. But in the sweetly
singing middle section of the funeral march in the Sonata No 2 in B
at minor, something clicked and he was suddenly playing with his
old authority, going on to deliver the wind over the graves nale
with breathtaking wizardry. The rest of his concert was sublime,
with Debussys rst book of Preludes becoming a richly suggestive
succession of tone poems thanks to his uniquely poised touch.
Back at the Wigmore, Angela Hewitt laboured over Haydns
Variations in F minor, dragging out the last stages funereally, but she
gave a spring-heeled account of Beethovens Op 2 No 2 and wound
up with a blistering performance of Bachs Chromatic Fantasy and
Fugue in D minor: Bach was always her natural habitat, and still is.
Leif Ove Andsnes is currently immersing himself in Beethoven,
and at the Barbican gave us a vivid taste of this project, starting
with an incisive performance of the craggily dramatic Sonata in
B at major Op 22. This was followed by a nely shaped Op 101,
the surprises in its last movement sprung with awless assurance.
The concluding Appassionata was magnicent, but the USP of this
recital was Andsness chiaroscuro treatment of the enigmatic Six
Variations on an Original Theme, Op 34. And yet one was lef
with the feeling that although his interpretations had been deeply
pondered, he had somehow been lef untouched by the music.
Since Richard Goodes real mtier is Beethoven, one was curious to
know how he would deal with Schubert, Chopin and Debussy. And the
answer was: provocatively. His manner with the rst D899 Impromptu
was bracingly martial, while the third had none of the melting
sweetness most other pianists give it. Then, things went downhill: for
a group of Chopin Mazurkas he applied a positively Beethovenian
touch, and his treatment of Debussys rst book of Preludes had none
of Pollinis renement, no trace of the requisite
mystery. Goode may be a wonderful Beethovenist,
but he has neither the technical brilliance nor the
subtlety to bring Debussys music to life.
Afer such experiences, one turns with relief to
younger and fresher talents, even if they do play
the same old repertoire. Grace Yeos account of
the Appassionata was both thrilling and intimate,
and she brought out the qualities of Haydns
Sonata in E at major H XVI:52 with sparkling
authority; only in Liszts Sonata in B minor did
she mar things with a tendency to hurry.
Francesco Piemontesi, at 30 a fully edged
master, played four Debussy Preludes in a manner
to rival Pollinis, while his account of Schuberts
D960 Sonata was both ravishing and original.
Finally, hats of to a young Malaysian: in a cleverly
constructed 60-minute lunchtime programme of
Messiaen, Ravel, Bartk and Balakirev, Mei Yi Foo
intrigued, charmed and dazzled in equal measure.
She now deserves a full Wigmore evening.
MICHAEL CHURCH
P
H
O
T
O


C
O
L
I
N

W
A
Y
Pavel Kolesnikovs
Debussy emerged with
transcendent beauty
IP0514_70_RecitalRU_CJ.indd 70 14/04/2014 15:40:31
May/June 2014 International Piano 71
REVIEWS Books
Intimate Piano: Conversations with
Nicolas Southon
Alexandre Tharaud
Editions Philippe Rey (www.philippe-rey.fr),
173 pages, 13.64
Alexandre Tharaud, born in 1968, has
made CDs of Chopin, Scarlatti and the
French repertoire from Rameau to Satie.
Born in Paris, Tharaud has that citys
psychoanalytical tastes, and his book
of conversations with the incisive, well-
informed musicologist Southon is a
gimlet-eyed auto-analysis. Tharaud sees
his early ambitions to record piano music
as narcissistic, since he daydreamed that
he would become his idol, the eccentric
Samson Franois (1924-1970), or resemble
Arthur Rubinstein. Asked why he decided
to unite seemingly random works by
Schubert on a CD for Arion, Tharaud
replies that his motivations were egoistical
and that he recorded voraciously,
following personal appetites instead of
considering the programmes musical
coherence. Tharaud also remembers how
he paid extreme attention to the cover
photos of his CDs, posed for a hundred
photographs and a short lm displaying the
beauty of his hands, and appeared in Amour,
the 2012 French-language lm directed by
Michael Haneke, even allowing Haneke to
choose the tempos and interpretation for
his renditions of Schuberts Impromptus
D899 Nos 1 and 3. This self-awareness
may be due to long experience with zen
meditation, which makes Tharaud seem
like an eccentric individualist. He refuses
to own a piano, preferring to visit the
homes of two dozen friends who are
willing to lend him their keys. This unusual
method allows him to adjust immediately
to varied, less-than-ideal pianos on tour.
There is method in Tharauds Gallic,
Cartesian intimacy. BENJAMIN IVRY
The Music of Herbert Howells
Edited by Phillip A Cooke and David Maw
Boydell Press (www.boydellandbrewer.com);
382 pages, 50.00
Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews
Nicolas Southon (editor), Roger Nichols
(translator)
Ashgate Publishing (www.ashgate.com),
313 pages, 65.00
The witty pianist and composer Francis
Poulenc (1899-1963) was always a
chatterbox. This volume, representing less
than a third of Poulencs miscellaneous
writings as published in 2011 by Fayard,
benets from a translation favouring sense
above stylistic posing. Yet Poulenc was a
skilled poseur, praising his friends beyond
all logic. Defending the harpsichordist
Wanda Landowska in 1950, he complained
that on the piano, Bachs counterpoint
grows fat, to the point of turning into a
burble (neatly ignoring another friend,
Marcelle Meyer, who recorded Bach on
the piano charmingly). Always a man of
ides xes, Poulenc the pianist was obsessive
about pedal usage. Explaining that Saties
works sometimes require a lot of pedal, he
mused, One has nevertheless to play clearly,
something [pianist Ricardo] Vies could
do marvellously but which, sadly, many
pianists do not manage to understand.
Of Ravels Concerto for the Lef Hand in
D major, Poulenc wrote: I am grateful to
[pianist Jacques] Fvrier for playing this
concerto with very little pedal. And in a
carefully scripted series of radio interviews,
he ranted about his own piano works: The
pedal can never be used enough, do you
hear! Never enough! Never enough! In
the same interviews, Poulenc ungallantly
badmouthed a recording of his Two
Piano Concerto, apparently played by the
American duo Arthur Whittemore and Jack
Lowe, as being intolerable on the nerves,
with frightful rubatos and ignoring his
metronome markings. Sometimes catty but
constantly captivating, Poulencs prose is
denitely worth reading. BI
In 2000, piano lovers were startled to
discover that the English composer Herbert
Howells (1892-1983), celebrated for his
Anglican church music, also wrote two ne,
long-forgotten piano concertos (1914 and
1925). Howard Shelleys recording of these
newly discovered works (on Chandos CHAN
9874), accompanied by the BBC Symphony
Orchestra and Richard Hickox, was
revelatory. In a preface to this informative
new collection of essays, Maw argues that the
concertos were too Romantic to seem truly
modern, and too modern to please a public
keen to see a perpetuation of the Romantic
tradition. Howells Piano Concerto No 2
in C major is a dazzling, take-no-prisoners
virtuosic efort radiating condence, which
the composer himself lacked. Distressed
when the noted soloist Harold Samuel
complained of inadequate preparation time,
resulting in a lacklustre premiere, Howells
was further upset when an amateur critic in
the audience, a chum of the notorious gady
composer Peter Warlock, shouted Thank
goodness thats over! when the performance
ended. Howells Second Piano Concerto
was duly withdrawn from his catalogue,
while the First Concerto was disavowed
as a student efort. Referring to the latter,
Howells fellow composer Hubert Parry
complained of a certain stifness of manner
that did not engage the hearers interest, but
Ivor Gurney disagreed, writing from the
trenches of the Great War to inform Howells:
I ofen think of your [First] Concerto and
its strength and beauty. Now we can all
appreciate these works afresh, with the
useful and pertinent insights aforded by
this welcome volume. BI
CHOICE
IP0514_71_Books_CJ.indd 71 14/04/2014 13:12:15
72 International Piano May/June 2014
REVIEWS Sheet music
Pianissimo: Piano Duets
Fifty Original Pieces From Three Centuries
(Intermediate)
Edited by Monika Twelsiek
Schott ED 21379
ISMN 979-0-001-8763-3
15.50
Schotts glamorously packaged Pianissimo
series has already given us 100 Beautiful
Studies and Fr Elise, Liebestraum and Eine
Kleine Nachtmusik, three anthologies of
moderately challenging popular repertoire.
Here, the series continues with duets from
no less than 20 composers. Edited by
Monika Twelsiek, the music chosen comes
from the 18th to the 20th centuries, with
many of the usual suspects in evidence.
These include Debussy (En bateau)
Moszkowski (one of his most famous
Spanish dances) Faur (part of the Dolly
Suite) Grieg (Peer Gynt Suite), Brahms
(waltzes, Hungarian Dances) Dvok
(Slavonic Dances) and of course Schubert
(Marche Militaire and Lndler). As such, the
261-page selection will be of limited value
to experienced, enthusiastic duettists, who
may well already own copies of all of these
standards. Indeed, this clearly presented
and well laid-out edition seems designed as
a wonderful induction for players of
around Grade 5 to 6 level who are ready to
begin duets. Not that there is any shortage
of rarities among the 50 pieces on ofer
here. Not many of us will know the
charming Valse pour Nadia of Emile
Naoumof (born 1962), but it could prove
very useful as a teacher and pupil
educational motivator, and is exquisitely
crafed. Also of benet is JC Bachs
contrasted F major Rondo, which would
serve as a good initial foundation in
classical duet playing before works such as
the Beethoven D major Sonata (also
included here) are introduced. Overall,
pianists in search of a bargain bumper duet
pack cannot fail to be satised.
Classical Piano Anthology
Works by Mozart, Cimarosa, Vorek
and Czerny
Edited by Nils Franke
Scott ED 13440
ISMN 979-0-2201-3275-9
10.99
Praise for Nils Frankes previous
anthologies in this ongoing series should
not make us take his painstakingly
thorough editorial work for granted.
Franke is an exceptionally conscientious
editor, equipping his chosen repertoire
with tasteful performance suggestions and
some fascinating biographical material.
The selection in this volume will suit
students at around Grade 5 to 6. Fingering
and editorial work on the actual text is
done with a light, sensible touch, and the
ngerings are ofen creative and idiomatic
(as is the case in that ofered for the
repeated notes in Webers exquisitely
charming 16 bar E at Waltz). There is
relatively familiar music from Leopold
and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Czerny
and Cimarosa, but also fascinating and
characterful works from the likes of Jan
Vclav Voek, Vclav Tomek and
Michal Kleofas Ogiski. Particularly
fascinating is the D29 Andante from the
15-year-old Schubert a work that already
shows his distinctive personality through
its melodic shape and harmonic
progressions. The slow movement of
Beethovens Wo084 Sonata is presented in
its 1975 completion by Ate Orga, though
the alternative, historic 1830 completion
by Beethovens pupil Ferdinand Ries is
also included as an appendix. With a
generous CD included in the back cover
containing carefully gauged renderings of
all the music from Franke on a model D
Steinway, this is another bargain anthology
for intermediate players. Strongly
recommended.
Saint-Sans Variations on a Theme of
Beethoven, Op 35 for two pianos,
four hands
Edited by Maurice Hinson and Allison Nelson
Alfred Masterwork Edition
ISBN-10: 1-4706-1044-2
It is wonderful to see this sparkling and
substantial work a comparative rarity
reappear in the excellent Alfred Masterworks
series. Though we all know and love Saint-
Sans for a handful of repertoire pieces such
as his Second Piano Concerto, much of his
deliciously idiomatic piano music remains
unfairly neglected. This virtuoso piece uses
the trio in the third movement of Beethovens
Op 31 No 3 E at Piano Sonata as the basis
for a completely democratic display of
athleticism between two pianists. Written in
1874 for the composers friends Alfred and
Marie Jall, the work is clearly designed for
professional use. In terms of pianistic layout
and idiom, it is similar in many respects to
the composers celebrated Carnival of the
Animals. Afer a witty introduction hinting at
the skeleton of Beethovens Op 31 Sonata
theme, that theme makes a full, literal
appearance, with each pianist taking it up in
turn only partially at a time. The result is
extremely humorous and convincingly
bizarre. Variations 1 to 8 concentrate
separately on various decorative deviations
and satellite discoveries from the theme.
Eighth notes, repeated semiquavers, repeated
chords, arpeggios and even a funeral march
appear. A short interlude leads into a
substantial and exciting 130-bar fugue before
the nal exhilarating Presto coda closes the
work. Though challenging and meaty in total,
this is also the sort of work that amateur
pianists would enjoy dabbling with, if not
performing in public. Helpful background
notes and ngerings are included. A
rewarding and most useful issue of a work
that deserves far more recognition.
MURRAY MCLACHLAN
IP0514_72_SheetMusicRevs_CJ.indd 72 14/04/2014 15:50:03
May/June 2014 International Piano 73
Schubert Piano Sonata in B at,
D960 (three versions); Drei Klavierstcke, D946
Paul Badura-Skoda (fp/pfs)
Genuin GEN 12251, 144 minutes (2 CDs)
REVIEWS CDs
This release utilises the potential of the
recording process to the full. It is a rather
specialist mode of thought, perhaps,
to include not one but three performances
of the same piece on one release. But for
pianists, historians and musicians alike,
this disc is a goldmine. Badura-Skoda
performs Schuberts last sonata on a Graf
fortepiano from around 1826, a 2004
Steinway and a 1923 Bsendorfer. Each
instrument has its own individual sound.
Badura-Skoda plays the Klavierstcke
on the Graf, as he does the rst D960, thus
ensuring the whole of disc one is on the
same instrument. He delivers a muscular,
imposing reading of D946, with an
underlying disquiet throughout.
However, the three readings of D960
ofer the most fertile ground here. To add
spice, Badura-Skoda opts for the rst
movement repeat in the Graf and Steinway
performances, but omits it for the
Bsendorfer (his booklet essay is fascinating
on this topic). He sees how each instrument
can reveal diferent facets of this ever-
rewarding music. The piece sounds almost
fragile on the Graf, yet the climaxes still
manage to convey huge power. The
Andante sostenuto is desolate without
being overly slow, while the edge to the
instruments tone is most efective in the
Scherzos angry accents.
The Steinway performance is
tremendously lyrical, but such is Badura-
Skodas interpretative grasp that one does
not feel as if the edges are blunted. Clarity
is maintained at all times. Finally, the 1923
Bsendorfer, with its more velvety tone,
inspires Badura-Skoda to his most interior,
serious reading. A most fascinating release
that is urgently recommended.
COLIN CLARKE
This CD booklet calls Yvar Mikhashof a
musical polymath , an apt description for a
pianist and composer who studied with
Boulanger, worked as a ballroom dancer,
edited Nancarrows music, commissioned
Cages Europera 5, curated tango festivals
and tirelessly championed 20th-century
American piano music. This four-CD set,
released to mark the 20th anniversary of
Mikhashofs death in 1993, has its origins
in the famous free mega-concert he gave in
New York in 1984 under the title The
Great American Piano Marathon: Seventy
Works in Seven Hours from Seventy Years
(1914-1984) .
The discs, recorded in 1991/92 as he
fought against the AIDS that would kill
him, feature 62 works by 48 composers
from an 80-year span (1911-1991).
Mikhashof had planned to record more,
and not everything he did record has
survived, so perhaps its unfair to point to
absentees, such as John Adams and Elliott
Carter, or to note that the great majority of
composers he chose to record were white,
male and born before 1945. While many
immigrants to the US are included here,
this only makes the lack of a substantial
African-American presence all the more
disappointing.
That said, Mikhashof presents an
impressive sweep of American piano music,
from pre-modernist to post-minimalist,
Antheil to Zappa, Charles Ives to Kamran
Ince. Several composers appear twice and
Cage appears on all four discs. Most of the
pieces selected last under ve minutes
Virgil Thompsons two contributions are
timed at just 19 seconds and 58 seconds
while only a handful exceed ten, the
longest being Alvin Currans For Cornelius
at 13:47. So its a mixture of slight and
substantial, mainstream and avant-garde,
high art and broad humour (Cowells
Amiable Conversation, Brants Music for a
Five and Dime), with occasional lip service
paid to folk and popular sources, such as
Roy Harriss treatment of Streets of Laredo
and Zez Confreys Nickel in the Slot. There
are also seven rst recordings and two rst
recordings for piano.
Mikhashofs real achievement here
is to bring a sense of cohesion to such
diverse materials through the excellence
of his playing. He doesnt impose himself,
but embraces each composers aesthetic,
playing each piece with total conviction
and the appropriate kind of brilliance.
Hes at home with everything from the
extended techniques required for Crumbs
amplied Tora! Tora! Tora! to the dreamy
lilt of various waltzes, commissioned in
the 1970s for an earlier project and
re-recorded for this one.
The title of Shani Dilukas American
disc is an awkward amalgam, referencing
Jack Kerouacs novel On the Road and the
Route 66 highway, which she cites as the
two mirrors of her journey through
American music . Though her 14 chosen
composers are a diverse bunch from
Amy Beach to Leonard Bernstein to
Bill Evans she plays them all in the
same muted, over-rened style; it comes
across as precious and, cumulatively,
leaves the music sounding enervated,
even soporic.
Natalie Dessays breathy, listless delivery
of a Cole Porter number conrms there
are no kicks on Road 66.
GRAHAM LOCK
Panorama of American Piano Music
Yvar Mikhashoff (pf)
Mode 262/65, 274 minutes (4 CDs)
Road 66
Shani Diluka (pf)
Mirare MIR239, 70 minutes
CHOICE
IP0514_73_75_CDRevs_CJ.indd 73 14/04/2014 15:50:12
74 International Piano May/June2014
REVIEWS CDs
Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3;
Triple Concerto
Annie Fischer, Gza Anda (pf), Wolfgang
Schneiderhan (violin), Pierre Fournier (cello),
Bavarian State Orchestra/Berlin Radio
Symphony Orchestra/Ferenc Friscay
Pristine Audio PASC400, 72 minutes
At her best, as on this 1957 studio recording
of Beethovens Third Piano Concerto with
the Bavarian State Orchestra and Ferenc
Fricsay, Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer
(1914-1995) was a captivating artist. Fischer
displayed plenty of verve and paprika in
her playing. She and her compatriot Fricsay
audibly share a poetic imagination and
mutual complicity in the Beethoven
Third, which itself contains emotions
of controlled, quasi-hysteric intensity.
The Beethoven Triple Concerto is
again conducted by Fricsay, this time
leading the Berlin Radio Symphony
Orchestra. Sometimes the Triple Concerto
has been pointlessly slated, as by a critic
for The Guardian who, in 2009, termed it
arguably the least successful of any of
Beethovens mature concertos . Yet pianists
including Martha Argerich, Claudio Arrau,
Eugene Istomin, Joseph Kalichstein,
Hephzibah Menuhin, Lev Oborin,
Menahem Pressler, Sviatoslav Richter,
Rudolf Serkin, Howard Shelley, Lars Vogt
and Christian Zacharias have chosen to
record it, disregarding any such glib value
judgments. In 1960, the Hungarian Gza
Anda (1921-1976) joined their number,
expressing both the works sombre gravity
and its dancing high spirits.
CD purchasers can also download two
bonus tracks: Fischers charming 1959
renditions of two Mozart Concert Rondos.
A booklet note by reissue producer
Andrew Rose accurately praises these
recordings as essentially very well made ,
adding that these new transfers have, with
XR remastering, built on very ne originals
with a clean, clear and full sound that in
both cases might have been recorded just
last week, rather than more than 50 years
ago. BENJAMIN IVRY
Prokoev Piano Concertos Nos 1-5
Jean-Efam Bavouzet (pf), BBC
Phihlarmonic/Gianandrea Noseda
Chandos CHAN10802, 122 minutes (2 CDs)
This set updates the previous Chandos
ofering of the Prokoev piano concertos,
conducted by Neeme Jrvi and split
between pianists Boris Berman and
Horacio Gutirrez. The new booklet notes,
by the Prokoev expert David Nice and
Bavouzet himself, are a model of their kind.
The ve concertos t neatly over two discs.
The BBC Philharmonic blossomed with
Noseda as its principal conductor (2002-
2011; he is now conductor laureate), and
the close rapport they enjoy is evident
here. It needs to be, given the ensemble
challenges of Prokoevs scores, both for
the orchestra alone and between soloist
and tutti. Bavouzet, one of the most
intelligent pianists active today, plays
with complete authority.
Bavouzet made his concerto debut
at the Paris Conservatoire with Prokoevs
First Piano Concerto. He captures the
works youthful energy. The BBC
Philharmonic is on exceptional form
in the Andante assai, yet it is the works
closing pages that sum up the vitality of
the Bavouzet/Noseda combination so
perfectly. The musicians capture in the
recording studio (MediaCityUK, Salford)
all the excitement of a live event. The
performance is up there with Argerich/
Dutoit (EMI).
The tremendously and notoriously
dif cult Second Piano Concerto seems
to hold no fears for Bavouzet (although
he acknowledges the dif culties in his
commentary). Communication between
piano and orchestra is once more a
highlight, as is Bavouzets very muscular
cadenza. The helter-skelter passages
in the nale are wonderfully done.
Excellent though Yuja Wang is (Deutsche
Grammophon), Bavouzet is the more
mature musician, while demonstrating
just as ne a technique.
The Third Piano Concerto, by far the
most famous of the ve (and the most
recorded), emerges as almost feather-light
and Classical in outlook. Bavouzets crisp,
clear articulation, def ngerwork and
intelligent, sensitive contributions to the set
of variations that comprises the central
movement are remarkable. The nales pace
is slightly leisurely, but this strategy comes
of in the lead-in to the nal gestures.
The Fourth Piano Concerto is for the lef
hand only (it was originally written for and
commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein).
Bavouzet gives it his all. There is a
tremendous sense of strength, particularly
in the rst movement; Noseda and the BBC
forces equal him in profundity, though, in
the depth of the string sound at the
opening of the Andante second movement.
The Fifh Piano Concerto brings
Bavouzet up against titanic opposition in
the form of Sviatoslav Richter (the
Deutsche Grammophon version, with the
Warsaw Philharmonic under Rowicki).
Both pianists give valid readings, with
Bavouzet more open to the works humour
in fact, he is decidedly cheeky at the
opening, providing a contrast to Richters
wide-eyed exuberance. Both pianists
capture the myriad moods of this piece
with uncanny ease, from the motoric
elements of the second movement to the
nightmarish processional at the heart of the
fourth (Bavouzet and Noseda are
particularly successful here, and the
pianists magnicent jeu perl touch
thereafer is magical).
This is a release that efectively sets the
standard for 21st-century Prokoev
interpretation. CC
IP0514_73_75_CDRevs_CJ.indd 74 14/04/2014 08:44:14
May/June 2014 International Piano 75
REVIEWS CDs
Chvez Piano Concerto; Meditacin;
Moncayo Muros Verdes; Zyman Variations
on an Original Theme
Jorge Federico Osorio (pf), Orquesta Sinfnica
Nacional de Mxico/Carlos Miguel Prieto
Cedille CDR 90000 140
Carlos Chvezs Piano Concerto is an
attractive, big-boned work in the
traditional three movements, built on a
Rachmaninovian scale and running for
36 minutes. Internally, the writing seems
to owe something to Prokoev in the
motoric, toccata-like passages in the huge
rst movement, or to Bartk (or perhaps
Cowell) in the percussive use of the
instrument. But there are also Mexican
rhythms and harmonies in the
freewheeling opening Allegro agitato
(with its Largo non troppo introduction),
the succeeding Molto lento (the lowering
mood of which seems to redene the
works rst span) and the festive Allegro
non troppo. The music is vividly rendered
by Osorio in a performance of compelling
virtuosity just listening to him
negotiating the torrents of chords is
hair-raising and he is vibrantly
accompanied by the Mexican National
Symphony Orchestra under Carlos Prieto.
Chvezs Meditacin was written 20
years earlier, an apprentice piece showing
a delicacy of feeling and an awareness of
the French Impressionists. Of stronger
prole are Samuel Zymans ne Variations
on an Original Theme (2007) and
Moncayos Muros Verdes (Green Walls,
1951) but dont expect a Huapango for
piano, or you may be disappointed. This is
a nely wrought piece, adding depth to
the prole of a composer too ofen
thought of as a one-work creator. Zymans
Variations are more recent, but t well
with the rest of the disc; an attractive,
well-written set, expressively and
technically interesting. Osorio is on his
mettle here, and indeed throughout. A disc
that just gets better with every playing.
GUY RICKARDS
Williamson Piano Concertos Nos 1-4;
Concerto for Two Pianos; Sinfonia Concertante
Piers Lane (pf), Tasmanian Symphony
Orchestra/Howard Shelley (pf/conductor)
Hyperion CDA 68011-2, 116 minutes (2 CDs)
Australian-born but UK-domiciled
Malcolm Williamson (1931-2003) was once
the most commissioned composer of his
time, with a catalogue of over 120 works.
He is little played now and few discs
devoted to his music seem readily available
either here or down under. This two-disc
set from Hyperion makes handsome
amends in collating all his piano concertos,
composed between 1957 and 1994.
The solo parts demand virtuosity and
energy in equal measure, and Piers Lane
sparkles inexhaustibly. Composer
inuences abound: Concerto No 1 alone
may remind you of Bartk, Prokoev,
Lutosawski, Britten and the neo-classical
Stravinsky, while Messiaen hovers over the
two-piano concerto with strings.
(Williamson was a virtuoso pianist: his
1966/67 BBC recording of Messiaens
Visions de lamen with fellow composer
Richard Rodney Bennett is a historical
treasure that ought, if it still exists, to be
released on CD.) A knack for uninhibited
and memorable tunes recalls Malcolm
Arnold. The highly regarded Third
Concerto (rival CDs exist) changes style
possibly too widely to cohere but is always
compulsively listenable, as is the whole set.
Williamson was particularly good at
catchy nales, while his slow movements
exude total, positively post-coital calm.
Trumpets shine, both as joint soloists in
the Sinfonia Concertante and elsewhere;
other orchestral playing is accomplished
but occasionally deadpan. The recording is
handsome; lef-right separation between
soloists in the two-piano concerto is very
fair, given that co-soloist Howard Shelley
also directed the orchestra and presumably
had to be centrally placed. An absorbing
and highly entertaining experience.
MICHAEL ROUND
Life Carries Me This Way
Myra Melford (pf)
Firehouse 12 FH12-04-01-081, 56 minutes
Myra Melford has been a prominent gure
in American jazz for the past 25 years, yet
this is her rst solo recording. And
although her music has ofen reected her
interest in other art forms, from poetry to
dance to architecture, I think this is the
rst project she has devoted to ne art. The
music here is her response to the paintings
and drawings of Californian artist Don
Reich, who died in 2010. He was a close
family friend and, she says, an artistic
inspiration for as long as I can remember,
so clearly this is a very personal and deeply
felt album.
Melford and Reich had planned the
project together but he died before she
could complete the music, and her
ruminations on his artworks are touched at
times by a keen sense of loss, as with Red
Lands gently rocking grief or the tender
farewell implicit in Still Life. Yet this is not
a sad record overall. In her booklet note,
Melford remarks on Reichs colorful and
quirky sensibility, and her music, with
what she calls its tendency towards
lyricism, abstraction and rhythmic
mobility, certainly captures those qualities.
From the playful sense of form evident in,
say, Curtain, to Piano Musics colourful
acrobatics, the whirls and splatters of notes
recall the rhythmic panache of Don Pullen
as much as Reichs jubilant zigzag
chromaticism.
The booklet includes the relevant
paintings and Melfords piano is
beautifully recorded. This is a wonderful
and moving tribute from one artist to
another. GL
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IP0514_73_75_CDRevs_CJ.indd 75 14/04/2014 13:38:06
REVIEWS CDs in brief
Bach and the Early Fortepiano
Luca Guglielmi (fps, clavichord)
Piano Classics PCL0062, 67 minutes
Like Prosperos isle, this disc is full of
sounds and sweet airs played on twangling
instruments; not a thousand, though, just
three all examples of the early keyboards
on which Luca Guglielmi is an expert
performer. He shares the limelight here with
copies of a 1726 Cristofori fortepiano, a 1749
Silbermann fortepiano and a 1784 Hubert
clavichord. He employs the Silbermann for
six of the discs eight works a reasonable
choice, given that Bach played a Silbermann.
Both fortepianos possess a range of seductive
timbres, their mellow, sof-edged charm
further enhanced by Guglielmis adoption
of the Bach-Lehman temperament. He plays
Bachs early Toccata in C minor, BWV 911,
on the Cristofori; and the Sonata in A
minor, BWV 1003 originally composed for
solo violin on the clavichord, as we know
Bach did, where it sounds very attractive.
GRAHAM LOCK
Beethoven The Complete Piano Trios, Vol 3:
Trio Op 11; Variations on Ich bin der Schneider
Kakadu, Op 121a; Trio Op 38
Gould Piano Trio, Robert Plane (clarinet)
Somm Cleste SOMMCD 0135, 78 minutes
This well-lled disc nicely complements the
complete Florestan Trio set I reviewed in
January/February 2012 exactly when these
live Gould Piano Trio performances were
recorded at St Georges Bristol. Here is Op
11 in its original form for cello, piano and
clarinet (Robert Plane is bright and up front
in the mix). For the same combination is the
rare trio arrangement of the Septet Op 20
no doubt a shrewd commercial move on
Beethovens part, though in these reduced
colours quite wearing. The rst Minuet
quotes from the Sonata Op 49 No 2. The
Kakadu Variations (the only piece here with
violin) are seriously played, diluting the
ponderous introduction to silly tune joke
famously reused in Dohnnyis Nursery
Variations. Somms invaluable booklet notes
are by the ever-reliable Robert Matthew-
Walker. MICHAEL ROUND
Bowen Chamber Works: Clarinet Sonata,
Op 109; Rhapsody-Trio, Op 80; Piano Trio
(unnished, completed by the Gould Trio);
Phantasy Quartet, Op 93; Piano Trio, Op 118
Gould Piano Trio, Robert Plane (clarinets)
Chandos CHAN10805 (78 mins)
There has been something of a blossoming
of interest in York Bowen in recent years.
Continuing this trend, Chandos has
delivered this generously lled disc of
chamber music, mostly featuring piano. Its
worth mentioning the superbly crafed
Clarinet Sonata (1943), here expertly played
by Robert Plane. The Rhapsody-Trio of some
18 years earlier, for piano trio, is of a
diferent (and magical) world. Lucy Goulds
searingly emotive violin playing is ably
supported by Benjamin Frith. The Piano
Trio of around 1900 is here completed by
the present performers and here receives its
premiere recording. Afer the mysterious
world of the Phantasy Quartet (bass clarinet
and strings), the unabashedly Romantic
Piano Trio of 1946 is given a pointed, ery
performance; the central Adagio is very
tender indeed. CC
Beethoven Piano Sonata in C sharp minor,
Op 27 No 2; Schumann Kinderszenen;
Chopin Piano Sonata No 3 in B minor, Op
58; Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1;
Mendelssohn Cello Sonata No 2
Pavel Kolesnikov (pf), Johannes Moser
(cello), Calgary Philharmonic Ochestra/
Roberto Minczuk
Honens 2012-3/04CD, 124 minutes (2 CDs)
Born in Novosibirsk in 1989, Pavel
Kolesnikov won the Honens International
Piano Competition in 2012, and a notable
Wigmore Hall debut in January this year
seems to have conrmed his credentials. This
twofer documents his Honens recital and
concerto appearances. The Calgary
Philharmonic is not a great orchestra, and
the recording rather shunts it into the
background. Kolesnikov, though, has a ne
grasp of Tchaikovskys First. Surprisingly
considered interpretationally, his reading
still holds excitement: it is Kolesnikov rather
than the orchestra who captures the re of
the nale. Unfortunately the solo items are
rather nondescript. There is no doubting
Kolesnikovs musicality nor, as the
Moonlight nale reveals, his technique. But
suspicions are conrmed with the
Schumann. Kolesnikov simply does not have
the maturity for Schumanns meditation on
youth. Similarly, the Chopin Third Sonata is
merely good conservatoire playing, years
away from a fully formed reading. CC
Schumann Fantasiestcke, Op 12; In der
Nacht; Carnaval; Beethoven Piano Sonata
in C sharp minor, Op 27 No 2; Chopin Two
Nocturnes, Op 27 Hough Piano Sonata No
2, Notturno Luminoso
Stephen Hough (pf)
Hyperion CDA67996, 77 minutes
Hyperions superb recording and Stephen
Houghs burnished sound make this a most
appealing disc on the subject of music of the
night. Schumann bookends the recital, his In
der Nacht beautifully sustained before Hough
gives a Moonlight Sonata in a diferent
league from Kolesnikov (above), nding
cheeky accents in the central Allegretto and
presenting an explosive nale. The two
Chopin Nocturnes, both beautifully shaded
and harmonically aware, precede Houghs
own Second Piano Sonata, a consideration of
various facets of the night: brightness,
darkness and irrational fears. Dissonant yet
based in Romanticism, the piece includes
nods to Scriabin, Webern and Messiaen.
Hough is his own nest interpreter, playing
76 International Piano May/June 2014
IP0514_76_77_CDRevsBrief_CJ.indd 76 14/04/2014 12:03:43
May/June 2014 International Piano 77
with a erce belief in the score. Finally,
Schumanns Carnaval (each movement
separately tracked) is full of character. The
opening gestures are gloriously exuberant,
introducing one of the nest readings
available. CC
Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales;
Sonatine; La valse; Scriabin Piano Sonatas
Nos 4 and 5; Waltz in A at, Op 38;
Pomes, Op 32
HJ Lim (pf)
Warner 5099991450920, 64 minutes
I wish I could be more enthusiastic about
this intelligently programmed disc. Lim is
not particularly well served by the recording,
which tends to lack depth. But her problem
is that she cannot align herself with these
composers fully, so that everything sounds at
an interpretative remove. This is most
obvious in the Scriabin Sonatas. In No 4 she
cannot quite capture the perfumed, elusive
quality at the heart of the music, while in
the Fifh Sonata she misses the primal,
gestural aspect. Her Ravel sufers from
similar faults. Any sense of ecstasy is missing
(in the Valses nobles and particularly in La
valse). The Sonatine is merely supercial,
missing any sense of the suave or
sophisticated. Try Osborne on Hyperion for
a truer experience. If the slighter Scriabin
pieces fare better, it can hardly generate a
recommendation. CC
Edwin Fischer Trio Beethoven, Brahms
and Schumann Piano Trios
Edwin Fischer (pf), Wolfgang
Schneiderhan (vln), Enrico Mainardi (cello)
Pristine Audio PACM088, 59 minutes
This Bavarian Radio recording captures a
1953 recital at the Salzburg Mozarteum by
the eminent Swiss pianist Fischer (1886-
1960) and his longtime chamber music
partners. Fischer was a great listener as much
as a great pianist, and his discernment
radiates through these performances. He was
a chamber music devotee from early on and
formed his rst trio with Mainardi and the
violinist Georg Kulenkampf, whose death in
1948 made a replacement essential.
Kuhlemkampf was an altogether chaster
artist than the showboating Schneiderhan,
so it is unfortunate that the original Fischer
Trio apparently lef no recorded trace. Even
so, this later formation of the trio is well
worth hearing. BENJAMIN IVRY
Eller Complete Piano Music, Vol 5
Sten Lassmann (pf)
Toccata Classics TOCC0225, 73 minutes
This fh disc of Lassmanns Heino Eller
survey is arranged broadly (though not
exclusively) in chronological sequence,
from the early Caprice (1911), to the sublime
13 Pieces on Estonian Motifs (1940/41). The
result is an overview of Ellers development
as a keyboard composer, from initial late
Romanticism in the rst ve pieces to the
leaner, modernist-nationalist idiom of the
Estonian-inspired 13 Pieces. These, together
with the second book of Preludes (on an
even higher plane than the First Book, on
Volume 1), are among the nest works he
wrote for the keyboard, encompassing
delicacy, subtlety and power. Lassmann plays
superbly, as he has throughout this series,
and Toccatas sound is beautifully clear.
GUY RICKARDS
Lutosawski Complete Piano Music:
Piano Sonata; Deux Etudes; Melodie Ludowe;
Bukoliki; Three Pieces for Young People;
Invencja
Ewa Kupiec (pf)
Sony 88883778432, 58 minutes
This is a magnicent disc and my clear pick
of the crop for this issue. Ewa Kupiec plays
this music with unfailing authority and
technical mastery. The recording has
stunning presence and denition.
Lutosawskis Piano Sonata dates from
1954 but was not published until 2004.
There are few recordings available, and
Kupiec goes straight to the top of the pile.
Various inuences are discernible: Chopin,
Szymanowski and Bartk, but the work
retains its own integrity. Kupiec projects
the varied terrain of the central Adagio
perfectly and her touch in the nale is
simply beautiful, nowhere more so than
in the nal gesture, as the music oats
away into nothingness. She also plays
the Etudes (contemporaneous with the
famous Paganini Variations) with panache.
The rest of the disc is taken up almost
exclusively by music for young people,
delivered with style and grace.
Recommended. CC
Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos 4 and 5
Walter Gieseking (pf)
Pristine Audio PASC390, 68 minutes
In 1944, a primitive form of stereo sound
was used to record a performance by the
German pianist Walter Gieseking (1895-
1956) with the Berlin Reichsender
Orchestra, led by Artur Rother, an opera
specialist. Given the Second World War-
era setting and the anti-aircraf re faintly
audible during the rst movement, it is
unsurprising that Gieseking adopted
tempos that are sometimes so brisk.
Giesekings 1934 recording of the
Emperor the Vienna Philharmonic and
Bruno Walter is of greater pianistic interest.
A 1951 studio Beethoven Fourth has the
UKs Philharmonia Orchestra conducted
with intermittent languor by Herbert von
Karajan. Gieseking is in muted, if still
masterfully limpid, form. A previous
1939 recording with the Saxon State
Orchestra and Karl Bhm is a more
straightforward indication of Giesekings
mastery in this repertory, but this is
certainly worth hearing for every
piano lover. BI
CHOICE
REVIEWS CDs in brief
IP0514_76_77_CDRevsBrief_CJ.indd 77 14/04/2014 12:03:48
Reminiscences of Childhood, Op 54
is a set of three contrasting pieces
entitled Lucillas Beehive, Uchti-Tuchti
and The
Melancholic
Mobile. These
pieces ofer three
diferent ways
of looking at
childhood: the
rst piece focuses
on the innocence
and beauty
of childhood; the second, a fast scherzo-
like piece, is about playfulness; and the
highly dramatic third piece is written
as if we were looking at childhood from
an adult perspective, complete with
identication and regrets.
For me, contrasts are an essential part
of art. I am interested in creating short
and meaningful pieces that, due to their
intensity and inner diversity, give the
illusion of much longer works. These
three pieces can either be performed
separately or as a cycle. NB
REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD
NIMROD BORENSTEIN
N
imrod Borenstein 2012. All Rights Reserved
78 International Piano May/June 2014
S HE E T MUS I C
An excerpt from Lucillas
Beehive is printed below.
Reminiscences of Childhood
can be downloaded in full
from www.rhinegold.co.uk/
ipdownload.
Digital readers click HERE.
Reminiscences of Childhood, Op 54
By Nimrod Borenstein
IP0514_78_79_SheetMusicextra_CJ.indd 78 14/04/2014 12:21:53
May/June 2014 International Piano 79
S HE E T MUS I C
IP0514_78_79_SheetMusicextra_CJ.indd 79 14/04/2014 12:22:00
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NO.25 MAY/JUN 2014
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January/February 2014 International Piano 27
MUS I C I N T HE 2 1 S T CE NT URY
asked if we can help with an instrument.
Well say, Well, we do have a very good
piano dealer in that area so perhaps we
can also ofer some tickets to the piano
dealers customers, perhaps Artur can visit
the store or perhaps we can arrange some
links between a retailer who stocks CFX
pianos and Artur. Or if Stephen Hough
decides to record a particular CD on a
Yamaha instrument, we will know about
that. HJ Limis a brand ambassador, so well
say to EMI, HJ is recording this particular
repertoire for a CD to be launched next
year can we include some information
about why she selected a CFX for this
repertoire, for this record? And because
its all so top end and so professional, the
comments of venues and pianists all add
up to a critical mass with momentum
that gets other serious pianists or labels or
venues thinking about the Yamaha CFX.
Its quite diferent fromjust asking an artist
to do an advert for you.
Outside the classical world, we have
people like Jools Holland and Jamie
Cullum, who actively get engaged in
programmes to promote pianos and piano
playing. A brand ambassador will do a
variety of activities beyond just playing
the instrument maybe workshops in
schools, or developing sofware in the case
of Chick Corea, who plays Yamaha pianos
and synthesisers.
Other pianists lending their name
to the brand include Julian Joseph,
Hiromi, Ananda Sukarlan, who has been
working with Yamaha on a national
piano competition in Indonesia, and Nise
Meruno, who was the rst Indian to be
named a brand ambassador of Yamaha and
who also represents AKG microphones.
Everywhere you look, pianists are
jumping on the brandwagon. Yundi Li is
a brand ambassador for audio and video
product manufacturer Bang & Olufsen;
German-Russian pianist Olga Scheps ies
the ag for Audi and Swiss-based luxury
company Chopard, and was the rst person
to appear on the front of German womens
magazine COVER; and Jordanian telecoms
company Umniah has native pianist Zade
Dirani on the line.
Music and fashion are a marriage made
in heaven from a promotional point of
view male pianists get away with a dark
suit, but when women walk onstage to
They get nothing. Theyve never even asked
to have a line in the programme saying Im
dressed by Chanel. It was just a gift; goodwill
froma very generous company
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A
BDULLAH IBRAHIM
began life as Adolph
Brand and made his rst
recordings as Dollar Brand, a tag
that stuck until his conversion to
Islam in 1968, which prompted
the change to his current name.
Born in Cape Town in 1934, he
heard his rst jazz courtesy of the
township ice cream vans, whose
loudspeakers blared out hits by
American bandleaders such as Louis
Jordan and Erskine Hawkins. Brand
had studied piano since childhood
and, afer stints with dance bands,
joined up with trumpeter Hugh
Masekela and alto saxophonist
Kippie Moeketsi to form the Jazz
Epistles. In 1961, they became the
rst black group in South Africa
to record an LP. However, increasingly sickened by the repressive
apartheid regime, Brand lef for Europe the following year.
In 1963, Duke Ellington heard him play in Zurich and was so
impressed that he recorded the young pianist and invited him to
IPs jazz expert GrahamLock
picks some quintessential
recordings by South African
pianist Abdullah Ibrahim
TA K E F I V E
Abdullah
Ibrahim
Take Five
1. Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro
(solo, 1969), from African
Piano (ECM/JAPO)
2. Moniebah (with Archie
Shepp, 1978) from Duo
(Denon)
3. The Wedding (with
Ekaya, 1989), from African
River (Enja)
4. African Market (1988, with
sextet), fromMindif (Enja)
5. Joan Cape Town
Flower (with trio, 1997),
from Cape Town Flowers
(Tiptoe/Enja)
the USA. In 1965, Brand appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival
and Carnegie Hall, and then joined the Ellington Orchestra for
a West Coast tour. He also embraced the more experimental
jazz of John Coltrane, whose music raised questions of freedom
and spirituality that had a particular resonance for him.
Following his conversion to Islam and name-change, Ibrahim
returned to Cape Town in the late 60s. He lef again afer the
suppression of the 1976 uprisings and settled in New York,
becoming what he called a cultural ambassador for the
African National Congress (ANC) and, in songs such as Hit
and Run and Tula Dubula, he looked forward to apartheids
downfall and the promise of a new world a-coming.
Commentators have discerned a number of inuences in Ibrahims
music, fromNegro spirituals and Islamic incantationto Cape Town
street dances and the percussive dissonances of Thelonious Monk.
Blended together they fuel what critic Francis Davis has called the
deant joy that characterises so much of Ibrahims African jazz.
Eruptions of joy certainly punctuate the rolling lef-hand ostinatos
onthelive 1969 recordingofBraJoefromKilimanjaro, where Ibrahims
darting right-hand urries evoke both the spirit of free jazz and a
dervish-like ecstasy. The extraordinary force with which his right
hand strikes the keyboard (a signature technique) means the notes
seem to jangle and shimmer in the air like shards of frozen light.
Ibrahims Cape Town recordings of the early 1970s were
hugely popular in South Africa, particularly his township
tributes Mannenberg and Soweto. Elsewhere, he was better
known for quieter, meditative pieces such as The Pilgrim and
Moniebah. The latter can be heard in a leisurely 1978 duo version
with US saxophonist Archie Shepp. Ibrahims piano defly
ushers the raspy, slithering tenor through a set of improvised
arabesques that curl like smoke around the haunting theme.
Ibrahims best-loved tune is probably The Wedding, with
a lovely arching melody that Wilfred Mellers likened to
the breath of God. He has recorded it in several diferent
versions (as he has many of his pieces), and it sounds especially
poignant on the alto saxophone try the ardent sound of
Carlos Ward on the Water from an Ancient Well CD or the more
stately, slightly wistful tone of Horace Alexander Young on
African River, both framed by Ibrahims gently rejoicing piano.
Those two albums, featuring Ekaya (it means home), the septet
he formed in 1983, are among Ibrahims nest, though principally
because of his attractive compositions and arrangements rather
than his self-efacing piano. To better appreciate his value as
an ensemble pianist, listen to African Market, from the Mindif
album, where his delightful splatters of improvisation inspire
the horns in their carousing evocations of a busy marketplace.
Once apartheid had ended, Ibrahim was able to return to Cape
Town. Peace and contentment are the predominant emotions on
Yarona and Cape Town Flowers, the two trio albums he made in the
mid-1990s. Joan Cape Town Flower, from the latter, is remarkably
calmand limpid; a handful of well-chosen notes that seemto oat
on air, then dissolve into nothingness. The music tells you he was
home at last.
Graham Lock has written several books on jazz, including Forces in
Motion, Chasing the Vibration and Blutopia
January/February 2014 International Piano 35
January/February 2014 International Piano 45
MA S T E RCL A S S
not. Whatever the performers choice,
decisions also need to be made with regard
to articulation, dynamics, ngering and
tempo all of which can be considered
as a continuation of composition.
And exactly the same is true for music
written afer 1800. By its very nature,
music notation is extremely vague and
approximate. One only needs to think of
the basic distinctions of dynamics; within
the boundaries of pianissimo, piano, mezzo
piano, mezzo forte, forte and fortissimo there
are innite shades of colour. The
same is true in terms of articulation:
staccato, for example, is
generally considered as an
indication of detached playing,
but many diferent types of
staccato are possible on a modern
grand piano, and it is up to
the pianist to decide just how
short or how long an individual
staccato marking should be
played.
Example 2 comes from one of
the most densely packed scores in
the classical literature: the third
movement of Beethovens Sonata
in A at, Op 110. In examples like
this, it is extremely difcult to
even project an aural photograph
precisely,simply because there is so
much information to process. But
the magic and creativity comes
from rening and choosing
from the innite range of shades
possible within the parameters
laid down by Beethoven in this
sublime spiritual masterpiece.
This is where real freedom resides:
in small, carefully considered and
measured diferences of approach.
In the second bar of Example 2, the
performer needs to decide on the
touch to adopt within the held
pedal does he stay close to the
keyboard or come of the keys
and let the music carry across
the hall? The third bars dynamic
oscillation needs special care,
experimentation and renement,
while in the fourth bar tonal
balancing between the hands and
experimentation with just how
at or curved the right ngers
should be will be time consuming
(though not boring if you are
working with freedom and
creativity within the parameters
given on the text).
The scope for freedom within
the given parameters laid out
by a composer is vast. We should never
underestimate just how much freedom we
actually possess as interpreters; especially
when we observe every printed marking
to the letter in a Beethoven sonata, Bartk
Romanian Dance or Debussy Etude.
E
X
A
M
P
L
E
SEXAMPLE 1a

Allemundu

_
4
521
4 5 2 1 3 5

4
_ 2
3 4

,
,


,

_
,

J
__
__
_
.

_
_


_
,


,
,

,

,


,






EXAMPLE 2
Bach Sixth Partita in E minor, Allemande and Gigue

J /ib.
tuttc /c corJc crcsc. Jim.
AdugIo, mu non Iroppo

4
+
, _ ,_ ,_
, _ ,_ ,_
_,,,,,,
4 2 3 42
532
_,,,,,, -
_,,,,,,
ArIoso dolenIe
4 3 . 3 2 1 4 3
_,,,,,,
3 5

,

,

Beethoven Sonata in A at, Op 110, third movement


EXAMPLE 1b
46 International Piano January/February 2014
I
T SOUNDS LIKE QUITE A DEAL:
more than 100 piano lessons at your
ngertips for just over 3 a week. Too
good to be true? Yes and no. For this is
online learning, where the world is your
oyster but you dont actually get to shake
hands with it.
When Mathieu Papadiamandis set up
his online piano learning resource, he
got a mixed response. Murray McLachlan
wrote in this magazine: Online piano
resources are inspirational and extremely
important, but they will never be better
than what can be provided by human
contact in the traditional sense . For sure,
no online teacher is going to tell you
that your posture is wrong, your legato
leaves something to be desired, or that
your pedalling is all over the shop.
But it would do Papadiamandis a disservice
to suggest that iplaythepiano.comwas ever
intended to take the place of live one-to-
one piano lessons.
In fact, he was driven to create the site
because of the sheer volume of bad advice
on the web. There was a need for me
to create such a website because on the
internet you can nd a lot of blogs and
YouTube videos where people give advice
without any knowledge, so people imagine
that we can learn to play the piano as if we
were learning to cook an egg, he says.
The site, in essence, is a selection of
lmed masterclasses in which a series of
teachers concentrate on one work at a
time. You get analysis, opinion and perhaps
inspiration. The lessons are divided
into ten stages, from beginners through
intermediate to advanced. Before tackling
any pieces, beginners receive practical
introductions to aspects of playing the
instrument, including hand position,
learning to sight read, creating a good
sound and crossing the thumb under
to get a legato.
Beginners pieces include a Mozart
minuet, a Czerny study and a waltz by
Hummel. Intermediate pieces range from
Beethovens Bagatelle Op 119 No 9 and the
rst of Saties Gymnopdies to Debussys
La lle aux cheveux de lin and Ravels Pavane
pour une infante defunte, while advanced
players can tackle Liszts Ballade No 2 in B
minor and Beethovens Appassionata .
The lessons are in the hands of seven
teachers, including Papadiamandis himself
and headed up by Michel Brof, who, like
Anne-Lise Gastaldi and Marie-Joseph Jude,
is a colleague of Papadiamandis at the Paris
Conservatoire. Making up the team are
Jean-Marc Luisada of the cole Normale de
Musique in Paris, Jerome Rose of Mannes
College in New York and Jacques Rouvier,
a professor at the Salzburg Mozarteumand
the University of the Arts in Berlin.
I
PLAYTHEPIANO.COM STARTED
life as jejouedupiano.com in 2011.
It was easier to start in France with
French teachers, says Papadiamandis. I
studied at the Paris Conservatory and I
found it really natural to ask some of the
teachers there totake part inthis project. We
started three years ago and because it was a
big success in French language countries
Belgium, Switzerland, even French Canada
I decided to make an English and more
international website.
The French site boasts more teachers and
a lot more lessons a total of more than
300. The French masterclasses are gradually
being dubbed into English. It is time-
consuming work, but Papadiamandis is
keen to see the site grow as comprehensive
as possible and he welcomes approaches
fromnew teachers.
E DUC AT I ON
CACHE
BENEFITS
Online piano learning resource
iplaythepiano.comoffers conservatoire-
standard masterclasses at the touch of
a button. Keith Clarke logs on
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 80 14/04/2014 13:06:34
STRAUSSS PARERGON
A Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
LEFT-HANDED PIANIST
NICHOLAS MCCARTHY
ESSENTIAL REPERTOIRE
Including Ravels Left Hand
Concerto and Brittens Diversions
PLUS...
CENTENARY STAR
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NO.25 MAY/JUN 2014
5.50
www.international-piano.com
RISING STARS
The top
30 pianists
under 30
JOHN OGDON
Remembering
his talent,
25 years on
HISTORIC
KEYBOARDS
Inside Finchcocks
musical museum
INCLUDES MUSIC
TO DOWNLOAD
HENRI
DUTILLEUX
Essential
works
PLUS
Marielle
Labque
John Law
Nicolas
Hodges
INSIDE
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MUSIC
POLONAISE IN A FLAT
MAJOR OP 53 BY CHOPIN
PUBLISHED BY WIENER URTEXT NEW EDITION
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The Luxembourgian pianist
on recording Liszts
Transcendental Etudes
JEAN MULLER
exclusive
interactive
content
LEFT-HAND PIANO
MUSIC SPECIAL
IP0514_81_NxtIssue_CJ.indd 81 14/04/2014 12:24:00
82 International Piano May/June 2014
W
HEN I WAS SMALL, WE
always seemed to be listening
to opera. We were living in a
small town called Hendaye on the Basque
coast, near the border with Spain, where
there was no music and no concerts. So we
could only listen at home, and of course
with my mother being Italian and from
Torre del Lago, there was a lot of Puccini.
There was no one to teach us the piano
in Hendaye, so my sister and I would travel
by train with my mother to Paris once a
week for lessons. The rst opera she took
us to was La Bohme in Paris, with
Mirella Freni. I still remember that. She
was amazing. We were all crying. That
was the work that opened the door for
me into the world of opera a world
I am very much involved with today,
of course, because of Semyon Bychkov,
my husband. It is such a joy the orchestra,
the fabulous voices, the staging. For me,
its a miracle. And I think I enjoy the
rehearsals even more. Theres something
very honest about it with just the voices
and the piano.
These childhood experiences stay with
you. I remember the rst time we heard
Michel Brof play Vingt regards sur lenfant
Jsus from memory! He was 15 years
old. Unbelievable! That was important
because that is how Katia and I started.
We met Michel and he said, You know,
you should look at the score of Visions de
lamen for two pianos because you could
play it well. And why did we want to
play it? Because of his playing of Vingt
regards. Well, we started work on Visions
at the conservatoire and one day we
were rehearsing it and Olivier Messiaen
happened to be walking down the corridor
and heard us playing. He opened the door
and said he liked what he heard and asked
if we would record the piece for Erato.
That was our rst recording. A long time
ago: 1970. Can you believe it?
The rst person to tell me about Robert
Levin was John Eliot Gardiner. He said,
You know, hes a genius. Its important
for me to speak about him because
when people talk about great pianists
Richter, Argerich or whoever they never
mention Levin. For me, he is a revelation.
He improvises all his cadenzas, he plays
the organ, fortepiano, harpsichord and
piano, and his knowledge of music is
incredible. He can play anything. I adore
his Beethoven concertos with Gardiner,
though when he plays the second
movement of No 4 I nd it quite scary! He
plays it on a fortepiano and the question
and answer between the instrument and
the orchestra has never been so clear.
He speaks the music; he tells you a story.
You can see the opera. I have enormous
admiration for him.
My next choice is Gardiner again, a
concert I went to of Bachs B minor Mass.
It was so beautiful. I was crying aferwards
and I went backstage to see him and I
couldnt say anything. Every phrase, every
gesture seemed to be the culmination
of his lifes achievements. When I am so
deeply moved by music like that, it is really
hard to speak about it. I love to listen to
music from this era. Katia loves new music.
She loves to discover. I have a tendency to
stay in this period, one we dont focus on
so much ourselves.
Now I must include something by
my husband but it is so dif cult. I can
never make a decision! Katia always
decides when we y, where we y to and
at what time and then aferwards we
can change it. Its the same with music!
There are so many of Semyons recordings
to choose from, like the Verdi Requiem,
but I will go for Eugene Onegin because
it reminds me of a very beautiful period
with him in Paris back in 1995. I didnt
know the music of Onegin at all and thats
when I discovered it. I really adore it.
Semyon and I met in Paris in the 1980s
and Elena Bashkirova [the pianist wife
of Daniel Barenboim] said I must come
and hear this conductor. Id never heard
of him. He conducted Shostakovich.
Then, later, we had dinner together at
Daniel Barenboims et voil! Weve been
together now for 27 years. Unbelievable.
Time goes so quickly. e
INTERVIEW BY JEREMY NICHOLAS
Marielles sister, Katia Labque, named her
Music of my Life in issue 21, Sept/Oct 13
Puccini
La Bohme
Freni, Pavarotti et al, Berlin Philharmonic/
Herbert von Karajan
Decca 421049
Messiaen
Vingt regards sur lenfant Jsus
Michel Broff
EMI 69161
Beethoven
Piano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58
Robert Levin, Orchestra Rvolutionnaire et
Romantique/John Eliot Gardiner
Archiv Produktion 459622
Bach
Mass in B minor, BWV 232
John Eliot Gardiner
Archiv Produktion 4150514-2
Tchaikovsky
Eugene Onegin
Hvorostovsky, Focile, Shicoff et al,
Orchestre de Paris/Semyon Bychkov
Philips 475 7017
P
H
O
T
O


B
R
I
G
I
T
T
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L
A
C
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M
B
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Music
of my life
Marielle Labque one half of French
piano duo the Labque sisters
shares her favourite recordings
IP0514_82_MusicOML_CJ.indd 82 14/04/2014 11:17:13
IV BNDES INTERNATIONAL
PIANO COMPETITION OF
RIO DE JANEIRO
Tribute to MAGDA TAGLIAFERRO and VILLA-LOBOS
November 27 December 6, 2014
Total amount of prizes BRL 200,000.00
(two hundred thousand Reais), plus concerts in
Brazil, USA and Europe
Age limit 17-30
Application deadline July 2
nd
, 2014
2012 Edition Winners From left to right: Nino Bakradze (3
rd
prize),
Mikhail Berestnev (2
nd
prize), Tamila Salimdjanova (1
st
prize)
Information:
Rua Marquesa de Santos 42 # 1702
22221-080 - Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brazil (+55) 21 - 2225-7492
www.concursopianorio.com | cip.rio@br.inter.net
Artistic director: Lilian Barretto
Sol e Sponsor
Suppor t Pr oducer
Alink-Argerich Foundation
Member of
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 83 11/04/2014 18:27:21
LOFOTEN
PIANO
FESTIVAL
New Piano Festival
in the spectacular
surroundings of
Lofoten in
Northern Norway.
www.lofotenfestival.com
Paul Lewis, piano
Christian Ihle Hadland, piano
Louis Lortie, piano
Lise de la Salle, piano
Gyorgy Tchaidze, piano
Phillip Baden-Powell, jazzpiano
Marianne Beate Kielland,
mezzosopran
Engegrdkvartetten
Lofoten Festival
Strings
ARTISTIC
DIRECTOR:
Jean-Ef am
Bavouzet
7.12.
JULY
Book tickets and
accommodation at
www.festicket.com
IP_03_2014_ADS.indd 84 14/04/2014 11:31:00

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