You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Chopin’ tag.
I ran an informal poll amongst my Twitter and Facebook friends, asking them to indicate which pieces they feel should be “must plays” in the pianist’s repertoire. This post is compilation of those thoughts. Thank you to everyone who contributed. Please feel free to leave further comments, either via the comments box on this blog or via Twitter @crosseyedpiano.
J S Bach – The Well-Tempered Clavier, Italian Concertos, Partitas
The general consensus is that Bach “teaches you everything” (Melanie) and is “the basis of all piano knowledge” (Lorraine) – phrasing, voicing, balance, techniques such as jeu perlé and legato, “orchestration”. Master Bach and you can play anything. Bach was revered by many composers who followed him, perhaps most notably, Fryderyk Chopin, who, it is said, studied the ’48′ every day (he took a copy of the manuscript with him on his ill-starred trip to Majorca).
Mozart
I’m revisiting Mozart’s late Rondo in A minor, K511, at the moment, and I am struck, not for the first time, by how Mozart’s piano music presents his oeuvre in microcosm: operatic, orchestral, choral – it’s all there. He is also a master of chiaroscuro (light and shade), with changes of mood and shading often occurring within the space of just a bar or two. Mozart’s piano music requires great clarity and elegance. Never forget Schnabel’s comment “too easy for children, too difficult for artists”.
Beethoven – Piano Sonatas
Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas are considered to be the New Testament of piano repertoire (Bach’s WTC is the Old Testament). Learn any one of the sonatas and you’ll have a snapshot of Beethoven’s creative impulse, as well as insights into how rapidly the instrument was developing at the time. Beethoven pushed the boundaries, both of the form and the instrument for which he was writing. For all the clichéd readings of it, the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata (Opus 27/2) remains a revolutionary work, written by a composer poised on the cusp of change. His music is full of wit, humour, pathos & philosophy.
Chopin – Études, Nocturnes
I suppose it goes without saying that any pianist worth his or her salt should study at least one of Chopin’s Études and Nocturnes at some point. Chopin elevated the Étude from student study to a highly refined genre, while retaining the original intention of the ‘study’. They are all different, and individual, and they all offer opportunities to hone specific techniques. Some are very well known (the ‘Winter Wind’, ‘Butterfly’, ‘Aeolian Harp’, ‘Tristesse’, ‘Revolutionary’) which makes them doubly difficult to play, for one wants to do one’s absolute best by them. Learn a handful of the Études – or all of them – and you will be scaling the high Himalayan peaks of piano repertoire.
The Nocturnes are exquisite miniatures, some of the finest small-scale music written for piano, and studies in beautiful cantabile playing. The distinct ‘vocal line’ in these pieces lends great drama and profound emotional expression, together with the judicious use of tempo rubato. Many have decorative features such as trills and fiorituras, which, when played well, appear to float over the surface of the music. The influence of Mozart on Chopin is clear in these works, in their distinct melodic lines. For me, the best performances of Chopin’s Nocturnes reveal him as a classical composer, with understated rubato, and close attention to structure and notation. Chopin may be ‘Prince of the Romantics’ (Count Adam Zamoyski), but he revered Bach and Mozart.
On a more general level, playing Chopin’s music offers the modern pianist a fascinating insight into what kind of instrument the piano was in the first part of the nineteenth century. More advanced than Beethoven’s piano, it was still some way from the modern instrument we know today. Hearing his music played on a period instrument is fascinating and makes sense of his dynamic markings such as sostenuto, and his pedal writing. (The Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, Surrey, has three ‘Chopin’ pianos, which he may have played during his 1848 visit to England.)
Rachmaninov
The landscape artist in sound, Rachmaninov presents the vastness of his native Russia in his music, and a sense of history. A reluctant performer himself (in a photo in the green room at Wigmore Hall he looks as if he’d do anything but play the piano!), he wrote piano music which is difficult yet so beautifully constructed that it is extremely satisfying to play.
Debussy
Debussy forces you, as a pianist, to totally reappraise the way you play, and how the instrument works. In a lot of his piano music, you need to forget the piano has hammers. Debussy’s own piano playing was described as “hands sinking into velvet”. I learnt so much about arm weight, lightness, and touch from my study of Debussy for my Diploma, so much so that I feel he is now required playing for any pianist, whatever level. (Even simplified versions of Debussy’s greatest piano works are worth investigation.) Debussy’s piano music also presents some interesting paradoxes for the modern pianist: we have this idea that his music is fluid and gentle. It was, relative to the prevailing style, but we have now gone too far now, and many interpretations capitalise, sometimes erroneously, on the “impressionistic” nature of his music. The Preludes, for example, contain many different moods. shadings, and exercises in touch and tone. Definitely worth studying.
Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Ligeti
I’m a recent convert to atonal music. I actually sat through a piece by Stockhausen in a concert earlier this week and enjoyed it, and I learnt a piece by Messiaen for my Diploma. It’s good to play outside your comfort zone, not least because it introduces you to new and different repertoire (I feel the same about Scarlatti and his cohorts!). Interestingly, younger students are often very receptive to dissonant and atonal music, because they have not yet experienced enough ‘straight’ classical music. I have also found some of my students like minimalist music, for the same reason.
This is by no means comprehensive, and is also very subjective. There are many, many more pieces and composers which could be considered “required reading” for pianists. Do please feel free to leave comments and keep the discussion going.
Khatia Buniatishvili
Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili played an absorbing programme of works by Liszt, Chopin and Prokofiev to a sold-out Wigmore Hall on the evening of 6th December 2011.
Read my review for Bachtrack here
Say ‘Mazurka’ and most people will reply ‘Chopin’. Chopin wrote at least 69 pieces in this form: 45 published during his lifetime, 13 published posthumously, and a further 11, which are known but where the mss are in private hands or untraced. He took the rough Polish peasant dance and refined it, as he did with the Waltz and the Polonaise (also of Polish origin), elevating it to drawing room “art music”. His Mazurkas remain perennially popular; some are much more famous than others and are performed regularly (for example, Op. 7, No. 1, Op. 17 (1-3), Op. 33 No. 2) . I first came across the genre when, in my late teens, I was a Saturday pianist for the local ballet school in Rickmansworth, where I would belt out bouncy Mazurkas on a rather ropey upright, and a group of little girls in pink tutus would prance about the studio before curtseying to ‘Miss Frances’ at the end of the lesson.
Chopin’s Mazurkas show great range and variety. Some are lively, full of rhythmic vitality, others more soulful and melancholy. They are some of Chopin’s freshest and most original works, yet all retain features of their folk origins. One the last Mazurkas, indeed one of his final works, Op. 68, No. 4 in f minor, is one of the most plaintive and heart-rending pieces Chopin ever wrote, suffused with zal, with striking, sliding chromaticism, and an interesting marking (Chopin’s own) after the Trio, senza fine, literally “without end”, suggesting that instead of a regular da capo al fine, the piece should go on indefinitely, or simply fade away to nothing.
The Mazurka, or mazurek, originated in the Polish region of Mazrovia, near Warsaw, a dance in triple time, with an emphasis on the second or third beat. The true folk origins of the Mazurka are two other Polish musical forms, the slow, plaintive Kujawiak and the fast, lively Oberek. The mazurek always has either a triplet, trill, dotted quaver pair, or an ordinary quaver pair before two crotchets. A closer reading of Chopin’s Mazurkas will reveal these different aspects of the Mazurka: for example, the Op. 68, No. 4 is a Kujawiak, while the much-loved Op. 7, No. 1, draws direct influence from the Oberek.
Typical Mazurka rhythm
Chopin’s composition of Mazurkas suggested new ideas of nationalism in music, and influenced and inspired other composers, mostly eastern European, to support their national music. Franz Liszt was a big mover and shaker in this respect, claiming (somewhat inaccurately) that Chopin had been directly influenced by Polish national music. What is more likely is that Chopin heard national music of his homeland when he was growing up. When he left Poland, never to return because of the political climate, the Mazurka and the Polonaise became central genres in his compositional output, allowing him to retain a connection to his homeland.
Karol Syzmanowski
Fellow countryman, Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) wrote two sets of Mazurkas, Opus 50 and 62 (22 works in total). He drew musical influences from Chopin, but also from Wagner, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Scriabin, Debussy, Ravel and nationalists Smetana and Bartok. I discovered Szymanowski’s music, in particular the Etudes for piano, after a friend said “If you love Chopin, you’ll like Szymanowski”. They were right. However, listen to his Masques or Metopes, and you could easily mistake him for Debussy or Ravel, with their misty, uncertain harmonies, flutters and shimmers of sound, and ambigous keys.
Szymanowski travelled extensively, and from the 1920s, he spent a great deal of time at the resort of Zakopane, in the Tatra highlands of Poland, where he discovered the local folk music or Górale. With its typical rustic fiddles and flutes, drone basses and pedal points, this became the template for his own music. Like Chopin, he was loyal to the idea of musical nationalism, but neither was he intimidated by it. So, while retaining many of the traditional features of the Mazurka in all its forms (Oberek, Kujawiak and Mazurek), he also extended it beyond the strict 4-phrase dance measure. As a result, Szymanowski’s Mazurkas defy the traditional symmetry of the dance, and instead expand and contract. The longest are just over three minutes long, the shortest just under two. Some are wistful, plaintive and meditative, others bounce and leap, some are witty and acidic, other are just rough and noisy. Within each one, tempos contract and expand, and one might find a slow Kujawiak-inspired passage right next to a section which is pure Oberek. It is these clever juxtapositions which give Szymanowski’s Mazurkas such life and piquancy.
I am including the first two of the Opus 50 Mazurkas in my Diploma programme. The first, a Kujawiak, opens with a plaintive descending figure, redolent of a rustic violin or shepherd’s flute, with a bagpipe-like drone on an open fifth in the left hand, before the introduction of distinctly Debussyan chords at bar 3. The opening melody is then repeated and embellished. The marking ‘molto rubato’ suggests plenty of freedom in the tempo here (while, of course, retaining an underlying sense of pulse), which adds to the wistful nature of this section. The organisation of material here suggests the typical Górale ensemble of first and second violins, and bass. The music then moves into more familiar Mazurka territory, with a repeated drone bass in the left hand and two strands of melody in the right hand, a hint of Górale polyphonic writing. At bar 25 a very characteristic Mazurka rhythm is introduced, repeated in octaves at bar 29, but marked ‘pp dolciss.’ (very soft and sweetly), which suggests a reminiscence, rather than a straight repeat. And this is what I love about these pieces – the way the composer takes distinctive elements of the form and then tweaks them to give subtle hints and nuances, as if the melody were heard from afar.
Interestingly, there is no full double bar between the first and the fourth of the Opus 50, which suggests all four should be played straight through, without a break, and I like to segue straight into the second from the first. The second is much more characteristic of Górale folk music, with off-beat drones, asymmetric phrasing, dissonance, falling melody, abrupt dynamic shifts, voice-crossing between the parts, and bouncy Oberek-inspired repeating rhythmic motifs. However, at bar 53, there is a section drawn directly from the Kujawiak, a plaintive, melancholy dance strongly redolent of Chopin’s f minor Mazurka, Op. 68, No.4. This is fleeting: the Oberek is restated, and once again the music sets off on a lively, astringent strut. But at bar 95, there is another ‘reminiscence’, in a section marked ‘sostenuto’. The opening melody reappears, shared between the hands and rising in pitch, while fading to pianissimo, before an emphatic, sfzorzando and accented closing chord.
Of all the Opus 50 Mazurkas, the first is probably the most popular for many pianists, including Artur Rubenstein, to whom it was dedicated.
(Links open in Spotify)
Vladimir Ashkenazy – Chopin: Mazurka No.1 in F sharp minor Op.6 No.1
Vladimir Ashkenazy – Chopin: Mazurka No.3 in E Op.6 No.3
Vladimir Ashkenazy – Chopin: Mazurka No.5 in B flat Op.7 No.1
Piotr Anderszewski – Szymanowski: 3 Masques, Op.34: Scheherazade/Shéhérazade (lento assai, languido)
Marc-André Hamelin plays Szymanowski’s Mazurkas Op. 50 Nos. 1 and 2
For those of us who had piano lessons as children, I’m sure we can all remember our first teacher. Mine was Mrs Scott, in Sutton Coldfield, who seemed ancient to me, and really quite scary, with her big grand piano, her elegantly manicured and scarlet-painted nails, her pearls (jewellery, not wisdom!). I learnt dull pieces, and early Czerny and Clementi studies and sonatinas. I took an exam a year. I recall being quite bored by my lessons.
One friend of mine remembers, with a shudder, the teacher who rapped her knuckles with a ruler and, on occasion, dropped the lid of the piano on her fingers (this was in the 1970s, not the 1870s!). Another has never forgotten the teacher’s withering words about his playing – and his parents’ insistence that he keep taking lessons (he didn’t – but started learning with me a year ago).
My music teacher at secondary school was enthusiastic and inspirational (I can still hear him, when I say to my students “pretend you’re a trumpet/cello/clarinet”), and the piano teacher, recommended by him, was energetic and motivating. I learnt quickly with her, always the sign of good teaching, in my book, because she encouraged me, and engaged my interest and excitement in the music I was studying. I was very sorry to leave her when I went to university.
I decided to resume piano lessons in my 40s, but a brush with a “weirdo” teacher some years ago upset me greatly (I never got to the bottom of exactly what this teacher had done to another adult student, only that the student, a woman of my age, was “very distressed”: it was clearly something unsavoury), and for a long time made me wary of trying to find another teacher. Then I found my current teacher, via EPTA, someone who has given me confidence and self-belief, who offers nearly 30 years of experience, who is patient and highly-skilled, and who was herself taught by some of the greatest pianists and pianist-teachers of the twentieth century.
Alfred Cortot with Jacques Thibaud
This connection to earlier teachers and pianists interests me: one of my teacher’s teachers, Vlado Perlemuter, studied with Maurice Ravel, and was a student of Alfred Cortot who was a student of Descombes who was, possibly, a student of Chopin. Thus, I could, albeit somewhat tenuously, claim to be a great-great-great-grand-pupil of Chopin! Students of British pianist Phyllis Sellick (1911-2007) can trace a direct lineage back to Chopin via Isidor Philipp and Georges Mathias. Another of my teacher’s teachers, Guido Agosti, was a student of Busoni. Yet another, Maria Curcio, studied with Artur Schnabel, who was a student of Theodor Leschetizky.
A good teacher is like a doorway, a connector to earlier teachers and mentors, and, most importantly perhaps, to the music. One feels a tremendous sense of continuity through these generational connections, and such musical ‘provenance’ is invaluable and inspiring when one is learning. A teacher can act as a spy on the past, if you will, passing on ‘secrets’ handed down from earlier teachers, and enriching one’s experience of previous performers and performances. This musical genealogy also enables a good teacher to be eloquent and articulate about what makes a good performance – and what makes a really great one.
When learning at an advanced level, a good teacher is less a didactic tutor, more a guide and a mentor, and, ultimately, a colleague. It always excites me when my teacher asks me what I thought of something, why I played this or that passage in a particular way, or how I might translate an aspect of technique to suit my most junior students. Such exchanges prove that teaching is an ongoing learning process in itself: the best teachers are often the most receptive too, and engage in continuing professional development to ensure they remain in touch with current practices and theories. Mix this with that wonderful heritage of past teachers, an ability to communicate well, patience and empathy, and a positive attitude, and you should have a truly great piano teacher.
More on teachers and mentors here
Say “Glenn Gould”, and most people will reply “Bach”. Horowitz? Liszt. Schnabel? Beethoven. Lipatti? Chopin. Many great pianists (and even some lesser ones!) have become associated with one particular composer, and this “composer connection” still prevails today: Mitsuko Uchida and Maria Joao Pires are noted for their interpretations of Mozart, Evgeny Kissin for Chopin, Alfred Brendel for the great Austro-German triumvirate of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert (though there are far better interpreters of these composers’ music than Brendel!).
So, why is it that certain pianists become so closely associated with a particular composer, or group of composers? A definitive recording, a well-received concert tour, the praise of respected critics, all these factors contribute. Some pianists choose to devote their life to playing and recording the entire Chopin Etudes and Preludes, or the complete Beethoven piano sonatas (Brendel – three times, Barenboim – twice), while others prefer to play more wide-ranging repertoire. The great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter seemed able to turn his hand to anything, from Bach to Britten, Handel to Hindemith (he claimed he had enough repertoire for “around eighty programmes”). Claudio Arrau is another noted all-rounder, along with Maurizio Pollini, who is also a champion of the sort of late twentieth-century repertoire many modern pianists of a similar stature won’t touch (‘The Pollini Project’, his personal survey of piano music from Bach to Boulez, draws to a close next Tuesday).
But is it also perhaps that some pianists choose to immerse themselves in one particular composer, or composers, because the music reveals something about their own personality? We talk of so-and-so having an “affinity” for, say, Bach, or Debussy. The word “affinity” originates from the Middle English affinite and the Latin affinitas which is defined as “connection by marriage”. This suggests an even more intimate connection between musician and composer, and perhaps it is that very intimacy which enables some interpreters to really get to the heart, and soul, of the music?
This sounds fanciful: of course, musicians pick up repertoire because they like it, not because they want to marry it! Why learn something you dislike, or because you feel you should? Even at the most junior level, with my students, I would never force them to learn music they do not like: it is wholly unproductive. I have clear memories from my childhood piano lessons of being confronted with the same dreary page of score week after week, my piano teacher insistent that I learn the damn thing. As a teenager, and, admittedly, a rather tiresome, smug, academic teenager, I claimed to love the music of Bach. I’d only scratched the surface of his oeuvre, but there was something about the tight construction of his music that appealed to my intellect. And still does. While at 16, learning a Chopin Nocturne (Op 37, no. 1) for Grade 8, I loathed what I considered its overblown sentiment. Now, I can’t get enough of Chopin, and studying and learning his music is an enormous, if difficult, pleasure (and, no, I don’t consider his music to be full of overblown sentiment any more!). Liszt has been another revelation – a composer I refused to touch until this year, for the same reason as my dislike of Chopin my teens. Again, I was wrong. Meanwhile, much as I love his music, Mozart remains a tricky option, the words of Schnabel never far from my mind “too easy for children and too difficult for artists”, and I’m not convinced I have the mindset for Mozart.
One of my adult students, a rather stiff, anxious woman, had a breakthrough recently learning Bartok (the Quasi Adagio from For Children, which is part of the ABRSM Grade 1 syllabus this year). While other students have struggled with the simple yet highly emotional nature of this piece, this lady has reveled in it, creating the right nuances and shadings, despite her inexperience, and bringing a plaintive poignancy to the tiny piece. So then we looked at ‘Kummer’ (‘Grief’) by Alexander Gedike (ABRSM Grade 1 2009-10 syllabus), and the same wonderful thing happened. She admitted that the sorrowful, minor-key nature of these pieces suited her personality, and it’s true that she plays both extremely well. So, maybe this is an example of the music “fitting” the personality of the performer?
Performers need to balance their own personality with the expression of the composer’s ego: there is, for me, nothing worse than going to a performance where it is all about the performer (Lang Lang, Fazil Say). It just gets in the way of the music and is, in my opinion, hugely egocentric. The best performances are those where the performer stands back from the music a little, with a “passionate detachment”, a little deferential, thus allowing the music (and its composer) to speak for itself. As conductor Mark Wrigglesworth says in his article which, in part, inspired this post, “the best results are of course when the personalities of both the piece and its performer lie in perfect harmony”. The one notable exception to this is perhaps Glenn Gould, whose personality is, in many ways, all over the music in his muttering and humming. Some people can’t bear this, but to me it’s a sign of Gould’s total engagement with the music, and his enjoyment of it too.
Richter playing the opening movement of his favourite Schubert sonata (G major, D894).
Glenn Gould – French Suite No. 2 in C minor, BWV 813/I. Allemande
Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt wittily and imaginatively coupled two of Bach’s French Suites with a handful of miniatures by Chopin, all composed in Paris, in an enjoyable lunchtime concert at London’s Wigmore Hall. Read my full review here
Grand old man of piano Charles Rosen presented an all-Chopin programme at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Sunday 15th May 2011. Read my full review here
The Cobbe Collection of musical instruments with “composer associations” resides at Hatchlands, a fine, 18th century house, nestled in the Surrey Downs, near Guildford. The well-proportioned house sits in landscaped parkland designed by Humphrey Repton, and inside the house are Old Master paintings and rooms decorated by Robert Adam.
The house contains a collection of around 50 historic instruments, mostly keyboard instruments, which Alec Cobbe, patron of Hatchlands, has acquired over the last 40 years. The collection includes keyboard instruments actually owned or played by some of the greatest composers of classical music, such as Henry Purcell, J C Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Bizet, Liszt and Elgar. The instruments are maintained in playing condition, and throughout the spring and early summer there are regular concerts at Hatchlands, offering a wonderful opportunity to hear music contemporary with the instruments being performed, on the actual instruments, in the Music Room. Alec Cobbe, who is a fine amateur pianist himself, also gives tours of the collection.
In 2007, the 1846 Pleyel in the collection was found to have belonged to Chopin, brought with the composer to London in 1848 for his last, great concert tour (read the full story here). Of course, there is no evidence that Chopin actually played this piano (John Broadwood & Sons had agreed to supply Chopin with pianos during his stay in England), though it is quite probably that he did. And, in a way, that does not matter. To hear it being played, as I did at a concert in the summer of 2007, made so much sense of Chopin’s music: how it is constructed and how he, and his audiences and pupils, would have expected to hear it. On a big, shiny modern concert Steinway, in a big, acoustically-perfect concert hall, one can sometimes lose what Liszt described as the “silvery and slightly veiled sonority and……lightness of touch”, and the effect of all the interior architecture, and all the different strands of textures and melodies coming together. When you hear Chopin’s music played on his piano, or a piano contemporary with the pianos he played (and it is important to remember that he preferred a French Pleyel for its particular mechanical and tonal qualities), you realise that every single note he wrote mattered, and that every single note has value, colour, and meaning. Those who are used to hearing Chopin played on a modern piano may find the sound of his own piano, or one like it, slightly unexpected. There is not quite the same evenness across the entire range that you find on a modern piano, but this means that all the interior textures, harmonies and structures can be highlighted, enabling the listener to almost “see” the music through sound (something I am quite familiar with, thanks to my synaesthesia!). Of course, the other, most startling feature of Chopin’s piano is the sound: never too loud. We often forget that much of Chopin’s music was intended for the salon, and even his loudest fortes and fortissimos would be – and should be – tempered, by instrument and performer.
Of course, maintaining this wonderful musical heritage costs money. The Cobbe Collection Trust is run as a charity, and today, with the leaflet I received advertising this season’s concerts at Hatchlands, was a flyer about the Adopt an Instrument Scheme. The Chopin Society has, naturally, adapted the 1846 Pleyel. Other pianos in the collection include an 1836 Graf, a square Broadwood from 1844, autographed by Elgar, and an 1843 Erard, belonging to Chopin’s pupil, Jane Stirling. This strikes me as a very worthy and important cause, which will enable audiences and performers to continue to experience the sounds that inspired composers.
For more information about the Cobbe Collection, including concerts and list of instruments, click here
Jean-Yves Thibaudet playing the Cobbe Collection’s Broadwood supplied to Chopin during his stay in London
As the year draws to a close, I thought I would review my year in music:
Goldberg Variations, Simon Devine, Purcell Room, March: The perfect way to spend a sunny, early spring Sunday morning. Harpsichordist Simon Devine brought immense colour, elegance, depth and humour to Bach’s greatest keyboard work.
End of Course Concert, March: My first “proper” performance in 25 years, as part of my teacher’s end of course concert. I amazed myself by pulling off a thoughtful and melancholy rendering of Chopin’s Etude Op 25/7, which has now become my “party piece”! The exceptionally high-quality of the music was a great inspiration, as was the variety: Chopin, Gershwin, Bach, Kapustin.
The Jerusalem Quartet, Wigmore Hall, March: A lunchtime concert memorable for all the wrong reasons, a concert during which politics and angry protest invaded the hallowed space of the Wigmore Hall and forced everyone present to contemplate the question “should music be above politics?”. The Jerusalem Quartet played on, despite the frequent interruptions. A disturbing, eye-opening, and extraordinary event.
Elisabeth Leonskaja Schubert recital, Wigmore Hall, May: A wonderful lunchtime concert which included several of my favourite works (Impromptu in F minor D935, and Impromptu in A flat D899, played as an encore), and confirmed, once again, what a fine Schubert-player Leonskaja is.
Lucy’s Parham’s ‘Nocturne’ at Wigmore Hall, July: A delightful and very moving evening of words and music by and about Chopin. Parham’s playing left something to be desired: she is unnecessarily flamboyant, and lacks finesse and accuracy at times, but the overall experience was delightful. Sam West was so good that very soon into the evening I truly believed he was Chopin!
Courtney Pine at Hampton Open Air Pool, July: A picnic with friends to the accompaniment of jazz-legend Courtney Pine’s full-bodied and exciting music, in his own tribute to Sidney Bechet. The best part was shaking his hand as he toured the audience at the end of the concert.
Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’, Wigmore Hall, October: The first time I’d heard this monumental work played live and in its entirety. Deeply moving, searing, painful and beautiful, it has inspired me to learn some of Messiaen’s piano music, and has piqued my interest in 20th century music in general.
Goldfrapp, Hammersmith Apollo, November: A rarity for me, attending a pop concert, but nonetheless a great night out. Interesting and unusual music, beautifully performed and visually and aurally arresting.
Students’ Concert, December: A lovely, fun and very enjoyable afternoon of music-making by my own students. The event was a huge success and I will be using the same venue for my summer concert.
Elisabeth Leonskaja, Schumann and Schubert, Wigmore Hall, December: Another great performance by this monumental “old school” Russian pianist. She never fails to please and I am already looking forward to her next solo recital in the late spring.
Handel’s Messiah, English Chamber Orchestra with Raymond Leppard, Rodolfus Choir, Cadogan Hall, December: A really fine Messiah with the superb ECO, youth choir and soloists, all under the baton of Raymond Leppard, a conductor who I remember seeing many times as a child. A lovely start to the festive season.
I fear I may have omitted some concerts from earlier in the year, and will make an effort to keep a ‘concert diary’ next year so that I don’t forget what I’ve heard. If there are any sins of omission here, I am sure Sylvia will point them out for me!
Recent Comments