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Thanks, again, to my blogging colleague Somewhere Boy for inspiring this meme. As he says in the preamble to his own post (I’ve also ‘borrowed’ his title), the meme is “a socially sanctioned excuse for theft”. It’s also the opportunity for a ramble before I have to get on with some reality tasks.
Top 3 concerts: 2011 was a busy year for me, as my new job as reviewer for Bachtrack.com enabled me to enjoy even more live music (a trend I hope to continue in 2012). Hard to select a ‘top three’ as I heard so much fine music in 2011, from an extraordinarily talented young cellist giving her first London recital at St John’s Smith Square to Marc-André Hamelin’s superb late-night Liszt Prom.
Maurizio Pollini at Royal Festival Hall. Truly a concert which took my breath away, especially his exhilarating performance of Boulez’s Piano Sonata No.2, a piece I did not know. In this concert, the last of Pollini’s 2011 residency at RFH, he demonstrated true virtuosity, in the very best sense of the word: a pianist who can tackle any repertoire with great skill, conviction, fidelity and flair. A very memorable and special event (review here).
Ian Bostridge at Wigmore Hall. I adore Ian Bostridge and have been known, in the past, to prostrate myself before him in my devotion (only to be hastily dragged away by a friend!). He has a beautiful voice, clear and pure, lacking that heavy vibrato of old-school tenors, and is even able to make German sound attractive when sung. For two hours I sat in rapt adulation. And then went home and wrote this review.
Mahan Esfahani at Cadogan Hall. A double first for the Proms: the debut of young Iranian harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and the first ever solo harpsichord recital at the Proms. Esfahani brought the ‘Goldberg Variations’ to life in new, exciting and unexpected ways, and left the entire Cadogan Hall audience utterly spellbound by his performance (review here).
Top 3 books: I sort of ‘gave up’ reading during the second half of 2011, and temporarily left my bookclub (which I established in 2005) as I simply did not have time to read anything much as I was studying for my performance Diploma (anyone who thinks that is just “playing the piano” should come and see me for a fuller explanation!). It occurred to me, when I (previously a voracious reader) hadn’t actually opened a novel for about two months that reading is a little like piano practice: you need to do it regularly. Once in a routine, it is easy to read every day. Instead, I caught up with some reading during two holidays in France. In no particular order…..
The Hand that First Held Mine – Maggie O’Farrell. I loved O’Farrell’s first novel, After You’d Gone, and have enjoyed most of her subsequent books. This is her most recent, and as usual she cleverly interweaves several narratives, sensitively and evocatively. A moving and absorbing story of lives connected across the decades.
A Single Man – Christopher Isherwood. I read some Isherwood as a teenager and then forgot about him. Then I saw the film ‘A Single Man’ starring Colin Firth in a Tom Ford suit. The film was exquisite, the book even more so (of course). Beautifully observed, poignant, painful, funny, warm, and ultimately hopeful.
The Musicians’ Way – Gerald Klickstein. I’d been following the blog of the same title for some time before I purchased the book. It arrived at exactly the right time when I was fully immersed in my Diploma preparations. An excellent volume full of sound advice on how to practice effectively and deeply, preparation for performance, dealing with performance anxiety. A great handbook for musicians everywhere, professional and amateur, accessible and easy to absorb.
Top 3 CDs/Downloads: I rarely buy CDs these days, as I tend to download albums or single tracks from iTunes, or listen to things via Spotify where I “borrow” them before deciding if I’d like to own them.
LISZT Années de pèlerinage: Deuxième Année, Italie (complete). Première Année: Au la de Wallenstadt; Au bord d’une source. Troisième Année: Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este • Christine Stevenson. One of many wonderful contributions to the Liszt bicentenary celebrations in 2011, this recording by pianist and fellow-blogger (Notes from a Pianist) contains much to delight the ears and mind. Christine spent 2011 playing and writing about Liszt’s music, and her deep involvement in his music, both physically and intellectually, is evident in her thoughtful and detailed reading of these works.
50 Words for Snow – Kate Bush. After years of waiting for a new album by Kate Bush, we get two in one year: Director’s Cut, a satisfying and enjoyable reworking of songs from her albums The Red Shoes and The Sensual World, and 50 Words for Snow, a completely new album, which proves that Kate has still ‘got it’, with her unerring ability to reinvent herself every time she releases a new album. In her early 50s now, her voice has mellowed, it’s rich and warm. Lyrically strong, musically inventive, nevermind that the ubiquitous Stephen Fry is on the title track – he’s a lot better than I feared, and I love the different words for snow (‘ankle breaker” being my favourite!).
‘O Radiant Dawn’ from the Strathclyde Motets – James Macmillan. Discovered this very morning thanks to Radio Three’s Breakfast show. A piece of spine-tingling beauty and purity. I’m “borrowing” the entire album (performed by the matchless Sixteen with Harry Christophers) from Spotify so I can explore it further.
The Sixteen – Strathclyde Motets: O Radiant Dawn
3 blogs I follow. A bit nebulous and entirely subjective this category….and not music-related. Actually, I visit so many blogs that it’s impossible to select a “top 3″, so here are three of my favourites, for different reasons.
Betty Herbert. Betty blogs on sex and sex-related issues so this site is NSFW. She also blogs about trying to get pregnant, being pregnant, books, food, film, and invites guest posts or ‘Whispers’. Open, honest, funny, poignant, comforting, friendly, this is the blog equivalent of having coffee with your best girlfriend.
Cook Eat Live Vegetarian. I discovered this wonderful food blog by accident while searching for a recipe for Tikka Halloumi. If you thought vegetarian food was dull and tasteless, think again! Natalie’s recipes are imaginative and colourful, and are accompanied by the most gorgeous, mouth-watering photographs. She lives in Spain, the lucky girl!
The Kitten Covers. Sounds like a sex site? It’s not. It’s a joke. Silly and fun. Album sleeves reworked with cats and kittens. Love it.
Here are the ten posts which received the most traffic on this blog in 2011. Enjoy – and Happy New Year!
Describing music – in words and sound
Guest post: FLOW – Transforming Your Practice
Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas
Should You be Practising Right Now?
Music Apps for iPhone and iPad
Maurizio Pollini plays Beethoven’s Last Sonatas
The Top 10 Classical Music Composers
Review: Mahan Esfahani Plays the Goldberg Variations
I’d love more guests posts in 2012. If you are interested in contributing to this blog, please contact me via the comments box on this post, or Facebook or Twitter (@crosseyedpiano).
Many thanks to all my readers.
“Maestro Pollini”, as the interviewer in the programme rather sycophantically calls him, is presenting a five-concert series at the Royal Festival Hall entitled ‘The Pollini Project’, intended, as the Italian pianist says in the interview, to offer “an overall flavour of the keyboard repertoire, from the Baroque to that great master of the 20th century, Stockhausen” to a London audience he describes as “almost unique………so enthusiastic, attentive……..with lots of young people”. The five concerts offer a fairly broad brush of piano music from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach, to Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2 (a composer with whom Pollini claims a particular affinity), Chopin’s Op 28 Preludes, Debussy’s Etudes, and the last sonatas of both Beethoven and Schubert. The final concert in the series features music by Stockhausen, Schumann and Chopin.
Pollini is a fairly regular visitor to the RFH, and I was very sorry to miss his Chopin birthday recital last year, as I have heard he is good with Chopin. I have not heard him before, neither live nor on disc. Last night, the second concert of the series, he played the last three sonatas of Beethoven, which are a somewhat different kettle of pianistic fish from Chopin, being profoundly emotional, with universal values, and in possession of “philosophy in music”, if you will (that is not to say that Chopin does not posses these attributes in his music, because he does, in different ways….). The last sonatas combine sublimity and a certain roughness, and a skilled performer, who understands these pieces intimately, both metaphorically and physically, should be able to combine both elements convincingly.
The Opus 109 begins with that memorable, lyrical opening melody. It was pleasantly played, if a little choppy in places (what my teacher calls “notey” playing). The second movement variations did not grab me, but I have no criticism of his playing per se which was pristine and technically flawless. There was a sense of Pollini settling in to his programme.
Readers of this blog and my musical friends will know already that I am very devoted to the middle sonata of the three, the Opus 110. It is my Desert Island Disc, and I am very fussy about it. Piers Lane failed to move with it a couple of weeks ago at Wigmore Hall in a rather workmanlike performance. To me, Pollini hurried through it, not allowing us enough time to enjoy the beautiful, serene first movement, while the final fugue, in its second incarnation, was rushed and muddy in places so that its wonderful “paean of praise” was lost. There were some nice parts in the Arioso, but his fortissimos were sometimes too much and verged on Hammer Horror soundtrack in places. Some of the quieter passages were also marred by an unidentifiable buzzing in the auditorium (someone trying to tweet by Morse code, perhaps?), a good deal of coughing in the audience (well, I suppose it is the time of year for coughs and colds), and the pianist’s own huffing and snuffling.
Pollini’s playing style is quite uncomfortable to watch too, though it is unlikely that anyone will ever replicate Glenn Gould’s bizarre, crouched posture. He sits close up to the keyboard, almost hunched over it (though he’s not tall – I know this because he walked right past us when we were having a post-concert drink), with his elbows jammed to his sides. He looked awkward, and it was often a surprise to see his arms go out to the highest or lowest registers of the keyboard.
Having said all that, the Opus 111 was fantastic. He brought an appropriate roughness and “bump and grind” to the opening movement, while the second movement variations were full of lyricism, sublime and meditative, while in the more up-tempo variations, Pollini demonstrated he could more than cope with Beethoven’s sheer weirdness and nuttiness (a feature common to the late works in general). Some of the trills in the highest registers fluttered as if carried on a fragile breath, and in other places we heard bells ringing, and repeated notes which seemed to nod forward to the minimalist music of John Adams and Philip Glass (and I’ve never felt that about Beethoven before!).
He received five curtain calls at the end, and many members of the audience were on their feet by the third call. Behind us, a group of Pollini tifosi whooped and cheered, much to the irritation of my companion who grumbled “I can’t stand that stuff!”. Since he played the three sonatas straight through without an interval, there was still time after the concert to enjoy a leisurely drink in the bar. Maestro Pollini came down to the foyer of the RFH to receive plaudits and sign copies of his Beethoven CD.
The next concert is in the series, Schubert’s last three sonatas, is on Saturday 26th February.
I thought I would start 2011 with reasonably good intentions and try to keep track of all the concerts I attend this year, in advance of them, so that when I come to review the year in December, I will be able to refer back to this post…. Once, I had similarly good intentions about my reading and religiously kept a reading diary. After a while, though, I decided life was too short for such anally retentive activities, and I let it go. Thus, when fellow blogger Somewhere Boy offered his review of books he’d read in 2010, I was unable, embarrassingly, to recall much of what I’d read last year. Maybe, it’s less to do with keeping lists, and more to do with getting old(er)….?!
Meanwhile, here, the concerts I have booked, so far, for 2011. I am sure it will come as no surprise to any of my regular readers all of my selections feature the piano. By the way, I tend to select concerts based on programme rather than performer, though there are one or two exceptions, Elisabeth Leonskaja being the most obvious: I just love her old-skool approach.
January – Piers Lane (piano), Wigmore Hall. It was the inclusion of Chopin’s four Ballades that sold this concert to me (I am learning the First Ballade – on and off (mostly “off”!) at the moment). The programme also includes Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Opus 110 which is my Desert Island piece. Early last year, as part of Radio 3′s Chopin anniversary celebrations, Piers Lane wrote and presented a series of very interesting essays about Chopin. If he is as articulate at the piano, it will be a wonderful way to start my concert year. The programme includes music by Schubert and Brahms as well.
February – Maurizio Pollini (piano), Royal Festival Hall. Tagged ‘The Pollini Project’, this concert forms part of a series Pollini is presenting on the South Bank, spanning repertoire from Bach to Boulez. Sadly, I missed Pollini playing Chopin last year, and I have never heard him live. This programme is Beethoven’s last three sonatas, so it will be fascinating to hear two versions of the Opus 110 within the space of only a couple of weeks.
March - Angela Hewitt (piano), Royal Festival Hall. I love the clarity and humour of Hewitt’s Bach playing. Part of the International Piano Series, this concert includes music by Bach, Handel, Beethoven and Brahms (Handel Variations).
April – End of Course Concert. Once again, I am attending my teacher’s Advanced Piano Course, three days of intensive masterclasses, which end with an informal concert. This year, I have, somewhat rashly, agreed to play Chopin’s Etude Opus 10, No. 3 (the ‘Tristesse’). I say “rashly” because just thinking about the dread sixths in the climactic middle section makes my hands ache! Joking apart, I was hugely impressed by the extremely high standards of musicianship and technical ability at last year’s course, and the variety of music presented, from Bach to Kapustin.
June – Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall. Back to the Wig for a lunchtime concert of two Bach French Suites and a Chopin selection. A great and appropriate combination: Chopin revered Bach, and it is said that never a day passed without him referring to the WTC. My only slight anxiety is that Angela Hewitt will bring in a Fazioli piano for this concert (as she did for a previous concert I attended at WH), and its huge voice might be too much for Bach’s Baroque traceries and Chopin’s nuances….
June – Elisabeth Leonskaja, Wigmore Hall. A welcome return of this great Russian maestra, playing Schubert, including the ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy.
June – Penelope Roskell, Sutton House, Hackney. A summer gala concert given by my teacher at Sutton House, a charming Elizabethan house in Hackney. Penelope is Artistic Director of the Sutton House Music Society, which presents a range of concerts and soloists throughout the year. When I saw her perform the year before last (a Mozart piano concerto with the Fitzwilliam String Quartet), it made sense of so much of what she talks about during our lessons. This concert, called Reason and Romance, juxtaposes Bach’s Suites and Schumann’s ‘Papillons’.
July – Imogen Cooper, Wigmore Hall. I admire Imogen Cooper’s rather understated style and the absolute precision of her playing. This programme includes an early Beethoven sonata (Op 10, No. 3) and works by Chopin, including the F minor Fantasie, and “my” Ballade (the No. 1 in G Minor).
July – Students’ Concert. A chance for my students to show off to family and friends. After the success of the Christmas concert, we shall be using the same lovely venue. Currently, I am thinking of giving the concert a “Jazz on a Sunday Afternoon” theme.
I have yet to see the Wigmore Autumn programme, though I know that Sylvia, my friend and regular concert companion, will leap upon it as soon as it is released!
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