Paul Lewis

Music critics in Europe and N. America agree that Paul Lewis, is a master pianist of the first order. In a review of one of his concerts, Tim Page of the Washington Post says that he ‘seems incapable of playing anything in a bland or nerveless fashion. His sense of meter is infinitely elastic, and yet the pieces hold together organically. One almost had the sense that Lewis could have stopped in mid-passage, walked offstage for a minute or two, come back and resumed playing without ever losing the thread of the music entirely. He is the musician as master storyteller, and he keeps our eager attention.’

I have seen him in solo performance three times, the latest yesterday evening. His platform manner is without the flamboyance associated with some great performers. He seems unconscious of anything other than what he is doing, absorbed in the music, receiving applause as if it was a slightly embarrassing affair and incidental to the occasion, allowing a slight smile as he acknowledges it. A dedicated musician, whose journey you feel privileged to share.

He was ‘shocked’ he said to win the classical category of the annual arts awards presented by the BBC TV programme ‘The South Bank Show’ in 2003, partly no doubt because he beat long established musicians such as Sir Colin Davies and the composer and conductor Oliver Knussen. The award was for a series of Schubert’s sonata performances at Wigmore Hall, London’s premier small concert venue. He said that he was ‘amazed’ to have the opportunity to do the concerts in the first place.

Since then he has performed all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas and I am collecting the recordings of them; the last album is being issued in May. He is now in the process of recording all of the Schubert sonatas, two of which I already have on disc. We were at St Georges Hall, Bristol, yesterday to hear an eclectic programme of Mozart, Ligeti and Schubert, the same works which I see he was performing in Madrid a week ago. Last night he played to a packed house with the flair and bravura that has made him a much sought of artist throughout the world, but with the deep seriousness that is so typical of him.

B.R.

Symphony Hall, Birmingham

At last! I have been wanting to go to the this concert hall ever since it opened in April 1991 and on Wednesday of last week I actually got there, with the added advantage of hearing the City of Birmingham Orchestra on its home territory. It’s a huge building; the arsenal of fearsome organ pipes the focus at one end, and a precipitous gallery near to the roof at the other. The honey-coloured pine wood and orange/red seating give a harmonious unity to the whole auditorium, the acoustic and lighting canopy hovering above it like some friendly visitor from outer space. Planned on traditional lines – it reminded me strangely of the very different Concertgebouw in Amsterdam – it has a welcoming and modern feel to it (though there could be more generous provision of toilets on Level Four!).

If the design of the Hall was visually impressive on this my first visit, the sound of the music was sensational. I have never heard an orchestra with such clarity and with so perfect a balance between the instruments. (Again Amsterdam comes to mind – another superb acoustic).The concert began with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and the opening mighty chords were for me like a declaration to prove that all the claims for exceptional acoustic brilliance were fully justified : orchestral music with a purity I have never heard before.

This was a matinee and the hall was full of retired people like me, in the interval refreshing themselves from little trays of cups and tea pots, the place buzzing with conversation. A real sense of a place and of mutual enjoyment. And the rest of the programme? Mozart’s 40th. Symphony, and Brahms 1st Piano concerto played by Elisabeth Leonskaja, in what I thought was a rather under-powered performance but one which delighted the large audience. The athletic conductor was Yannick Nezet Seguin, a Canadian with many musical responsibilities to his (unusual) name. It was a good concert by my favourite orchestra, but the venue itself demands that I must take the journey to Birmingham again.

The following day I attended a concert in Bristol’s Colston Hall, the orchestra this time being London’s Philharmonia. I am sure they performed as well as the C.B.S.O. and Mahler’s 4th Symphony under the Australian conductor Alexander Briger – conducting at short notice - was sensitively and powerfully played. But the difference in the sound between the two concerts was unmistakable.

B.R.

Sir Charles Mackerras

Charles Mackerras is one of those versatile musicians whose art encompasses many genres. Born in Schenectady, New York, in 1925, he was in fact raised in Australia, where he studied oboe, piano, and composition at the New South Wales Conservatorium in Sydney. In 1945 he joined the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as principal oboist (later he became their chief conductor), but came to Europe in 1947. I first became aware of him when I bought his LP of music by Arthur Sullivan which he arranged for the ballet ‘Pineapple Poll’. I became conscious then of his growing reputation as a champion of the Czech composer Janacek – indeed one could say he introduced him to the West, becoming the foremost conductor of his unusual and often bizarre operas, two of which I have seen in performance.

He has had a long association with Sadlers Wells in London (later English National Opera. He was the First conductor of the Hamburg Opera for three years and has been a regular conductor of operas in London’s Royal Opera House. He regularly conducts at The Metropolitan Opera, New York, Welsh National Opera and San Francisco Opera. He has also pioneered the study and practical realisation of period performance techniques, as with his landmark 1959 recording of Handel's "Fireworks Music" in its original wind band instrumentation, and has made many recordings with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment since.

Mackerras had his 80th. birthday in 2005 and there were suitable concerts to celebrate his many achievements over the years including a performance of Verdi’s'Un Ballo in Maschera' at Covent Garden. He just goes on conducting! Last year, for example, he was conducting the Prague Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras and the London Philharmonia, whom we heard under his baton in Bristol in February of last year. That was a memorable concert which included Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. Although he needed to be seated for much of the evening, he otherwise showed little sign of his age. He had the aura of a favourite uncle, smiling at both audience and orchestra as if it was his pleasure to preside over a very special occasion. It was a performance of precision and passion.

I see from a recent review that he was performing this week in Scotland, conducting an orchestra with which he is now closely associated – the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He has made recordings of seven Mozart operas with them. Together they have recently recorded the last four symphonies and, responding to rave reviews, I have bought this two disc CD (308 Linn records) and am relishing the rhythmic strength and delicacy of works that, together with the piano concertos, represents for me the very best of Mozart.

B.R.

The Thirty Two Piano Sonatas

Daniel Barenboim, whom we have already met in these postings (see 28th.May 2007) comes to the end of a series of sell-out performances of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas in London’s Royal Festival Hall tomorrow evening. He is performing the cycle in several major European cities. When the Argentinian pianist was only an eleven year old, he was described by the great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler as a’ phenomenon’. His subsequent multi-talented career has more than justified that description. There are many websites detailing and applauding his achievements.

During his earlier years he was associated with a group of performers which included his late wife, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré, who died so tragically in 1987, as well as the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, and violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. He also accompanied Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in lieder recitals. His discography is huge with recordings of the great classical piano solo and concerto, operatic and orchestral works. Now known as much as an eminent conductor as a soloist, he is also honoured as an humanitarian who expresses a commitment to peace and reconciliation in practical rather than political ways, notably by his creation of the West- Eastern Davin Orchestra (see our blog 23rd.May.) In his fascinating 2007 BBC Reith lectures ‘In the Beginning was Sound’, he explored the significance of music as part of the human story.

Beethoven’s sonatas are regarded as the Everest that any considerable pianist is challenged to climb. The young British Pianist Paul Lewis has been touring the world giving performances of all the sonatas, and has recorded them on the Harmonia Mundi label. I am in process of collecting them and, as I compare them with recordings by another artist, am enormously impressed with his spontaneity but also his imagination and rythmic control. We shall be going to a recital by Lewis in April, and look forward to that.

Writing in today’s Guardian, Martin Kettle – who has been attending Barenboim’s concerts –refers to the sonatas as Beethoven’s ‘imperishable achievement’, and says that in them he went further towards expressing the human spirit in sound than anyone before or since. So hail Barenboim!, and the many artists who have recorded the sonatas (I have traced at least 25 currently available on CD’s). But most of all, hail that troubled, brilliant, adventurous genius, Beethoven himself!

B.R.

John Ogdon, Master Pianist (1937-1989)

Born in Nottinghamshire but educated at Manchester Grammar School, John Ogden was the greatest English pianist of his generation. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music in the illustrious company of the composers Harrison Birtwhistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr and the conductor Elgar Howarth. Together they formed the New Music Manchester group to publicise and perform contemporary music. Later he studied with Denis Matthews and the legendry Myra Hess and Egon Petri. He had a fabulous technique and it was no surprise that that he won jointly with Vladimir Ashkenazy the Moscow International Tchaikovsky competition in 1962, having already won the Budapest Liszt Competition the previous year.

I saw him in performance only once when he was at the height of his powers, Massively talented he was physically massive too and I remember him crouched over the keyboard. The music critic Edward Greenfield said of him that there was no gentler giant in music. I have recently been given a new album of his recordings, including several of his own compositions which have never before been published. (EMI – 70th Anniversary edition).

He was never a well man but had a severe breakdown in 1973 which was never fully diagnosed but it may have been manic depression. For many years he was out of action but then began to play again in public. I taped two of his performances of the Rachmaninoff No.2 when he was on tour with I think the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, but whilst there was still the excitement of a dedicated performance, there were many anxious moments when he was clearly below form.

As well as a pianist he was also a composer of more than 200 works which include four operas, two large works for orchestra, songs, chamber music and of course compositions for the piano some of which are included in the discs I have referred to. They are all stored as an archive in the Royal Northern College of Music. He also made piano transcriptions of many works by other composers.

Widely respected as a kind and gentle man, his death was mourned by many. Together with friends and colleagues, his wife, the pianist Brenda Lucas Ogdon, established The John Ogdon Foundation in 1993 to ‘inspire and assist young musicians to develop in romantic piano and contemporary music, and to raise awareness of Ogdon as a composer’. Its Patron is Vladimir Ashkenazy. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies – creatively driven as was his onetime fellow student - says of John Ogdon that he was ‘a genius of enormous sensitivity and very great humour’.

It's a sad story, but a wonderful legacy.

B.R.

Enrique Granados (1867-1916)

Unlike de Falla (whom he influenced), Granados wished to compose essentially as an inheritor of the Spanish tradition. Born in Lleida, Catalonia, and taught in Paris by Felipe Pedrell who shared his nationalist dedication, his first success was at the end of the 1890s, with the zarzuela ‘Maria del Carmen’, which at a time when royal patronage mattered, earned the approval of King Alfonso XIII.

In 1911 he gave the first performance of his suite for piano Goyescas, which became his most famous work and which I am listening to as I write (Alicia de Larrocha’s recording). Granados was a painter as well as a musician, and this set of six pieces are based on the paintings of Goya, an artist whom he greatly admired. The work was a great success and, encouraged to expand it, in 1914, he wrote an opera based on the subject.

The outbreak of World Wall forced the opera’s European premiere to be canceled but it was performed for the first time in New York two years later. Whilst in the U.S.A. he was asked to perform before President Woodrow Wilson which caused him to miss his passage back to Spain. Instead, he took a ship to England, and then a ferry to France which was torpedoed by a German submarine. In attempting to save his wife who was in the water, Granados jumped out of the lifeboat and drowned. The tragic irony of his death was that he had a morbid fear of water.

Granados’ music was mainly instrumental although he also composed several zarzuelas, an orchestral tone poem based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, and many songs. Much of his piano music has been transcribed for the classical guitar and was frequently played by Pablo Casals and his successors in the repertoire. Naxos in their Spanish series have produced ten discs of his music, the last of which will be published at the end of February 2008, and contains piano music (as most of the others), but for four hands or two pianos. The details of the set of recordings can be found on the Naxos website.

As is so often the case of a composer’s early death, one can’t help but wonder at how his career might have developed, but also how much glorious music is lost to us.

B.R.

Orchestra Filarmonica de Gran Canaria

The Canary Islands are for many people the place to go for sun, sand, sea; and sleepy siestas after long lunches. But the Gran Canaria Island has a special cultural fame through its orchestra, which performs in the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium, named after the renowned Spanish tenor, who although of Austrian descent was actually born in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. (Kraus had an exceptional lyrical voice that made it possible for him still to be singing in his 70’s).

The orchestra was founded in 1845 and may have had an uneven history as it struggled to survive, but in more recent years it has gained in reputation, has toured in other countries including China, as well as performing extensively in Spain. They appear in Madrid and Barcelona and have been designated as one of the ‘Great World Orchestras’. The International Festival of Music in the Euroresidentes’ home city of Alicante, held in July and August, has welcomed the orchestra as part of their annual programme, and so has the Alicante Contemporary Music Festival held in late September. The orchestra contributes to a very lively musical scene in the islands. I see that also during this and next month the Hague Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras are in residence in the Canary Islands, and the Gran Canaria Orchestra itself is presenting a concert performance of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’ in Las Palmas on February 15th.

The English conductor Adrian Lepper is closely associated with the orchestra. He was its Director of Music for some years, but is still one of their favoured conductors. Together they have made several discs for the redoubtable Naxos label. They include recordings of symphonies by Sibelius, Mahler and Dvorák, and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, as well as a Spanish repertoire CD of music by Rodrigo and Turina and interestingly Walton's Symphony No.1 (music which is about as ‘un-Spanish’ as you can get!) But he and the orchestra have also recorded a series of three discs for ASV which covers an extensive range of the contemporary Spanish repertoire, including music by Halffter and Montsalvatge.

The Orchestra seems to lack an up to date website and its distinction as a long-standing ensemble in an area known only for relaxation and pleasure by most holiday-makers, deserves one. Certainly if I was to go on holiday there I would first find out whether they were performing!

B.R.