Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?
My mother always wanted to play but never had the chance. One day she asked me if I wanted to learn, and I said yes.
Who or what are the most important influences on your playing?
I really love and admire the older pianists who themselves emulated the great singers of the past. One can always hear the influence of great singing on pianists such as Horowitz, Nyiregyhazi, Sofronitsky, and Tiegerman.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
After not playing for over 25 years, it was a very long walk to the wonderful Fazioli at St James’s last October.
Do you have a favourite concert venue?
My dream venue would be an open-air concert in Loch-ard Gorge along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. The acoustic there is phenomenal. Just a slight logistical problem of getting a piano and full orchestra down there.
Who are your favourite musicians?
Ramon Vinay (Tenor), the late Dietrich Fischer – Dieskau (Baritone), Zara Dolukhanova (Mezzo Soprano), Adolf Busch (Violinist), Bronislav Hubermann (Violinist), Carlos Kleiber (Conductor), Victor de Sabata (Conductor), Wilhelm Furtwangler (Conductor)…. and many more.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
I heard Shura Chekassky play at Wigmore Hall just before he died. He made the most ravishing piano sound I’ve ever heard in that Hall.
What is your favourite music to play? To listen to?
Being a pianist, I am really spoilt for choice as there is so much truly great music written for the piano. Where does one stop? And to listen to….. I constantly marvel at the sense of novelty and invention of Errol Garner’s concert by the sea (I also seduced my fiancée listening to this album).
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians/students?
There is no such thing as perfection. The greatest performances, no matter how extraordinary and ‘ideal’, are in a state of flux. We must never forget that some of the greatest performers in history i.e. Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Scriabin, Art Tatum, Errol Garner and Miles Davis et al, were great improvisers.
What are you working on at the moment?
I love to work on a number of things simultaneously. My old Russian piano teacher often spoke about walking past Sviatoslav Richter’s apartment and eavesdropping, hearing the great master practicing completely different works to what he was going to play later that very evening.
What do you enjoy doing most?
Opening a sensational bottle of red wine after a good concert and sharing with friends.
Angelo Villani performs at London’s St John’s Smith Square on Wednesday 8th May in a concert featuring works by Debussy, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner/Von Bulow/Liszt/Villani and Alkan. Further details and tickets here
Born in Australia to Italian parents, Angelo Villani attended Melbourne’s school for musically- gifted children, the Victorian College of the Arts, where his teachers included Alexander Semetsky, a pupil of Emil Gilels, and Stephen McIntyre, a student of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. A flourishing career as a teenager included performances of the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto and Rachmaninov 2nd Concerto with Melbourne Symphony, acclaimed for their dramatic intensity, vision and musical conviction.
Following further recitals and appearances on ABC Television, Angelo Villani won considerable respect and esteem and a promising career seemed forthcoming. Following recommendations by Leslie Howard and Joyce Greer de Holesch to take part in the Moscow Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, the 23-year-old pianist was accepted for the 9th International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990.
The young Australian pianist arrived in Moscow a week earlier to prepare himself for the Herculean contest. Shortly before the first round, Villani withdraw owing to a trapped nerve. A potentially important career came to an abrupt halt, whilst Villani travelled internationally seeking effective treatment.
Since settling in London in 1991, Villani has performed sporadically in mostly private gatherings such as the Liszt Society annual meeting performing alongside Kenneth Hamilton and at the Royal Overseas League. He has channeled his extensive knowledge of piano repertoire and recording history in new ways. He gives masterclasses to professional musicians, has written for specialist publications and worked for 7 years in Tower Records, providing expert advice on recordings to customers. When specialist music shops disappeared from the high streets, Villani took up employment as piano teacher at Rosary Primary School (Belsize Park) and Kentish Town Church of England Primary.
Since 2010, tangible improvements have emerged which have allowed Angelo Villani to make a full return to the keyboard and over the past couple of years he has given several private concerts across the UK. 2012 marked a return to form culminating in his official London recital debut.
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?
When I visited my maternal grandparents as a child I was always drawn to their piano. It was in their front room, a room reserved for I’m not sure what. They didn’t ever sit in there, and it was filled with objects I was told not to touch which all added to the mystique of this instrument. I was fascinated by it and they decided to have it moved to my parents’ house in Gloucestershire when I was five so that I could begin piano lessons. Looking at it now, it is a very small upright, with not much tone and poor action made by that infamous piano maker ‘Luton’. This was my piano until I left home at 18. When I went to University I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with music and while I enjoyed playing the piano it wasn’t my sole musical interest and as such I left school with an advanced diploma on violin and grade 8 flute and organ too. At University I was joint study violin and piano until my second year when my piano teacher was unwell for one term and so a replacement from the RAM was sent, Jeffrey Harris. He was a wonderfully generous man who said in my first lesson ‘Frederick [I’m still not sure why he called me this], you’ve got a technique from Mars’ and so he began rebuilding from scratch my understanding of what it meant to sit at a piano. He taught me for two years during which time I travelled to his home in Surrey and he would give me whole days of free lessons. After two years of the most remarkable and hugely influential lessons, he died suddenly while on tour in the far east. I think ten years after my first lessons with him, I am beginning to understand many of the concepts he was trying to impart. Shortly after he died I won the conducting and concerto prizes at University and applied to the Royal Academy of Music half thinking I’d stay at University and turn my MPhil into a PhD. The RAM offered me a generous entrance scholarship however and I ticked a box to be taught by Michael Dussek and Malcolm Martineau which was one of the best uses of biro I’ve ever made. They turned out to be a superb double act and Malcolm, with his customary generosity, introduced me to the song literature and also instilled in me the desire to, having done ‘all the work’, rely on my musical instincts. Through him I also found what I wanted to do, be a song accompanist.
Who or what were the most important influences on your playing?
Now that I have chosen to specialise in the art of playing for singers, I’d say the most important influences are the texts great composers chose to set: that magical marriage of word and music, when ‘music does not run its course beside, beneath or even above the poem. It is entirely born of the poem‘ (to paraphrase Henri Sauget). That, and having a fascination with art. A memory bank of images is a wonderful thing if you have an over-active imagination and can find pleasure in music’s play of light and shade. I am also influenced on a daily basis by the other artists with whom I’m fortunate enough to make music.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Any challenges of this career soon pale into insignificance when you stop and realise what an incredibly fulfilling life you can have as an artist doing what interests you and working with a medium you feel is important. Providing your income is such that you can survive, it is a privilege beyond measure to work for yourself doing what you love. That being said, piano-playing is the easy part of the puzzle. Balancing a home life so that you feel you’re not jeopardising the quality of your playing or missing out on experiencing life with family and friends needs constant reassessment. Admin is also a necessary evil. Vulnerability is also worth mentioning. It is one of the greatest assets a musician can have, to be able to let his or her guard down when performing but with this comes an openness which can be at odds with the business elements of this profession. Having a part of you that you keep sacred for music-making sounds pretentious, but it is necessary.
Which performances/compositions/recordings are you most proud of?
I performed Dichterliebe with Tom Allen in Toronto a few years ago and his mastery of timing and the way he made a 2000 seater hall as intimate as the spaces Schumann would have known in performance was miraculous. I look back with fondness on the recording sessions I enjoyed with Felicity Lott for our Elgar disc. She is a very generous colleague and a very warm person and even though the repertoire is not from the top drawer, to have recorded with her is something of which I’m proud. Tom and Flott seem to me like beacons in the music business of people who got it right as good musicians and good humans. I’m also proud of my first Wigmore Hall concert which I performed in 2007 with Clara Mouriz. We worked for months on that recital programme and it was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration and friendship as well as the start of many happy hours of music-making in that hall. I’ve also been very fortunate in being offered recitals to programme myself for Wigmore and in series for the BBC. It’s an aspect of my work I relish and the singers I’ve worked with for these projects have been very special.
Schubert’s Winterreise holds a spell over me too and I first performed it at the RAM with Allan Clayton and got totally obsessed with how rich the psychological tapestry is within the masterpiece. Recently I played it through with Tom Allen in his front room, just because we both had half a day free and fancied it. It was a strange performance that I wish the whole world could have been able to hear because of it’s spontaneity and informality – we didn’t discuss it or rehearse, we just opened the book, began at song 1 and performed it to each other without break. As with all live music it was a moment that passed in time without record.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
Wigmore Hall.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
This is impossible to answer. I am attracted to most classical music. I do however feel my life would be much the poorer without Bach, Handel, Schubert, Schumann, Debussy, Fauré, Ravel and Britten.
Who are your favourite musicians?
I’d better just mention pianists, otherwise we’ll be here for a while:
Martha Argerich, Benjamin Britten, Krystian Zimerman, Emil Gilels, Walter Gieseking, Murray Perahia, Mitsuko Uchida, Menahem Pressler, Maria João Pires, Paul Lewis, Radu Lupo, Rosalyn Tureck, Gerald Moore, Graham Johnson, Malcolm Martineau, Bengt Forsberg.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
I remember playing violin in Mahler 4 and thinking, aha, I finally think I get this composer. It was music so much easier to understand from within the orchestra. The last piece I conducted was Shostakovich 5 and it’s a work where every gesture must count. I remember being at Symphony Hall and hearing Barenboim conduct the Berlin Staatskapelle in Brahms symphonies over two nights. It was an occasion when everything seemed to line up perfectly – repertoire, musicians, hall, audience’s attentive listening. It was electric, the standing ovations were immediate and for once, necessary and I’ve never heard wind playing like it since.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
To learn to sing or play clearly. That is, to communicate the essence of whatever you are performing by having a clear map before you begin and to put across the work in the strongest possible light (much easier to write about than to do!). To be humble and learn, because the composer teaches us what to do.
Preparation is freedom in performance – Try to understand what the symbols in front of you mean – with each composer they mean a different thing.
If you are an instrumentalist, learn to sing. Singers phrase music instinctively and instrumentalists can learn much about music’s natural ebb and flow from vocalising music. All music consists of consonants and vowels, a mixture of singing and speech. Also become aware of how singers breathe and support breath and use it in piano playing. Loads of pianists hold their breath when they play and this stops the music. As an accompanist you get used to sharing a collective lung with the singer you’re playing for.
It’s very helpful when you’re accompanying a singer to imagine how you would support them as a conductor.
Become obsessed with the quality of the sound you make, how it takes up space and time and how it resonates to put across emotions.
Everyone has a safe, default setting in their playing or singing. Know what yours is and try not to spend time there.
Don’t have regrets for too long after a recital, just have expectations for yourself in the next one. Will yourself to play it better next time.
Let people ‘overhear’ what we do on stage (don’t put the ‘emotion’ over to an audience).
To take huge and guiltless pleasure in what we do. Music is one of mankind’s greatest achievements and without being all quote-y, I love what Fauré wrote: ‘music exists to lift one as far as possible above what is.’
To exploit the right kind of tension. Much music relies on the performer using emotional tension without getting physically tense.
Be vulnerable.
Have an obsessive curiosity to learn.
I wish I could achieve some of these things more of the time!
What are you working on at the moment?
This season I return to the Wigmore and make my Concertgebouw debut with Katarina Karneus, I have BBC broadcasts with Christopher Maltman and next season will make my Vienna Konzerthaus debut accompanying him and then in San Francisco too. I’m also looking forward to returning to the Cheltenham Festival with Dame Felicity Lott, the Tetbury and Three Choirs with Sarah Connolly, I’m playing for Christianne Stotijn’s study of Britten’s Phaedra with it’s dedicatee Dame Janet Baker, recitals in Oxford, Leamington and Cambridge with Roderick Williams, Sussex with Christiane Karg, and in Freiburg with Carolyn Sampson. I’m also recording Purcell/Britten songs with Ruby Hughes, Anna Grevelius, Robin Blaze, Allan Clayton, Ben Nelson and Matt Rose and I’ll have my residency from the Lammermuir Festival broadcast by BBC Radio 3 with Sophie Bevan, Jennifer Johnston, Andrew Kennedy and Marcus Farnsworth. Recital CDs will be released with Amanda Roocroft and Clara Mouriz.
Pianist Joseph Middleton specialises in the art of song accompaniment and chamber music and has been highly acclaimed within this field. The Times recently described him as ‘the cream of the new generation’ and The Telegraph wrote that he ‘represents the crème de la crème of young British-based musical talent’. He performs and records with the greatest international singers in major music centres across Europe and North America.
Who or what inspired you to take up your chosen instrument and make it your career?
I can’t remember what inspired me to take up playing the piano. I remember asking my mother for a piano for my 7th birthday. She bought me one, then made sure I learned it.
As for the career, I pretty much stumbled into it. I studied physics for my degree and worked for 8 years in industrial electronics, but never gave up practising the piano and was doing various accompanying work (initially unpaid, of course) from student days. Eventually I found I had enough to live on, though to this day I have one or two other strings to my bow, which I keep up as much for sentimental reasons as financial ones. Making recordings is one which has a frequent practical use, with singers and instrumentalists being often asked to submit recordings as a preliminary for competitions or auditions.
Who or what are the most important influences on your playing?
I was lucky to have an excellent teacher, Bernard King, when I was in my teens, and also lucky to be at a school with a very good music department. Fellow-pupils gave me good advice which I forget in the specifics but remember receiving. One school-friend founded a record label and through him I met Ronald Stevenson, who has been a good friend for nearly 30 years: I’ve played a lot of his music, solo vocal and chamber. His playing was uniquely beautiful and passionate and his verbal advice no less inspiring. The latter is still true, though sadly his health prevents him performing these days. I met John Ogdon through the same record label and watching him play (I turned pages for him on many occasions) was an object lesson in achieving the (apparently) impossible.
I’ve also learned a lot from singers I’ve worked with, both seasoned professionals and those of my own generation. Sir Donald Macintyre has made me think a lot about effective sound production
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Pianistically, the greatest challenge has been learning and performing Ronald Stevenson’s ‘Passacaglia on DSCH’. I hardly ever play solo anyway, and that’s a fair-sized challenge for anyone, so it was some way out of my comfort zone. Immensely rewarding, though. I promised Ronald back in the early 1980s I would do it, and hate to break a promise.
As an accompanist, I’ve played plenty of music that takes a bit of learning. One of the most interesting challenges was getting to grips with the songs of Bernard van Dieren. It took me several months to get a proper feeling for them, though I could sense from the first that there was real beauty there. I haven’t performed any in a while, and miss them. Alan Bush’s song cycle ‘Voices of the Prophets’ was a headscratcher – I reckon it includes the most difficult, second most difficult and third most difficult song accompaniments I know of.
Accompanying auditions is always a challenge. The singer (or instrumentalist) relies on you, and the accompanist can basically make or break a career. It’s no stress at all when someone turns up with a bit of ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’ or ‘Carmen’, but sight-reading ‘Wozzeck’ or ‘Die Aegyptische Helene’ requires some concentration.
As an accompanist, you do sometimes get asked to do concerts at rather short notice, especially if you’ve a reputation as a reasonably handy sight-reader. That may be for no better reason than someone having forgotten to book anyone for the gig! But then there’s the situation where a soloist is flying in from another country and even if you have plenty of notice of the repertoire you may have very little time to rehearse together. One soon learns to work efficiently under such circumstances. Orchestral musicians of course are also all too familiar with the under-rehearsed scenario. When I got together with my two colleagues in the Pizzetti Trio, one of our main aims was to ensure we had adequate – plentiful! – rehearsal for every concert. It’s much more rewarding like that.
What are the particular challenges/excitements of working with an orchestra/ensemble?
I don’t do a huge amount of orchestral piano work, but the big difference from anything else a pianist does is that you don’t have the score, only an orchestral part, so you actually have to count – just like everyone else does all the time, of course. Once you’ve disciplined yourself to do that it’s not too tricky, though some of the piano parts are surprisingly awkward and of course you have to follow the conductor, usually from the back of the band.
In a chamber ensemble, by contrast, the pianist does have the score and so is, if not by any means the leader, at least the referee – you need to keep an eye on the other parts and make sure everyone is in the right place. And of course in any kind of ensemble work you have to listen to the whole sound, not just your own. This is why Wilhelm Fürtwängler said that if you can’t be an accompanist you will never be a musician. True! If you can’t accompany you’re obviously not listening properly. Fitting the sound of a piano seamlessly with voice(s), strings and/or winds is great fun.
Which recordings are you most proud of?
I’ve done very few recordings for commercial sale (though certainly over 200 demo and private recordings), and I think my first is probably my favourite: three song cycles by Ronald Stevenson (initially on CD, now on iTunes, CDBaby and all the rest). Moira Harris, Wills Morgan and me. I think we did the music justice, and we organised it all ourselves, which was a useful lesson in musical practicalities. I did the technical stuff and editing too.
Do you have a favourite concert venue?
The Wigmore Hall, as much for sentimental reasons as any others. I’ve played there a couple of times and it’s a lovely feeling, but I’ve been in the audience countless times, often listening to friends performing, and it’s great. I’m not sure it’s the ultimate acoustic for piano, but it’s as good as it gets for string quartet, which is a favourite genre of mine, and voices bloom in there too.
Who are your favourite musicians?
I’ve already mentioned Ronald Stevenson and John Ogdon, and among pianists I could also mention Marc-André Hamelin, Marta Argerich, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Art Tatum, Percy Grainger… and lots more, of course. A rather random handful of other kinds of musicians might include Igor Markevitch, John Barbirolli, Furtwängler, Maxim Vengerov, Wissam Boustany, Alexander Ivashkin, Elizabeth Connell, Hans Hotter, Pavarotti and Dame Anne Evans.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
Hearing John Ogdon play Busoni’s ‘Fantasia Contrappuntistica’ at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the late 1980s. He was in a bad mood and played with the kind of intensity you just don’t forget. The opening of the Coda Stretta, where there’s a fortissimo bass ostinato, was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard from a piano, by a long way.
What is your favourite music to play? To listen to?
For me, few things can match the pleasure of playing Brahms’s and Beethoven’s chamber music – trios and quartets and the sonatas for various instruments. I also love playing Wagner’s operas in rehearsals: some of the piano reductions are very ingenious transcriptions, done in many cases by Liszt pupils.
I couldn’t possibly single out one composer or genre as a favourite to listen to, but string quartets by anyone rank highly, alongside symphonies by all the usual suspects and a few more besides, Martinu for instance. Anything at all by van Dieren and Ildebrando Pizzetti, two of my favourites among less-well-known composers. Stevenson, Shostakovich, Alkan…
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians/students?
My work as a repetiteur is often very much about detail, and I do think that developing an eye and an ear for detail is crucial. But what I find myself missing most often in contemporary performances, by comparison with recordings from 50 or more years ago, is the sense that the music really means something to the performer. There’s no point at all in going after ‘individualism’ as an effect – that’s just a party trick. If you can work out for yourself what a piece means (which of course need not be verbal in the slightest), and transmit that through attention to the details, you’ll be individual all right.
What are you working on at the moment?
Untypically, a work for two pianos, ‘The Fortress of Illusion’ by Michael Maxwell Steer. It’s a marvellous piece in three movements which we’re playing at the Chetham’s Summer School in a few days from now. After that I’ve got a singer to accompany at the Leicester Square Theatre in a show based on Noel Coward, repetiteuring and coaching on operas of all kinds, accompanying auditions here there and everywhere and a handful of exams. This is why I enjoy my work: it’s practically never the same two days running.
What do you enjoy doing most?
Solving problems.
Richard Black is a highly versatile pianist whose work takes in opera, the symphony orchestra, chamber music and song recitals. He has worked for opera companies great and small in the UK, on operas ranging from half-forgotten gems of the late baroque (Opera Italiana) to the largest works of Wagner (Scottish Opera, Longborough Festival Opera) to new pieces composed in the 21st century (Royal Opera House, Tête à Tête Opera). His ability to play almost anything at sight and his wide knowledge of the opera repertoire have made him a familiar face at opera auditions, and he employs similar talents in accompanying students of every voice and instrument at Goldsmiths College.
As a recital accompanist, Richard has played for singers at Wigmore Hall and St John’s Smith Square, as well as in New York, Paris and Luxembourg. He has accompanied a wide range of instrumental works and played in a variety of chamber ensembles: he recently gave what was almost certainly the first UK performance in some decades of the piano trio by Pizzetti. He has for over 20 years had a strong interest in music by the Scottish composer and pianist Ronald Stevenson, and has performed and recorded many songs by Stevenson as well as playing several of his chamber and solo piano works, including the large-scale Passacaglia on DSCH. Other recordings include songs by Alan Bush and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and he has broadcast several times on BBC Radio 3.
Apart from playing the piano, Richard is an experienced recording engineer, producer and editor and a consultant on audio technology.
Who or what inspired you to take up composing, and make it your career?
My parents tell me that I started to learn music when I was 3 years old, so I had no choice but to become a musician! Apparently, when my parents and I were on holiday in France, one late afternoon we heard one of the “Orchestra in the Park” concerts. I stayed hypnotised for more than an hour and then announced that I wanted to play the violin. Soon after that I began to learn music and started to compose a few years later. I still have a clear memory of wanting to be like Beethoven when I was eight years old!
Who or what were the most important influences on your composing?
I have been inspired by many great composers from the past (including Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and many others) but can say that my greatest influence has been my father, who is an artist. We often discussed all aspects of creation and tried to find parallels between painting and music. Our discussions were immensely pleasing and challenging and I find that these abstract exchanges have helped me being the composer I am now.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
The white empty page always has and always will be the greatest challenge of all. Maybe composing would not be such a great passion if it weren’t for the white page!
Which compositions are you most proud of?
I feel proud of having written pieces for many genres including orchestral, vocal, chamber music and solo instruments. But the first time I heard my orchestral piece The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe premiered at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford I felt really proud to have written what I felt was my first symphony. I am very attached, in particular, to the second movement, Peace, which has a natural flow and evokes so many deep human feelings and longings.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
As long as I love the music and the musicians, it can be anywhere!
Favourite pieces to listen to?
It varies. At the moment I am very interested in writing concertos, so I have been listening to the Beethoven Piano Concertos a lot.
Who are your favourite musicians?
There are many great musicians I admire and am lucky to work with. During my formative years I spent a considerable amount of my time listening to some special recordings, which included the Menuhin/Furtwangler’s Beethoven Violin Concerto, the Oistrakh/Rostropovich Brahms’ Double Concerto, Rubinstein’s Chopin Ballades and Richter performing Schumann’s Fantasie opus 17. Having heard them so many times I can replay them in my head whenever I want to!
What is your most memorable concert experience?
I would have to say that this must be the concert, which made me want to become a musician when I was three years old. It must be lodged somewhere in my subconscious….!
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Two ideas that complement each other: work on making yourself more than you are every day of your creative life (in other words, the artistic life is passionate Sisyphean work), and secondly trust your judgement and do not believe anyone else!
What are you working on at the moment?
I have just completed a new orchestral piece for Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia Orchestra to be premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in June 2013 and am currently writing a violin concerto for Dmitry Sitkovetsky to be premiered in February 2014.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Blue sky, beautiful music and my wife and daughters with me!
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?
My recorder teacher and my godfather were jointly the ones who nudged me towards getting my first piano lesson at the age of seven. None of my family play and I wasn’t brought up listening to a great deal of Classical music, but as soon as I started lessons, I took to it like a duck to water and digested every new thing I learnt with a great enthusiasm. Surprisingly, for once, my habit of impetuously discarding the latest hobby in exchange for a new one didn’t happen; something was a little different about playing the piano, and it stuck with me and I with it. I still can’t quite put my finger on what it is I love so much about playing. Maybe it is the very essence of intangibility itself; the idea of crafting something so magical and beautiful for an instant, passing moment. Who knows? But it captivated me then and still does now, and that’s why I have chosen to pursue music as a career.
Who or what are the most important influences on your playing?
My teachers, for me, have always been the most wonderful influence on my playing, not because they have dictated what I do – what does anyone actually learn from that, after all? – but because I have been lucky enough to have grown up and continued to study with teachers who have encouraged me to question everything I do and to do it my own way. I think finding your own path of understanding with music is essential because, at the end of the day, it’s an art form and art is a very personal thing.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Starting to make the leap from amateur to professional has definitely been a difficult one – playing for family and friends and people in the local area who support you is one thing; playing for a new and unfamiliar audience in a venue you’ve never been in, and knowing your reputation is at stake, is entirely another. As with any transition, it requires gently testing the water at times, and at others just jumping on in and not fearing the consequences. I seem to have struck the balance fairly successfully so far, but it is most definitely a tricky one to strike!
What are the particular challenges/excitements of working with an ensemble?
Ensemble playing is (mostly) a wonderful experience for me because as pianists, we spend far too much time cooped up on our own, and getting to explore music with other people is a refreshing change! A spectrum of different but equally valid viewpoints to consider is exciting beyond measure, but of course, with conflicting viewpoints comes scope for disagreement and if you’re not working with open-minded individuals, deciding anything new can be like banging your head against a brick wall. I seem to generally have been lucky on this front so far, but I do have one or two unsatisfying experiences of working with less flexible musicians. It seems to me that the vital thing is to have the same vision of where the music is heading and what it’s about. If you can connect with others musically and conceptually in the macro sense, the little details fall into place pretty much seamlessly.
Do you have a favourite concert venue?
I absolutely delight in going to watch concerts at the Royal Festival Hall; it is quite simply my favourite venue in the whole of London. I particularly enjoy sitting in the choir seats when an orchestra is playing because you can feel the buzz of the excitement from being in such close proximity to the performers and see every nuance on the conductor’s face. To play in the Royal Festival Hall would be an absolute dream-come-true, and is something I aspire one day to do.
Who are your favourite musicians?
I have to say I think Marin Alsop is an incredible musician. I went to see her for the first time last year conducting Liszt 1 and Liszt 2 with Stephen Hough and was so bowled over I bought a ticket for her next concert two days later! She’s incredibly animated and passionate about what she does, and I find that inspiring. I also adore Murray Perahia’s recordings of Mozart – he just captures the cheeky yet graceful nature touch that Mozart playing requires sublimely and his recordings are always an absolute joy to listen to.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
It’d probably have to be the Medway Young Musicians Awards Finals 2006, the first year I got into the finals, which take place in The Brook Theatre in Chatham. It’s not exactly a large venue, but monumental to a fourteen-year-old who used to practise on a Clavinova in her dining room, and stepping onto a real stage with a real spotlight and performing live to an audience was absolutely captivating. The playing itself didn’t go so well from what I remember – I played Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ and made a bit of a mess of it due to being wracked with nerves – but the experience itself was addictive beyond measure and that’s probably the first time I was truly awakened to how thrilling a performance experience can be.
What is your favourite music to play? To listen to?
My favourite music to play has probably got to be Mozart or Purcell, Mozart for its deceptive simplicity (such detail and intricacy hidden within such seemingly uncomplicated music!) and Purcell for the tortuously beautiful harmonies. To listen to, I’m currently obsessed with Tchaikovsky’s later symphonies (the first three are indeed delicious, but 4, 5 and 6 absolutely blow my mind) and I also love Louise Farrenc – I think she’s sorely underrated as a composer, and it’s a shame more of her works aren’t played and recorded.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians/students?
I think the concept that music is an art and not just a skill and, as a result, is something that you mature into; the process simply cannot be rushed or artificially induced. By all means, practise hard, listen, play, perform, read as much as you can, broaden your mind in every possible direction, but don’t expect to magically blossom into a fully-formed artist overnight. Allow yourself time to grow and while challenging yourself at every turn, don’t have completely unrealistic expectations you’ll fall short of and grow bitter about. I myself am only a young pianist, and I know that with time to grow and mature, I’ll have a deeper insight into what I’m doing and a broader base of knowledge and experience to draw from when approaching new music, but that’s something I accept and feel strongly is an important part of the process. If there was a magical ‘cure-all’ solution to all our technical and musical problems, the beauty in the process of feeling your way into music would be completely meaningless. We have to take it for what it is and, though it can be frustrating at times, it’s ultimately more rewarding for it.
What are you working on at the moment?
At the moment, I’m tackling the Strauss Cello Sonata, among other things, with my duo partner cellist Daniel Edwards. We’ve just aired the programme for the first time, and have concerts coming up in Birmingham and London over the coming fortnight. I’m also starting a new programme for a recital at the Maritime Museum, inspired by the current Ansel Adams exhibition: the programme will be officially announced shortly, but it’s going to be an interesting mix of miniatures including some rarely played pieces by MacDowell.
Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?
Tricky one. Not sure I know how to answer that! I would like to think I’d be a better musician and have a better sense of self. But as to where that will take me? On to bigger and better things is the most specific answer I can give. I don’t like the idea of being too single-minded about the future; I’d far rather make sure I’m prepared as I can be and just see where it all takes me and what exciting directions I end up going in.
What is your most treasured possession?
My piano, of course, though primarily for sentimental reasons. It was given to me by a gentleman whose wife sadly passed away, and he let me have it on a long-term loan since he personally had no use for it. A few months later, after I had sent him a few update letters and CDs to show my gratitude and so that he could see how I was getting on, he sent me a letter and told me wanted to give me the piano as a gift as he wished it to go to a young musician who would use it regularly and treat it well. I’ve simply never been so touched and surprised, and the gesture was made even more wonderful by the fact that the letter arrived about two days before my birthday – a coincidence, but a fantastic one. We still keep in touch with each other, and if you’re reading this, Michael, thank you very much, I am forever indebted to you!
What do you enjoy doing most?
I assume you mean aside from music? Learning, in whatever shape or form that comes. When I’m not devouring music, I love devouring books. I also love talking (anyone who has ever met me face to face will tell you that, I’m sure!), giving speeches to audiences is something that lights my candle – I’m most definitely a performer at heart! Writing is also a passion of mine. I used to write a lot of poetry, but sadly don’t find the time so much nowadays. But obviously I still get to exercise my pen a lot, what with reviewing for Bachtrack and writing for various other websites and blogs.
Madelaine’s full biography, and details of forthcoming concerts and her writing can be found at
Who or what inspired you to take up the ‘cello, and make it your career?
Listening to my father play double bass as a soloist made me consider becoming a musician. Cello as an instrument was chosen for me by my parents.
Who or what were the most important influences on your playing/composing?
Composing has come easily to me as the method of expression when I started reading music scores at age 7.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
It is a challenge to understand the laws of interaction and the conflict between the world of musicians and the world of classical music management.
Which performances/compositions/recordings are you most proud of?
Considering how much we value each performance, performances that were the most important were the ones that brought the sense of accomplishment.
The audience today is taught to be guided mostly by physical expressions during performance instead of detecting the hidden movements of a soul. It would be incorrect to be solely guided by the reaction of the audience.
What do you consider your most important achievement?
Although I consider premièring and recording my Cello Concerto ten years ago an achievement, I think that the most important achievements are in the future.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
Concert venues with the best acoustics are definitely preferred.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
I have absolutely no favorites. To have favorites would mean to put artificially-created limitations on yourself. It is a powerful feeling to consider it all possible (even mastering less interesting works).
Who are your favourite musicians?
Musicians who are capable of giving their crystal clear souls away to the maximum are the musicians for whom I feel the most respect.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
The Red Square, Carnegie Hall, Berliner Philharmoniker.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Focusing on the inner expression in music and not the purely physical effect will eventually bring the art of performance into a more balanced state.
Creating your own creative world around yourself, learning and understanding how concerts venues and management work, meet people, establish relationships, create opportunities for yourself to perform.
Music says what a word is incapable of expressing. It uses the language of sound, pattern and form and masterful emotional input of the individuals involved .
Discussing the emotional charge as well as realizing what emotions music evokes in you is going to help you to appreciate classical music.
The most important thing is to cultivate the taste from the youngest age, develop curiosity to the arts and study.
What are you working on at the moment?
I often come back to the standard ‘cello repertoire, which is indispensable in putting recital programs together and performances with an orchestra as a soloist.
This season I am also premiering another newly completed concerto written by an American composer for ‘cello and orchestra.
Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?
I have received a very specialized type of education in the classical music – to keep unraveling my talents, achieving and fulfilling myself in other sectors of art.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Balance. A sense of accomplishment.
What is your most treasured possession?
My talent.
What do you enjoy doing most?
Being with my family.
What is your present state of mind?
Lev Tolstoy: ”But my life is now”
Russian-born cellist Nina Kotova has been hailed “passionate and inspiring”. According to Newsweek magazine, “she‘s a fantastically gifted cellist.” “Very expressive, imaginative, and she has a powerful stage presence.” Time magazine states: “She is a musician of high seriousness and real talent”.
Ms. Kotova studied at the Moscow Conservatory and Musikhochschule in Cologne, Germany, giving her first performance as a soloist with orchestra at age 11. She made her Western debut in Prague with the Prague Radio Orchestra in 1986 after winning the Prague International Competition, and followed with debuts at Wigmore Hall, the Barbican Centre in London, Carnegie Hall in New York and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Ms. Kotova has since then performed as a soloist with symphony orchestras across the globe including the Czech Philharmonic, the Russian National Orchestra, the State Symphony Orchestra, the China Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and the Royal Opera House orchestras, the BBC Orchestra, the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Gulbenkian Symphony Orchestra in Lisbon, and the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg. She has performed on the Red Square in Moscow, for the Imperial family of Japan, and at Buckingham Palace. Upcoming highlights include performances in South America and the Al Bustan Festival.
Ms. Kotova has collaborated with musicians such as violinists Sarah Chang, Joshua Bell and Nikolaj Znaider, flautist Sir James Galway and pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Lang Lang and Hélène Grimaud, with Sting, and conductors Teodor Currentzis, Stephane Deneve, Vladimir Jurowski, Claus Peter Flor, Nicola Luisotti, Antonio Pappano, Libor Pesek and Tamas Vasary.
As a composer Nina Kotova has written numerous works for cello and orchestra. Her first Cello Concerto premiered in San Francisco in 2000. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that “Like Wolfgang Rihm in 1974, so Kotova in 2000 stands in defiance of both the emotional austerity of last century’s modernism and the new simplicity of so much recent music.”
Although perhaps most acclaimed for her performances and recording of the Dvorak Cello Concerto, Ms. Kotova has a keen interest in expanding the repertoire available for cello. A composer herself and a champion of contemporary music, Ms. Kotova commissioned several leading composers to write a Cello Concerto for her, including another recent collaborator composer Christopher Theofanidis. In 2009 Ms. Kotova performed the world premiere of the Theofanidis Cello Concerto with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, following with the Asian premiere of the work in Singapore with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jaap Van Zweden.
Ms. Kotova co-founded The Tuscan Sun Festival in Cortona in Italy and Festival Del Sole in Napa Valley. She calls the Festivals “a mecca and meeting place for artists and admirers of the arts alike”.
Now performing with the instrument that Jacqueline du Pré made famous in the early 1960s and that Lynn Harrell played over the last two decades, she explains, “The cello is a unique instrument with the capability to reflect the most mysterious qualities of the human soul. As a solo instrument, the cello must have new works written for it that emphasize its virtuosity, powerful energy and lyrical impact.”
Ms. Kotova has taught as a visiting artist at the University of Texas and has been the subject of numerous features in Time, Newsweek, Vogue, Elle and the Wall Street Journal, as well as being on the covers of Classic FM, Gramophone China, Il Venerdi Italia and Reader’s Digest and appearing on television on A&E “Breakfast with the Arts” and the “Charlie Rose Show”.
She is carrying on the tradition of not only her legendary father, Russian double-bassist Ivan Kotov (1950-1985), but her teachers and mentors, which include Igor Gavrysh, Valentin Feigin, Boris Pergamenschikov and Mstislav Rostropovich.
An internationally acclaimed and celebrated performer and composer, Ms. Kotova is well on her way to inspiring today’s musical community-classical and beyond. In addition to a CD release of her own Cello Concerto recorded with the Philharmonia of Russia conducted by Constantine Orbelian (Delos, 2002), other recordings include her chart topping, self-titled debut album (Philips Classics, 1999), a recent recording of the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Andrew Litton (Sony Classics, 2006) and inclusion on the compilation Masters of the Bow (Deutsche Grammophon, 2003), which pays homage to the greatest cellists of the last 50 years.
Who or what inspired you to take up composing, and make it your career?
Music has been something that I’ve always done and has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. When I turned13 I suddenly turned round and said that I wanted to learn the saxophone, despite never showing an interest in woodwind instruments before, and after a lot of badgering my parents eventually relented. I guess it never crossed their minds then that I would stick to it nor pursue a career in music. I was never a foot on the monitor, look at me person so I guess they were as surprised as I was that when I was bitten by the music bug I couldn’t give it up.
Composing was another surprise for me too. I’d always felt lost composing at school and university and I was never inspired to write anything other than the tasks we were set, and I dropped composing modules in favour of performance as soon as I could. But after university I found I needed to write new pieces for my students to challenge a specific area of their playing and it was this that got me writing again. All of sudden I was inspired and couldn’t stop.
Who or what were the most important influences on your composing?
My playing and composing has been influenced a lot by the different genres I love to play and listen too. I have a deep love of jazz, ska and classical music – especially ska and reggae! And its these styles that I like to mix together to make my own sound.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
The greatest challenge so far was standing up and conducting the premier of my first orchestral piece I wrote in 2011. It was absolutely terrifying but I loved every minute of it!
Which performances/compositions/recordings are you most proud of?
My favourite piece that I’ve written do date is ‘Do Dodos Dance’ – I wrote it for the twtrsymphony who will be getting a woodwind trio to record this soon. It is quite a funny piece and it always makes me laugh listening back to it!
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
I’ve played at all sorts of venues and one of my favourites in the Square in Harlow – nice stage, brilliant sound guy and with air conditioning
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
My favourite classical piece was one a friend reminded me of a couple of days ago – the wonderful ‘Song for Tony’ for sax quartet, was one piece I’ve loved performing before. My favourite piece to listen to (and play, but I don’t think I’ve every been with a group who’ve played it as good as the originals) is ‘Echo 4+2′ by Bad Manners.
Who are your favourite musicians?
One of my favourites is Ludiovico Einaudi – love his piano pieces. My other favourites are a lot of my contemporaries who I tweet with, and a big love for Mozart and things my hands will reach to play on the piano.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
Most memorable concert would be performing at the Secret Garden Festival this year with the ska band I work with. It was rather muddy and hot! But an amazing atmosphere and great crowd!
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Aspiring musicians need to be thick-skinned and not take any one else’s beliefs, comments or criticisms to heart. You need to be passionate about what you do and be happy with what you do. If you love it, someone else will. And remember to treat people how you’d like to be treated. Above all keep writing/performing/listening/reading and developing.
What are you working on at the moment?
At the moment I’m gearing up to go to Italy in November and tour around for the Donne in Musica female concerts they’ve arranged. I will be performing my new solo sax piece ‘My Life in Music’. Compositionally I’m working on some new educational string pieces as well as working on a new wind band for a local wind band to play next year.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
My idea of perfect happiness would be to be able carry on writing music for groups of all shapes and sizes and to hear my music performed. That an a big cup of tea.
Rachael Forsyth is a freelance composer, music teacher and all round woodwind player based in North London. She has gigged extensively with bands around the UK and her main musical loves are for classical music and ska. As a composer she writes lots of pieces she knows students will love to play as well as working on large scale orchestral and piano based pieces. Rachael has been invited to Italy in the Autumn to perform a solo saxophone piece on a tour around Rome. Highlights for her for the last year have been conducting the premier of her first orchestral piece in November 2011 and being given the opportunity to write a woodwind trio piece that is due to be recorded and released later this year. Her current projects include writing material for music exam boards, writing solo saxophone pieces as well as writing a Wind Band piece to be performed next year.
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?
I started at the piano as a toddler and simply never stopped! I just never found anything I loved as much. In my teens, I had passing fantasies about being an archaeologist or an actor “when I grew up”, and then I realized that I could incorporate aspects of both of those careers into my musical path. My work involves a lot of archaeological excavation of the repertoire in search of historical narrative and context, and I think that I channel my inner actress into the task of interpreting the emotions and messages of the composers whose works I perform.
Who or what were the most important influences on your playing/composing?
It’s been a collage of many things: my very first teacher, Maria Cisyk, was my first love! She was a wonderful woman who integrated a true understanding of and curiosity about music into the first steps at the piano. As soon as I could cover a five-finger position, she had me playing little and Bach and Bartok pieces, and learning the stories behind them so that I had a sense, from the very beginning, of the scope of a history and a tradition in music.
A little later I went on to work with Adolph Baller, a wonderful Austrian pianist with whom I studied at Stanford when I was still very young. He gave me, again, another layer of understanding about the importance of tradition. Having come out of the Viennese tradition himself – he studied with a former student of Franz Liszt! – he was a direct link to the European Romantic school that I, an adolescent in California, could only vaguely imagine. Tragically, Baller had suffered tremendously during the Nazi regime (he was interred in a concentration camp and his fingers were broken), before escaping to the U.S., where he was able to rehabilitate his hands and resume his career as Yehudi Menuhin’s accompanist and a member of the Alma Trio. His story gave me some insights into the power that music can have in a life, the strength that can be found in one’s calling throughout personal tragedy and upheaval. That was an important turning point.
Later on, as a teenager, I studied myself at the Hochschule in Vienna and the Mozarteum in Salzburg with the great Hans Graf, and was able to touch that grand tradition for myself, which brought everything full circle. I remember a winter morning in Vienna, the first heavy snow of the year, when an Argentine classmate came running into Graf’s class saying “I went to the Mozart house and I walked in Mozart’s snow!” That’s how it felt for me during those years, working in the birthplace of the tradition, treading the same ground as the composer whose works I was studying. Very magical.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
I think that I’ve come of age in a challenging time to be a musician, but also a very liberating one. So I see the challenges also as advantages. The limited opportunities in the concert world (especially in the U.S. where funding for the arts is such a tremendous issue) present a constant difficulty, but ultimately that difficulty has been an inspiration to me to develop a real creativity and innovative spirit in my approach to presentation and programming, to build a unique profile as an artist, to identify what it is that I have to offer and share with audiences that is uniquely mine, my genuine voice in the world. I think we are living in a time when an artist with something significant to say can take a significant amount of control in determining how, when and where he or she is heard. There is a really interesting and diverse mix of artistic personas on the concert stage these days, reflecting a commitment to different ways and means of musical expression. I think it’s very exciting.
And then of course there have been the challenges of combining my professional and personal lives – the same challenges we all face as musicians, finding ways to integrate my roles in my family and in the professional world. Being a mother of two young children has meant making some choices. But that too, I think, has been a very positive thing for me. I’m certainly a more centered, more thoughtful musician than I was when I was younger, and obsessed solely with the day-to-day mechanics of being a pianist, practicing 6 hours a day. Having a wider landscape to tend has been very good for me. I’ve built a career that encompasses performing and recording, writing, and also concert curating and presenting, which I love to do. Being active as a concert and festival curator/presenter allows me more space to bring my many (too many??) ideas to life! It’s important to me to have some impact in shaping the future of an art form that is changing so quickly, and has so much potential to reach new audiences in new ways.
Which performances/compositions/recordings are you most proud of?
I’m proudest of the multi-faceted projects I’ve created and produced from start to finish, which have encompassed everything from commissioning and premiering new works, to writing and delivering narrative commentary from the stage, co-producing multimedia/visual enhancements, and self-producing and releasing recordings on my own label (Tritone).
Some favourite examples are:
13 WAYS of Looking at the Goldberg: 13 new re-imaginings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. World premiere recording released on the Tritone label in 2010
Long Time Coming: A full-length multimedia concert featuring works by Duke Ellington and a new commission from composer David Sanford
The Americans: A retrospective of concert music influenced by the American vernacular
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
I love playing the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. They treat artists so well (my son wants me to go back so we can “ride in the limo”!), but more than that, the place evokes for me something very powerful about respect for and pride in the arts. It’s just a beautiful place to be and to perform.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
Whatever I’m working on at the moment! And some “comfort food” pieces that go way back for me, that I turn to when I need to sort of musically meditate and center myself: the Chopin Nocturnes, Schumann’s Davidsbundlertanze, Bach’s Goldbergs, some favourite pieces by Barber, Ives, and Prokofiev…
Who are your favourite musicians?
Arthur Rubinstein, Billie Holiday, Richard Goode, Nat “King” Cole, Chet Baker, Etta James, Charles Aznavour, the Beatles, Pablo Casals, my son playing the trumpet, Lucio Dalla… you see it’s pretty all over the place!
What is your most memorable concert experience?
Hearing Rudolf Serkin under the big tent at Tanglewood in the late ‘80s, just a few years before his death. I was a kid watching a legend and knowing deep in my bones just how precious the moment was. Again, to me he represented the magic of the tradition.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Know what your music means to you. Find your voice. Learn what you alone have to give. Don’t try to be like anyone else. Be flexible in your thinking and let your path take you in unexpected directions. The future can surprise you.
What are you working on at the moment?
My next recording, Exiles’ Café, will be released on the Steinway & Sons label on 26 February 2013. It’s a collection of 19th and 20th century music by composers in exile, or written in response to the experience of exile and diaspora. I’ve positioned music by composers displaced by World War II (Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bohuslav Martinu, Darius Milhaud, and Kurt Weill) alongside works by earlier composers such as Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev, who were likewise political exiles in their own time. I’ve also included the Africa Suite by African American composer William Grant Still, representing the permanent wandering of the African Diaspora, and some preludes by the American composer and novelist Paul Bowles, who lived in self-imposed exile in Tangiers for the latter part of his life. The central, big piece on the album is Korngold’s 2nd Sonata, which he wrote in 1910 when he was a thirteen year old prodigy! It’s a massive, late-Romantic, very Straussian work, just absolutely gorgeous and lush.
The project illustrates the global currents of diaspora and exile, which create artistic confluence among people from many different backgrounds of time and place. I think the theme of displacement is one with which everyone is familiar at some level, and also I think that this goes back to my answer to your earlier question, which touched on my deep emotions about the tradition that has built our concert repertoire. Often it has been breaks in that tradition that have actually carried it forward – the historical and political situations that have carried composers from one place to another (Chopin from Poland to France, Rachmaninoff out of Russia, Korngold to Hollywood where he made a legendary career as a film composer and defined the future of that genre) have influenced the development of concert music in a profound way. So once again challenges sometimes prove essential!
It’s a hugely exciting time for me. I’m watching several musical projects come to full maturity and thrive, and I’m embarking on new ones. I feel that I’ve arrived at a time in my life when my musical/professional priorities are clear to me. I know what I want to do, and I’m ready for new challenges. I feel lucky every single day to be making a life in music, really. It’s an amazing thing.
“I’m launching a new concert series in San Francisco in April. The Artist Sessions will be held at a historic jazz club called Yoshi’s, where the atmosphere is very modern and informal, and the audience is diverse and “downtown”. The concerts will be unique in the sense that they will be presented as immersive encounters with the artists – each evening will be begin with an onstage conversation between the guest artist and myself, and will conclude with an audience talk-back session. I want audiences and artists to come together as people, and for listeners to find context and connection in the work being presented. The first Spring Preview season will feature performances by Christopher O’Riley and myself, and then a full Fall season will resume in September (series guests will be announced in April).“ http://www.sfcv.org/article/lara-downes-pianist-entrepreneur-innovator http://tinyurl.com/TheArtistSessions
Lara has just opened an online piano studio where she can meet students from around the world. Sessions can be held from anywhere with wifi and a webcam. Further information here
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?
I was given piano lessons for my sixth birthday. My mother had always wanted to learn but had never had the chance so she was keen that I had the opportunity. I enjoyed the lessons, but didn’t consider making a career of music until I was 8 and was taken to an orchestral concert at the Royal Centre in Nottingham. I can’t remember which orchestra I heard now, unfortunately, but I was absolutely swept away by the music and decided then and there that I wanted to be a pianist. Of course, I had no idea then what this would entail, but the seed had been sown!
Who or what are the most important influences on your playing?
I think it’s important as a musician to be open to all sorts of influences so I couldn’t really point to any dominant strains in my playing. I try to listen to as many live performances and recordings as possible, and also to take what I can from observing theatre, dance and even sport. I enjoy teaching and learn a great deal both from explaining things in novel ways to my students and from the phrases they use to articulate their problems or thoughts to me.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
I spend a great deal of time working by myself and have found, as a result, that the greatest challenge of my career is to maintain perspective. It’s very easy to be thrown off course temporarily by minor setbacks and I sometimes feel that there is so much to achieve, in such a short space of time, that it can be extremely daunting.
What are the particular challenges/excitements of working with an orchestra/ensemble?
I adore working with orchestras and ensembles as it’s such a pleasure to be able to react to somebody else’s sound. You are forced to collaborate in real time, which is both risky and incredibly exciting. It’s easier to track the emotional and psychological development of a work when you’re not solely responsible for it, or at least it’s less exhausting to sustain!
Which recordings are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of my debut album, ‘Piano Polyptych’, which is a collection of contemporary piano music by British composers. It was quite a strain to learn all the repertoire in time for the recording, especially as much of it is extremely complex, but I have had so many opportunities as a result of the project. It was a particular pleasure to collaborate with the composers. It’s a completely different experience when you’re working on music by living composers as they can tell you exactly what kind of sound they’re aiming for. It brings an element of dialogue into what can otherwise be a very solitary pursuit.
Do you have a favourite concert venue?
I’ve performed in a number of venues with wonderful acoustics, but my principal concern when playing in concert is the quality of the piano. Recently, the best that I’ve encountered was at St George’s Hall in Bristol. Their newer Steinway is extremely responsive and has a very pure, glowing tone, supported admirably by the acoustic of the hall itself.
Who are your favourite musicians?
Personally or musically? In either case, I’m not sure I can answer this question. I know so many wonderful musicians who have so much to offer that to place them in any kind of order would be impossible!
What is your most memorable concert experience?
My most memorable experience of performing was not for an official concert per se but at my parents-in-law’s house. My father-in-law is a vicar and I gave a recital for a music society near to his parish a few months ago. Several of his parishioners were keen to hear me but couldn’t make it to the recital so we arranged a coffee concert the following morning. I performed on an upright piano in their front room, surrounded by about 12 people many of whom had never been to a classical music concert before. I’m not sure if it was due to the intimacy of the venue, or the fact that I knew many of these people personally, but I felt that my playing was at its most communicative. I now try to recreate that, with varying levels of success, in larger halls!
What is your favourite music to play? To listen to?
Again, I can’t give a specific answer to this question. Different works or styles of music are suitable for different occasions and express wildly varying emotions. In fact, one of things I love about being a pianist is the breadth of the repertoire. However hard you work, you can never learn everything that has been written for the piano so there are always new horizons to strive towards.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians/students?
I’ve found that the most important skill in teaching is to be able to tailor what you’re trying to explain to the particular skills and aptitudes of the student. Of course, there is a broad ‘syllabus’ of concepts that you need to communicate to students depending on the level that they’re currently at, but you also need to draw out what is individual and unique about them as a person. When I was studying with Ronan O’Hora, at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, I had the impression that he never taught two students in the same way. First, you have to understand the student as a personality, and then you can start teaching them music.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’ve been working on Piani, Latebre by Piers Hellawell, whose Das Leonora Notenbuch and Basho I recorded as part of ‘Piano Polyptych’. Piani, Latebre was commissioned by the pianist William Howard who premiered it at the Spitalfields Festival in 2010. I performed it as part of my inaugural recital as Artist-in-Residence at Queen’s University Belfast on 11th October 2012. My programme also included two pieces, Portrait and Spring Fantasy, by the Northern-Irish composer, Hamilton Harty, which have only recently been discovered. It’s quite exciting to give a world premiere of pieces which were written nearly 80 years ago!
What is your present state of mind?
Calm, on the whole, and drowsy. I’ve just eaten an enormous meal and the resulting haze of contentedness is impeding my ability to think clearly…
Acclaimed by The Daily Telegraph as a pianist of “amazing power and panache”, Clare Hammond has performed across Europe, Russia and Canada and has appeared recently at the Wigmore and Barbican Halls in London and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Her Purcell Room debut for the Park Lane Group concert series was praised by The Guardian for its “crisp precision and unflashy intelligence”.
A passionate advocate of twentieth and twenty-first century music, Clare combines a formidable technique and virtuosic flair onstage with stylistic integrity and attention to detail. Since her debut with orchestra at the age of eleven, she has acquired a concerto repertoire of over 20 works which she has performed at major venues across the UK and on the continent. Solo engagements have included recitals in concert series and festivals across Britain, in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Denmark and Russia.
Who or what inspired you to take up composing and make it your career?
I heard a ‘cello being played on the radio (I can’t remember who was playing) when I was about 6, and just knew that was the instrument I had to play. I fully intended to just become an internationally famous concert ‘cellist (as you do!) but gradually composing took over.
Who or what are the most important influences on your playing?
As a composer I think my greatest influences came from the music I played at the Yehudi Menuhin School (I studied ‘cello, piano and composition there for 10 years). But some of my favourite composers are Britten, Ligeti, Beethoven and Prokofiev, as well as many composers who are writing today.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Trying to get a balance between composing and life: I’ve still not quite worked it out, although, after hardly going out the house for six months whilst writing an opera, I’m determined to be a bit better at it!
What are the particular challenges/excitements of working with an orchestra/ensemble?
Working with any group is exciting for me. I think as long as you treat musicians with the respect they deserve, and prepare parts properly (enough time for page turns!) then they will hopefully be receptive to your music.
Which recordings are you most proud of?
To date I’ve only had one recording released: my debut album The Glory Tree. It features a lot of my chamber music and is released by Champs Hill Records. About thirty musicians were involved in the recording (most had premiered/commissioned the works) and we spent three days recording it: probably some of the best days of my composing life so far. You can read a review of it here:
My second CD, of vocal works, featuring the singers Jennifer Johnston, Natalie Raybould and Jane Manning, with pianists Joseph Middleton and Alisdair Hogarth, is coming out soon, also with Champs Hill Records.
Do you have a favourite concert venue?
Not really, as a composer you are just very grateful that your music is being played! Perhaps I’ll get pickier about this later in life! I had a mini opera performed in park in Hammersmith – a group of children gathered round and started answering the questions the singers were posing – it was fantastic!
Who are your favourite musicians?
I’ve mentioned the composers above…I’ve been so lucky and had such a fantastic time with all the performers who have performed my work: there are too many to list!
What is your most memorable concert experience?
I had my Concertino for Cello, Piano, Percussion and orchestra performed by the BBC Philharmonic as part of the BBC Young Composers Competition (when it still existed, back in 1996). I think that experience more than any other convinced me that I wanted to make composing my career. It was just mind-blowing to hear something that I’d only heard in my head played by a massive orchestra.
What is your favourite music to play? To listen to?
I don’t regularly play in public any more, but I play keyboards in a salsa band and am also learning jazz piano. I played in a rock band until recently and am soon to join a hip hop band – all very different from my composing life, and my past life as a cellist at the Yehudi Menuhin School!
Recently I’ve hardly been listening to music not directly related to my work (for my opera I listened to a lot of 1930’s dance music for instance as this was one of the main influences) because I’ve been writing so much – something I’m determined to rectify soon.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians/students?
I think you just have to be determined to the point of utter bloody minded-ness. Part of the reason why I’ve managed to make a kind-of living out of composing is that I have always just refused to acknowledge that it might not be possible. I recently got a new composing job after applying for it twice – although I’ve applied for other opportunities up to ten times before I’ve finally been awarded them. A thick skin for rejection is very useful I think, and somewhere (however deep down) you need total self confidence in what you are writing, even if this partly achieved by self-deception…
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a big ‘cello work for David Cohen and chamber ensemble for this year’s Spitalfields Festival – quite daunting but very exciting!
What is your present state of mind?
My present state of mind is probably calmer and happier than I’ve ever been. Everything seems to be fitting into place recently and I’ve come to realise that life outside of composing is also very important (something which I perhaps didn’t when I was younger). The older I get, the happier I get, which is rather fortunate for me!
In 2008 Cheryl was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Artists in Residence Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, enabling her to investigate aspects of the mind at the Psychiatry Department, which resulted in a new work for piano premiered at the 2009 Cambridge Clinical Neuroscience and Mental Health Symposium. Also In 2008, Cheryl was awarded the Wicklow County Council Per Cent for Arts Commission (Ireland), which enabled her to compose her first piano concerto, premiered by Bobby Chen and the Greystones Orchestra in May 2009.
Cheryl’s work has been premiered in some of the world’s most important chamber music venues, including the Wigmore Hall (Melancholia (piano trio), Excelsus (solo ‘cello) and My fleeting Angel (piano trio)) and the Purcell Room (The Glory Tree (for soprano and six instruments), and The Ogre Lover (for string trio)). Her debut CD of chamber works, The Glory Tree, was released in 2011 by Champs Hill records and received excellent reviews in The Times, Telegraph and Guardian, and was chosen as “Chamber Music Choice” by BBC Music Magazine in October 2011. Her second CD, of vocal works, is due for release in July 2012.
Future works include an Olympic-inspired work for the Lawson Trio and Chamber Music 2000 (to be premiered at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, early 2012), a song cycle inspired by Darwin’s legacy (to be premiered in Leeds, 2012), a new Canticle to be premiered by the Prince Consort to be premiered on the exact centenary of Britten’s birth (at the Wigmore Hall, 22nd November 2013) and a new opera, Amy’s Last Dive, with a libretto by Adam Strickson, to be premiered as part of the Yorkshire Cultural Olympiad programme in July 2012 in Bridlington and Leeds.
