Two Bagatelles, Op 126 : G major – Andante con moto & E flat major. – Andante cantabile e grazioso
Piano Sonata No. 29, Op 106 ‘Hammerklavier’
Friday 26 April, Tincleton Gallery, Dorset
The tiny village of Tincleton is nestled in the pretty Dorset countryside near Moreton, where T E Lawrence (of Arabia) is buried. A converted Victorian school house is home to Tincleton Gallery which exhibits local artists and sculptors and also hosts concerts of jazz and classical music in an elegant vaulted gallery space which was once the schoolroom.
Organiser and host Joan Burdett-Coutts is friendly and welcoming, and one can take a glass of wine into the concert room, underlining the convivial ambiance of these events. The audience is very loyal, some people travelling from far outside the county to attend, and many come to all the concerts in the series.
The first time I met pianist Ronan Magill he played Liszt and Schubert, and some of his own compositions from his Titanic suite, on the Bechstein in my living room – a pre-performance ahead of a “proper” concert later that week. It’s a real treat to be so close to the music, and the music maker, and the audience at Tincleton Gallery enjoyed the same intimacy and immediacy of sound.
Ronan’s programme offered a snapshot of the extremes of Beethoven’s compositional life, from an early sonata, composed in 1795, to two Bagatelles from the Op 126, written after the final three piano sonatas and inhabiting the same otherwordliness as these works, and the monumental Hammerklavier sonata, one of the highest peaks of the pianist’s repertoire.
The early sonata is full of Hadynesque wit in its outer movements, deftly portrayed by Ronan, but the slow movement looks forward to the emotional depth and range of the Hammerklavier and the late sonatas, and was played with an elegance and sensitivity which found even greater expression in the slow movement of the Hammerklavier.
The first and last Bagatelles from the Op 126 contain all the brilliance, rhetoric and mercurial character of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, and set the tone nicely for the Hammerklavier after the interval (during which more wine, nibbles and conversation).
The Hammerklavier is justly regarded by pianists as one of the high Himalayan peaks of the repertoire, and marks a significant point in Beethoven’s compositional life – a musical manifesto, which reaffirms the composer’s presence in the world, after the turbulent, difficult years of the Heilingenstadt Testament (a letter from October 1802 in which Beethoven expressed his despair over his increasing deafness). The sonata is a pianistic tour de force, from its infamous and perilously daring grand opening leap of an octave and a half to its finger-twisting final fugue. As Beethoven himself stated, ‘it will give pianists something to do’. The cumulative effect of this work is overwhelming: an expression of huge power, richness and logic, and Ronan rose to the challenge of the majestic breadth of this great sonata
The Adagio sostentuto is the emotional heart of this expansive work, and here time was suspended in music which has an almost Schubertian harmonic trajectory and introspection, combined with the improvisatory qualities of a Chopin Nocturne, all played with a Mozartian clarity and broad dynamic palette. And out of this other-worldly place came a restless physicality in the gigantic explosion of the final fugue and its deliberate dissonances and crunchy harmonies.
What can one play after such a mountain has been scaled? Schubert’s sixth Moment Musical in consoling A flat major offered a gentle salve and shared the introspection of Beethoven in his more reflective moments.
Who or what inspired you to take up the violin, and pursue a career in music?
As a child, in Cape Town, I played recorder and then classical guitar, and at the age of 9 I started violin lessons as I really wanted to be in the school orchestra. Already then, the lure of making music with others took hold. But it was not a given that I would be a musician. My secondary school was sporty and academic, and I got a scholarship to study medicine at University. However a gap year convinced me that a career in music would be infinitely more exciting than life as a medic, albeit far more insecure, and I headed to the Guildhall School of Music in London to concentrate on the violin, a decision I have never regretted!
Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?
I would say violin lessons with Gyorgy Pauk and Sandor Vegh, and chamber music coaching from members of the Amadeus Quartet (especially Siegmund Nissel) were a real inspiration to me, musically. But I was also an avid concert-goer, and a love of live music-making was instilled in me from an early age.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Fitting everything in, and finding time for recharging those batteries! I was luckily born with a lot of stamina, and I have certainly needed it.
Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?
The complete cycle of Shostakovich Quartets which I recorded for Chandos with the Sorrel Quartet, and played live over a weekend in Cratfield Church in Suffolk. Nothing will compare to that epic journey, both emotionally and physically. One of the great excitements of now joining the Brodsky Quartet is that they have shared similar Shostakovich journeys and I am looking forward to comparing “travel notes”.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
I can think of two, straightaway. The first, Wigmore Hall, London. Perfect acoustic, perfect size, wonderful audience, and the sense of history walking onto that stage, well-documented in all the photos lining the Green Room walls. I made my solo debut there at the age of 21, and I vividly remember playing the Bach Chaconne as part of the programme in that heavenly acoustic, and thinking how amazingly fortunate I was to be there. The second, Snape Maltings near Aldeburgh. Every creak and groan from the wooden structure has one imagining Benjamin Britten’s presence still there in those rafters. Years ago, when they replaced the bluffs on the roof, my then quartet, spending a winter in residence in Aldeburgh, was sent as a publicity stunt to be pictured with instruments (luckily not our own!) on the roof…and oh, the view across the marshes, with the steel grey water meandering in loops through the reeds! You never see that from ground level. A very special place indeed.
Who are your favourite musicians?
Too many to list, but currently: Maria Joao Pires, Henning Kraggerud, Kristine Opolais, Paul Lewis
What is your most memorable concert experience?
As a child, hearing the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra at the Alhambra Palace in Granada. The setting, the architecture and the music made such an impression on me.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
I think if one feels successful, one might as well retire! As musicians we are so fortunate to be involved in a career we love, where we can continue learning and being curious and growing in experience throughout our life. Sharing this passion and enthusiasm with audiences or students is surely the most rewarding part of our life? If just one person is moved or changed in some way by their experience in a concert hall then perhaps we have been successful in our mission?
What is your most treasured possession?
I know I should say my violin! But actually it is a string of pearls which belonged to my Austrian/Italian mother, and her mother before that, the only piece of her jewellery which travelled from Europe to South Africa and was not stolen in a burglary. My only sadness is I cannot wear it when playing violin!
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Work hard – nothing valuable is ever gained without that – but be open to inspiration from a broad range of genres. Do not spend all your day in a practice room. Walk in nature, visit an art gallery, go to the theatre, read, explore… you will need far more than an assured technique if you are to have something interesting to share with an audience. And every time you play a piece, find something new in it, and take risks.
Gina McCormack will join the Brodsky Quartet from May 2019. Find out more
Gina McCormack is well established as one of Britain’s leading artists, with regular solo appearances at London’s Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre and at venues across the country. She has performed at many British Festivals, including the City of London, Henley, Edinburgh, Buxton, Aldeburgh and Salisbury Festivals, and has appeared as soloist in the UK with the Hallé and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras and the former Bournemouth Sinfonietta. Tours abroad have taken her to France, Norway, Denmark, the Czech Republic, South Africa and South America, and most recently to Austria and Switzerland.
Gina studied with György Pauk at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and attended masterclasses with Sandor Vegh (at the Salzburg Mozarteum and at Prussia Cove in Cornwall), Dorothy DeLay, Andras Mihaly and Siegmund Nissel (from the Amadeus Quartet). While still a student, she was a prizewinner at the Royal Overseas League Music Competition in London and at the International Young Concert Artists’ Competition in Tunbridge Wells, where she has since returned to serve on the jury.
For thirteen years Gina was the leader of the Sorrel Quartet, with whom she was frequently heard on BBC Radio Three. The quartet made twelve CDs for Chandos Records, of works by Britten, Mendelssohn, Schubert and the complete cycle of Shostakovich quartets. Their Elgar CD was chosen as one of Classic FM’s records of the year and was Editor’s Choice in Gramophone Magazine. The group also recorded John Pickard’s Quartets on the Dutton label.
She then led the Maggini Quartet for two years, and decided to leave the group in March 2010 to focus on her solo work, continuing a long association with her duo partner, pianist Nigel Clayton. Since then the duo has had engagements in Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, and all around the UK.
Gina McCormack is also well-known as a teacher, having spent 11 years as professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (formerly Trinity College of Music) in London. She is currently teaching at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow. She also gives regular masterclasses both in the UK and at summer festivals abroad.
Politicians in particular talk a lot about the “weight of history” or of feeling “the hand of history on our shoulders”, especially when faced with a serious national crisis or significant policy decision.
As musicians we feel the weight of history too – through the many exceptional musicians who have gone before us and the fine recordings of the “great works” of the repertoire which serve as benchmarks or models for our own progress. These can affect our approach to our music making and influence the way music is presented to others.
Whether or not you like his playing, the presence of Glenn Gould hangs heavily over anyone playing Bach, and his two recordings of the Goldberg Variations, a great work in itself, are held up by many as the absolute zenith of greatness in this repertoire. Similarly, Andras Schiff and Angela Hewitt, both fine Bach interpreters, also cast a significant shadow over those of us who choose to play Bach’s music. In Mozart we have Mitsuko Uchida and Maria Joao Pires, Barenboim in Beethoven, Lupu in Schubert, Pollini in Chopin, Argerich in, well, virtually anything, and Perahia for “all round excellence”….the list is endless as everyone has their personal favourites, and each era seems to bring yet another crop of “greats”.
Maria Joao Pires
The classical musician’s training is still largely about preserving tradition and the reverential “canonization” of repertoire: we’re taught from a young age that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms et al…. are “great” composers. Revering the music in this way can create problems when learning and playing it: for pianists, as for other musicians, certain works – the Goldberg Variations and the Well-Tempered Clavier, Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas, Chopin’s Études, the great piano concertos, for example – have an elevated status on a par with the works of Aristotle, Shakespeare or Dickens. We hold the music in awe and feel a tremendous responsibility towards it. Thus, the musician is like a conservator or gardener, bringing these great works to life.
As a consequence, it can be difficult for us to find our own personal voice: the music itself is not necessarily “more difficult”, but the weight of history, and the long line of renowned musicians who have played these great works, can stifle our creativity, artistry and personal interpretation (it is for this reason that I tend towards lesser-known or contemporary repertoire for performances). In addition, the many recordings of these works, plus a century or more of scholarship, can drown out one’s personal voice. You hear a “perfect” recording or performance and wonder “what can I bring to this music that is new/different?”
I had to stop myself listening to other people play it or there would no hope in hell of me finding my own way with it.
– Jonathan Powell, pianist
There are, however, ways to mitigate this. Listening to great recordings and performances does no harm. They can inspire and inform, highlighting aspects of the score which may not be obvious from our initial study of it, sparking ideas, expanding our perspective and nourishing our perceptions of the music. We can admire the great interpretations of the music we are studying, but should never seek to imitate nor borrow from someone else’s version. Acknowlegding the greatness rather than revering it can be helpful too: after all, if we continually keep the music on unreachably high pedestals, we may never actually play it, thus denying ourselves the opportunity of experiencing something truly wonderful and the feeling of being part of an ongoing process of recreation every time we play or perform the music.
If you enjoy the content of this site, please consider making a donation towards its upkeep:
“It’s important,” explains piano builder Wayne Stuart of Tumut, Australia, “to realize that we perceive sound not only through our ears but through all of our body.” That’s how the Big Beleura, his new 108-key concert grand, gets to you.
At the recent world première of the instrument, composer Alan Griffiths had rescored one of his pieces to better exploit the extended range of the keyboard, and pianist Nicholas Young had to play part of it standing up. As he reached inside to strum with his left hand, he played the octave melody on the upper keys, and the audience reportedly loved it.
Young says he finds the extended bass keys “incredibly sonorous even when not in use. They seem to contribute to the entire timbre. It pulses through one’s entire body like an organ pedal note.”
In this excerpt, Young is playing Griffiths’ “Cakewalk from Hell”. The deep bass takes over at 40 seconds :
Stuart has described his expanded keyboard concept in these terms: “Once players have tasted these fruits, they will never willingly return to 88 keys … Can you believe there are players and luddites who think this is crazy?”
And indeed, the premiere audience for the new model was a full house of “very excited”, but not crazy, music lovers who “listened to every note and sprang to their feet” at the climax, Stuart recalled during our week-long exchange of emails recently. Their attention never waned. “Folk were there to get everything they could from the experience.”
As director of Piano Australia Pty Ltd that presides over the manufacture of the Stuart & Sons brand, Stuart believes his new four-pedal expanded keyboard piano may show the way for the first radical advance in piano design in more than 130 years. Certain limited experiments aside (such as Bösendorfer’s Imperial and Daniel Barenboim’s disappointing “Barenboim”), piano architecture has been pretty much frozen since the 1880s.
Not surprisingly, some players and critics remain skeptical. I asked the respected critic and composer Melinda Bargreen of Seattle how excited she is – or isn’t — about the new piano. “I salute Wayne Stuart for pushing musical boundaries,” she wrote in an email exchange with me. “Experimental composers may enjoy tinkering with those extra 20 notes but they must face the fact that their performance opportunities will be extremely limited. The size, price and 1,420-pound weight will make these instruments inaccessible to nearly everyone outside of Australia.” (The Steinway Model D concert grand weighs a mere 990 pounds.)
And yet the piano is off to a promising start. Beleura House and Garden villa and concert hall on Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, where the premiere was held, was already an attraction for music-lovers and is now boosted by the acquisition of the first Big Beleura.
The new piano will come to Europe and the United States only if a buyer will commission a new hand-crafted model. Stuart tells me it would go for about $250,000 and will require a full year to build. In the interim, YouTube videos and a forthcoming Griffiths recording will fill the gap for those of us in the northern hemisphere.
Ashley Hribar, an Australian pianist of German-Slovenian parentage, has logged the most hours on the massive keyboard and praises the “amazing colour” of the piano. He tells me in an interview (see below) that the tone and the touch of the piano proved easier to master than he expected. “After about 30 minutes I felt quite at ease and everything became intuitive,” he said. The 1,492mm (4 feet 10 inch) wide keyboard would be a stretch for a child prodigy but average players seem unfazed. Long-limbed Hribar can reach both ends by leaning forward slightly.
Here he plays Jelly Roll Morton”s “Fingerbeaker”, stretching to reach the deep bass at 1;24.
A modest player and highly trained piano technician, Stuart has added ten notes to the bass and ten to the treble. He is now encouraging composers to come forward to experiment with it. The first to emerge is Brazilian pianist Artur Cimirro with a composition that takes in the full keyboard.
Premiere pianist Young reminds me there is a long tradition of imitating the organ when performing or arranging Bach (e.g. Busoni, von Bülow, Liszt), so the extended sonorities allow the pianist to come even closer to perfecting that illusion. “I imagine that works using extended technique, such as Henry Cowell’s The Banshee, would also be incredibly effective with the extended range, he said. “Duet arrangements of symphonies, like those that Liszt arranged of Beethoven, will sound fantastic.”
The additional keys, made possible in part by technical developments in string metallurgy, rarely carry melody but are effective for percussive effects and resonate when played together at an adjacent octave. I can confirm, after much research, that the effect of these extreme notes does indeed set the body tingling.
The limits of piano wire performance have been pushed by Stephen Paulello Piano Technologies, near Fontainebleau in France, at Stuart’s urging. A super-strong wire suitable for extreme treble keys was first developed in 2012 and toughened up just a year ago to enable the 108-key range.
As new repertoire for the instrument emerges, other works are being amended and adapted to incorporate the highs and lows. Griffiths says he was pleased to hear the “visceral energy” of the deep growling bass with percussive left-hand chord clusters. In his adaptations, he was after an “unworldly sound — primal even — to do what no other piano can do.”
Hribar is also rearranging some of his repertoire, including his own Paganini Variations and Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz Nr 1. “I am hoping many other composers will continue to write for the expanded keyboard,” says Hribar.
———
An edited transcript of email exchanges with pianist Ashley Hribar follows:
How intimidating was it to approach the instrument for the first time and look at 108 keys?
People often say to me, “You must need long arms”, etc. In fact, physically, I don’t find the extra 20 keys make a huge difference. It’s probably more psychological, especially when you hear the number 108 as opposed to 88. One simply needs to extend the arms slightly further or lean a bit to either side. Playing the notes simultaneously on either end, which one rarely does on traditional pianos, does require one to move the head closer to the keyboard. This is no issue for my arm span, but it may be for smaller people.
Did you need a few hours to adapt to the touch and the sound?
It wasn’t so daunting. I had previous experience with the 102-key Stuart & Sons piano. Playing the Brahms Cello Sonata (F Major) was a little scary at first because I had to re-coordinate, sometimes needing a split second to reach octaves in the bass. After about 30 minutes, I felt quite at ease and everything became intuitive.
Did you need adjustment of your sensibilities to appreciate the growling bass notes or the tinkly uppermost register?
Yes, pianists need to adjust to each new brand of piano. My biggest adjustment to this piano has been with physical coordination and adapting a slightly different visual approach to the extra notes. This opening of a new sound world in colour and depth have been inspiring indeed. I’ve had a lot of experience with experimental new music and improvisation and so having access to such an instrument is a true blessing.
Do you find these additional keys suited more to enhancing chords rather than carrying melody?
Yes. The human ear has difficulty distinguishing these extremes of register, especially the last few notes on each end. So, playing melodies in this range can be challenging. From a compositional perspective today, this would depend on one’s approach to melody and something very new. But interestingly, the brain does compensate well by imagining the sound of these notes, especially when playing chromatic scales or broken chords toward these extremes. I think the piano balances and blends the sound, continuing from the traditional range in a way one would imagine.
This is starting to sound like the extremes reached by pipe organs in a grand cathedral.
Yes, much like the pipe organ, particularly those reaching 8 Hz (lowest organ note) and the high register (beyond 8,000 Hz), the listener feels the sound rather than distinguishing the notes. Transferring this to the acoustic piano, the sound of the pipe organ at this range is much different than the range of the Stuart & Sons. Nonetheless, these vibrations give an unexpected dimension to sound, adding depth and warmth to the lower registers and brilliance in the high registers.
Give us an example of improvisation that has worked well.
When appropriate, I add the lower bass notes to enhance the effect of the music. Debussy’s Claire de Lune is an example where at bar 15 and 17 I add the lower E-flat. When playing this note extra soft (ppp), you can feel the vibrations of this note as well as its overtones. This, in combination with the original notes creates an amazing colour.
What kind of repertoire is available and what is in preparation?
Brazilian pianist Artur Cimirro was the first person to write for the 108 key piano. Alan Griffiths has been rearranging and writing wonderful new works for the ‘Big Beleura’ (the 108 key Stuart) in his recent CD Rare View. As for myself, I have been rearranging some of my own compositions, such as my Paganini Variations and adapting traditional works like the Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz Nr 1. Other works of interest here originally written for 102 keys include Black Opal (2000) by Alex Mitchell and various pieces by Fabien Touchard, Charly Mandon and Stéphane Delplace written especially for the French 102 key piano built by Stephen Paulello.
Some composers invited improvisation. Aren’t they a good starting point?
Yes, virtuosic piano music, particularly of the romantic era with composers like Liszt, Alkan and others, show many examples where experimentation is implied. That is, the performer could in some cases use the score more or less as a guide. The lesser-known Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt are typical examples where we are left with bare bones on the page, leaving space between the notes to fill out harmonies, add arpeggios, extra notes or completely re-invent passages. These works and many others are perfect opportunities for pianists to use 108 keys.
The Liszt sounds appropriate for the broader sound spectrum.
True, and I have been reimagining Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No.1, originally an orchestral work and later arranged for piano by the composer. The Peters edition includes alternative passages, suggesting experimentation or implementing personalised embellishments, for example the dazzling flourishes in the right hand. Such deviations from the score were commonplace in the 19th Century, especially with pianists of the golden age like Rachmaninov and Horowitz.
French composers like Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen experimented with rhythm and colour. Ravel writes the G sharp below the A1 in his Piano concerto for the Left Hand, and in Une barque sur l’océan (Mirrors) and Messiaen’s Par Lui tout a ete fait (Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus). Claire de Lune and many other works show how 108 keys could be used.
Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. He worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his writing career. He is the author of five books and divides his time between Boston and Bordeaux.He is a regular contributor to The Cross-Eyed Pianist
The Cross-Eyed Pianist is free to access and ad-free, and takes many hours every month to research, write, and maintain.
If you find joy and value in what I do, please consider making a donation to support the continuance of the site
And yet the piano is off to a promising start. Beleura House and Garden villa and concert hall on Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, where the premiere was held, was already an attraction for music-lovers and is now boosted by the acquisition of the first Big Beleura.
The Cross-Eyed Pianist 