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“today I finished the Fantasy and the sky is beautiful…..”

Fryderyk Chopin, 1841

The sky was indeed beautiful on perhaps the last day of summer, August Bank Holiday Monday, when I and my concert companion escaped the city heat and embraced the cool elegance of Cadogan Hall for an hour of poetry in music.

Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov is still in his twenties, yet he plays with all the assurance, poise and musical sensibility of an artist twice his age. His performance of piano music by Fryderyk Chopin was one to savour, to revisit (thanks to the wonders of the Radio Three iPlayer) and to hold in the memory for a long time to come. It is rare to be so transported, to lose time, suspended in sound, such was the effect of Pavel Kolesnikov’s playing.

A pianist from another era, Phyllis Sellick, declared that a concert featuring only one composer was “a list”. But how can one say that of the music of Fryderyk Chopin, so rich and subtle, so varied yet accessible that each performer, professional or amateur, can find their own personal way into it? Kolesnikov created a programme of pieces which “cast a different light” on Chopin, revealing not only his deeply Romantic mindset but also “an extremely refined, clear, clean style” (PK), perfectly complemented by Kolesnikov’s cultivated playing.

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Pavel Kolesnikov (photo: Eva Vermandel)

Some purists may balk at his elastic tempi, pushing rubato perhaps a little too far for some tastes (though not ours). This slackening of tempo, stretching of time, was felt most palpably in the repeats in the Waltzes, proof that no repetition is the same in the hands of a pianist. There were decorations too, sprinklings of improvisation, graceful musical seasonings, though always subtle and delicate as a breath. As a great admirer of Bach, I am sure Chopin would have approved of these embellishments, especially when delivered with such sensitivity and intuition.

From the opening work, a Waltz scored in A flat major but constantly hovering in the minor key, played with a tender poignancy and a caressing touch, Pavel Kolesnikov created a bittersweet intimacy in each work he touched, even in the grander, more expansive measures of the Fantasy in F minor and Scherzo no. 4, whose skittish good-nature closed this exquisite hour of music.

As I said, it is rare to be so transported by sound, by pianist and composer so perfectly in sympathy; yet I have heard Kolesnikov before in Debussy and Schumann, and I have been moved to tears by the poetic refinement of his playing. When so many young players seem to subscribe to the louder-faster school of pianism it is refreshing to hear a pianist who does not rush, who knows how to create breathing space and dramatic suspensions in the music, and who appreciates the smallest details as well as the most sweeping narratives.

Afterwards we stepped out into the Chelsea sunshine, found a shady spot for a drink and a long conservation about music, concerts, art, writing, and had the privilege of meeting the pianist, who was dining at the same cafe, to offer our congratulations for his wonderful, transporting performance.

My review for Bachtrack here and my companion’s response to the concert here

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In 1952 a composer called John Cage told us there was music in silence, and the world hasn’t been the same since. Today, the gradual wearing away of stone by water, the echoes of gravitational waves, and the caloric metamorphosis of food into energy may all be understood as musical works, a privilege for which we are indebted to Cage.

September 5, 2017 would have been Cage’s 105th birthday, and to commemorate and honor our favorite sonic philosopher, Ace Hotel and the John Cage Trust, in partnership with Mode Records, present Untouchable Numbers, a 24-hour listening event beginning at 12am. Cage’s sounds, and silences, will play throughout lobbies and public spaces of all nine Ace Hotels as the earth completes one full rotation, freely and open to the public. Visit individual listings for Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, New York, Palm Springs, Portland and Seattle for specific venue information.
Learn more about where to hear Cage across Ace Hotels properties here, and consider booking a room with the promo code SILENCE, valid for stays from 9/4-9/6. RSVP suggested but not required. Seating in public spaces is first come, serve.
Listening is a radical act.
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(source: Ace Hotels press information)

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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and pursue a career in music?

When I was a teenager, I never thought of pursuing a career as a pianist. I used to play a lot of classical and romantic piano repertoire but just for the personal joy of playing. I was much more into rock and punk music. The life of a classical musician seemed to be quite boring and bourgeois to me, even after starting my piano studies at university. At this point I was totally uninterested in any contemporary classical music and pieces I heard by composers like Boulez or Stockhausen sounded too academic for my taste. At the time, I didn’t know about contemporary genres like minimalism or any electro-acoustic music and I never imagined that there could be “classical” composers out there influenced by the same music as me. My view completely shifted after I started listening to “The people united will never be defeated” by Frederic Rzewski. The eclecticism of this work, the political attitude, and the combination of elements from both popular and classical music made me reconsider my view of what a pianist is able to express on stage. From this point on I wanted to be a professional pianist.

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

Frederic Rzewski definitely had a large effect on my decision to pursue a career as a pianist but, for my own musical style, there are a wide range of influences. I admire composers like George Antheil and Henry Cowell for their uncompromising and radical approaches towards the piano as a noisy sound monster, but also composers like Erik Satie or Philip Glass who are able to create an almost transcendental sound out of the most simplistic material. At the moment I’m very much into post-rock, which to me feels like a mash-up of both of these sound aesthetics. This mood somewhere between mania and meditation is what I try to transfer to the piano when doing my own arrangements.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

At the end of my studies after I was about to leave the comfort zone of the university, I recognised that I was a classical pianist but with quite a strange repertoire and an unusual way of setting up my concert programs. I felt too superficial for the contemporary music hardliners, too progressive for the classical traditionalists but still too serious to be part of the popular culture. Falling between these schools became my niche. I liked the idea of being kind of intangible for the audience, and it gave me the opportunity to reinvent myself with every new project or album. But that’s sometimes a long journey.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

Every recording is a very unique project to me, reflecting just a current idea or an aesthetical statement at a certain point of my life so I would say that there isn’t one particular album I’m most proud of. There is, however, obviously always a moment after finishing each album when you feel a great sense of pride as a result of all of the hard work put in: from the first conceptual idea to the last mixing session.

Which particular works do you think you play best?

I stopped playing Beethoven piano sonatas in concerts after I recognised that my interpretations had nothing more to add to the interpretations I’d already heard by all those great pianists. I’m convinced that you can only be a true musician if you have something new to say through the music you play. My motivation as a musician is not to try and imitate what hundreds of pianists have previously done before me but to explore hidden links within different genres by reworking pieces or discovering rarely performed works. I hugely favour American piano music; from George Gershwin’s colourful jazzy rhythms, to the dark and sensual soundscapes of George Crumb, to the works of the American minimalists. This music suits me best.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

The process usually starts with a piece that I’m obsessed with at the time. This work then forms the conceptual basis for a new program. In the case of “Beauty in Simplicity”, there was a track called “A new error” by German techno group Moderat. This work reminded me of Philip Glass’ piano works. My first thought was then to prepare a program that picks up on classical minimalism but also explores elements of Techno and Ambient Music. There is a strong aesthetical connection between Brian Eno and the music of Erik Satie so there was suddenly a new storyline going back to the 19th century. For the next step, I went through a lot of original piano music repertoire as well as tracks I wanted to rearrange for piano. From this, I compiled a set ranging from the Paris salons to Berghain held together by the compositional ideas of patterns and loops.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I really love playing in planetariums. I started this two years ago with my “Insomnia” program and I am planning on doing this with my upcoming album “Beauty in Simplicity”. It’s a place that gives me the opportunity to create a very special concert experience by combining the music with fulldome visual art and building up a three-dimensional soundscape. You’ll hardly find this kind of hypnotic atmosphere in any other concert venue.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

I think it was when I first performed Rzewski´s “The people united will never be defeated” back in 2009. I worked on this masterpiece for almost two years until I had the courage to go on stage with it. I was totally absorbed into the background story of the piece. Playing this piece felt like being part of a revolutionary fight using the notes as weapons. There was just so much adrenaline released during these 65 minutes of music.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

There is always a sense of ambivalence in the life of an interpreting artist: are you a servant of the performed work or should the work serve to the performer? I feel successful if both of these are fulfilled: by making another’s work my own either on stage or during a recording.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

As a pianist I can say: don’t expect to be a universal genius, focus on a repertoire that fits your personality and makes you authentic. If you were a pop musician, no one would tell you to play jazz today, heavy metal tomorrow and drum ‘n’ bass the day after, just because it’s all part of the pop culture. Classical pianists are often expected to cover more than 300 years of music history. A classical education requires you to play Bach just as well as Mozart, Chopin or Stravinsky. Find the mistake.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Like a famous German entertainer once said: “having nowhere to be and being tipsy”.

 

Kai Schumacher’s new album Beauty in Simplicity is released on 1 September

 

Kai Schumacher delights in pushing the boundaries between classical and popular music while avoiding the wellworn clichés “Crossover.” Boasting an impressive pedigree, Kai studied at the renowned Folkwang University Essen with Prof. Till Engel, passing his „Konzertexamen“ with distinction in 2009. Since then, like a musical mad scientist, he has been constantly experimenting and combining seemingly incompatible elements with surprising results. His solo performances are acts of pure musical – and stylistic – alchemy, serving up heady mixes of Dadaism and Dancefloor, Avantgarde and Pop culture – sometimes all at once!

When not engaged in genre-defying pursuits, Kai Schumacher‘s repertoire focuses on American piano music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His debut recording of Frederic Rzewski‘s monumental “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” (2009) was hailed by Fono Forum magazine as a “pianistic sensation” and voted CD of the month. On his second album, “Transcriptions” (2012), he bravely turned to the musical heroes of his youth – Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana, Slayer and others – remixing them and transforming the concert grand into a four squaremeter sound monster, a mechanical sound-effects board, complete with prepared percussion. His third album “Insomnia” (2015) is the story of a nocturnal odyssey, at once soothing and disturbing. It´s five restless “hymns” to the night feature the works of five American composers written over the past 80 years.

On his current album „Beauty in simplicity“ (September 2017, NEUE MEISTER) Kai Schumacher is combining original piano compositions with his own arrangements for „enhanced piano“ to create a repetitive set between meditation und mania. Including works from three centuries ranging from Erik Satie through Steve Reich to Moderat Minimal Music meets its classical pioneers and descendants in Ambient, Techno and Post-Rock.

Kai Schumacher also works as a producer, regularly appears as an orchestral soloist and has toured throughout Europe, Asia and North- and South-America.

kaischumachersite.wordpress.com

(artist photo by Bonny Cölfen)

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Concert etiquette. Yes, that old chestnut, doing the rounds again, getting bloggers, reviewers and audience members all hot under the collar….. To quote my friend and fellow blogger ‘Specs’: “audience behaviour seems to be such a ‘hot topic’ at the moment, it might as well be in a furnace balanced on a bonfire surrounded by lava. (And since that’s a fairly accurate description of being inside the Royal Albert Hall much of the time, perhaps the two are connected.)”

Aside from all the hand-wringing and eye-pulling on the subject of applause (when, how and why – of which more in a subsequent article), there is the question of general behaviour at concerts. Some people say that the etiquette of classical music – sitting quietly during the performance, trying not to disturb fellow concert-goers with coughing, turning the pages of the programme, or trying to silently opening blister packs of cough sweets (it’s impossible, I know) – is what makes classical music elitist, but the same etiquette is expected of theatre- or cinema-goers.

When we go to a live concert, we choose to do so in the knowledge that we will be sharing the auditorium with other people. These other people are, en masse, known as the audience, and without them there would be no concerts. Audiences are human – living, breathing, moving, sentient human beings – and when you go to a concert and become part of the audience, you accept that you are going to be surrounded by people who might move, or make a very small noise or tiny disturbance…… The vast majority of us who attend concerts do so with a sense of courtesy towards our fellow concert-goers and we enjoy the experience of sharing this wonderful music with other people in the special space that is the concert hall.

Sadly, a minority of concert goers seem to have a problem with this….. I was upset to read a post by a Facebook/blogging acquaintance who reported that during a concert at the Edinburgh Festival he moved slightly to cross his legs and was promptly punched on the shoulder by the person sitting behind him and ordered to “stop moving around, you fool!“. That the concert-goer reacted so aggressively to what I am sure was a very slight movement on the part of my acquaintance is disturbing in itself; that it happened at a classical concert, that art form where one expects civilised, courteous behaviour, is really quite shocking. Unfortunately, this is not the first incident of this kind I have encountered. Some months ago at a concert at the Wigmore Hall, I witnessed a man some rows in front of me smartly whack the couple in front of him with his programme because they were being just a little bit smoochy. It happened not once but twice during the evening and it was an unnecessary and overly aggressive reaction, in my humble opinion.

Concert venues do their absolute best to ensure the experience is pleasant for everyone. There are regular reminders to switch off your mobile phone and other electrical devices which might disturb the concert (watch alarms for example), to stifle coughing as far as possible (the Wigmore sensibly sells cough sweets at the desk in the foyer and most venues will allow you to take a bottle of water into the auditorium) and to be tolerant of other concert-goers. I am not overly troubled by coughing, nor am I especially bothered by the whole “applause between movements” business. But talking during the performance is a big No No for me – it’s discourteous to other concert-goers and disrespectful to the musicians – as is checking your Facebook timeline on your smartphone. And crowd-surfing is not recommended either….. (see below)

It seems to me that some concert goers would prefer to have a private concert, just them and the musicians, without the bother of tiresome other people and their irritating natural human attributes. To which I say, if that’s how to you want to experience music, I suggest you stay at home and listen on the radio or on disc in the quiet privacy of your own home.

Good behaviour at concerts was inculcated in me from a very young age. My parents took me to many classical concerts when I was a little girl – mostly at the old Birmingham Town Hall – and I learnt to sit quietly during the performance and to stifle my yawns: my mother used to tell me that yawning was very rude as “the musicians might notice and think you are bored!“. Having now been on the other side, so to speak, as a performer, I can safely say that when one is involved in the business of performing, one doesn’t really notice the audience that much (I doubt you could spot someone yawning in the audience from the stage of the Birmingham Town Hall!), but it also helps if you can sense the audience are still alive and engaging with the performance. I love that collective sigh that one hears just before the applause comes, or the sense of people listening incredibly intently, the atmosphere so thick, so powerful you could almost reach out and touch it.

Further reading:

Clapped Out

Getting Rid of Claptrap

How to Save Classical Music according to Stephen Hough

Scientist Kicked out of Classical Concert for Trying To Crowd Surf