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Spotify is a music streaming service, offering content from a vast range of mainstream and independent record labels and artists. Music can be browsed by artist, album, record label, genre or playlist as well as by direct searches.

Until fairly recently, I thought the Spotify catalogue only contained pop music and jazz, and therefore of almost no interest to me: I was wrong. Spotify has a vast and wonderful archive of classical music, by mainstream artists and lesser-knowns (and even some real oddities!). There are the latest albums by the artists “du jour”, there are “classics” and “standards”, and there are some fantastic archive recordings of great performers of yesteryear, including Horowitz, Heifertz, Wilhelm Kempf (I love his Liszt ‘Legendes’), Gilels, Gould, Lipatti and many more…. There is a whole album of Rachmaninov playing his own music, including the E flat Etude-Tableau I have (possibly foolishly) included in my LTCL programme, and taken at such a lick by its composer, it is over almost before it has begun.

Purists and lovers of vinyl and cassette tapes bemoan the fact that we can’t make “mix tapes” like we used to. Wrong. With services like Spotify, you can create your own personal playlists and “mixes” and share them, so that others may enjoy them too. You can subscribe to other people’s playlists, and even see what your friends on Facebook are listening to – in real time (and you might be surprised by some of their choices!). You can share tracks to Facebook and Twitter, email a track to a friend, and waste hours of your precious time (when you should be practising) browsing the vast catalogue. And all for £9.99 per month. (There is a free service, but your listening is frequently interrupted by adverts.)

I really started to fully utilise Spotify when I began my reviewing for Bachtrack. I tend to like to know what I’m going to hear in advance, so I’ll make a playlist of the programme to familiarise myself with the music, and sometimes I might listen to a recording of the performer I’m going to hear. I have two ever-lengthening playlists called Stuff I Like 1 (Classical) and Stuff I like 2 (Other) where I save tracks that interest me. When I was devising the programme for my LTCL Diploma, I created four different playlists of the pieces so that I can tinker with the programme order and listen to the complete programme to see if the ordering worked or not. When the programme was finalised, I sent a link to the playlist to my page turner so that he could acquaint himself with the pieces ahead of our rehearsals.

My latest playlist is called New Repertoire Ideas and contains tracks of pieces I would like to tackle after I’ve taken my Diploma in April. It’s a way of reminding myself of the music, while also giving me the opportunity to familiarise myself with it before I have even laid eyes on the score. And as regular readers of this blog will know, I often include links to tracks on Spotify so that readers can hear the music being discussed.

Recently, while reviewing a new CD of Brahms’ sonatas for violin and piano, I was able to do some “comparative listening”, to check out the competition, or the “standards” against which certain pieces are benchmarked. It was really interesting to compare different performers’ approaches to the same works, something I could do without having to load-eject-load-eject a stack of CDs. (Damian Thompson of The Spectator has written a very positive review of this particularly useful and enjoyable aspect of Spotify – read his article here.)

Spotify has a use in my teaching studio too: I can compile playlists for students, to enable them to “listen around” the music they are studying, or offer examples of one composer’s output. For example, while teaching Beethoven’s Rondo in F (Trinity Guildhall Grade 4), I have directed those students who are studying this piece to Beethoven’s ‘Rondo A Capriccio’, the famous ‘Rage Over a Lost Penny’ as a way of introducing them to Rondo form. Or for those who are working on the witty Fanfare for the Common Cold (Trinity Guildhall Grade 2), a link to hear Aaron Copland’s iconic Fanfare for the Common Man, which inspired this quirky piece. In lessons, I often want students to listen to music, and it’s quick and easy to plug my iPhone into the speakers in my piano studio, and call up a few tracks on Spotify. And of course the kids love it because they are all so techno-clued up these days……

Spotify has surpassed iTunes as my music app of choice – because I can set a playlist to be available offline and enjoy listening to it even when I don’t have access to WiFi. One of my recent and best discoveries on Spotify is a series of albums called Rarities of Piano Music, which a friend and colleague of mine flagged up. These live recordings from the annual Husum Festival of Rare Piano Music are fascinating, offering some little-known but no less wonderful piano works, a number of which have migrated onto my New Repertoire Ideas playlist. Here’s a handful of my particular favourites:

Ferruccio Busoni – Astrologo op. 33 No. 5 – Live

Cyril Scott – Lotus Land op. 47 No. 1 – Live

William Baines – “Tides”: Goodnight To Flamboro

Jean-Baptiste Lully – Sarabande in E Minor

Francisco Tárrega – Recuerdos de la alhambra

My Stuff I like 1 (classical) playlist

Spotify is available on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod and other smart phones and similar devices, and synchronises across your devices. Clever huh? Go on, give it a try and open up a whole new world of music and listening……

Details of this year’s Rarities of Piano Festival in Husum here

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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

www.madelainejones.co.uk

Madelaine performing at Normansfield Theatre, 20 May 2012
Madelaine performing at Normansfield Theatre, 20 May 2012

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1359142475A group of Durham musicians are planning the first performance in Durham for fifteen years of an opera written for young people. In the first of two events this year to mark the centenary of composer Benjamin Britten, the Durham Singers are leading a project with local children to mount a fully staged performance of Noye’s Fludde.

This short opera is based on a 15th-century mystery play, and tells the familiar Bible story of Noah’s Ark. Britten wrote the opera with the idea that people of all ages and musical abilities should be involved, from the young children who sing the parts of the animals, to the audience themselves, who have the opportunity to join in with rousing settings of three well-known hymns. The animal parts will be played by Durham Cathedral’s outreach choir – the Durham Cathedral Young Singers, and by younger pupils from Durham Johnston School. Forty-nine different animals are named in the text, from rats and mice to lions and camels, and including a number of bird species. One member of the cast will be enjoying spectacular promotion: The Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham Cathedral played the part of a goat in one of the very first performances of the work, and he returns to the work now to play The Voice of God.

The opera is accompanied by an orchestra that includes parts written specifically for young, inexperienced players. These parts will be taken by musicians from Durham Johnston School, giving them a unique opportunity to play alongside professional orchestral players. They’ll also be playing some other rather unusual instruments; a set of mugs hung on a string is used to create the effect of the first raindrops. A group of young singers drawn from the recently launched Samling Academy will take the major solo roles, with 20-year old mezzo-soprano Charlotte Heslop from Spennymoor singing the part of Mrs Noye. Charlotte is currently studying voice with Miranda Wright on the Young Musician Programme at The Sage Gateshead and has previously appeared as Second Witch in the Miranda Wright Singers production of Dido and Aeneas and as alto soloist in the Durham Singers’ performance of Mozart’s Requiem, and this is her first major role.

They’ll be joined by professional bass-baritone Richard Strivens as Mr Noye, who won’t just be leading his flock into the ark – he’ll be leading them musically too, as Mr Strivens will be spending several days prior to the concert working with the young singers coaching them and guiding them in their roles. Musical Director of the Durham Singers, Dr Julian Wright, explained how the idea of sharing musical knowledge and experience is central to this piece:

“Britten wrote this piece specifically to engage young people – both players and singers – with music and drama. Like Britten himself, the groups involved are dedicated to spreading the message of great music and drama to communities and age groups that had not benefited from this. But one of the most important messages will be that of musical humility. Noye’s sons and daughters are up-and-coming singers in their early twenties. They will learn, from Britten’s musical generosity, about how music can be shared with amateurs and children; and that is the message for the Durham Singers as well, as we support this huge collaboration between different musicians of different levels of experience.”

The opera will be preceded with two shorter works by Britten. In keeping with the theme of God’s blessings on his creation, the Durham Singers will sing Rejoice in the Lamb, a vivid setting of an eighteenth-century poem written by Christopher Smart. The concert will open with the Fanfare for St Edmundsbury, a work for three solo trumpets, dispersed around the cathedral.

The concert has been supported by a grant from the Britten Pears Foundation

Date: 2 March 2013

Durham Cathedral, 7pm

Fanfare for St Edmundsbury
Rejoice in the Lamb
Jubilate in C
Noye’s Fludde

Tickets: £18 adults, £12 students/children, available from the Gala Theatre box office (www.galadurham.co.uk tel 0191 334 4041)

In the summer, Durham Singers will join forces with an up-and-coming chamber choir called Renaissance to will explore the links between Britten, Purcell, Britten’s contemporaries and those who have come after him. It will include “Where is thy God” by Ben Rowarth, which won the NCEM composition prize last year, conducted by the composer.

Durham Singers is a chamber choir of about 40 adult amateur singers who enjoy performing an adventurous repertory of mostly unaccompanied choral music, to the highest possible standard. In recent years, they have performed music by contemporary composers, such as Richard Rodney Bennet, Paul Spicer and Julian Anderson, alongside a core repertoire of English renaissance and romantic music.

Full details at www.durham-singers.org

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“The hand should be quiet, tranquil, floating. It is supported by the spine, whose stable strength is cantilevered through the shoulders and elbows, which, in turn, support the weightless and buoyant hand at rest. But in motion the hand channels the torso’s energy, echoing and concentrating the body’s disposition, the heart’s disposition toward contraction and release.” Russell Sherman ‘Piano Pieces’

from ‘The Craft of Piano Playing’ by Alan Fraser

The hand is a complex bio-mechanism, comprising some 27 bones, not including sesamoid bones which number varies between people. The metacarpals are the bones that connect the fingers and the wrist. Each human hand has 5 metacarpals and 8 carpal bones. The anatomy of the hand, and wrist, allows a range of motions, large (gross motor skills) and small (fine motor skills), and the fingertips contains some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body, are the richest source of tactile feedback, and have the greatest capability for positioning of all the parts of the body.

For the pianist, like the surgeon, the hands are the ‘tools of the trade’, that take signals from the brain and translate those signals into a vast range of articulations, gestures and – most importantly – sounds.

The hands need to be looked after, and many pianists are obsessive about the care of their hands. The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould was famously neurotic about his hands. He would refuse to shake hands with people, for fear of damaging his hands (so he claimed, but I wonder whether this was just another manifestation of his OCD?). He liked to soak his hands in hot water to warm them before he played, and he wore gloves (and scarf and hat!) in all weathers. Professional pianists are often asked whether they insure their hands, but as the British Paul Lewis once said, if one did that, one would have to insure the arms, shoulders, back, neck…. as well, for all these parts are crucial in the production of sound for the pianist. When asked if he did anything special in the care of his hands, a professional pianist I interviewed some years ago while researching a book, replied “no, but weeding it useful”, an activity which offers a range of movements to assist suppleness (I suppose – I am not a gardener!). He seemed very cool about the care of his hands, but for some of us being a pianist means a lifelong fear of carrying heavy things, sharp objects, boiling water……  British pianist Peter Donohoe suffered a serious accident to one of his fingers, thanks to a hotel window, which could have cut short his career (read more about it here). I admit to being slightly precious about my hands, especially if I have a concert coming up, refusing to carry heavy shopping or do DIY; and the cold weather plays havoc with my hands, making the skin dry and sore. I have to remember to take gloves and emollient cream with me whenever I go out, and I always have hand cream by the piano.

As a pianist, one is constantly aware of one’s hands, checking them, massaging them, drumming the fingers, playing a silent keyboard on a table top or one’s knees when away from the piano. We are aware, too, of the arms, shoulders and back. An injury higher up the arm, in the shoulder, neck or back, can affect the health of the hand too (as I found to my cost, and considerable pain, before Christmas when I damaged my left shoulder playing Rachmaninov too energetically). If you’ve had an injury, you become hyper-sensitive to the slightest twinge or ache. In autumn 2007, I was diagnosed with tenosynovitis in my right hand, the result of using an electric screwdriver (a no-no for the pianist: I should have known better!) and playing octaves too rapidly and without the necessary softness and “spring” in hand, wrist and arm. My hand ballooned into a red, painful useless thing and my osteopath ordered I rest it immediately. I spent three months with my hand in an orthopaedic brace, unable to play the piano, frustrated and miserable. When the brace came off, despite seven sessions with my osteopath (and some considerable expense), my hand was stiff, sluggish and unresponsive. The rehabilitation process was slow. I steered clear of music with octave passages, fast or slow, and the slightest extension of the hand – even a sixth – terrified me, in case the condition returned. Then I met my current teacher, a specialist in relieving tension in the hand and body, and through her guidance, I learnt how to relax, how to make the hand “weightless”, how to support it with the arm, shoulders and back, how to sense instant control and softness. And, most importantly, how to warm up properly. Five years on and I’m playing Liszt and Rachmaninov, composers who famously put huge demands on the hands (and the body in general) – pain free and without tension. Now, the hand problem is nothing more than a minor irritation, one I am aware of, but not something I obsess about.

Non-pianists are often fascinated by the idea of the pianist’s hand, imagining that one must have a special shape or size of hand to play the piano. In reality, there is no “proper” shape or size of the hand for playing the piano. Long fingers are not necessarily an advantage, though having a reasonable hand stretch (at least a 9th or 10th) is useful. Rachmaninov had very big hands (he could stretch to a 12th on the white keys), and for this reason many people think his piano music is unplayable. In fact, because he was a pianist himself, his music is so well written, it is not impossible to navigate, and there are ways around some of the bigger stretches, such as splitting them between the hands. Liszt also had large hands and unusually long fingers with very little web-like connective tissue between them, which allowed him to make wide stretches. Meanwhile, Chopin had surprisingly small hands, and had to come up with some imaginative fingerings for his music in order to be able to play it.

The athleticism of the pianist’s hands is also a source of fascination for the non-pianist, and anything involving crossed hands is often thought to be incredibly difficult or virtuosic. (My students love it if I play something with a crossed hand passage; even better if they get to cross their hands!) In reality, crossing the hands is almost never done for virtuoso showiness, rather for practical purposes: a particular passage may simply be easier to manage with crossed hands.

Repetitive stress injuries such as tendonitis, tenosynovitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and focal dystonia, are, sadly, common for pianists and have afflicted a number of well-known artists, including Gary Graffman, Leon Fleisher, Wanda Landowska, Artur Schnabel, Alexander Scriabin, Ignaz Friedman, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Clara Schumann, Glenn Gould, Michel Beroff, and Richard Goode. Fortunately, injuries rarely end the career of a pianist, but they can lead to cancelled concerts and time out for recuperation, in some cases a very long recovery process: Leon Fleischer has only recently returned to the concert platform after many years suffering from focal dystonia. When we play, our hands and fingers are under constant pressure, and are prone to overuse, but we can use various techniques to protect the hands (see resources below). Learning how to relax between notes (especially when playing large spreads, or octaves) is crucial, also ensuring one observes the correct posture at the piano. Take care of yourself, physically (the great teacher Heinrich Neuhaus expected his students to train in the gym at the Moscow Conservatory to keep themselves fit). Perhaps the most important advice is to understand and listen to your body, and never play through pain.

Researchers at the University of Southampton, UK, are engaged in a fascinating project using 3D motion-capture technology to understand the mechanics of piano playing. Led by Dr Cheryl Metcalf, the team hope to build a database of hundreds of piano players to understand the variations in technique, style and playing habits. The information gathered will be useful to understand why and how some pianists develop repetitive strain injuries, and, hopefully, to advise pianists how to better protect themselves against such injuries.

Yoga for Pianists – a sequence of exercises devised by pianist and teacher Penelope Roskell

www.pianomap.com – website of the pianist and teacher Thomas Mark, author of What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body

Craft of Piano – website of renowned teacher Alan Fraser, author of The Craft of Piano Playing

Yoga for Musicians – a DVD by my teacher, Penelope Roskell

Stress in Piano Playing

Thoughts on the hand and fingers from pianist and teacher (and author of Piano Pieces) Russell Sherman

And for fun:

The Top 10 pianists showing off their hands

I’m a pianist. Look at my hands – from the perenially entertaining site Awkward Classical Music photos