An intriguing envelope, postmarked from Ireland, dropped through my letterbox this morning, a welcome change from the daily deluge of Christmas mail. The A4 sheet of text, which accompanied the enclosed CD, immediately caught my attention when I saw the name Joyce Hatto, and initially I misread the text, thinking I’d been sent a recording to review by one of the artists Joyce and her husband ripped off in the course of their great classical music scam.
Pianist Archie Chen with actress Maimie McCoy who plays Joyce Hatto (right) as a young woman
In fact, the CD, a collection of works by Chopin, performed by pianist Archie Chen, relates to the upcoming BBC biopic of Joyce Hatto, Loving Miss Hatto. Written by Victoria Wood and starring Francesca Annis and Alfred Molina, the film will be aired on Sunday 23rd December on BBC One.
Archie Chen is indeed the pianist “behind the hands” – in that he provides the music for the film, under the direction of the musical director Niall Byrne. Chen himself is the pianist playing in the film, and he was also charged with teaching the actress Maimie McCoy, who plays Joyce as a young woman, how to play convincingly for the camera. The challenge for Chen was to learn some of the most difficult works in the repertoire in a very short space of time. As Chen himself says of working on the film: “I’m in such a privileged position to be involved in this project……I really relished the challenge of learning the most fiendishly difficult Godowsky Studies…..The hardest part was putting in the mistakes!”.
The release of the film coincides with the launch of Chen’s new CD ‘Chopin’, which features some of the composer’s best loved works, including the Ballade No. 3, the Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor op. 31, and all of the Impromptus, as well as the B minor Sonata. The opening Impromptu, in A-flat major, is a joyful outpouring, Chen opting for a more relaxed tempo than some performers, with restrained rubato and a thoughtful middle section. The Ballade No. 3 is graceful and elegant, with tasteful rubato and an enjoyably lilting tempo, which calls to mind the chime of a carriage clock (perhaps on the mantelpiece at Nohant?). In the Scherzo, once again a more spacious tempo allows us to enjoy all the contrasting elements and drama of this work. Likewise in the Sonata, tempos are measured and well thought out, in particular in the final movement (marked Presto non Tanto, far too many pianists, in my opinion, take this movement at such a gallop many of the details of the music are lost). Clean and expressive playing throughout, coupled with considered tempos and spare use of rubato, make this a CD to enjoy over several listenings.
Archie Chen ‘Chopin’ is available on CD or as a download
Who or what inspired you to take up editing and performing early music, and make it your career?
I took up a choral scholarship at Christ Church, Oxford on the basis that I seemed to be able to read music well enough and had an inoffensive highish tenor voice that was considered to be quite useful. Having spent my late teenage years obsessed with contemporary music, composing and playing the piano in Glasgow, it was a major culture shock for me to suddenly be catapulted into a hotbed of early music. Singing with the choir under Stephen Darlington, and with the academic interests I developed, under the influence of scholars such as John Milsom, Margaret Bent and David Maw, I began to realise that I enjoyed the music – and both the scholarship and performance in equal quantities. This is what made me realise that I wanted to run my own group (and not to necessarily conduct!), performing music that I love and am able to help bring to life, alongside musicians I respect and enjoy working with.
Who or what were the most important influences on your performing?
There have been many. Stephen Darlington at Christ Church is an enormously motivating director, who was always encouraging but gave me a strong sense of discipline which I desperately needed. John Milsom, who actually discouraged me from attempting to become ‘merely’ a singer (not that I’m good enough anyway!). Jeremy Summerly is such an effortlessly consummate musician and all-round excellent person to work with. He taught me that if the music’s good, then everything else is worthwhile. John Butt, who is currently my academic supervisor, is a paradigmatic figure in balancing performance and scholarship at the highest level. The other members of Oxford Baroque influence me a lot, both practically and ideologically. Without them, I’d probably have got a real job by now.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Being able to convince myself that what I am doing is worth it! Financially, it’s not been easy and I’ve done all sorts of other work to put into my group, Oxford Baroque. Funding isn’t something that’s easy to come by these days, but if you believe it can happen, then you can only blame yourself if it doesn’t.
Which performances are you most proud of?
I think every time we perform as a group, we get better and better, so it’s always the last one.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
Anywhere with good transport links and a decent pub nearby! Though I think the most impressive place I’ve performed recently was at Le château de Versailles. It’s such a beautiful venue that it distracts you from the ridiculously enormous acoustic.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
I love performing Schütz and Bach. There’s something – different about each of them, of course – about their sense of upholding attention to the text, but with a nuanced mode that brings something more to it, which I find hugely rewarding to sing. A lot of my colleagues are more diverse, but I’m a bit of a geek and collect lots of early music CDs. At the moment, I’m hooked on the Huelgas Ensemble’s Dufay disc, O Gemma Lux.
Who are your favourite musicians?
Lots of them.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
My most memorable concert experiences are probably not for the right sort of reasons. There was one on a Japanese tour, where at the rehearsal I suddenly realised I’d forgotten to pack black trousers and, without time to buy or commandeer a pair, had to perform in a pair of blue trousers.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
One of the obvious things that I notice is that professional musicians tend to be some of the most intelligent and educated people that I encounter, yet they normally work for relatively small financial rewards considering their skills and dedication. I remember spending a train journey between Oxford and London with Roderick Williams at a time when I was feeling a bit down on my luck. I’d just left Oxford and was puzzled why things weren’t suddenly taking off for me. After explaining how his own career had taken several years to develop, his advice was: ‘If you think the music’s worth it, then it probably is.’ This is a maxim that I like to think of every time I’ve had any doubts about what I’m doing. Also, that it’s important to respect those around you, however old or young they are. You learn quickly that everything is built around respect – for teachers, for fellow performers, for the music itself – and it’s imperative that you don’t get carried away with yourself. There’s always someone better than you out there, so be grateful for the opportunities you’re given.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m currently doing my laundry between trips away. But more generally, I’ve recently started doing postgraduate research with John Butt at the University of Glasgow. I’m trying to balance this with running Oxford Baroque. At the moment, I’m planning, editing and rehearsing for our concert in the St John’s, Smith Square Christmas Festival on Tuesday 18 December, with the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble. I’ve edited quite a few ‘new’ pieces for this concert and am really looking forward to hearing how they come together with such a large ensemble!
Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?
I would like to be able to balance an academic career with my own performing activities. As I realise that the teachers I’ve encountered are the ones who’ve switched me on to my passions, I’m becoming aware that I’ve enjoyed teaching in a university environment a lot so far and would welcome the chance to do more.
David Lee appears with Oxford Baroque in a concert on Monday 6th May as part of the Oxford Early Music Festival. Further details here
Oxford Baroque
David Lee graduated from the University of Oxford with a first class degree in Music, where he was a Choral Scholar at Christ Church and subsequently a Lay Clerk with New College Choir. Having worked closely with a number of eminent musicians and musicologists over the past few years, he has shown a particular enthusiasm and talent in working on music composed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. He recently completed editing the English-texted anthems of Christopher Gibbons, accompanied by an in-depth commentary – a project which received a first class award from the University of Oxford. He works regularly as an editor for several professional groups. Alongside assisting All Souls fellow, Dr Margaret Bent in her research, which he combines with an increasingly busy career as a freelance singer, working in the UK and abroad with groups including the Academy of Ancient Music, Tenebrae, Oxford Camerata, Chapelle du Roi, Ludus Baroque and Suonar Cantando. David is currently dividing his time between Glasgow and London, whilst working on postgraduate research, editing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German music, at the University of Glasgow, under the joint supervision of Prof. John Butt and Dr David McGuinness.
In addition to co-directing and singing for Oxford Baroque, David’s role with the group involves researching projects, editing the performing materials and managing the personnel for each programme.
Whether or not to meticulously observe the exposition repeat in Schubert’s final sonata, the D960 in B-flat major, is a question which continues to trouble pianists, musicologists and listeners alike. The debate concerns aspects such as authenticity, personal taste, prevailing musical fashion, and timing. It has cropped up the press this autumn as British pianist Paul Lewis completes his cycle of Schubert’s sonatas, and has exercised myself, colleagues and other musical friends in discussion.
The opening bars of the first movement of Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat Major D960
When I first started learning the D960, the day my new piano arrived from Chappells in January 2007, I did not doubt the correctness of adhering to the score and repeating the exposition. Throughout my musical studies, I had been taught to trust the composer’s intentions, that composers know what they are doing, and that repeats are there for a reason.
In Baroque repertoire, sectional repeats are commonplace, often used to reinforce material and to offer soloist and/or ensemble the opportunity for some interesting extemporisation or ornamentation in the repeated material. At a recent harpsichord masterclass I attended at Handel’s House with some of my students and those of a teaching colleague, the harpsichordist, Claire Williams, encouraged students to experiment with different effects in repeats, such as using the upper manual of the harpsichord, or employing a lighter touch. Bach and his contemporaries would have expected and encouraged it.
In the piano sonatas of Mozart, for example, a repeat of the exposition in the first movement is often a reinforcing device, a reminder that this is a sonata, in Sonata Form (Exposition, Development, Recapitulation). And Mozart would have expected his keyboard player to offer some extemporisation – changes in dynamics, ornamentation and so forth – in a repeat. As musicologist, pianist and noted Mozart expert Robert Levin states:
“If you take a repeat, for instance, heaven forefend you should play exactly the same way you did before. It’s like telling somebody, ‘Look, if you could go back five years and relive your life would you change anything?’
Some people might say, ‘Nah, I think I basically did what I wanted to do,’ but a lot of people would say, ‘Oh boy. I can name you a dozen things that I would done differently.’ A piece of music is an almost cinematic opportunity to revisit a situation and reinterpret it.”
In a repeat of the exposition, the musical experience does not stay the same – there can never be a “straight repeat” because we are human and do not seek to replicate MIDI recordings – but the repeat of the same material helps the listener to assimilate the musical ideas expressed in the composition, and makes it easier to comprehend the structure of the piece.
In Schubert’s last sonatas, the repeat sign is written for an exceedingly long exposition, while the material of the exposition is repeated a third time in the recapitulation with little alteration. This has led some pianists to omit the exposition repeat in performance. But in the last Sonata (and, indeed in the penultimate Sonata, D959 in A), the first ending of the exposition contains unique material, leading the music back to the movement’s opening. If the music is performed without the repeat, this material is missed out completely as it does not appear in the second ending of the exposition (if one does not observe the repeat, one goes straight to the second time bar and thence to the development section). These bars contain striking material, which does not appear anywhere else in the piece, and is significantly different from the second ending. When the exposition ends a second time, Schubert introduces an extraordinary bridging section, three ethereal chords a single bar, which seem to come from somewhere else completely, and lead the music into darker, minor-key territory.
The first and second time bars at the end of the exposition
British-Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff feels that the omission of the exposition repeat is as “the amputation of a limb” (Schiff, “Schubert’s Piano Sonatas”), while Alfred Brendel declares the exposition repeats in the final two sonatas to be “unimportant”, that the transitional bars in the D960 are too unconnected to the rest of the movement, and that their omission actually contributes to the coherence of the piece. Brendel also states that “repeat marks must not be taken as orders to be automatically obeyed, as if the repeatable section were written out by the composer.” (“Schubert’s Last Sonatas: An Exchange”; Frisch and Brendel). But the last two sonatas have more than mere “repeat marks”: the bars of music specifically written out by the composer suggest that Schubert requires the repeat to be observed.
Personally, I have never doubted the inclusion of the exposition repeat, and it irritates me when I hear performances, either live or on disc, which omit it.
In reading reviews of live performances of Schubert’s last three sonatas, it strikes me that many pianists omit the exposition repeat/s simply to save time. Most concerts last around 90 minutes (plus interval); any longer and the audience starts to get restless, worrying about last trains etc. Critics, who praise the omission of the exposition repeat, are similarly impatient, presumably keen to get out of the Wigmore and into the pub before last orders! Played in its entirety, with all repeats intact (including in the third movement Scherzo), the D960 comes in at around 40 minutes.
Another issue which relates to this is the tempo of the first movement. It is marked Molto Moderato, and in some pianists’ hands (Richter), this can verge on Adagio! Moderato means “not rushing or dragging”, and Schubert also used the German term mässig, implying the calm flow of a measured allegro. A quick glance through Spotify of recordings of this work reveals that most versions which include the repeat come in at around 20 minutes; Richter’s is 25 minutes, which is verging on self-indulgent, while Pollini’s is 18 minutes. At this length, the opening movement of the D960 is as long as an entire sonata by Haydn or Beethoven.
It is customary to programme Schubert’s last three sonatas together, just as Beethoven’s last three are, to stress the interrelations between the three. The D958 and D959 are played in the first half of a concert, and the D960 after the interval. It can feel like a long haul for the audience, and one of the solutions to this problem is to shorten the programme by omitting repeats, mainly those of the opening movements’ expositions. However, it irks me when I read reviews of pianists such as Paul Lewis (a protégé of Brendel), who is completing his survey of Schubert’s piano and lieder music with performances of the final three sonatas, in which critics praise the omission of the repeat without outlining at least a little of the background to this ongoing debate. I feel that without the exposition repeat the audience is cheated of the opportunity to experience Schubert’s compositional intent, and the drama, which comes from the tension between the contrasting harmonies in the exposition, and the transition between exposition and development, is lost.
To my mind, a well-played opening movement of the D960, with repeat, need not feel unnecessarily long. The music has an spaciousness (its key and scale always calls to mind, for me, a great river charting its final course towards the sea) which is offset by a considered interpretation of the Molto Moderato marking. I particularly like Pires and Uchida in this work. I have enjoyed all three sonatas in a single concert, or the D960 on its own, preceded by one of the D899 Impromptus in a lunchtime recital at the Wigmore (Andreas Haefliger – repeat omitted!). Both programmes work equally well.
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?
I was growing up in Hanoi right after the war so taking up piano was not exactly my conscious decision, given the trying circumstances that we were all facing. My father, though, was a violinist, a graduate from the Moscow Conservatory, had noticed that I had some musical abilities and was very persistent that I would take up an instrument. After my refusal to play the violin (too difficult !), he miraculously found a second-hand piano that I was much more happy to get on with. My father certainly had ignited the love for music that has become my close companion since.
Who or what were the most important influences on your playing?
I do find that most things are closely interconnected: human voice plays a substantial part in my understanding of sound – innate and comparative; literature helps me to understand the psychological architecture and the narrative sense of a music composition; visual arts inspire me to explore different spectrums and shapes of sound and, more importantly, the relationships with people in my life teach me to understand the emotional meaning of all the above.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
The greatest challenge so far is to view what I love doing most as a career. I constantly struggle with this concept since certain things that are considered to be good for the ‘career’ nowadays can kill true creativity. We are living in an era where most things are expected or forced to happen instantly while the truth is ars longa, vita brevis.
Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?
I don’t have one that I am totally happy with – but when it happens that the music directs me, draws out unexpected things in concerts or in the recording studio, it feels quite good!
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
As long as there is an audience who wants to listen, am in it.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
I love to play many things (not always from the solo repertoire) but performing the ‘Andante’ from Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto brings a deep sense of wonder. It feels very special to be a living part of such an ethereal sound world, breathing and creating it on spot with other musicians.
I listen all the time so on top of a very long list, can I have more Lully and Medtner’s songs?
Who are your favourite musicians?
There are so many musicians that I admire: Edwin Fischer, Clara Haskil, Henrich Neuhaus, Carlos Kleiber, Kathleen Ferrier are the first ones that came to mind. When you listen to these performers, music is what you hear first, not the “performance” nor “interpretation”.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
There are two: the first one is listening to Richter playing a Bach recital by candlelight in Moscow when I was a child. Time simply stopped. I hadn’t known until then that such beauty existed.
Second is witnessing Sir Colin Davis conducting Sibelius Fifth Symphony in London:- in the finale, just a few seconds before the famous climax reached its height, he stepped back, stopped conducting altogether and let the musicians continue by themselves. That was a great gesture of trust and the result was that as if the music was set to be free, it flew up and exploded into a firework of sounds and emotions – very moving.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
For learning as well as performing: listen with your mind but see with your heart.
If you are a pianist, go out and make music with your fellow musicians: learning Schubert’s Winterreise is as important as learning Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier!
What are you working on at the moment?
A selection of piano sonatas for my upcoming recital at the Wigmore Hall:
Clementi Sonata in f sharp minor op.25 no.5
Schubert Sonata D664
Scriabin Sonata no.6 op.62
Chopin b minor sonata op.58
What is your most treasured possession?
My windows. I live in a small place but it is quite high so the far-reaching view keeps things in different prospective. The ever-changing sky accompanied by London’s diverse rhythm is the most valuable live painting that I could ever own.
Tra Nguyen is making her Wigmore debut on 16th December 2012. For more information and tickets please visit the Wigmore Hall website
Tra plays Annäherung (Reconciliation) from ‘Frühlingsboten’ (Spring Harbinger) op.55, by Joachim Raff
British-Vietnamese Tra Nguyen gave her first concert when she was ten, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K488 with the Hanoi Conservatory Orchestra. Since then she has continued to engage audiences worldwide. Past and future performances include Queen Elizabeth Hall, Tokyo Opera City, Hong Kong City Recital Hall and Wigmore Hall amongst others. Her imaginative programming balances core repertoire and lesser-known music, winning critical praises. Her discography introduces many world première recordings of neglected music. Her most recent recordings of the piano music of Joachim Raff were chosen as Album of the Week by the Independent in March 2010 and in April 2012.
Tra studied with Lev Naumov at the Moscow Conservatory and with Christopher Elton at the Royal Academy of Music.
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