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The lockdowns, imposed by our governments in response to the coronavirus pandemic, had little, if anything, to recommend them, but for me one of the more positive aspects of the long monotonous months of the UK lockdowns were my regular conversations with my friend Dr Michael Low.

Michael lives in South Africa. I first “met” him online through Graham Fitch, with whom Michael studied, and who taught me when I was preparing for my FTCL diploma. Some years ago, when Michael was visiting his family in the UK, we met for lunch in London’s Chinatown and we talked, and talked, and talked…..about the piano, pianists, repertoire, and more.

During the lockdowns, my regular conversations with Michael were an opportunity to talk not just about the piano, pianists and music in general but also about politics and our respective government’s response to the pandemic. It was both refreshing and comforting to know there was a kindred spirit on another continent.

Many of us found our creativity severely impaired by the lockdowns – at first the opportunity for endless practising, or writing, or other creative pursuits felt like a treat for those of us who lead busy lives, but it quickly sapped creative impulses. Not so, Michael, whose Lockdown Liszt Project was recorded in the summer of 2021.

Michael recorded two works by Franz Liszt, the Vallée d’Obermann from the Swiss book of Années de pèlerinage, and the Ballade No. 2.  I first heard Michael’s Obermann when I was reading Paul Roberts’ new book ‘Reading Franz Liszt’ and my head was full of the literary and poetic inspirations behind this and many other of Liszt’s works. What Michael captures so wonderfully in this performance is not only the poetry and drama of Liszt’s writing but also the evocation of the monumental, awe-inspiring landscape of the Alps, which Liszt himself would have experienced during his travels in Europe.

There’s a wonderful spaciousness in Michael’s performance and he really savours the drama of silence as well as that of sound – of which there is great variety in the colours and timbres he offers. The portentous opening theme, restated throughout the piece, is contrasted with moments of great lyricism and introspection, perfectly capturing the dilemma of the character of Obermann as well as the physical drama of the Alpine landscape.

The Ballade No. 2 is similarly picturesque, and like the Ballades of Chopin charts a fantasia-like narrative (pianist Claudio Arrau maintained that the piece portrays the Greek myth of Hero and Leander) through 15 minutes of operatic grandeur, rapidly shifting moods and contrasting soundscapes.  Here, as in Obermann, Liszt confronts the listener with wide-ranging, often extreme emotions – from menacing, stormy rumblings in the bass to a serene hymn-like melody and clusters of chords high in the treble. There’s beauty in the darkness of this Ballade and Michael really appreciates this, relishing the contrasts in note-saturated, complex textures without any loss of clarity or expression. It’s an absorbing performance and the quality of the recording has an immediacy which really suits this music.

Watch both performances on Michael Low’s YouTube channel

Dr Michael Low will be in conversation with Frances Wilson, The Cross-Eyed Pianist, in a new podcast series, Piano 101, launching soon

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An interview with Frances Wilson AKA The Cross-Eyed Pianist by author and poet Leslie Tate.

Leslie: Why do you call yourself ‘The Cross-Eyed Pianist’?

Frances: I wanted a catchy title for my blog and this seemed a good one, since I am actually cross-eyed – and I play the piano.

Leslie: Can you tell the story of what drove you to return to the piano after an absence of 20 years? What were the difficulties? How did you manage the ups and downs of achieving advanced certification in your late 40s?

Francis: A few years before my son was born, my mother bought me a digital piano and suggested I start playing again. I tinkered with it, playing some of the music I’d played in my late teens before I left home to go to university, but then my son was born and for some years my time was taken up with him. When he went to school full-time, I began to play more seriously and found it a wonderful escape from being a mum at home, and it gave me some much-needed “me time”. Around the same time, I started going to concerts again and I realised how much I had missed music and especially the piano. So then I began to really throw myself into rediscovering the piano and improving both my technique and artistry. In a way, it wasn’t that difficult because a lot of the music I was playing had been well learnt previously and it was gratifying to find how much of it was still “in the fingers” even after such a long absence. 

In 2006, I started teaching privately at home, mostly children from my son’s primary school, and my private practice quickly grew into a popular studio of more than 25 students. At this point, my husband bought me an acoustic piano which made a big difference to my playing and the kind of advanced repertoire I could tackle. Then, in 2008, I started taking piano lessons myself again, with a master teacher who was professor of piano at one of London’s leading conservatories. My main motivation for this was a personal one, to enable me to develop and extend my pianistic abilities and to gain some experience in performance – something I hadn’t done since I was at school. After 6 months of fairly intensive work to bring my technique up to scratch, my teacher suggested I work towards a diploma. I was 43 at the time and this felt like a massive, positive endorsement of my abilities from a teacher/mentor whom I really respected. That I then went on to achieve a distinction in this and a higher diploma (also with Distinction) in 2013 was a huge personal achievement and gave me the impetus to continue playing and improving. 

In order to manage my teaching work and my family, I was very strict about my practicing when preparing for the diplomas, creating a daily routine and setting myself regular goals. This was interspersed with lessons and practice performances. I also attended masterclasses and courses with other leading pianist-teachers and took some mentoring from a concert pianist. In addition, I did a lot of research on the psychology of performance and observed professional musicians in concerts to gain insights into the practice of performance. In effect, I taught myself to be a performer.

Read the entire interview here

Frances Wilson (photo by James Eppy)

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I first heard this work live over 10 years ago at a concert given by the American pianist and noted Mozart specialist Robert Levin, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Played on a fortepiano, whose relatively modest voice spoke so elegantly in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, from the opening measures I was completely hooked. The next day, I purchased the music and started to learn it. It took at last three attempts to learn it “properly” – it’s one of those pieces which benefits from being put aside for a few months and then revisited, not once, but time and again to reveal its details and many layers of meaning and emotion. It’s a piece that keeps surprising both listener and performer.

Composed in the spring of 1787, after Mozart returned from Prague, it has been suggested that its composition was in response to the news that one of the composer’s closest friends, Count August von Hatzfeld, had died, and may therefore be a rare example of a personal event in Mozart’s life prompting a composition. The piece is introspective and private, freighted with melancholy and sadness, with a thoughtful, measured elegance throughout. It is touching and beautiful, simple and perfect; but its deceptive transparency offers no place to hide. It requires great clarity and preciseness in order to express its overriding melancholy, and its poignant charm.

The Rondo theme is a pensive melody which looks forward to Chopin – and has even been mistaken for Chopin by a naive listener when I’ve played it. A rising theme, yet it hardly seems to move forward, and with each weary semitone step, there is a dying fall, almost sigh or a painful intake of breath, emphasised by the quaver rests. The dissonance, created by the first ornament (which reappears regularly throughout the piece) further enhances the sense of tragedy.

Each reappearance of the theme is treated slightly differently, further emphasising its pathos and poignancy. The C major phrase is somewhat less painful, but, tinged with poignancy, it is hardly hopeful.

The first subsidiary theme (‘B’), beginning at bar 31, harks back to J S Bach in its use of counterpoint and chromaticism, while the texture is suggestive of string quartets with its different voices. As the new theme pours forth, the mood is now more hopeful and consoling, with a lovely LH cello line which is very different to the haunted bass of the opening melody. There’s an almost operatic grandeur through these measures, immediately dispelled when the music lurches unexpectedly into D-flat major at bar 46. The music then creeps chromatically, recalling the opening theme, and, after an episode marked by plaintive descending and ascending chromatic figures, the earlier ‘B’ material returns, building to a climax in bar 59, marked by the octave figures in the LH. A greater, more full-toned climax at bar 63 is carried through to bar 69 with a grand, energetic arpeggiated figure in the RH. From bars 69-75, the long chromatic notes hark back, once again, to the chromaticism at the beginning of the piece, while from bars 74-80, the music seems hang in suspense in the dominant, in anticipation of the rondo theme, which returns at bar 81.

The second statement of the theme is stripped of its C major sentence, and is even more haunting, with its sobbing, breathless syncopations in bars 86-87, a kind of written rubato, which needs no additional increase or decrease in tempo in the bass line (prefiguring Chopin). The quaver rest in bar 88 can be lengthened in readiness for the A major section (“C”).

Now, we are in more familiar, comfortable territory, for here is Mozart at his most charming and elegant, before a brief shift into B minor, with dissonance created by the ornaments. A more hopeful D major passage (I read somewhere once that Mozart declared D major “the happiest key”) begins at bar 101, reprising some of the material from the A major interlude. At bar 116, the chromaticism in the bass again recalls the opening motif, leading into further chromatic surges and grinding diminished seventh harmonies. The thematic material of the opening is never really forgotten, thus further reminding us of the prevailing sense of sorrow.

At bar 129 the rondo theme returns in its original form, but with more elaborate ornamentation this time, tortured rather than decorative. There’s a real sense of desolation at bar 155, while the repeated A’s and chromaticism in bars 155-157, evoke almost a wailing, grief-laden lamentation.

The Coda, beginning at bar 163, heartbreakingly recapitulates all the elements that have gone before and all the motifs return in a grim, Bachian setting. It is highly emotional, mixing tragedy and frustration, with a final, whispered statement of the opening theme in the closing measures.

More a Fantasia than a strict Rondo in the organisation of its thematic material, the K511 offers many technical challenges, and, as stated earlier, requires absolute clarity in its delivery. Overly fussy playing will only obscure the deeply emotional nature of this work – and this, to me, is the real heart of it. Conveying that sense of melancholy, sadness and grief is the hardest part, while always maintaining honesty and fidelity to the score. For those of us whose early pianistic encounters were with the early works of Mozart, the pieces with the lowest ‘K’ numbers, all smiling childlike innocence and playfulness, the Rondo K511 represents a work of great maturity and profound expression.

The piece contains all the subtleties of Mozart’s music in microcosm: its chiaroscuro, its many moods, some fleeting, passing in the space of a single bar, its storms and its sunshine. Leonard Bernstein said “Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation“, a quotation which perfectly sums up the enduring fascination and appeal of the K511.

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The first post-pandemic full season of Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts (WLCC) drew to a close with a beautiful rendition of Liszt’s transcription of Robert Schumann’s Widmung, played by pianist and artistic director of the series, Duncan Honeybourne. This glorious piece of music was written by Schumann as a gift to his beloved Clara; for Duncan, playing it at the close of his concert, and the finale to the series’ 20th anniversary season, it also felt like a gift to our audience to thank them for their ongoing support.

I’ve been Concerts Manager for WLCC since November 2019. Shortly after I took over the role, the pandemic hit and we were forced to suspend all our performances. We resumed in a limited way in the autumn of 2021, presenting just two socially-distanced concerts before we were obliged to suspend the series once again. Throughout this time, our audience supported us, returning enthusiastically, though in vastly reduced numbers due to the constraints of socially-distanced performances (we could only allow 25 people in a church which normally seats 80), and adapting to new ways of doing things, including an online box office and advance booking system.

Having now completed my first proper season as Concerts Manager (absent a Christmas concert due to the omicron wave), I have seen at first hand the importance of trust between artistic director/organiser and the audience. In fact, it was my husband, who has been regularly attending WLCC concerts in recent months, who highlighted this significant aspect of the series’ success. Our audience place a great deal of trust in Duncan Honeybourne’s stewardship of and artistic vision for the series and because of this, they reward us with their loyalty, returning to the concerts month after month, regardless of who or what we are presenting.

So how does this trust manifest itself? For some audience members, Duncan is a friend, and this friendship fosters a sense of trust. He is also well-known and highly regarded in the local community, as well as in the wider British musical world, with a 20-year record of running WLCC, a reputation that counts for a lot. But I think above all it is Duncan’s unsnobbish, authentic and enthusiastic approach to music-making which makes audiences feel confident that they will enjoy the concerts. (And it’s worth noting at this point that the series specialises in presenting lesser-known and rarely-performed music and composers alongside classical favourites and well-known works.)

Promoters, programmes and audiences

As concert life returns to normal after covid, promoters and venue managers – and musicians too – need to rediscover or reconfirm a sense of trust with their audiences. From the most basic aspect of making people feel comfortable and safe when visiting the venue to the planning of programmes and featured repertoire, I believe a sense of trust should be cultivated at all times.

Unfortunately, it strikes me that some venues have a rather casual, untrusting or even antagonistic attitude to their audiences, and I see this most clearly in the type of programmes being presented. I sense a certain unwillingness to trust audiences’ taste/discernment and instead to impose programmes, repertoire and composers on the audience. In some instances, especially with regard to contemporary music, a didactic, almost patronising attitude prevails – that one must listen to this music because “it is good for you” or because it has “an important message”. This misses the point of why, in general, people go to concerts: most of us want to escape the hectoring and finger-wagging of politicians, public health “experts”, commentators and others, at least for a few hours, rather than endure a polemic in music. And now, more than ever, because of the lack of live music over the past two years, many of us want to go to concerts to socialise as well.

Concert managers and promoters need connect with their audience in such a way that shows they understand them: the most basic aspect of this is presenting the music the audience wants to hear. If you’re spending upwards of £25 on a concert ticket, in addition to the effort and expense of traveling to the venue, you probably want a guarantee that you’re going to enjoy the concert.

The anti-popular, anti-classical favourites advocates seek to impose their ideas of what audiences should be listening to and then wonder why tickets don’t sell and concert halls are half-empty.

Sadly, an attitude prevails in the contemporary music world in particular that the music matters far more than the audience and that considering the audience is an egregious form of pandering which devalues the “art”.

Music is there to be heard – a particular concern for contemporary classical music. But that music won’t be heard if the audience feels alienated by the way it is programmed and/or presented. Advocacy of new or neglected music is important, and audiences should be given the chance to hear that music for themselves. But in the end, however hard you argue a case for the music, audiences either will or won’t like the way it sounds, and there’s not much one can do about that!

A more trust-oriented way of doing things would be to plan programmes which include well-known repertoire as a “hook” to entice audiences, while also featuring more unusual, less familiar, rarely-performed, or contemporary music. Presented in a non-didactic way, audiences may enjoy the chance to discover new music, while hearing it alongside the more familiar. Thus, you can build a degree of trust with your audience by gradually expanding the repertoire alongside popular classical favourites. Open the concert with something familiar, so people don’t arrive late, then give them something new or less familiar. Programme another such piece after the interval but close with a box-office favourite so people stay to the end.

Musicians and audiences

The relationship between the musician and their audience is, or at least should be, founded on mutual trust.

If the audience doesn’t trust you, it won’t turn up for the concert. If there is no trust, people will be reluctant to listen to and engage with the performance – and, by the way, audiences are very good at sensing whether or not the performer trusts them!

When I hear of A Famous Pianist complaining about audiences or insisting that they sit through 2-hour programmes without applause or a comfort break because that would “interrupt the flow” of the performance, or who sneers at a perceived ignorance or lack of discernment in current audiences, I sense a lack of trust between performer and audience. In fact, this musician perhaps does not trust audiences at all, instead preferring to impose his will upon them.

Many performers are expert at creating a sense of connection and trust between themselves and audience from the moment they walk on stage – or even beforehand through posts and exchanges on social media (the British pianist Sir Stephen Hough is particularly skilled at this). Verbal and non-verbal cues can quickly set up a sense of shared experience and even friendship between artist and audience. Speak to the audience but in a language they can understand. Introduce the programme in a way that allows audiences to feel a connection to the performer – why is this music meaningful to them, for example? – rather than simply parrotting programme notes. Know your audience and where they’re coming from and respond accordingly. Show your gratitude to the audience – by playing encores (if appropriate) or by greeting them after the concert in the green room or at a CD signing, for example.

Concerts are a customer-facing activity, and while some may baulk at such a phrase in relation to classical music, accepting and understanding this can go a long way to making audiences feel welcome and trusting. Do more “Put the customer first”, and audiences will reward you with their support and loyalty.

Photo by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash