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by Michael Johnson

Latvian-American pianist Eleonor Bindman has often surprised pianophiles with her unique transcriptions, dating from Bach onward. The great cello suites, reworked for the modern piano, found new audiences in Europe, Asia and the United States. And her four-hand arrangements of all six Brandenburg concertos broke CD sales records.

She is achieving her ambitious aims – to widen the appeal of past keyboard and orchestral works, mainly the music of Bach, through her fresh and adventurous transcriptions.

And she is still doing it. Her new CD, which she cleverly titled AbsOlute, brings a flowing sense of joy to the Bach lute suites. They have never been heard like this.

“I don’t want to bore the listener,” she tells me in an extended interview. “I try to make my intentions clear about what I am doing.“

Traditionally, transcribers and arrangers have felt constrained by Bach’s already “perfect” compositions. But she is not about improving Bach, she says. “Not being a composer myself, I find that transcribing still gives me a feeling of creating something new.“

©Leslie Farinacci

An imported New Yorker, Ms. Bindman speaks in an accent she brought with her from her native Riga, Latvia’s capital. Her American career has flourished as a performer, a transcriber and teacher. For several years she taught private students in her New York home, playing her beloved “mellow” Bosendorfer, perfectly chosen to enrich her lute scores. In recent years she has taught less frequently, being overwhelmed with massive transcription projects such as the four-hand piano version of the Brandenburgs and the larger Bach orchestral suites.

Is she Russian-trained? Not quite. She never studied in Moscow but her first teacher came from the great Heinrich Neuhaus line. Her professor Theodore Gutman was a Neuhaus student and her second teacher was Lev Natocherny, a product of the Moscow Conservatory, so the Russian tradition found its way into her sensibilities.

She cites the Russian pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman as a major influence. We have “similar temperaments” she says, so his teaching was easy to assimilate.

It is now time to focus on getting a fresh perspective, she says, a new look at Bach’s music. “In the past year or so, I’ve become a little less hesitant, a little less inhibited, even adding ornamentation that does not agree with any particular convention.”

Ms. Bindman has relied on lute recordings to help her find the piano voice she wanted. She cites the CDs of Italian Evangelina Maccardi as an influence and probably the best of the lutenists playing today.

Critical acclaim seems to have come easily to her. Some reviewers praise her transcriptions and Bach originals without holding back. One fell in love with her Partitas, calling her a “marvellous Bach performer”. “The prelude from Partita 1, he wrote “is deliciously slow and expressive, with unexpected marking of inner voices, beautiful ornamentation, shimmering tone.… There’s not a bad movement in the bunch.”

In this YouTube clip, Lute Suite in C minor, BWV997, her easy mastery of the transcription can he seen, heard and felt:

Ms. Bindman balances her note-perfect clarity with rubato touches that bring out the emotion that some Bach interpreters eschew. Her strong feelings emerged when I raised the subject of respecting the score to a fault. Bach should be very emotional, she insisted. “It’s not about playing the right notes at the right time. He wanted to leave room turn it into your Bach”.

Among her collection of videos posted on YouTube and on her own internet site are glimpses of her impish wit. In one version of the suites BVW 996-998 she dressed in 17th-century attire, including a voluminous wig and custom-made shoes. In this clip, note the swaying body language and confident, if silent, foot-tapping (both feet simultaneously). Her joy is uninhibited.

Edited excerpts from our Q&A interview:

You were obviously enjoying this. Smiling and rocking on the bench, you are conveying the joy Bach intended. Is there an actor in you trying to get out?

No, I don’t think so, but I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who had fun.

You cannot sit still while playing Bach. You almost dance to his music, don’t you? How do you reconcile your changes with the “perfect” scores you started with?

Well, not being a composer, I find that transcribing still gives me a feeling of creating something new. Some musicians feel constrained from doing very much with it. Not I!

Aren’t you also a jazz fan?

Yes, I also love jazz and the freedom it gives you, and I always try to bring a fresh, improvisatory element to my playing.

Bach predated the modern piano by more than 200 years so how does one try to recreate what his compositions would have sounded like in his day?

His lute suites were originally composed for the lautenwerk or lautenwerck (lute-harpsichord), one of Bach’s favourite instruments, similar to the harpsichord.

The 17th-century lute came to his attention through his son CPE Bach who was personally acquainted with a prominent lutenist of the day. Inevitably the lute became part of the Bach family.

You have remained independent-minded in your development as a musician but perhaps you could name principal teachers who have guided you?

Of course there were various teachers along the way, with pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman being the most important one.

You mix the Bach clarity with your own emotions, to make us love the music you are playing. How do you dare?

I am concerned about the listening experience. I don’t want to bore the public. I try to make my intentions clear about what I am doing. Bach can and should be very emotional. Playing him is not about hitting the right notes at the right time. He leaves room turn it into your Bach. Now that I have done my cello suites and the lute suites I feel I have a lot more data. I studied the scores so I could decide what I could do with them.

Haven’t you helped bring some international attention to these delicate lute suites?

Yes, many pianists do not know this music until they try the transcriptions.

Your reputation rests on your personal treatments of Bach. What other composers attract you?

Bach’s music is an endless source of wonder. But I also love Liszt, especially his poetic and mystical side, and have had some transformative experiences while playing his music. I feel a special affinity for the musical personalities of Schumann and Brahms, and the Russians, of course – Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov – since they permeated my upbringing. I absolutely revel in Spanish music, particularly Albeniz.

In an interview with The Cross-Eyed Pianist, you were asked what your definition of success is.

Being able to hold people’s attention and transport them into a different time and place.

AbsOlute is available on CD and streaming on the Orchid Classics label

eleonorbindman.com

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Guest post by Frances Jones

One of the bonuses of teaching is that from time to time you are introduced to new repertoire. Sometimes, you get the opportunity to change your view of a composer that was really only based on a passing experience. 

A pupil of mine has recently been learning a piece by Cecile Chaminade, a composer whose music I had until now associated with a flautist house-mate practising diligently in the run up to a recital. A beautiful work, the Concertino, but the flute can be surprising loud in close quarters. 

Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) composed throughout her life, and left a large number of piano works, in addition to orchestral music and songs. The piece that my pupil learnt, and that inspired me to explore Chaminade’s music, was the Idylle, Op. 126, No. 1, from her Album for Children of 1907. It has a melody that becomes a real ear worm; marked bien chanté, it does indeed feel very singable. It’s such a satisfying piece to play; the melody in the right hand is accompanied by a simple enough bass line helped along with discreet pedalling. The middle section requires a little more diligent practice for the aspiring Grade 4 pianist (the piece has recently been on the ABRSM Grade 4 syllabus) and the writing is never dull; the melody wings its way onwards, and for a glorious minute or so you can be flying over the rooftops, your spirits lifted. The opening melody returns to round off the piece and you sense in the pupil the confidence that familiarity brings. Immediately the pupil’s playing is more assured, expressive, even playing around with tempo and the placing of the notes. 

I think it was the singable melody that piqued my curiosity, and made me want to know more about Chaminade’s music. The piece I found first was her Serenade Op. 29, written in 1884. After listening to this you can see why Chaminade’s music has been described as charming. The opening melody is gentle, almost like a lullaby, and is supported by pleasing harmonies in the accompaniment. The second melody has a similar rhythmic pattern and is more searching but still holds a tender quality. They are both such beautiful melodies that the whole piece really works. Both tunes use similar rhythmic patterns and accompaniments, but it’s the subtle melodic development as well as changes in articulation that keeps this piece interesting. The music finally fades away to ppp and a tonic chord, dusk having fallen and the musicians taking their leave. 

The next work of Chaminade’s I listened to, which really threatened to take the attached description of ‘charming’ and hurl it out of the window, was her Arabesque No 1, Op. 6, from 1892. It’s a tempestuous piece, technically much more difficult than the Serenade. Chaminade was a pianist, studying with teachers from the Paris Conservatoire, and later performing her works in Europe and the United States. I can imagine her sitting at the keyboard, absorbed in her music, taking the audience with her on a journey through delicate flourishes and big chords, carried along by a melody that is seeped in the Romanticism of her Russian and German contemporaries. 

Her Caprice-Impromptu, despite being one of her later works, written in 1914, is also decidedly Romantic. Chaminade, like her near contemporary Rachmaninov, remained broadly consistent in her style whilst many composers around her responded to new influences. Indeed, the Caprice-Impromptu has hints of Rachmaninov in its melodic writing. Like the Arabesque, there’s a sense of urgency and although the first section is playful as the title of the piece suggests, the melody that follows in the second section is at once both yearning and lyrical. Chromatic scales in octaves add to the sense of drama and the composer makes full use of the expressive range of the piano; the music ranges from fortissimo to piano and dolce. 

Chaminade’s music is characterized by its melodic writing and chromaticism; it’s Romantic, yes, accessible, maybe, but no less interesting for that. Chaminade was a prolific composer and her piano works are both imaginative and musically satisfying. I can’t wait to discover more. 

 

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Sofia Gubaidulina Revue Music for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band
UK premiere

Ravel Piano Concerto in G major

Shostakovich Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor, ‘Babi Yar’

Benjamin Grosvenor piano
Kostas Smoriginas bass-baritone

Synergy Vocals
BBC National Chorus of Wales (lower voices)
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Ryan Bancroft conductor

It’s eight years since I was last at the Proms in person. In that time, there is better air-conditioning in the Royal Albert Hall, and the queues for the ladies’ loos are not quite as long. People grumble about the deficiencies of the RAH, but it remains an impressive space and one can’t help feeling excited on entering the vast arena and sensing that pre-concert anticipation building amongst the audience.

We escaped the teeming crowds around South Kensington station and had a very civilised pre-concert supper just off High Street Kensington and then strolled back to the RAH through elegant streets lined with Porsches and other luxury vehicles. At the hall, there was the usual confusion about which door (“is it door 6 or door J??”) and then we were in our seats, behind the Prommers, with a direct sightline to where the piano would be for the Ravel (concert companion and I are piano nerds – and he chose the seats!).

The opening piece, Sofia Gubaidulina’s Revue Music for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band, receiving its UK premiere, was, frankly, utterly bonkers. A crazy mash up of groovy 60s psychedelics, 70s funk, movie soundtracks and big band jazz collided with lush orchestration and silky strings redolent of Korngold, with some spoken word and vocals thrown into the mix for good measure. It was foot-tappingly lively, unexpected, witty and fun: an uplifting and entertaining opener for this concert.

And it provided the perfect link to Ravel’s glittering G major concerto, a work of syncopated jazz brilliance, composed at the height of the Jazz Age in Paris, replete with nods to Spanish Basque music and the “blue notes” of Gershwin. Benjamin Grosvenor gave a stand out performance, playing what is perhaps his “signature piece” (in 2004 he won the Keyboard final of BBC Young Musician with this concerto, when he was just 11). And here, as in any piece he touches, he created the most beautiful sound, even in the fortissimo range. This was matched by remarkable versatility, switching from sparkling, playful runs across the keyboard to gorgeous passages of luminous lyricism, especially in the second movement, a sublime meditation set between the heady Spanish exoticism and jazz idioms of the outer movements. For an encore he gave a remarkable performance of the ‘Precipitato’ finale from Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7, with its repeating “rock and roll” left hand idiom and angular, relentless drive.

The first half was a brilliant example of thoughtful programming, where the works connected and reflected upon one another. And then that encore, from a sonata composed in the depths of wartime, provided a bridge to the second half, and a complete change of mood.

Where previously conductor Ryan Bancroft bounded onto the stage with all the exuberance of a puppy, now he was serious, quietly escorting bass-baritone Kostas Smoriginas for the performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13. Here, the composer set words by the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko , to commemorate and mourns a heinous act of mass murder, when in 1941 and 1943, during the Nazi occupation of Soviet Ukraine, more than 100,000 people, most of them Jews, were shot by Nazi soldiers, with the help of members of the local population, in a ravine called Babi Yar in Kyiv. The symphony is also a condemnation of anti-semitism, its five movements scored for bass-baritone, male chorus, and large orchestra with an expanded percussion section.

A tolling bell opens this work of immense power, bleakness and strange, granitic beauty. The music snarls and bites, soars and whispers, sardonic humour contrasts with moments of tenderness and profound poignancy. You don’t need the text to understand the narrative – the music does it all. In the final movement there is a sense of hope, with sweet string writing, a haunting solo on bass clarinet, a distant tolling bell and the gentle tinkling of the celesta to bring this monumental work to a quiet climax. Silence enveloped the hall for perhaps two minutes: how else could one respond to such a masterful performance of this compelling, profound and thought-provoking music.

Listen on BBC iPlayer

(Images BBC Proms, header image by Marco Borggreve)

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An important new recording, ‘The Spirit of Love’, featuring chamber music and songs by British composer Alisa Dixon (1932-2017), will be released on the Resonus Classics label on 22nd August.

This landmark recording highlights Dixon’s chamber works, many of which have remained largely unknown, until now. With the combined talents of the Villiers Quartet, soprano Lucy Cox and ondes Martenot player Charlie Draper, this recording represents a vital step in rediscovering the depth and breadth of Dixon’s music.

Born in 1932, Ailsa Dixon began composing before reading music at Durham University, and later studied with Paul Patterson, Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music. Her works include a two-act opera, several pieces for string quartet, songs, chamber music and instrumental works including a sonata for piano duet.

In July 2017, five weeks before she died, her anthem for choir, These Things Shall Be, was premiered by the London Oriana Choir at the Cutty Sark in London. This marked the beginning of a revival of interest in her music and has led to a host of new performances of choral, vocal and instrumental works in concerts across Britain

Hailed as a ‘stunning find’, with its ‘lush harmonies’ and ‘strange yet still beautiful dissonances’ (Nottingham Chamber Music Festival, 2024), The Spirit of Love gives the title to this recording – a selection from her most fertile period of composition in the 1980s and 1990s. One of the many works found in Ailsa Dixon’s manuscript archive after she died, these songs for soprano and string quartet were premiered posthumously at St George’s Bristol, where a spellbound reviewer for the British Music Society registered ‘a feeling that something special had just occurred’.

Ailsa Dixon

A collection of three songs for soprano and string quartet, composed between 1987-88, and originally commissioned through Dixon’s lifelong musical friendship with Irene Bracher, The Spirit of Love sets texts by Dixon herself, along with works by A.E. Housman and F.W. Bourdillon. The work was given its posthumous premiere in 2020 at St George’s Bristol by the performers on this recording.

Another distinctive piece is Shining Cold for soprano, ondes Martenot, viola and cello. This work is characterized by its haunting vocalise and uniquely explores the sonorities created by the soprano voice, strings, and the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument famously associated with Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie. This work highlights Dixon’s innovative use of instrumentation and vocal expression.

Other significant works on this recording include:

The ‘lost’ Scherzo for string quartet. Written in the 1950s while Dixon was at Durham University, this piece disappeared for over half a century before the manuscript came to light after her death. The recording presents its first performance, 70 years after it was written. Its changes of time signature may show an early interest in Bartok whom Dixon cited in later life as an inspiration for his ‘elasticity of musical motifs’.

Sohrab and Rustum for string quartet. This ambitious, through-composed work from 1987-88 was inspired by Matthew Arnold’s poem of the same name, depicting the tragic encounter between a father and son in battle. The music is a vivid response to the poem’s human drama and atmospheric setting.

Variations on Love Divine for string quartet. Written in 1991-92, this is Dixon’s final string quartet work and an exploration of religious chamber music, perhaps inspired by Haydn’s Seven Last Words. Woven around John Stainer’s Anglican hymn tune, it explores themes from St John’s Gospel, the Incarnation, Nativity, Passion and Ascension, culminating in a vision of heavenly joy. The Villiers Quartet recently gave the work its first complete concert performance.

This is more than just a new album; the release of The Spirit of Love represents a pivotal moment for the rediscovery and appreciation of Alisa Dixon’s diverse and compelling chamber music – music which combines lyrical lines, adventurous harmonies, and a spiritual undercurrent, brought to life with vibrant intensity and finesse by the Villiers Quartet, Lucy Cox and Charles Draper. This recording offers listeners an insightful journey into the rich, previously under-exposed world of a significant British composer.

The project has received support from the Vaughan Williams Foundation, and the release of this recording coincides with the publication of Ailsa Dixon’s scores by Composers Edition, making much of her previously unpublished material available for the first time, thereby enhancing scholarly and public access to her complete works.

Scores of the pieces featured on the recording are available from Composers Edition. The album is released on the Resonus Classics label, on CD and streaming, on 22nd August.