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Guest post by Dinara Klinton

My life to date, like most people’s, has been continually evolving as a chain of decisions and coincidences. As a small child I was taken to the special music school in my hometown in Ukraine, and by coincidence to the teacher whose pupil my mother had seen on television a few years before, playing magnificently for the Pope. A few years later, another teacher decided to take a big risk to her reputation and started preparing my 8-year-old self for the Vladimir Krainev Competition, considered one of the most serious for young musicians in Europe and Asia. This time not by coincidence, but thanks to the hard work of that teacher, the dedication and wisdom of my mother, and obedience and hard work on my side, I won first prize, the youngest ever participant of that contest.

Three years after winning the competition, I was invited by Krainev to play in Moscow at the Central Music School. It became apparent that in order to secure my professional growth I would need to move there to study. During my Moscow years I met Dina Parakhina, professor at the Royal Northern College of Music. She suggested I investigate the possibility of studying in the UK, as she believed it would open up more opportunities for me, but at that time I didn’t feel ready to take such a big step. Some years later, when I was approaching my final year at the Moscow Conservatory, I randomly met Professor Parakhina again, who had started teaching at the Royal College of Music, and by then I felt the time was right.

My first year in London, 2012, was rather scary, and at points I felt lonely and lost – even after having lived in Moscow for 11 years and with a decent command of English. I found London a marvellous city with lots of possibilities, but completely different to my homeland and very competitive. Thanks to the friendly atmosphere at the RCM, kind care of Professor Parakhina and the Head of Keyboard. Vanessa Latarche. I managed to overcome my fears, and slowly I realised that my world view and piano playing had begun to change.

Upon completion of my Masters I decided to stay at the RCM for another year on the Artist Diploma course. What happened next changed my life, plans and even goals to some extent. At that time Michael Loubser – the founder of the Philip Loubser Foundation (PLF), ENO Mackerras Conducting Fellowship and RBS Nadia Nerina Scholarship – had been inspired to launch a new piano fellowship. It would be named, just like the other PLF fellowships, after an outstanding artist of the corresponding discipline, a figure admired by Michael. By coincidence I had an upcoming performance at the Royal Albert Hall’s Elgar Room, which Michael and his wife Catherine discreetly attended, following the RCM’s recommendation. It was mid-July 2014 when I was told I’d been chosen as the inaugural recipient of the RCM Benjamin Britten Piano Fellowship, which would generously cover my study costs and support any dream project.

Michael Loubser, Dinara Klinton, Cathy Loubser
Dinara Klinton (centre) with Michael and Cathy Loubser
A few weeks beforehand I had played nearly all of Liszt’s Études d’exécution transcendante for my Master’s final recital, after which my professor told me wistfully that it would be so great to record them. Being very keen on that repertoire myself, I wasted no time, and the Études were recorded in June 2015 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus for the wonderful German label Genuin. That recording took place in between my performance of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and participation in the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

I was on cloud nine realising my longed-for project and despite the exhausting schedule of that period, I neither felt tired nor thought much about the outcome of the recording. What did matter to me was ensuring I did it to the highest standards and met the expectations of the people who had so kindly and generously given me a chance. I also needed to find a way to stay in the UK as my student visa would expire in few months. Thanks to the PLF and the RCM who helped me with this difficult business, I was finally granted the Exceptional Promise visa, just a week before taking part in the Chopin Competition. I felt strongly that it would be wrong to leave the UK at such a pivotal moment of my career and after having been given such help and support here. The CD was released in March 2016 and I was pleasantly surprised by many complimentary reviews, including BBC Music Magazine’s “Recording of the Month”.

The most exciting aspect of this Fellowship is that its effects have been long-lasting, well beyond the end of my studies and the completion of the recording. For one thing, acclaim for the CD has led to more concert engagements in the UK. Michael’s true dedication to and love of the arts has shaped the Philip Loubser Foundation into something very special, where all past and current ENO Mackerras, RCM Benjamin Britten, RBS Nadia Nerina and TA International Ibsen Fellows are one big family of artists, who support each other. We all regularly collaborate through the mentoring sessions and by attending each other’s performances. Just last month the whole team assembled for an amazing Fellowship Weekend, which began with a photo shoot on the Millennium Bridge and continued to the Giacometti exhibition at the Tate Modern and to Shakespeare’s Globe for a tour and dinner. The next day we gathered at Michael and Catherine’s home for brunch and a lively discussion. Each of us described an object or experience that had most shaped us as people and artists. It was fun, thought-provoking, and most importantly we walked out happier and more engaging individuals.

It is truly inspiring to see the PLF family grow each year. Certainly my life would not be the same if I had not been blessed to be a Fellow. It is extremely rare to meet someone who helps young artists, and almost impossible to meet someone like Michael, who wholeheartedly devotes himself to nurturing the next generation. I much look forward to more life- and arts-changing magic happening with the help of the Philip Loubser Foundation.

Dinara Klinton was the first recipient of the RCM Benjamin Britten Piano Fellowship, made possible by the Philip Loubser Foundation.

More information about Dinara at her website

Further details on all the Philip Loubser Foundation Fellowships

Meet the Artist interview with Dinara Klinton

 

(Photo credit Elliott Franks)

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Arnold Schoenberg – Drei Klavierstücke, Op 11

Pierre Boulez – Troisième Sonate pour piano

Anton Webern – Variationen für Klavier op.27

Gilbert Amy – Sonate pour Piano

ZeD classics

It takes courage and chutzpah to play this kind of repertoire, but James Iman clearly relishes the special challenges of this music, both interpretative and technical. He’s a keen advocate of 20th and 21st century music and his enthusiasm and commitment to it is impressive (we are friends on Facebook and his posts about the repertoire he is working on – from the “great” works of the 20th century such as Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time to newly-minted music for piano – are intriguing and exciting, and have also introduced composers and music hitherto unknown to me). While some may regard this approach as “uncompromising”, I prefer to see James Iman as an intrepid musical adventurer. So first off, bravo to him for committing this music to disc. It is not performed that widely, programme planners and promoters regarding it as “too difficult” or “inaccessible” to sell to audiences (my view is that if this music is excluded from concert programmes, how on earth can audiences decide if it is too difficult or not…..?). And for the pianist, this music presents special challenges in the learning and practice process –  as James Iman says, the works on this disc “lack almost entirely the comfortable octaves, thirds, and sixths of common practice music…..[and] the conventional gestures pianists are comfortable playing, arpeggios, chords and inversions, etc.” In addition, Boulez and Amy pose unique problems in that “they offer freedom for the performer to order the material — though this is within the confines are certain rules set out by each composer. This means that a lot of time is spent reading the rules and searching the score to understand the basic ‘lay of the land’“.

Iman’s adventurous approach is amply reflected in this his debut disc: here is piano music by four composers all imbued with a boundless spirit of adventure, experimentation, and innovation. Schoenberg’s Op 11 is the jumping off point for this pianistic and compositional adventure: the Op 11 had a direct influence on Boulez’s Third Sonata. Meanwhile, Gilbert Amy wrote his own Piano Sonata in the years following the premiere of Boulez’s Third. Webern had a significant influence on the way Darmstadt composers used the twelve-tone note row: Gilbert Amy introduces certain stylistic features of the Variation’s into his Piano Sonata. In addition, Boulez and Amy also make use of non-conformist scores – printed in multiple colours with innovative bindings they are almost artworks in their own right.

For me what distinguishes all the music on this disc (and I freely admit that I do not hear this kind of repertoire that frequently) is its composers’ interest in exploring and utilising the piano’s timbre and its percussive qualities – and this pianist’s acute response to this. It is not “tuneful” nor melodic music; rather it reveals piquant juxtapositions of sounds, individual notes, unexpected intervallic relationships, repeated motifs, rhythmic clusters, fermatas and silences. It’s all exceptionally well-executed, Iman’s playing admirably tempered to the resonances and micro nuances of this music, which is mirrored in the quality of the recording. His performance of the Boulez Third Sonata equals Maurizio Pollini’s animated performance of the Second Sonata at the Royal Festival Hall back in 2011. Few can rise to the challenge of this music and meet it head on with conviction, musicality, and a supreme alertness to its myriad details and quirks: James Iman more than achieves this. Indeed, throughout the album one has a very clear sense of his total commitment to this music, and also how comfortable he feels in this repertoire.

To those who claim this music lacks emotion, I would direct you straight to Schoenberg’s Op 11, played here not only with precise attention to detail, sonic clarity and rhythmic vitality but also a profound sensitivity to this music’s intensity, its fleeting writing and ambiguous emotional landscapes.

It’s no easy thing to be a specialist in 20th and 21st century music. As a performer the music itself is taxing. It’s also difficult to overcome the intensely visceral reactions people can have (the invective that can be deployed is occasionally overwhelming!).

James Iman

Recommended

Meet the Artist – James Iman

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Guest post by Tara Yonder

All it took was one comment. From someone whom I previously regarded as a friend but later realised was in fact a “frenemy”. I always knew that Wagner would tear us apart, to misquote the song by Joy Division. That composer above all others seems to provoke the most extreme reactions, divides people down party lines and creates a polarity of opinion akin to the binary contretemps one sees on Twitter virtually ever day: if you don’t agree with me (about Wagner) you are against me. He’s the Marmite composer.

“Perhaps you are growing up” said the Frenemy in response to my posting a picture of the score of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, transcribed for piano by the late great Glenn Gould. I’d been meaning to learn the piece for some years, having first heard it on the soundtrack to the film ‘A Dangerous Method’, and I’d managed to find a score of the Gould transcription in Foyles (which has an excellent sheet music department). I was looking forward to getting my fingers on it and to treating it as a long-term project (it’s about 16 pages long).

“Perhaps you are growing up“. The primary inference is that Wagner is for grown ups, for “proper” mature connoisseurs of art music. This of course is ridiculous. Music should, and does, cross generations and age groups. I have friends in their 20s and 30s who adore Wagner – and friends in their 70s who do not. It reminded me of a comment from a friend a few years ago, “Did you start to like classical music when you reached your 40s?”, thereby immediately reinforcing the common misconception that classical music is only for old people. No, I replied, I’ve always liked classical music. I grew up with classical music, I cut my eager concert-going teeth on the CBSO’s thrilling concerts at Birmingham Old Town Hall under the baton of Louis Fremaux and later a young, rookie conductor with wild tousled curls…..

What stung more was the Frenemy’s patronising tone, all too evident even in an impersonal email, like some elderly uncle from the 1950s chiding a gauche youngster.  Because it was not the first time this person had taken this tone with me – commenting negatively on my writing, nitpicking my reviews, criticising my proof-reading skills (which was pretty rich coming from someone whose own emails were regularly sprinkled with literals and spelling errors), even once telling me I needed to be “taken down a peg or two“, sneering at my liking for certain concert pianists, describing one of them as “the emperor’s new clothes” without actually having heard said artist in a live concert……(you can hear the pianist in question playing Schumann at the end of this article – it brings me to the brink of tears).

***

I caught sight of the score of the Siegfried Idyll on the lid of the piano and felt the hurt, the insult welling up inside me again. Tinged with anger too, because why shouldn’t I change my mind about a composer? Why shouldn’t my tastes shift and alter? Such things are not set in stone, and it’s certainly not about “growing up” – I am already a fully-fledged grown up, I’ve had a mortgage and a “family car”. It’s about changing taste, and exploring the rich and varied repertoire, and finding music to play which will challenge me as well as giving me pleasure.

But the music was ruined for me. I couldn’t play it, couldn’t even lift my hands to the piano to play the opening phrase – so poignantly beautiful, so delicately romantic. So I shoved it right at the back of my bookcase, returned to practising Chopin’s First Ballade and Schumann’s Romance in C, and opened Ravel’s Miroirs beside the piano, with the intention of tackling Oiseaux Tristes.

All of this is uncomfortably redolent of a comment I once received via Twitter in response to my early explorations of a late sonata by Schubert. Someone had the temerity to suggest that, as a non-professional pianist, I was not “worthy” of this music. It’s an attitude I’ve encountered occasionally amongst professional pianists, that certain repertoire should be “off limits” to amateurs (notably Gaspard de la Nuit and Islamey). To which I assert, the music was written to be played – whether to a full house at Carnegie Hall or at home in the privacy of one’s living room. Brilliantly or badly, we should be playing this fantastic repertoire we as pianists are so lucky to have.

One day, when the hurt has healed, I’ll return to the Siegfried Idyll. Meanwhile, I’ll take refuge in my beloved Schubert, and Schumann and Chopin. If the Frenemy reads this, I suspect he would accuse me of being “over-sensitive” or of having “a sense of humour failure”. But I’m a writer, and a musician, and sensitivity is woven into every fibre of my being. And I’m glad it is, because that sensitivity allows me to shape the music I play, to linger over a piquant harmony or interesting intervallic relationship, to sculpt and contour a phrase, and to remain alert to the micro-nuances and shifting emotional landscapes of the music I love to play and listen to.