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Launched in August 2015, IDAGIO is a music streaming platform where musicians can share their recordings and connect with a growing global classical community.

I’ve recently joined the IDAGIO team as a creator/curator of playlists, compiled from their archive of both new and vintage recordings. My first playlist for IDAGIO explores the ‘Nocturne’ – music evocative of the evening and night-time, generally calm, mellifluous, expressive and rather languid in character, perfect for evening or late-night listening.

Listen to the playlist

Read more about IDAGIO here

 

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listen

There are many benefits in listening to the repertoire you are working on, on disc and in concert, as well as “listening around” the music – works from the same period by the same composer, and works by his/her contemporaries. Such listening gives us a clearer sense of the composer’s individual soundworld and an understanding of how aspects such as orchestral writing or string quartet textures are presented in piano music, for example. You are unlikely to pick up any nuggets of technique in the concert hall – you’re often too far away from the stage to see details – but listening attentively is helpful. Keep ears and mind alert to details such as articulation, phrasing and breathing space, dynamic shading and nuance, wit and humour, giving rests their full value (or slightly more) to create drama, tempo, and a sense of the overall architecture and narrative of the piece. We should never seek to imitate what we hear, but there is much to be learned from this kind of focused listening and I regularly come away from concerts of music I am working on with new ideas and insights.

Conversely, hearing a performance which I may dislike is never a waste of time. When I heard Andras Schiff perform Schubert’s penultimate piano sonata (in A, D959), a work with which I have spent a long time in recent years, and continue to work on, I found myself balking at certain things he did to the music – not that anything was “wrong”, it was simply not to my taste. But one thing I took away from that performance was his pedantic treatment of rests (Schubert uses rests to create drama, rhythmic drive and moments of suspension or repose) and this has really informed my practising.

In broader terms, hearing a group of pieces in performance is instructive in demonstrating how a good (or bad!) programme is put together. At one time, performers were concerned with things like key relationships between pieces, but now a programme that “works” tends to be one which contains a variety of contrasting moods, tempi and characters which help to create flow from the start of the concert to the end, or which focuses on a particular theme. Audiences – and performers – enjoy different levels of energy within a programme, while a programme with too many longeurs of tempo and mood can seem overly long or dull.

Most of us are limited by our own imagination, experience and knowledge and great performances and interpretations can broaden our horizons, inspire us and inform our own approach to music. But listening at concerts, and particularly to recordings and YouTube clips does have its pitfalls too. Recorded performances capture a moment in time and while they can certainly offer ideas and inspiration, they can also become embedded in our memory and may influence our sense of a piece or obscure our own original thoughts about the music. This may lead us to imitate a magical moment that another performer has found in a note or a phrase – a moment over which that particular performer has taken ownership which in someone else’s hands may sound contrived or unconvincing. It is important that we form our own special relationship with our music, and in order to do that we must investment time and effort in our study, while remaining open-minded and receptive to new ideas or approaches.

The other problem with recordings is that some performers may take liberties with the score to make certain passages or an entire piece more personal. This tends to happen in very well known repertoire, where an artist will put their own mark on the music to make it more distinctively their own, while not always remaining completely faithful to the score. Thus, some recordings may not truly represent what the composer intended, yet these recordings have become the benchmark or “correct” version.

So when we listen we should do so with an advisory note to self: that recordings and YouTube clips can be helpful, but we should never seek to imitate what we hear. It is the work we do ourselves on our music which is most important, going through the score to understand what makes it special, and listening around the music to gain a deeper understanding of the composer’s intentions so that our own interpretation is both personal and faithful.

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Guest post by Mark Ainley

Today officially marks the 100th anniversary of Dinu Lipatti’s birth and the fascination with this pianist continues unabated, his name continuing to be held in the highest esteem amongst piano fans and professionals alike due the truly exquisite craftsmanship of pianism found in the few recordings that he made before his premature death in 1950. His traversal of Chopin’s Waltzes is regularly singled out as the reference recording, as are his readings of the same composer’s Barcarolle and Third Sonata, and his Bach First Partita and ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ are among the most beloved Bach piano recordings ever made. It seems that each recorded performance by Lipatti is an example of pianistic mastery on every level – technically, emotionally, interpretatively, spiritually.

There are some who have wondered how much of Lipatti’s posthumous fame is the result of his tragic demise at the age of 33. Indeed, a good deal of mystique may be due to testimonials featuring religious terms: his recording producer Walter Legge said he had ‘the qualities of a saint’ and called him ‘a chosen instrument of God’ while Francis Poulenc apparently referred to him as ‘an artist of divine spirituality’. The story of his last recital in Besançon, France – where he was too weak to play the last Chopin Waltz he had programmed and played ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ instead – reads like something out of a Hollywood melodrama.

(Photo credit: Michel Meusy)

However, Lipatti received abundant praise for his playing and musicianship well before Hodgkin’s Lymphoma took its grip. The grandfather of cellist Steven Isserlis was on the jury of the 1933 Vienna Competition (Lipatti famously did not win first prize, much to Alfred Cortot’s consternation) and came home from the first round raving about “a 16-year old pianist from Romania who was so outstanding that he was convinced that he would win and become a world-beater.” The great Alfred Cortot, with whom Lipatti trained for five years, declared him “a second Horowitz” and stated that there was nothing to teach him – “one could, in fact, only learn from you.” Lipatti’s standing as a world-class pianist was evident in his teens, more than a decade and a half before his death, and his fame continued growing with each year.


The only large-scale solo work that Lipatti set down at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios was the Chopin Third Sonata, which won the Charles Cros Academy’s Grand Prix du Disque in 1949. The magnificent performance features a beautiful robust sonority, elegant phrasing, patrician timing, and subtle nuancing that is utterly beguiling:

Lipatti’s most famous recordings were made in Geneva under rather remarkable circumstances. Bolstered by outrageously expensive cortisone injections (paid for by wealthy patrons like Münch, Menuhin, and Sacher), Lipatti was enjoying renewed vitality and so at his doctor’s suggestion Legge had a van of recording equipment sent to Geneva from the Prades festival. A Radio Geneve studio was procured and over the course of ten days in July 1950 Lipatti set down critically acclaimed readings of works by Bach, Mozart, and Chopin that have never been out of the catalogue. The Bach Partita No.1 is particularly transcendent, with Lipatti’s incredibly consistent articulation and voicing, transparent textures, rhythmic momentum, and stunningly clear projection of motifs:

As remarkable as these performances are, Lipatti’s earlier recordings reveal a pianist with far more fire and bravura. A 1947 reading of Chopin’s Waltz in A-Flat Op.34 No.1 is much more virile, bold, and daring than his well-known 1950 account, with sparkling tone, a grand bass sonority, and brilliant runs, as well as some fascinating ‘breaks’ between phrases:

The recording that gives the greatest glimpse of the fullness of Lipatti’s pianistic and interpretative abilities is his April 1948 account of Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso. With rapid-fire repeated notes, taut rhythmic bite, breathtaking runs of extraordinary lightness, creative voicing and pedalling, and graduated glissandi (4:25-4:31) of staggering ferocity and dynamic control (how that last one fades into the faintest pianissimo!), this is a performance needs to be heard (multiple times) to be believed. It is worth keeping in mind that recordings made on 78rpm discs were unedited, with no tape splicing possible, so what you’re hearing is exactly what he played:

The pianist’s last public performance has become the stuff of legend and the recording of that recital is one of the glories of the gramophone. The emotion of the concert comes through in the recording, as well as in images by local photographer Michel Meusy – the transfixed look of intensity on the faces of the audience members reveals the magnetism of the event, and those who were present stated that it was clear that Lipatti did not have long to live (he died 11 weeks later). Most intoxicating to my ears is his mournful reading of Schubert’s G-Flat Impromptu, with a gorgeous singing line soaring over an undulating murmur in the accompaniment, with gloriously peaked phrasing with fluid legato:

A century after Dinu Lipati’s birth, his legacy continues to grow. There are now two websites devoted to his memory – dinulipatti.com and dinulipatti.org – and new publications are forthcoming, with a new edition of his biography being published in Romania alongside the first ever publication of a series of his letters (currently in Romanian but due to be translated). And new recordings by this supreme musician are coming to light: 15 minutes of previously unpublished material – private discs of Scarlatti and Brahms – was recently discovered and will be released in a multi-pianist compilation on the Marston Records label, and the search for more continues. In the meantime, we can continue to enjoy the stellar playing of this master musician, whose playing was, in the words of Herbert von Karajan, “no longer the sound of the piano but music in its purest form.”

 

Mark Ainley is an internationally recognized authority on the art of piano playing and historical recordings of great pianists. His clear insights provide important details about the mastery of the pianists of the past and present through his magazine articles, blog (The Piano Files) and social media pages, CD productions and liner notes, and lecture-demonstrations.

More about Mark Ainley here

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The opening track of pianist Lucas Debargue’s debut album is a fleeting sonata by Scarlatti (K 208). It’s a miniature miracle of control, voicing and expression, its emotional impact helped in no small part by the pianist’s choice of tempo and tasteful use of rubato. Here and there he lingers over the more piquant harmonies or intervals, creating delicious moments of suspense and delayed gratification.

It’s a wonderful opener to a fine debut disc, and the tempo of the piece has the effect of drawing the listener in, encouraging concentrated engagement with music and performer. In a live performance, opening a concert with a slow or slower work can have a very special effect on the audience: it causes them to focus on the music, to listen intently.

Tempo can have a profound effect on the way we respond to music. Upbeat or rapid music can raise the heart rate, blood pressure and skin response, making us more excited, more alert (why else do people choose fast-paced music as the soundtrack to exercise such as running or cycling?). Conversely, slow music is often used for meditation or relaxation because it has the effect of slowing the heart rate which makes us feel more calm. Listeners, especially the non-specialist listener, will normally equate slowness in music, particularly in classical music, with seriousness or more profound emotional content, and a performer’s choice of tempo can deliberately lead the listener into a particular emotional realm.

Some well-known works now seem to come with “standardised” tempi which have been set in stone by certain performers, critics, teachers, recordings, scholars and so forth. Take the Marche Funèbre from Chopin’s Piano Sonata No 2, for example: more often than not this is played as a ponderous Lento which immediately evokes (for those of us of a certain age) the passing of Soviet leaders. It’s sombre and gloomy, but if the tempo is increased very slightly, in the right hands it becomes majestic and proud, the contrasting Trio lyrical and eloquent. Similarly, the funeral march from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op 26 (which was played at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral): this is actually marked Maestoso (“majestic”) and too plodding a tempo will rob the music of its heroic grandeur (and Beethoven is quite specific in his marking in the score that this movement is a funeral march on the death of a “hero”).

I wonder whether audiences have received notions about the speed of certain works, notions which are perhaps inculcated in them by certain acclaimed pianists, critics, and benchmark recordings where a not inconsiderable “bending of the rules” of the score has taken place and a new standard way of performing the work is thus established and acknowledged by many to be the “right” way (the subject for a future article).

Perhaps one of the most extreme examples of tempo “rule bending” comes from the great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter in his reading of the first movement of Schubert’s G major Sonata, D894, where his interpretation of the Molto moderato tempo marking really pushes the boundaries of what is understood by the term “moderato”. Moderato usually means “not rushing or dragging” and Schubert often uses the German marking “mässig” in relation to Moderato, which implies the calm flow of a measured allegro. Coming in at 25 minutes (the length of an entire Beethoven piano sonata), Richter’s version is not rushing anywhere! For some this Moderato-verging-on-Adagio is far too slow, but there is, for me (and others), something about the concentrated, meditative yet expansive quality which Richter brings to it which convinces. Not everyone can pull it off, and most pianists prefer a walking pace moderato. In the right hands, the first subject of the movement retains some of the same qualities which Richter brings to it. Here is Sokolov, where his treatment of the dotted rhythms brings a lightness and dance-like quality to the first subject:

And here is Richter:

I’ve been pondering the nature of tempo, in particular slowness in music, as I continue to work on Schubert’s penultimate piano sonata, D959. As noted in earlier articles on this work, the second movement preoccupies pianists, scholars and audiences more than any of the other movements of the sonata. It is generally acknowledged to be the most extraordinary piece of music ever written by Schubert, and many believe it is a direct musical manifestation of his mental state and his response to his illness (advanced syphilis), with its melancholy opening and closing sections, and frenzied middle section.

In terms of its tempo, it is marked Andantino, a rather ambiguous direction: as the diminutive form of Andante, Andantino should indicate a slower tempo than Andante, but  since the 19th century it has actually came to mean the opposite. It is absolutely not the same as Adagio, which means slow and stately, yet some pianists, who shall be nameless, treat this movement of the D959 with an almost funereal slowness, perhaps in the belief that slow equals profound emotion and seriousness, thus heightening the audience’s perception of the composer’s feelings of depression, melancholy, despair, impending death etc.

By choosing to take the Andantino at a funereal tempo, I feel the pianist is at once misinterpreting the direction indicated by the composer and forcing his or her opinion of how the music should sound upon the audience, emphasising the belief that the slower the speed, the more profound the music will appear. In fact, I am not even sure this is done deliberately: the interpretation may have been handed down to that pianist from a teacher or mentor, or is an imitation of another, greater pianist’s interpretation….. But for me, the profundity and emotional depth comes not from the tempo, but from the way in which the music is structured and organised.

So how does Schubert create such extremely emotional music? First, the key of the movement is curiously alien from the first movement – and yet it shouldn’t be because it is cast in f-sharp minor, the relative minor of A Major. But the opening movement avoids proper references to this harmony except for a few places towards the end of the exposition and thus the second movement seems very remote indeed. Secondly, there is the sense of stasis which Schubert creates in the opening section. The movement begins with a poignant melody full of sighing gestures portrayed by falling seconds over a simple barcarolle-like accompaniment. The hypnotic main melody recalls ‘Der Leiermann’ from Winterreise, and an almost static quality is created in the opening section through restrained melodic repetitions within a narrow register. It feels constrained and restricted.

Daniel Barenboim has described the opening section of this movement as “a melancholy folksong”, a description which has informed my approach, and which for me suggests a lilting rather than a plodding tempo. Played well, at around 90 BPM (the speed at which I choose to play it), the lyrical melody with its sighing gestures creates a feeling of stasis and melancholy contemplation without the need for extreme slowness.

Some may argue that a faster tempo will lessen the impact of the middle section, but in my experience, as a player and listener, this is not the case. Again, it is Schubert’s careful handling of material which creates the drama. The middle section unfolds like a Baroque fantasia, improvisatory in character and growing ever more dramatic with extremely harsh modulations. The music continues to build with increasing savagery via extreme registers, the use of trills to sustain tension, and the sub-dividing of notes to create thicker textures, increased propulsion and a sense of “hysteria”. The music eventually arrives at c-sharp minor, culminating in dramatic fortissimo chords. After this climax, a recitative-like section follows, repeatedly disrupted by sforzando chords. It is as if we have run up a mountain with Schubert, stared into the abyss, and then pulled back from the edge of the cliff at the last moment. Or to have been battered by a fierce storm only to look up and see a shaft of light in the louring sky as the music settles back into the landscape of the opening.

Of course there are some very fine performances in which the performer’s choice of tempo for this movement is decidedly slow, and while these are not to my taste, I can understand why the pianist may have made that particular interpretative decision. I have compiled a playlist to offer some comparison between different performances – it is interesting to note the wide range of timings, from a mere 6:16 to 9:25. I have also included some recordings of the opening movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op 27/2 (‘Moonlight’), another work in which the choice of tempo is quite varied.