By |

280-warren-mailley-smith-980x360v1

Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?

I have played the piano for as long as I can remember and my earliest memories of the piano were being fascinated by the black and white keys and the delight of seeing and hearing my parents playing familiar melodies in front of me.  I was then lucky to have a very enthusiastic and encouraging first piano teacher from the age of 5 who certainly instilled in me a love for the instrument.

However, I didn’t set my sights on playing the piano full-time until I was at university studying law and soon found that I was skipping lectures and seminars to practise. The tipping point for me was a performance of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto in my second year and I remember thinking to myself “wow, this is what I really want to be doing!”

Who or what were the most important influences on your playing?

My teachers Alan Rowlands, John Barstow, Ronald Smith and Peter Feuchtwanger. Also, application of the Alexander Technique has been a very important influence on my playing.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

Fitting a grand piano in my front room! Striking the balance of coping with admin, making a living and practising sufficiently.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of? 

To date, I am most proud of my most recent CD of Liszt: Depictions  (Sleeveless SLV1005), which was released in 2011, and I believe contains my best playing so far.   There isn’t really one performance of which I am most proud, although I will always have a warm glow about my solo recital debut at Birmingham Symphony Hall when I was 22.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in? 

Wigmore Hall, for its piano(s), acoustic and audiences.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to? 

I adore playing Chopin, for the sensation that his music creates in the hand, and his wonderful combination of harmonic invention, breathtaking melody and virtuosity. I seem to find myself reaching more and more for symphonic music to listen to, for the ultimate range of colour and expression, which we pianists are constantly striving to conjour up from our solitary percussion instrument!

Who are your favourite musicians?

Horowitz, Rubenstein, Richter and Clara Haskill, Barenboim and Ashkenazy…   By sheer coincidence, they are all pianists.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

My RPO debut with Beethoven 5th piano concerto

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

After recently dispatching a wide-eyed pupil off into the profession, I gave him the following advice, (and I would do the same to anyone considering embarking on a career as a performer):

  • Aim to be the very best you can be.
  • Invite criticism and take it willingly!
  • Work (practise) hard and meet people,
  • Take every opportunity to perform and listen to others perform.
  • Play chamber music…
  • Teach!
  • Think creatively; create opportunities
  • Don’t wait to ‘be discovered’
  • Don’t leave a performing career to the lottery of international competitions alone…

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?

Performing… somewhere….

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

1 year with NOTHING to do but practise

What is your most treasured possession?

My fingers

What do you enjoy doing most?

Spending time with my wife,  playing the piano, listening to music, exercising, travelling, socialising………planning and executing successful projects!

What is your present state of mind?

Motivated, grateful and positive

 

Warren studied at the Royal College of Music where he won numerous postgraduate prizes including a Countess of Munster Award and the French Piano Music Prize.  He then took further private studies with Peter Feuchtwanger and the late Ronald Smith.

Warren’s solo career now sees him performing in festivals and concert venues across the UK, accepting invitations from further afield to perform in Europe and the US.  His concerto repertoire includes works by Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart and Tchaikovsky and he works regularly with duo partners Rowena Calvert (cello), Susan Parkes (Soprano) and Matt Jones (violin).

Warren is currently in demand for his teaching expertise both privately and in masterclasses.

Warren’s full biography here

www.warrenmailley-smith.com

Interview published 19th September 2013

By |

1234927_662015827144737_1804721049_n

I can think of few better ways to spend a weekday evening than listening to a sensitive and skilled pianist such as Mark Swartzentruber playing Chopin’s Four Ballades – and on Wednesday evening I was afforded the opportunity to do just that, in the comfort of a private house in a quiet residential street in Chiswick, west London.

The house was the elegant home of Japanese pianist Rika Zayasu, founder and artistic director of Wednesday Afternoons Music, a non-profit organisation which hosts a series of concerts and workshops on Wednesday afternoons and early evenings. The format is very simple: a group of invited guests arrive at Rika’s home, where we are directed to the living room to enjoy a drink and socialising before the concert begins. Afterwards, there is more socialising and drinks, and an opportunity to meet the performer.

I love hearing music performed in a setting such as this. It brings one closer to music and performer, is highly accessible, friendly and informal, a shared experience which reminds us that the majority of music written before 1850 would have been performed in such a setting. Indeed, on Wednesday evening, with the light fading outside, and a group of friends and music lovers seated in a friendly semi-circle, we could have been in a nineteenth-century Parisian Salon.

Chopin’s Ballades are some of his most popular works for piano (pianist Mark Swartzentruber admitted that they were his favourite of all Chopin’s piano works), and are performed frequently, either as a set of four, singly, or in pairs. To hear all four consecutively in one concert is a fascinating and rewarding experience. Although each has its own individual character, there are connecting threads through all of them: the use of lilting rhythms, the sense of a narrative unfolding, the recapitulation of themes and motifs, high virtuosity and intricate fiorituras and cadenzas offset by passages of great beauty and lyricism. Taken together, the Ballades create a rich and absorbing programme, and Mark’s playing of them was thoughtful and eloquent.

After enthusiastic applause and “bravos!”, Mark played Chopin’s Barcarolle, a wistful, mellifluous piece whose rocking rhythms and ringing chords in thirds and sixths evoke the swell of the sea. It was a charming close to a highly enjoyable concert.

There was time to socialise afterwards, and I enjoyed talking to a number of the guests, including a young composer who has written some piano works for Rika, and of course to Rika, and to Mark (we discussed the merits – and otherwise – of using an iPad in performance, one’s attachment to paper scores, and the exigencies of practising, amongst other things).

Find Wednesday Afternoons Music on Facebook

www.rikazayasu.com

www.markswartzentruber.com

By |

Who or what inspired you to take up conducting, and make it your career? 

When I was five I used to sit on the floor listening to my father [Manoug Parikian, leader of the Philharmonia in the 1950s, soloist, chamber musician and teacher] as he practised. So it’s safe to say that music was an integral part of my life from a very early age. And I decided that music was what I wanted to do while playing in a performance of the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion when I was seventeen (I was a percussionist before I took up conducting).

As for conducting, I genuinely can’t remember. I was aware of conductors and what they did, and knew names such as Toscanini, Furtwängler, Klemperer and Cantelli from my father talking about them. But it wasn’t until I was studying timpani and percussion at the Royal Academy of Music that I took an interest in what was or wasn’t going on at the front. And it wasn’t until my early thirties that I plucked up the stupidity to try and make it my career.

Who or what were the most important influences on your conducting? 

Oh crikey! I don’t know. I’ve had some wonderful teachers: Michael Rose, George Hurst, Ilya Musin. They all gave me enormous amounts of wisdom, a lot of which I chose to ignore at the time. But sometimes it’s something as simple as a player asking you to speak up that can make you examine what you do; and teaching others is of course the best teacher.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? 

I remember being so nervous before my first concert that I was unable to tie my tie. That was quite tough. Otherwise: remaining in employment.

Which performances are you most proud of?  

All of them. Some have been better than others, but any performance is something to be celebrated.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in? 

Not particularly. It helps if they have a roof.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to? 

Sibelius 7th Symphony – but ask me again tomorrow and you’ll get a different answer.

Who are your favourite musicians? 

Too many to mention, but anyone who plays with commitment, musical intelligence and honesty.

What is your most memorable concert experience? 

I can barely remember what I did last Thursday.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians? 

Eek. I feel desperately unqualified to answer this, but if I have to: put the music first.

What are you working on at the moment? 

I’m off to Edinburgh at the weekend for a week-long course with the wonderful Rehearsal Orchestra (www.rehearsal-orchestra.org), a group that has an astonishing capacity to have a go at pretty much anything thrown at them. I’ll be conducting Lutosławski Concerto for Orchestra, Stravinsky Petrushka, Shostakovich’s First Symphony…….errm, lots of other things. Basically it’s a week-long orgy of hedonistic musical excess punctuated by civilised bouts of whisky-drinking.

I’m also promoting my book, Waving, Not Drowning, a light-hearted pastiche of the Maestro Memoir married to a brutal exposé of the murkier secrets of the conductor’s world. Or something. Where can you get it, you say? Oh look: www.wavingnotdrowningbook.com.

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time? 

In the land of the living.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? 

As I am now: answering questionnaires while in the privileged position of watching England retain the Ashes and just having had a gin and tonic.

What do you enjoy doing most? 

I like nothing more than settling down for a good satisfying [redacted].

What is your present state of mind? 

Decisive. No, hold on, indecisive. Errm…

(Interview date: 5th August 2013)

Lev Parikian’s book Waving, Not Drowning: the art of conducting explained from upbeat to cufflinks, co-authored with Barrington Orwell, is now available priced £7. To read sample text or order a copy (paperback or e-book), please go to www.wavingnotdrowningbook.com

Levon Parikian studied conducting with George Hurst and Ilya Musin. Since completing his studies, he has pursued a freelance conducting career, and is much in demand as Guest Conductor with orchestras in Britain. He currently holds Principal Conductor posts with several London-based orchestras, and is Principal Conductor of the City of Oxford Orchestra and Artistic Director of The Rehearsal Orchestra. He has worked extensively with students and youth orchestras, including the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra, National Youth Strings Academy, Royal College of Music Junior Sinfonia, and Royal Holloway University of London, where he also teaches conducting. In 2012 Levon conducted the UK premiere of Armen Tigranian’s opera Anoush with London Armenian Opera.

Levon lives in South London and his hobbies include making retaliatory hoax calls to call centres, finding unexpected items in the bagging area, and wondering why he came upstairs.

Lev also blogs on topics as diverse as music, food, sport and aardvarks. To read his blog, please visit levparikian.wordpress.com

By |

In the second part of our podcast, pianist and conductor Alisdair Kitchen and I talk more generally, covering aspects such as teachers, inspirations and influences, forthcoming projects – and baking.

Listen to the first part of the podcast here

Download the complete Goldberg Variations, performed, recorded and produced by Alisdair Kitchen here

Download Alisdair’s complete #twittergoldbergs commentary here

www.alisdairkitchen.com

Follow Alisdair on Twitter @alisdairkitchen