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Guest post by William Howard

Two years ago I wrote some words on Howard Skempton’s piano music for this site, having just recorded a cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues that he had written for me in 2019. Skempton was inspired to write these pieces after hearing (and reviewing) my recording of another cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues, written for me by the Czech composer Pavel Zemek Novák between 1989 and 2006. Skempton’s 24 Preludes and Fugues were published by Oxford University Press within a year of their completion, but it is only now that Novák’s extraordinary cycle has become available, thanks to a new edition released this month by Music Haven.

Both cycles of Preludes and Fugues were composed to be performed in their entirety, but whereas Skempton’s are typically pared down and distilled, with very few notes on the page, Novák’s are written on an epic scale. His cycle, which lasts 75 minutes, is inspired by the Bible, the first twelve Preludes and Fugues based on the Old Testament and the second twelve on the New Testament. Composer David Matthews has described the work as ‘one of the finest piano works of our time, a worthy companion to Ligeti’s three books of Études’. This is a bold claim, given the fact that Novák’s music is comparatively little known, but it is one that I fully support myself. I am confident that other pianists around the world will now take up this powerful and dazzlingly original work.

I first came across Novák’s music in 1987, when composer David Matthews invited me to take part in a concert at the King’s Lynn Festival featuring works by Brno composers. I was sent a number of recordings to listen to in order to choose a programme and liked many of the works that I heard, but one that made the by far greatest impact on me was a tricky-sounding piece for oboe, cello and piano, which I had an immediate desire to play. I had been passionate about Janáček’s music for many years, and something about Pavel’s oboe trio made a similar kind of impact on me. Its strong, almost acerbic flavour seemed to me distinctly Moravian. Pavel made his first visit to the UK to hear the performance of this work, The Garden of Delights, in King’s Lynn, and for both David and myself a much-valued friendship was born.

William Howard and Pavel Novák

At the time Novák was hardly known outside his hometown of Brno. As a practising Christian working under a communist regime, and unwilling to be a party member, he could expect to be offered very few opportunities as a composer. Since that time his reputation has grown, both in the Czech Republic and abroad. For some years, he received more performances of his music in the UK than in his own country, composing several new works for the Schubert Ensemble and for myself, and receiving commissions from Chroma, the Composers’ Ensemble, the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, and Dartington International Summer School. In the last couple of decades his most important commissions have come from major institutions in the Czech Republic, including the Czech Philharmonic and Brno State Symphony Orchestras.

As a student, Novák was immersed in the Janáček tradition of building form through working with small motifs and fragments, but he went on to develop his own distinctive style and to explore a wide range of other kinds of music. Believing that dissonance had had its day and that everything that could be said with it had already been said, he arrived in the 1990s at a new means of expression through imaginative use of consonance and unison, with voices supporting each other rather than working in opposition. The integrity and purity of his musical voice has its roots in his deep Catholic faith, which is the ultimate source of inspiration for all his music.

If his music has not been more widely performed, the reason is at least in part because scores have been unavailable. Fortunately, this situation is now changing. Many pieces are now available through the Czech Music Information Centre’s database and a few chamber works have been published by Madrid-based Da_sh Music, including a superb piano quintet, Royal Funeral Procession to Iona, that he wrote for the Schubert Ensemble in 1995.

In the case of the 24 Preludes and Fugues, several music publishers took an interest in the work following the positive reaction to the London premiere of the work in 2007 and to the recording (released in 2011) but found the scale and the complexities of the hand-written manuscript too daunting to take on. The great news is that, with the help of a handful of sponsors, three years of heroic typesetting by the composer Cydonie Banting and many dozens of hours of proof-reading and editing by the composer and myself, the score is now finally available.

 Before and after typesetting/editing (Prelude 23)

The complete score is now available on the Music Haven website.

William Howard has recorded Pavel Novák’s 24 Preludes and Fugues on the Champs Hill Records label. 

Listen to the album via Spotify

 

William Howard is established as one of Britain’s leading pianists, enjoying a career that has taken him to over 40 different countries. His performing life consists of solo recitals, concerto performances, guest appearances with chamber ensembles and instrumentalists. In 1983 he founded the Schubert Ensemble, with which he performed for the full 35 years of the Ensemble’s existence (it gave its final concert in June 2018). Winner of the 1998 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Best Chamber Ensemble, the Schubert Ensemble earned a worldwide reputation as one of the finest piano and string ensembles, as well as setting up several ground-breaking educational projects and commissioning 50 concert works.

His solo career has taken him to many of Britain’s most important festivals, including Bath, Brighton and Cheltenham, and he has been artist in residence at several others. He has performed many times in the Wigmore Hall and the South Bank in London and has broadcast regularly for BBC Radio 3. For many years he has been invited to perform and teach at the Dartington International Summer School.

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Hertfordshire Festival of Music (HFoM) rejoices in the resurgence of live music in Hertfordshire with an exciting programme of glorious music, both old and new.

This year’s principal artist is the wonderful horn player Ben Goldscheider.  Ben has gone from strength to strength since being the BBC Young Musician finalist in 2016, giving recitals in major concert halls around the world. Ben is from Hertfordshire and is delighted to be involved in several Festival events: his Goldscheider Quintet with narrated pieces by Ruth Gipps and Ravel; a recital with pianist Richard Uttley; and a masterclass given to selected aspiring horn performers.

Musicians Guy Johnston, Melvyn Tan, Mathilde Milwidsky and Huw Watkins also join the roster of acclaimed artists visiting HFoM for the first time and there be a visit from the celebrated Maggini String Quartet in performances of music by both David Matthews and Malcolm Arnold.

Hertford will enjoy a return visit by two local artists with an outstanding national and international following. The flautist Emma Halnan and organist William Whitehead perform concertos by Malcolm Arnold with the HFoM Festival Orchestra conducted by Matthew Taylor in what will surely be one of the Festival highlights – and a fitting tribute to the late and much-loved Co-Founder of HFoM, Tom Hammond.

HFoM marks the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with two special events in Hertford. Our Festival Concert Band will bring local community musicians together to perform arrangements of music associated with royalty in a fun, relaxed performance in the grounds of Hertford Castle. And with a thriving choral tradition in Hertford, we relish the opportunity to hear three local choirs from St Andrews, All Saints’ and the Hertford Chamber Choir as they join forces in honour of the Queen’s Jubilee, together with organist William Whitehead.

The Featured Living Composer is David Matthews – one of the UK’s foremost composers who will be visiting many events and engaging in conversation about in his remarkable life in music. There’s a fascinating retrospective of the music of Sir Malcolm Arnold too as his music runs a thread through the festival.

Festival favourites ZRI make a return appearance in an evening of musical fun.  ZRI’s “Adventures with Charlie Chaplin” is part concert, and part film screening with live score. ZRI will bring their musical interpretation to the classic ‘The Adventurer’, including tunes by Django Reinhardt, Georges Boulanger, and much more.

Full details of all the events are on the Festival website. Events take place in Hertford, Ware, St Albans, Harpenden, Hitchin, and Hatfield.

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Guest post by Daniel Tong

The second edition of the Birmingham International Piano Chamber Music Competition will take place as part of the Conservatoire’s November Festival celebrating the role of the piano in chamber music. Six young ensembles, chosen at preliminary audition, will be invited to join the festival, give a recital, take part in masterclasses and compete for prizes that include a Wigmore Hall debut, commercial recording with Resonus Classics, mentorship and further concert engagements.

But why another competition? The arguments against are often-repeated: music is an art, not a sport; competitions encourage perfect technical performances of lowest-common-denominator artistic merit; it’s all a fix anyway, and the jury merely choose their own students. There has been some truth in all of these arguments, but none of them are essential to the idea of a music competition. The arguments in favour are made less often, and perhaps less clearly; it is down to the competitions themselves to take a lead.

In Birmingham I have created a competition that, I believe, does all within its power to make the experience positive for everyone involved. Of course there will be a winning ensemble, and those who are not chosen will be disappointed, but there is something on offer for everyone in a collegiate atmosphere of musical celebration. The competition takes place within a festival, where leading professional artists will perform alongside Royal Birmingham Conservatoire students and the six competing ensembles. These six young chamber groups will all be given the opportunity to take part in masterclasses, and their performances will be publicised as part of the Festival and livestreamed. The grand final livestream will be shared by Classic FM. All of the jury members will also play in concerts, dismantling some of the barriers between them and us. They will take their seats in the audience to listen to the young artists, rather than behind a desk with bottles of mineral water.

A competition gives anyone a chance. We have undertaken to hear all applicants at preliminary audition, either in person or by unedited video. Jury members will not be given references or biographies of the musicians that they hear. In a way, this is a fairer process than one in which an agent takes on an artist who is recommended to them by a friend, or who is already successful. To me, the argument that personal networking is a fairer process than a structured competition doesn’t make sense, and it can be guaranteed that all of our competitors will have plenty of chance to hone their networking skills in life before and after the event. Our competition also endeavours to make sure that there are no barriers to application, and that the open and accessible nature of video and livestream performance, which blossomed during the pandemic, are not lost in the rush to return to ‘normal’.

I have created a mark scheme for the competition that encourages artistic understanding and flair. So, although a performance that is a mess technically is unlikely to succeed, there are far more scoring categories that address artistic considerations than technical perfection. Of course ‘technique’ and ‘artistry’ are intertwined, the former being the means of producing the latter, but we have all been deeply moved by performances that couldn’t necessarily have been put out into the sanitised world of CD recording. Our mark scheme recognises this; music will inevitably be beautifully subjective, but this will be the case when our young artists gain reviews and are received by audiences in concert. And this is the nub: I would far rather that we rewarded artistry, communication, beauty, feeling and all of the attributes of music that elevate it above so much else in life, than focussed on the rather more mundane and measurable, even if highly-skilled, qualities. This is, I think, another important idea for our competition to own: we are looking for the ensemble who win on the night. The music that touches us and somehow steals the show. We are not trying to conjecture as to who are the ‘best’.

Oh, and the jury aren’t allowed to score or advocate for any ensembles with which they have a prior connection.

So, I hope that many young ensembles will throw their hat into the ring, and I look forward to welcoming six of them to Birmingham in November, when we will celebrate piano chamber music in all of its many guises.

Birmingham International Piano Chamber Music Competition takes place between 14th and 16th November 2022. Applications are welcomed from duos, trios and quartets with an average age of 28 or under, as long as the ensemble includes a single piano.

Find out more / apply

Daniel Tong

 

 

 

Daniel Tong’s website

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British pianist James Lisney is looking forward to his spring and early summer concerts with excitement.

The Cross-Eyed Pianist caught up with James to talk about how he and the music industry in general has fared during the past two years of the pandemic, the challenges and unexpected benefits of the enforced isolation, and the expectation of returning to live concert-giving once again.

The last two years have been extremely challenging for our industry. Have you seen any benefit from the enforced isolation of lockdowns and lack of live music?

The life of a self employed pianist has, in many cases, not been too adversely affected by the pandemic. Study, recordings, writing and online teaching have filled the gaps – but I am aware that there are many musicians who have had their careers decimated by the collapse of orchestral choral concerts in particular. Their phones and emails went ‘dead’ almost as soon as Covid was flagged up and, even when concerts started again, the full forces have not been employed on a regular basis. This economic hardship has not been specific to the young musicians, but there are scary statistics about how many musicians of all ages have either decided to retire or change profession. Apart from the lack of income, the expenses of their vocation continue: large insurance payments, membership of industry bodies, diary service subscription, instrument maintenance etc.

The matter of concert cancellations has been frustrating but it has also allowed unexpected time to rest and to study. For me this has enabled me to learn two monumental piano challenges by Beethoven: the Sonata in B flat (‘Hammerklavier’); and the ‘Diabelli’ Variations’ which I’m programming throughout the group of concerts that I am giving this spring and early summer. The lack of time pressure has allowed for deep and relaxed study – processes that have refreshed my love of music and the piano.

With time suddenly becoming a plentiful commodity, I have had time to explore Scriabin (for the first time), work at the music of Jan Vriend (always a slow process for me!), Chopin’s Études and Liszt’s Feux Follets – and I’ve even studied technical exercises that I’ve been intending to ‘get around to’ for about forty years!

The concerts I’m giving this spring and early summer are a gift to myself (programmed around my sixtieth birthday) and feature works that are the fruits of the pandemic (including Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’ Variations and Scriabin Vers la flamme, for example); and music that I have performed for over four decades (such as Chopin’s Sonate funèbre and Ronald Stevenson’s ‘Peter Grimes Fantasy’).

During the pandemic you gave a concert at St George’s Bristol to an empty hall. How do you feel venues have adapted to the “new normal” and supported musicians during the past two years?

St George’s Bristol have been a fantastic support for me and many other musicians during Covid. They have adapted finances and concert formats, organised industry-leading livestream events, and kept in touch with their community, both local and nationwide. I performed the final sonatas Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert in autumn 2020 to an empty hall, but arrived home to email messages from audience members in the USA, the Czech Republic and New Zealand!

I am very much looking forward to returning to St George’s with Chopin on 21 May.

Talking of Chopin, he is a composer who remains very close to your heart. What is the attraction of this repertoire, for both player and audiences?

Chopin has been central to my programmes since I was eighteen. Audiences love this music and it is a constant fascination to attempt to play it – but it is also a constant inspiration in my work as a teacher. Chopin gets to the heart of our physical relationship with the instrument – and to the beauty and meaning of the score. He exemplifies exactitude and classical values with the skills of poetic recreation and improvisation. When one considers, in addition, the premises of his teaching philosophy, it is difficult to find an area of his influence that is not essential to the study of music from almost all of the eras of keyboard music.

The Sonatas and Fantaisie [Opus 49] have been in my repertoire since my teenage years and continue to fascinate and evolve for me – each return to study revealing a more essential layer of understanding. The pandemic has been a chance to work on the Mazurkas – music as dense in implication and as demanding intellectually as late Beethoven. The trio of Mazurkas, opus 56, for example, cover a huge intellectual range and can hardly be considered as “miniatures”.

The music salon at the 1901 Arts Club

Pre-pandemic you launched your …petits concerts series at the 1901 Arts Club. Tell us more about this series.

I am looking forward to returning to the large recital halls such as St Georges, the Bradshaw Hall in Birmingham and the beautiful Stoller Hall in Manchester – but I have a special place for the resumption of the …petits concerts series held at the bijoux concert venue and salon that is the 1901 Arts Club in Waterloo, London. This project was thriving in the seasons before Covid and enabled a spontaneous and simple organisation for concerts, contact with a relaxed and intimate audience (both during and after the performances) and the chance to raise money for a variety of purposes. The latest instalments in this series will be fundraisers for The Amber Trust (which supports the musical expression of partially sighted and blind children), of which I am proud to be a patron, and Help Musicians, a charity which has done so much to help musicians during the pandemic.

James Lisney will give concerts in Norwich, London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Cheltenham and Tunbridge Wells between April and June. For full details and booking, please visit his website

Readers can enjoy generously discounted tickets for the first …petite concerts recital on 25 April at the 1901 Arts Club. Use code LUDWIG when booking.