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Who or what inspired you to take up viola and pursue a career in music?

Growing up, I was often the slightly withdrawn aesthete picking up beautifully coloured leaves on the football pitch rather than playing the game, so in a way I think I was just waiting to find the right creative outlet. The moment came when, aged 10, I decided to play the viola in my school orchestra. It became clear immediately that I had found the medium and instrument that sparked my imagination. Unusually, I never played the violin or indeed any other instrument before the viola – my first read notes of music were in the dreaded alto clef! It seemed that EVERYONE else wanted to play the violin, and my lanky limbs and desire to be different made the sultry viola a natural choice. My parents are not musicians but are great appreciators of music of all styles and so I always loved listening to (and dancing around to) music from an early age so was thrilled to finally be able to make it myself.

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

Throughout my musical development I have had a number of inspiring teachers and mentors. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, home of Marilyn Seelman, violist and pedagogue extraordinaire, and she completely changed the course of my musical life (and the flexibility of my bow hold), seeing a future brighter and bigger than I had ever envisioned for myself. I then went on to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where Carol Rodland taught me all about co-ordination, tension-free playing and musical abandon, Martha Katz guided me in the great art of chamber music playing and how to search for the perfect and most creative sound at any given moment, and Katarina Miljkovic opened my ears to and sparked my passion for the vast array of music written since 1950. I then finished my studies in London with the great David Takeno whose irrepressible enthusiasm about music and unbelievable work ethic continue to be a daily inspiration.

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

Confidently forging my own musical path, trusting my instincts and not being afraid to take musical and career-related risks.

Which particular works do you think you play best?

I particularly relate to anything which showcases the extreme, beautiful and huge emotional/sonic range of the viola.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

Often these choices are made based on a number of logistical factors such as commission schedules, artist availability, etc., but one strategy I love to employ is to construct a programme around a single work that is particularly special to me. For example, the recital I have coming up in June, centred around Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp (with the wonderful Gabriella Dall’Olio and Anna Noakes). The Debussy has long been one of my favourite pieces of music and I’m particularly interested in placing canonical works of the past in dialogue with music of our time, in this case Saariaho’s stunning ‘Vent Nocturne’ for solo viola and electronics, Garth Knox’s duos with viola powerhouse and fellow Atlantan Jennifer Stumm and a new work for solo viola and sampled sounds by a student composer from Trinity Laban.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I’ve played in a wide variety of venues in recent years, from celebrated concert halls to clubs, basements and living rooms, and it would be hard to pick a favourite. Generally, I love playing anywhere with an excited and attentive audience. In terms of enthusiasm and energy, I remember being blown away by the audiences in Japan and Korea and for full houses of seasoned concert goers up for the most challenging of new music night after night, Vienna’s Konzerthaus.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

To perform: I love the quicksilver energy, vitality and youthful fearlessness of Mendelssohn’s chamber music, the beauty and power of Jonathan Harvey’s ensemble works and the primal pyrotechnics of Luciano Berio’s viola music (I’m looking at you, Sequenza!).

To listen to: Beethoven symphonies and violin concerto, Brahms chamber music (early Cleveland Quartet recordings particularly), Mozart Requiem

Who are your favourite musicians?

Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, Joseph Szigeti, Helmut Lachenmann, Whitney Houston, Little Dragon, Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter

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

Try to understand why you are making music, what you want to say in your interpretations and to whom you want to say it. Without getting too fluffy, I really do think it’s also important to always remember what a privilege it is to make art professionally and to never take it for granted – the world needs more gratitude and we can start with being grateful for the enlightening task we as musicians have been set!

Since making his concerto debut at 17, violist Stephen Upshaw has played in prestigious halls (Carnegie Hall, Barbican, Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw…) and festivals (Lucerne, Salzburg, Huddersfield, City of London, Aix-en-Provence…) around the world. A recognized interpreter of contemporary music, he has worked regularly with ensembles such as Klangforum Wien and Ensemble Modern, collaborating with composers such as Heinz Holliger, Julian Anderson, John Adams, Helmut Lachenmann and Michael Finnissy, who recently wrote a new solo piece for Stephen.

Stephen has a strong interest in synthesizing music with other fields and has helped realize collaborative projects with the Boston Architectural College, Transport Theatre Company, Hofesh Shechter Company, Rambert Dance Company and Parasol Unit Art Space. He is also the founder and Artistic Director of Sounding Motion, a company combining contemporary music and dance.

He holds a BMus(Hon) from the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston) and completed his Postgraduate studies in the class of David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 2016 he was awarded the Richard Carne Fellowship for solo artists at Trinity Laban.

www.stephenupshaw.com

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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and pursue a career in music?

I have been surrounded by music since birth. My mother is a pianist and teacher and I spent my childhood listening to her practice and being taken to concerts, the opera and ballet. I was particularly fascinated to hear and see ‘magic’ on stage, and then meet the artists afterwards, with their ‘mask’ off. I started attending the Sarajevo Junior Music School before I started main school. I do remember wanting to be an opera singer initially, but the piano somehow won, and I am very happy that it did! Although I loved being immersed in music, later, if anything, I almost tried to avoid it as a career.

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

My long-term teachers, Niel Immelman and Peter Bithell. Working with singers while I was a student – they taught me how to breathe, phrase and tell a story. Dmitry Bashkirov who taught me to listen and colour every note in a way I didn’t think possible before. Steven Kovacevich for instilling discipline in me!

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

Learning to say no.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

My debut disc ‘In the mists’, because it had humble beginnings as an intended demo CD: As a coincidence, shortly after I recorded a few pieces at Champs Hill, Champs Hill Records was set up. They took my disc on, it was launched at my first Wigmore recital in 2010 and suddenly it started to receive wonderful reviews worldwide culminating in the Newcomer of the Year award from the BBC Music Magazine.

Which particular works do you think you play best?

Usually what I’m playing at the time, especially if I am revisiting a work after some time away from it.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

Mostly, there is a thread to my programming, a story. I try to bind together works I am drawn to play, and sometimes ones I have been asked to play, into a well-structured and balanced programme.

I have realised, somewhat retrospectively, that I have been especially drawn to composers who have sought to develop a sense of a national voice through their music. It all begun with my intrigue of the Russian Mighty Five while I was still at Cambridge. I then immersed myself in Janacek’s oeuvre, and afterwards in Grieg’s. More recently, I have loved spending time with Chopin Mazurkas. Although they are very stylised and sophisticated works, some, especially the early ones, are rather rustic and jagged, and I find this quite charming.

I’m also excited and honoured that one of the most interesting living composers, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, will be writing a Piano Concerto for me next year, in homage to the Haydn D major Concerto. It’s been long-in-planning but we’re very happy to make it happen. I wish promoters were not so afraid of commissioning new works.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

The Wigmore Hall, of course! It’s a beautiful and intimate venue.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

Favourite pieces to perform: in short, piano concertos. There is no greater feeling to me, than the thrill of playing concerti, and especially when it feels like you and the orchestra are making chamber music together, on a large scale. With listening, I usually go back to the same pieces: Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti, Rachmaninov Songs and anything written for the Ballets Russes. I’m also very fond of Ivor Cutler’ quirky recordings. Most of the time though, I just love putting the radio on.

Who are your favourite musicians?

Martha Argerich, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Annie Fischer, Ivan Fischer, Bernard Haitink, Teodor Currentzis.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Every concert experience is memorable in some way. Performing concerts is such an intense and intimate experience, and yet over in an instant, that nothing else I know comes close.

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

Grab every opportunity. Remember that we spend our days with beautiful things.

What do you enjoy doing most?

Dancing!

Ivana Gavric will be performing at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday 23rd April at 1130am, as part of the Coffee Concerts Series. Further information here

Her new album ‘Chopin’ will be released on Edition Classics on Friday 21st April and is available for pre-order now

British pianist Ivana Gavric created a sensation with her debut disc In the mists, winning BBC Music Magazine Newcomer of the Year for ‘playing of an altogether extraordinary calibre’. Her third disc of works by Grieg, also on Champs Hill Records, was selected as Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and noted for ‘an electrifying performance’ (BBC Music Magazine). The Grieg Society has voted the CD as its ‘Recording of the Year’. Ivana has performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Trondheim Soloists, Aurora Orchestra and South Denmark Philharmonie. She has collaborated with conductors including Rafael Payare, Nicholas Collon, Christian Kluxen and Ben Gernon.

Following her US solo debut, the Washington Post described Ivana’s playing as ‘impressive, insightful… a ravishing performance’. Ivana has been heard on the major concert platforms including The Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, KKL Lucerne, Gilmore Festival Rising Star Series, as well as across China, in Canada and Japan. Attracting considerable praise for her interpretations of Janacek’s music in particular, Ivana has curated festivals dedicated to the composer’s solo and chamber works. Also a dedicated chamber musician, Ivana performed with violinist Maxim Vengerov as part of Live Music Now, the outreach scheme established by the late Lord Menuhin.


She has partnered colleagues on the concert platform in festivals in the UK and Europe, taken part in the IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music Sessions and is an alumna of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. Outside the concert hall she is featured playing Chopin and Beethoven in BBC2’s adaptation of The Line of Beauty, and Bach in Anthony Minghella’s film Breaking and Entering.

Born into a musical family in Sarajevo, and raised in the UK, Ivana studied at the University of Cambridge and at the Royal College of Music. Her teachers include Niel Immelman, Peter Bithell and James Gibb. Additionally, Ivana has had the opportunity to study with esteemed musicians such as Menahem Pressler, Ferenc Rados, Dmitry Bashkirov, Boris Berman, Stephen Kovacevich and Leif Ove Andsnes. Ivana is indebted to the support of many trusts, including the Frankopan Fund (Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts), the MBF, The Solti Foundation, The Nicholas Boas Trust, The Richard Carne Trust and the RVW Trust. Ivana is proud to be an Ambassador for the charity ‘Music Action International’.

www.ivanagavric.com

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Who or what inspired you to take up composing, and pursue a career in music?

Since my earliest years, I’ve had an impulse to make up pieces at the piano, and that hasn’t really changed – except that eventually I learned to write them down, and nowadays often play virtual instruments via a keyboard. When enough people started asking me to write them something, it turned into a career.

Who or what were the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?

Musicians and theatre-makers who asked me to write music for them, including dancer/choreographer Clare Whistler and director Jonathan Kent; and who listened, encouraged and offered constructive criticism, notably composers Stephen Oliver and Julian Grant, conductors David Parry and Brad Cohen, opera-directors Graham Vick and Richard Jones. Probably the most significant of all were two people at Glyndebourne, Katie Tearle and Anthony Whitworth-Jones, who commissioned my first published piece (the wind serenade Figures in the Garden), three community operas, and my first main-stage (and most widely produced) opera – Flight.

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

Trying to get the current piece to be as good as I believe it can be.

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?

With a commission comes a deadline, without which I never finish a piece. More exciting, there is a date when you know certain musicians will be performing your piece in a particular place. The idea of these wonderful singers or instrumentalists is, in itself, inspiring.

How would you characterise your compositional language?

Pandiatonic, rhythmically driven, singable.

How do you work?

Dreamily and fitfully at first, as vague initial ideas start to emerge; then more continuously, as they gradually turn into stronger, more potent ideas. Mostly I work out pieces at the keyboard, but walking and cycling are also an important part of the process.

Who are your favourite musicians/composers?

Mozart, Stravinsky, John Adams

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

Write the music you want to hear.

Born in 1959 to architect parents, Jonathan Dove’s early musical experience came from playing the piano, organ and viola. Later he studied composition with Robin Holloway at Cambridge and, after graduation, worked as a freelance accompanist, repetiteur, animateur and arranger. His early professional experience gave him a deep understanding of singers and the complex mechanics of the opera house. Opera and the voice have been the central priorities in Dove’s output throughout his subsequent career.

Read Jonathan Dove’s full biography here

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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and pursue a career in music?

When I was four years old, my parents went away on a long European holiday, leaving me and my younger brother in the care of our grandmother and a much loved adopted “auntie”, a retired piano teacher. To keep her happy, they rented a piano which she played every day. One evening, Auntie Bessie played Schumann’s Arabesque Opus 18 and I vividly remember the overwhelming emotions which resulted in floods of tears! She responded by teaching me to play; by the time my parents returned I could perform simple pieces. It is my belief that from that time, music became an essential resource for me, filling the hole left by the absence of my parents. I didn’t envisage a performing career; that developed later on, but I knew there was no other path for me but to study music.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

I grew up in South Africa where very little 20th century music was performed. However, when I was a B. Mus. student at the University of Cape Town, my Harmony and Counterpoint lecturer, now Professor Emeritus James May, asked me to play Schoenberg’s Suite Opus 25 and Webern’s Variations Opus 27 in a concert. Despite not knowing these pieces at all and initially finding them incomprehensible, I was determined to honour my commitment and in the process became “hooked”. What fascinated me in the Suite for instance,was recognising the phrasing of a Gavotte or Minuet despite the unfamiliarity of the serial language.This felt exhilarating, like learning a new language. So thanks to James May, this was the start of my journey into 20th century and new music.

The teachers who influenced me most for very different reasons were Gyorgy Sandor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Susan Bradshaw in London. Sandor changed my piano technique with advice on arm weight and a flexible wrist; he was a pragmatic teacher, a problem solver. Lessons on the music of Bartok, who was his teacher, were revelatory, but his interest in 20th century music stopped there.

Susan Bradshaw was the perfect guide to performing 20th century classics and new repertoire. Her incisive intelligence simplified complex textures. She taught me how to articulate phrasing in unfamiliar contexts and to make new repertoire as accessible as possible at a first hearing. She introduced me to composers such as Robert Saxton who wrote a Sonata for me, which led to my giving my first London premiere in the Purcell Room. The experience of working together with a composer like Robert to produce a first performance was life changing.

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

I could say that performing the complete solo works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern from memory in the Wigmore Hall was one of my most challenging concerts.

However the real challenge for me was returning to performing after a long break following the birth of our two children.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

I am proud of my new CD of recent South African piano music which I hope will introduce some fantastic composers to those unfamiliar with South African contemporary music: Kevin Volans, Michael Blake, Rob Fokkens, Neo Muyanga, David Earl, Peter Klatzow, Hendrik Hofmeyr and David Kosviner. The majority of the pieces on the CD are rooted in traditional South African music though some are European in origin; this is diverse repertoire which reflects a rich and varied culture. With one exception, these works have never been recorded and many have been dedicated to me.

Which particular works do you think you perform best?

Schoenberg’s piano music occupied me for years so thank goodness I am told I play it well! I treasure the review from Peter Stadlen, a pupil of Webern, who liked my performance of Schoenberg’s Suite Opus 25 : “Schoenberg has come of age” he wrote; thank you Peter Stadlen!

However, maybe what I do best is what I enjoy the most, which is trying to communicate unfamiliar music in as clear a way as possible.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

Sometimes one is free to choose, or a festival or concert series may stipulate a particular work or composer. On the whole I have been able to perform the music I want to play. I enjoy creating programmes which are cohesive in some way, not merely a collection of disparate pieces.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

It is the audience who create the atmosphere in a concert and an enthusiastic audience can transform any venue into somewhere special.

However, recently, I loved performing at the Turner Sims in Southampton; fabulous piano and intimate hall. I will be recording there again soon on the Fazioli.

Who are your favourite musicians?

I admire musicians who engage with the music of their own time as well as performing traditional repertoire. Maurizio Pollini comes to mind or Stephen Hough who is that rare musician in today’s world, a composer-performer. Both Pollini and Hough bring an illuminating intelligence to whatever they play. Having said that, I will go anywhere to hear Angela Hewitt play Bach

What is your most memorable concert experience?

At the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival in 2015, I gave the first South African performance of Neo Muyanga’s Hade Tata (Sorry Father) composed in tribute to Nelson Mandela. That was a very special occasion for me.

One of the most memorable experiences was taking part in the Park Lane Group’s 25th Anniversary celebrations in the Queen Elizabeth Hall; 25 pianists playing 25 Steinway grand pianos on raked stages, conducted by Sir Colin Davis!

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

When I am asked to talk to young musicians, I advise them not to choose a career in music if they think it will make them rich or famous but only if music is their reason for getting out of bed in the morning! This is a difficult and unstable profession.

Being a professional musician requires hard work, humility, curiosity, passion and stubborn persistence! It requires an ability to “bounce back” from rejections.

Keeping fit and well in order to deal with the rigours of practice, performance and travel is vital; regular exercise, meditation and control of the breath also aid relaxation.

In practice, it is important to work from the inside out, from the notation, not outside in, imitating a favourite recording; it is essential to understand how the music is put together. Every performance should sound like a first performance even if the repertoire is very familiar.

I encourage young musicians to remember that while there is a vast legacy of repertoire from the past, we are living in the 21st century and there is a wealth of music being created right now which deserves some of their attention!

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

I hope I will still be excited about playing new music.

What is your most treasured possession?

Peace of mind.

Renée Reznek’s new disc ‘From My Beloved Country’, new piano music from South Africa is released on 31st March on the Prima Facie label
Renée Reznek was born in South Africa. As a child she studied with Adolf Hallis, who was a pupil of Tobias Mattay. She graduated with distinction from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Music degree. During these years Lamar Crowson was her teacher.
Read Renée’s full biography here