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This afternoon brought the sad news that André Previn, German-American pianist, conductor and composer, had died at the age of 89. A highly versatile musician who blurred the boundaries of genres and disciplines, he was a musical polymath, equally at home conducting the big warhorses of the classical canon, composing film scores, performimg and directing piano concertos from the keyboard, playing jazz at sold out venues, or good-naturedly engaging with the silliness of comedians Morecombe and Wise in a classic sketch featuring “the Grieg Piano Concerto by Grieg”.

As a child growing up in the late 60s and 70s and enjoying a lot of music at home, he was a big part of my musical upbringing, along with artists like Daniel Barenboim. Alfred Brendel and Paul Tortelier. I enjoyed watching his television programmes André Previn’s Music Night with my parents, where he conducted the LSO (often sporting a colourful silk neck scarf), and introduced works from the classical repertoire in a way which was informative, intelligent and accessible, never dumbed down nor patronising. This was at a time when it was quite usual to find classical music on prime time television – something we have lost today, where it is now consigned to the relative backwater of BBCFour and no longer feels part of the everyday cultural landscape. Previn’s suave ability to cross the boundaries between classical music and jazz proved that it was possible to like all music without snobbery. I was also lucky enough to see him conduct the LSO live on a couple of occasions.

There is a detailed appreciation of Andre Previn in the New York Times

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

It all happened rather by accident. I’m from, what I like to call, an atonal family and I owe it to the music school in Gdańsk – my home city. They were looking for talented children in kindergartens and so my parents received a letter one day. A little bit like Hogwarts! I remember discussing the options with my dad before the audition. He only asked that I don’t choose the piano as it’s a big, heavy instrument that takes a lot of space. Soon enough we had to find the space…!

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

From a professional point of view my teachers and fellow music colleagues. I’m infinitely grateful to all the professors I came across in my life. I’m getting to know that process from the other side now and I realise every day how tricky being a teacher can be.

From the psychological or mental side, I couldn’t have done it without my parents. I guess most musicians would say the same thing.

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

Freelancing! It still is. Also the post-graduation blues. I wish we’d speak about it more – how difficult it is to finish studying and to be in the world on our own, without the support of the institution behind us.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

First, my recent release with Naxos called ‘A Century of Polish Piano Miniatures’. I think I managed to put together a programme of the real 20th century jewels of Polish piano literature, allowing the listener to explore all that happened after Chopin. I’m proud of that one. The biggest challenge would be Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, a recording I did last year. Because of the technical difficulties my session lasted for 1.5 hours instead of 3. That’s not enough time to play it through even twice. No space for mistakes!

Which particular works do you think you play best?

I think that would be everything from Impressionism to contemporary music. Ravel has never let me down, same for most of the 20th-century repertoire. However, I must say there’s nothing more satisfying than some good Bach.

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

I aim for a selection of styles and variety of soundworlds. Something that will be good for competitions and recitals with different audiences. I usually make a list of pieces I want to continue playing and try to add works that would go well with it to create interesting programmes.

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

My room. Everything always works! And if I really want I can make it a performance venue. Concert is a state of mind after all!

Who are your favourite musicians?

The passionate ones. No time for accurate boredom.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

There is so many memorable experiences…It’s extremely hard to choose the one! Maybe I will go for the finals of Tallinn International Piano Competition when I performed my beloved Ravel for the first time. I felt so powerful, like nothing could stop me. There are also a lot of earlier experiences which are connected with becoming professional and finding my own identity as a concert pianist. I think that’s material for a book…

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

A balanced combination of high-quality artistic experiences and self-preservation.

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

We do it primarily for the others. We have to always remember that. We serve the audience, whoever they are. We serve the music, the composers, the beauty… It’s our duty to share the love and passion for arts – that’s the best way to make this world a better place.

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

Close to the people I love most, doing what I love to do most.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

The above, and loving your work (then you don’t have to work).

What is your most treasured possession?

My mind, nobody can read it.

What is your present state of mind?

Relaxed post-tax return!

Anna Szalucka’s latest CD, A Century of Polish Piano Miniatures, is available now

Anna Szałucka is a Polish pianist and started her musical education at the age of seven. She completed the Bachelor Degree at the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk studying with Waldemar Wojtal. In years 2013 – 2014 she continued her studies at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien in piano class of Stefan Vladar. Currently she is studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London under the supervision of Ian Fountain. In November 2016 Anna won the 1st Prize together with The Eller, Recital, Orchestra and Estonian Museum Awards at the 3rd International Tallinn Piano Competition. She’s a prize winner of many other competitions including the 1st Prize in Young Pianists Forum in Rybnik and the 2nd Prize and The Special Prize of Jerzy Waldorff on IX Iternational Competition for Young Pianists “Arthur Rubinstein in Memoriam” in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Anna is also a laureate of the 46th Festival of Polish Pianism in Słupsk (Poland). She’s been awarded The Jacob Barnes Piano Scholarship, Musicians’ Company – Harriet Cohen Bach Prize, Kenneth Loveland Gift Prize as well as the 3rd Prize in the International Sussex Piano Competition. Her recent successes include multiple prizes: Janet Duff Greet, Walter MacFarran and Alexander Kelly Memorial Prizes, The Regency Award as well as 2nd Prize and the Audience Prize at the Sheepdrove Intercollegiate Piano Competition. She was selected by the prestigious Musicians’ Company to give her Wigmore Hall debut recital in 2016.

Anna Szałucka has given many concerts across Poland and abroad cooperating with such institutions as The National Fryderyk Chopin Institute, Wiener Beethoven Gesellschaft, The Arthur Rubinstein International Music Foundation, The Worshipful Company of Musicians as well as BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and Radio Gdańsk. The orchestra appearances include concerts with the Polish Radio Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Worthing Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Baltica, Pomeranian Philharmonics, Górecki Chamber Orchestra and others. Anna has developed her passion for music by taking part in many piano masterclasses, among others with Aleksiej Orłowiecki, Alon Goldstein, Andrzej Jasiński, Kathryn Stott, Imogen Cooper, Dina Yoffe, Lee Kum-Sing, Paul Roberts, Joanna MacGregor, Yevgeny Sudbin and Alberto Nosè.

As the Royal Academy of Music scholar Anna is generously supported by the Thompson Family Charitable Trust. In Poland, she received a scholarship from the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, the President of Gdańsk City and the Principal of the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. She was also awarded the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Prize as well as Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Prize.

www.annaszalucka.com

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Guest post by Ben Goldscheider

The Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings by Benjamin Britten is one of the many works written for the great horn player of the twentieth century, Dennis Brain. It had its first performance on the 15th October 1943 at the Wigmore Hall with Brain playing and Peter Pears singing.

What, to me, is so remarkable in this piece is how Britten uses the horn as an unspoken commentator on the text sung by the Tenor. This is introduced in the Prologue which is a short movement for solo horn, setting a rather haunting atmosphere that sets up the reflective mood of the following movement, the Pastoral. Britten was seemingly trying very hard to push the limits of a seemingly invincible Dennis Brain, indicating that the Prologue be played on the natural partials of the horn; a recipe for disaster for many other horn players! He makes particular use of the 7th, 11th and 14th partials which, on the horns natural configuration, are “out of tune” to our modern tempered ears. I like to think that Britten was both pushing forward in terms of technical challenges and musical idiom but also looking back, using the natural harmonics of an instrument very much connected to nature, a theme that is central to the Serenade.

Britten’s style of “word painting”, that is, to match the music with the literal meaning of the text, is masterful throughout the Serenade. The opening verse of the Pastoral,  “The Day’s grown old; the fainting sun/ Has but a little way to run”  evokes a very reflective or even sombre feeling which is perfectly encapsulated by the descending triadic melody in D-flat Major that dominates the movement. Sharing this melody between horn and voice, Britten manages to create a musical language in which, after a period of time, merges the dialogue between horn and voice into one expressive gesture.

Again in the following movement, the Nocturne, Britten’s use of the horn to accentuate the power of the text is central to the musical message. He uses the phrase “Blow, bugle blow” from Tennyson’s The Princess which is then punctuated by the horn playing rapid fanfare figures, starting further away in a very quiet dynamic before coming to the fore at the height of the horn’s range and dynamic powers. In the third movement, the phrase, “O rose, thou art Sick” by William Blake is expressed by a mournful descending semitone figure over a pulsating string ostinato that pushes the music in a very uneasy way.

In the Hymn, a movement based on text by Ben Jonson, Britten continues in the tradition of the Mozart and Strauss Horn Concertos by writing a rondo-like figure in 6/8 time. Britten chose words from Cynthia’s Revels which is a play that depicts Queen Elizabeth I as the virgin huntress Cynthia. This allowed Britten the freedom to deploy the horn in its typical hunting style in an extremely lively movement that finishes with the horn player walking off stage to prepare for the Epilogue. Whilst the piece is by no means humorous, I can’t help but find connotations with the humour written into the horn part of the Mozart Horn Concertos by the composer himself, often making fun of, and insulting, the horn player. It cannot be a coincidence, or at least Britten himself must have had it in his conscience, that following a 6/8 movement (all of Mozart’s Horn Concertos finish with a lively 6/8 Rondo), Britten writes one of the lowest notes available on the horn (perhaps he liked the idea that one may miss this note and then have to walk off stage embarrassed) before the horn player has to leave in an almost comedic effect. I have never played this piece without hearing at least one snigger from the audience…

As a piece, Britten’s Serenade is written extremely well for the horn. It is very idiomatic, despite its challenging aspects of endurance and sheer technical capability. What is rather rare to the piece is that Britten writes the expressive phrases in sonorities that sit very well on the instrument: he writes the explosive figures at a range in which the horn player will be able to fully express the meaning of the music and he writes with a full understanding of the instrument’s capacity to be a perfect partner to the sensitivity of the voice. I personally find it hugely rewarding to play and it is an absolute joy to be able to play such a masterpiece with the human voice, an instrument which is to me, the epitome of expression.

d68502_b03c86f3f58d41b592ad96ad328dbb7dmv2_d_3477_5150_s_4_2_srz_970_903_85_22_0-50_1-20_0At the age of eighteen, Ben Goldscheider reached the Final of the 2016 BBC Young Musician Competition, where he performed at London’s Barbican Hall with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Since then, he has performed at venues including the Berlin Philharmonie, Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre and London’s Royal Albert Hall, where he made his BBC Proms Debut in 2018. He has also appeared as soloist with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra and City of London Sinfonia. In 2018, Ben released his debut album with Willowhayne Records to critical acclaim, and was selected both as BBC Music Magazine’s “Rising Star” and Gramophone Magazine’s “One to Watch”.

This season, Ben makes concerto debuts with the English Chamber Orchestra, Manchester Camerata and the Prague Philharmonia.  In February he returns to the Berlin Philarmonie to perform the Gliere Horn Concerto with das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin conducted by Radek Baborák. A committed chamber musician, Ben has performed at London’s Wigmore Hall with tenor Julian Prégardien and pianist Christoph Schnackertz, the Pierre Boulez Saal alongside Daniel Barenboim and Michael Barenboim and the Verbier Festival with Sergei Babayan. Future highlights include the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival and Trio concerts with Callum Smart (violin) and Richard Uttley (piano) across the UK, featuring the premiere of a new work by Geoffrey Gordon in London. Sought-after as an orchestral player, he has performed as guest with the Staatskapelle Berlin, Philharmonia, English Chamber, West-Eastern Divan Orchestras and in 2018, played the solo horn call from Wagner’s Siegfried in a semi-staged production with The Hallé and Sir Mark Elder.

Read more

Meet the Artist interview with Ben Goldscheider

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AV2398-cover-250x250-250x248Schumann: Papillons, Kinderszenen; Brahms: Opp. 117, 118

Sarah Beth Briggs, piano

Avie Records AV2398

27th February 2019 is the centenary of the birth of Denis Matthews, a great pianist from an earlier era of British pianism, who was also a respected teacher and lecturer. Matthews studied with Harold Craxton, (another pianist-teacher from an earlier era, and for those of us d’un certain age, a name forever synonymous, along with Donald Tovey, with ABRSM editions of the Beethoven piano sonatas).

Matthews most longstanding private pupil, the British pianist Sarah Beth Briggs, who commenced her studies with him at the age of eight, recalls her beloved teacher with great fondness and a profound respect for his intelligence, his insightful, fully rounded approach to teaching and music appreciation, and his own superb musicianship.

Denis Matthews was the most incredible inspiration. He was such a terrific all round musician. He made me understand that there was far more to being a good musician than playing the piano. Lessons would involve listening to Mozart operas, Beethoven string quartets, Brahms symphonies etc and then making the piano ‘become’ a singer, a string quartet, a pair of horns – always looking way beyond the dots on any given page!….So much was about the joys of being brought to great piano repertoire from a much wider musical perspective.

– Sarah Beth Briggs

Matthews was renowned for his unaffected refined pianism. A performer who was more concerned to serve the interests of the music rather than the musician’s ego, his brilliant, questioning mind brought magic and freshness to his interpretations.

DM and SBB by Clive Barda
Composite picture of Denis Matthews & Sarah Beth Briggs by Clive Barda

 

With her new disc Sarah Beth Briggs pays tribute to her beloved teacher through the music that was central to her studies with Matthews and their joint musical passions: two sets of late Brahms piano pieces (opp 117 and 118), and Schumann’s Papillons and his popular Kinderszenen, music which was “the subject of a sort of ‘party game’ whenever Denis visited my family home, when he would begin one of the miniatures on one piano and expect me to take over – from memory! – on the other”. While her debt of gratitude to Matthews is at the heart of Sarah’s new disc, Clara Schumann is the unifying thread in the selection of pieces included here. Kindeszenen was inspired by a comment by Clara about her husband’s childlike nature, while a sense of longing and unrequited love pervades Brahms’ late piano works.

Sarah brings an exquisite intimacy, fluency and warmth to the late Brahms pieces, sensitively capturing their inherent poignancy and haunting tenderness with a refined dynamic palette, a glowing touch, supple rubato and a refreshing musical honesty. The same intimacy is achieved in Schumann’s Kinderszenen: these pieces intended for children become grown up miniatures, reflective and touching, never sentimental. Traumerei, for example, too often the subject of clichéd readings, here finds a plaintive grace and elegant simplicity in Sarah’s discerning hands.

Schumann’s Papillons, which opens the disc, has an expansive grandeur, but Sarah’s exceptional control of sound is always elegant and tasteful, even in the extrovert movements. The overall sound quality of the recording is excellent, the piano rich and colourful across its entire range, with an appealing sweetness in the upper register.

This generous recording is a fitting tribute Sarah’s dear teacher.

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