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  1. Reject prejudice. Select the concert based on the programme rather than the performer and don’t always be led by the artist’s biography/reputation
  2. Support local and regional music-making: there’s plenty of it and it’s important to remember that the metropolis is not the only place where great music can be heard
  3. If you’ve enjoyed a concert, tell others and share your enthusiasm, especially with people who may be new to classical music (see 4 below)
  4. Go to concerts with friends, especially those who haven’t sampled classical music before
  5. Online reviews and blogs have real value. Read them. Don’t think the mainstream media always has the last word
  6. If you know musicians, support them by attending their concerts and buy their CDs – don’t expect friends to supply free tickets. (see 7 below)
  7. Musicians tend to command low or even no fees. Buy the goddam tickets (and CDs)!
  8. If you’ve enjoyed a performance, or recording, tell the artist! At places like Wigmore Hall, it’s easy to go to the Green Room afterwards to meet the performer/s. Alternatively, contact them on social media or email via their website. Go on – we really appreciate it!
  9. Please don’t tell musicians how to do their job: we are sensitive people who work extremely hard. And don’t ask “what’s your day job?” or hint that being a musician is some kind of superannuated hobby. It’s not, it’s a profession.

 

(Inspired by author Joanna Harris on Twitter)

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

My grandmother owned an upright piano and used it to play simplified arrangements of jazz standards. As a young child, I used to live in the flat above and enjoyed visits during her morning ritual, which consisted of drinking Turkish/Arabic coffee, cigarette in hand, and listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie and Billie Holiday amongst other jazz artists from the Golden Era. She almost certainly passed on her pure love of music to my father, who had similar recordings playing on cassettes, LPs and CDs in our own flat most of the time.

I’m not sure that this led to me becoming a professional classical pianist though. I believe the joy experienced by amateurs while listening to or playing music is often lost on professionals (especially within the classical music industry) who often use music to serve rather personal goals in their lives, such as becoming the very best at something – a very questionable goal to aspire to in the subjective world of the fine arts, in my opinion. My family’s love of jazz certainly made me want to have music all around me and led to drum kit lessons with my father at the age of three and piano lessons at the age of five with Agnes Bashir-Dzodtsoeva – an exceptional teacher and composer who was based in Amman at the time. I moved to the UK as an eleven year old to pursue my professional training and education. This was probably what actually placed me on the path to becoming a professional, having received a solid technical foundation in the Russian School of piano playing from Agnes, a Georgian educated in Moscow.

My grandmother gave me her piano about a year after I started lessons because she felt that my electric keyboard had surpassed its usefulness. This will always be one of the most precious gifts anyone has ever offered me.

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

I’ve been very fortunate indeed to have received input from quite a few extraordinary musicians; I met Yo-Yo Ma as a ten year old during the first West Eastern Divan workshop, which was directed by Daniel Barenboim who has mentored me on many occasions since. He has also invited me to tour with him and the West Eastern Divan as a soloist, playing works that include Berg’s Chamber Concerto which certainly shaped my interest in the Second Viennese School. I am privileged to have been introduced to a genre by one of its top authorities.

I will certainly never forget the late Sir Colin Davis’ advice on how to start the angelic ‘Siciliana’ movement (II) as I prepared for our performance of Mozart’s Concerto no. 23 in A major with the English Chamber Orchestra at the Barbican Centre. Furthermore, my lesson with the late Pierre Boulez on his own ‘12 Notations’ for solo piano at the Royal Academy will remain one of the most important and cherished musical experiences of my life, of course.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that my piano, theory, composition and conducting teachers had the biggest influences on my development, as they helped shape my musicianship very directly. Since leaving Jordan, I have studied piano with Tatiana Sarkissova (who was my main professor in the UK), Hinrich Alpers and Tessa Nicholson, composition with Jonathan Cole and Graham Williams, conducting with Paul Brough, Denise Ham, Quentin Poole and Peter Stark. Though I have had many fantastic theory teachers over the years, the Chicago-based conductor and arranger Cliff Colnot was one of the best pedagogues one could ask for, as I discovered during the many hours I spent analysing full scores of the symphonic repertoire with him. We met during summer West Eastern Divan workshops Seville, Spain and during visits that I made to Chicago for intensive courses as a teenager.

Since moving to Berlin, I have spent a lot of time learning about early music from the renowned scholar, viol player and director of Phantasm, Laurence Dreyfus. I remember attending one of his lectures during his visit to the Royal Academy of Music in 2012 and subsequently reading his essay ‘Beyond the Interpretation of Music’ which, I can safely say, forced me to reconsider everything I had learned about studying and preparing repertoire of any genre.

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

Remaining moderately sane.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?

I’m quite concerned about the levels of narcissism within our industry – especially since the onset of social media – so I’m careful to avoid pride, as much as I can. For clarity, I do use social media but try my best to be as pragmatic about it as possible. Focusing on the experience of performing is more of a priority for me, rather than the many emotions and thoughts that follow. They are after all pretty useless unless they help me improve.

However, if I had to choose one memorable performance to discuss, I would say that it was particularly interesting to play Schoenberg’s op. 11 to a group of students at the Hind Al–Husseini College in occupied East Jerusalem, Palestine. It is very likely that some of these students had never been exposed to any classical music at all until then (within the frame of attending live concerts). So the discussion about ‘Drei Klavierstuecke op. 11’ that followed my performance was fascinating, particularly as they had the advantage, as listeners, of having no strong standard to compare atonality to.* I remember one student saying that she imagined a scene from a horror movie while I was playing. Considering the fact that Schoenberg moved to Hollywood in 1934, I thought that this was very perceptive indeed. After all he must have influenced a whole generation of film composers as one of the University of Southern California’s and University of California, Los Angeles’ most valued pedagogues.

I’m very pleased that this event took place.

*Arabic music is mainly monophonic, with intricacy and complexity in the melodic ornamentation and rhythm rather than the homophonic movement of parts – in other words it’s more of a horizontal tradition.

Which particular works do you think you play best?

Not sure, tough one. Sorry!

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

I am naturally quite a curious person, so my approach to music has always been interest-driven. What I offer in recitals is usually linked to what I have been exploring as a listener, these days, now that I am no longer a studying in a traditional sense. Certainly my engagement with English Renaissance music developed because of my interest in Renaissance music in general. I was exposed to it at the Purcell School – we had to sing a fair amount of Palestrina, Lassus and Byrd in choir – and really enjoyed the counterpoint and modality back then, although I was probably too young to fully appreciate its beauty. However, it was a performance of Monteverdi’s ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’ at the English National Opera (especially the final duet) that really got me hooked as a listener. So by the time I met Laurence Dreyfus, I was ready to start working on and studying the genre more extensively.

There is no rich tradition of performing Renaissance keyboard music on the modern piano, (Sokolov and Gould are both true heroes of mine, as different as they are, but there aren’t many others who venture out into this territory) so the harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani’s survey of John Bull’s keyboard works was a very important and revelatory recording to listen to. Thankfully, he was very generous when I emailed him with questions, and invited me to Prague for some coaching. It was heart-warming to see how very encouraging he was about playing this music on the modern piano and using the instrument idiomatically to serve it. He had many suggestions for further keyboard repertoire that I should explore.

In general, I avoid chronological programming, so called well-balanced programming where one tries to tick boxes across genres that are limited to music written between about 1750 and 1950, exclusively nineteenth century programmes and single composer programmes (unless it’s a performance of the Goldberg Variations, which I sometimes play on it’s own, but usually start the concert with some Boulez or Schoenberg).

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

Not really, but playing at Luzern’s KKL and the new Philharmonie de Paris, both with Daniel Barenboim, were exceptional experiences – the acoustics really allow you to take risks with soft dynamics. Both halls were designed by the architect Jean Nouvel.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Playing Mozart’s K467 in Petra, Jordan as an 11 year old. Nothing quite beats Mozart in the middle of the desert, in front of a World Heritage Site as far as memorability goes!

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

Artistic fulfilment and paying all the bills simultaneously.

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

1) Constantly listening to and studying (not only practising) music with child-like curiosity.

2) Keeping a healthy check on one’s ego – it’s important to know when it’s appropriate to be the centre of attention (i.e on stage) and when it’s in one’s best interest to be a more generous spirit (backstage and everywhere outside the concert hall).

Karim Said’s new album ‘Legacy’ is available now on the Rubicon Classics label. Further information

Karim Said came to the public’s attention in 2009, playing concertos with the late Sir Colin Davis and the English Chamber Orchestra in London’s Barbican Centre and at the BBC PROMS with Daniel Barenboim and his West Eastern Divan. Karim has regularly toured with the Divan orchestra as a soloist, under Maestro Barenboim’s baton, performing at such halls as the Philharmonie in Berlin, Musikverein in Vienna and the Great Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. Mostly recently, Karim appeared with the Maestro as a soloist in the opening night of the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, playing the Berg Chamber Concerto.

Karim’s debut album ‘Echoes from an Empire’ (Opus Arte – 2015) was one of Gramphone’s ‘Top Ten recordings of Janacek’ (2016). The repertoire on this album was inspired by his London recital debut series at the Southbank Centre in 2013, where he played the complete solo works by Arnold Schoenberg over three recitals as part of the ‘International Piano Series’ and ‘The Rest Is Noise’ festival. As a chamber musician and song accompanist, Karim has collaborated with artists including Waltraud Meier, Dorothea Röschmann, Gabriel Croitoru, Adrian Brendel, and the Utrecht String Quartet.

Earlier this year, Karim launched the Etihad String Orchestra in his native Jordan as its first Music Director and performed with the European Youth Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko at the Dubai Opera House.

Born in Amman, Jordan in 1988, Karim commenced his piano with Agnes Bashir-Dzodtsoeva before moving to the UK in 2000, aged eleven. He studied piano, composition and conducting at the renowned Purcell School of Music and later at the Royal Academy of Music, both on full scholarships. At the Academy he studied with Prof Tatiana Sarkissova. In more recent years, Karim was coached by Hinrich Alpers in Berlin, where he is currently based. As a conductor, Karim attended masterclasses with Bernard Haitink at the Royal College of Music during his studies in the UK.

Karim Said was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London in 2017.

karimsaid.com

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

At 18 I was planning to go to Oxford to read history when I unexpectedly won a 3-year piano scholarship to the Royal Academy. On producing some ‘written work’ at my first interview, the Warden suggested I should also study composition

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

Everything I ever heard but all in different degrees and for different reasons. Schubert, Bartok, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Copland, Bach, Brubeck, Mozart. Handel, Puccini, Rachmaninov, Elgar, Delius , Warlock, Moeran, Butterworth, Franck, ,Orff, Prokofiev, Henry Mancini, Quincy Jones, Bernard Herrmann, Bernstein, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Gershwin, Malcom Arnold, Skryabin

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

In 1967 stopping my life as a pianist in order to take over composing/conducting ‘The Avengers’.

In 1971 abandoning a highly lucrative commercial career, not to mention a house in Knightsbridge and my first wife (!) in order to start again and learn to write much better music in the country (Sussex).

In 1981 abandoning a Hollywood contract in order to return to UK to finish my dramatic oratorio ‘Benedictus’, (which I consider my masterpiece) , although had I not done so I would not have then  been in London  to compose The Snowman!

Worst disaster for me professionally for me was in 1998 when my publishers issued a high court writ against me in an attempt to steal all of my music. It involved so many people I had trusted and been happy with and I was let down by them. This took me a very long time to recover from and the fact that they issued the writ on the day my son Robert was born was malicious! .In fact I fought the case and won, but it does illustrate ‘the price of fame in no uncertain way’. My frustrations and sadnesses have most often sprung from people’s envy of my success, which I find very difficult to deal with.

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

Everything one creates is a challenge whether one gets commissioned for it or not. I have 705 opuses listed but these include many false starts and rejects and disappointments. However a very great percentage were commissioned, sometimes quite handsomely, sometimes for nothing, but always because somebody really wanted me to write something for them. One needs to have a performance  to aim at and that won’t happen without an enthusiastic commissioner, nearly always just one person. For instance I remember the head of the Leeds Arts Council saying to me at a reception after the Paralympics: ‘Could you write the sort of violin concerto that would make everybody cheer at the end?’ I started immediately!

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles and orchestras?

I always write with a soloist or a group or an orchestra in mind., because I ‘hear’ their sound as I write and often have a sort of ‘conversation’ with the player. For instance when Thea King commissioned a clarinet concerto I knew how much she  loved playing in the low chalumeau register but was not at all so keen on screechy high notes. I wrote for her accordingly and could always hear her playing it.. I would find myself murmuring during the composition process: ‘Oh, she’ll like that!’

Of which works are you most proud?

‘Benedictus’, The Snowman Stage Show, The Piano Quartet, ‘Diversions for cello’, ‘Speech after Long Silence’,  ‘Sleepwalking’,  ‘Elegia Stravagante’, ‘The Bear’, ‘Granpa’, The Flute Concerto,  The Clarinet Concerto,  The Violin Concerto, ‘The Duellists’  ‘A Month in the Country’.

How would you characterise your compositional language? 

Gapplegate Review USA 2015 wrote the following which  is very much how I’d like to be thought of, though am rather too embarrassed to express!

An English composer with a pronounced lyrical gift, In his latest album of works for cello and piano ‘Diversions’ the music is of a pronounced tonality but without anything in the way of a neo-classical glance at the past. The works hold their own as contemporary music with a pronounced Blakean signature affixed and the music is filled with inventive flourishes that evince a fertile creative mind at work. It is rousingly good music. It is not high modernist but it is thoroughly contemporary. It has a special quality to it that belongs very much to the musical personality of Howard Blake

How do you work?

I both live and work in a top-floor apartment consisting of two converted Victorian artist studios near Kensington Gardens. The studios are on two levels with balconies. In one there is a Steinway grand piano, a desk, a PC and audio equipment. This is my business office and Anna my PA sits opposite me when we do the accounts and correspondence on Tuesday mornings. Upstairs is a second PC housing a Sibelius music writing system attached to a Yamaha electric keyboard. These are linked to a state of the art Konica Minolta printer from which I can print and publish my own actual sheet music, or place it on my website to be downloaded by musician players or by the public. I write music when it comes into my head, which can be at 3.00am or 12 noon or midnight. I have to write ideas down as they come to me which I am told makes me a very difficult person to live with! But I shouldn’t exaggerate this too much. Mostly I wake early around 7am have breakfast and start working like everybody else. I usually work till about 3pm and then go and have some late lunch. I may have a nap and then start working again or in the evening go out to a concert.  Aside from travelling , I’ve lived like this more or less since 1981 when I bought the studio.

Who are your favourite musicians/composers?

My cellist friend Benedict Kloeckner who now has his own International Music Festival in Coblenz. My great pianist and conductor friend Vladimir Ashkenazy who commissioned ‘Speech after long silence’ and recorded my piano music. My brilliant conductor friend John Wilson who was my protege in the nineties, currently conducting Porgy and Bess [at ENO]. Wayne Marshall with whom I performed concerts of my two –piano music with duo improvisations plus Rachmaninov. Fabulous Norwegian young violist Eivind Ringstad who is demanding a concerto from me. William Chen, professor of piano at Shanghai Conservatory, who made the first recording  of ‘Lifecycle’. Andrew Marriner, principal clarinet in LSO who introduced me to his father Sir Neville Marriner with whom we both recorded with the wonderful Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, not to mention Peter Auty, Aled Jones, Katherine Jenkins, Patricia Rozario, Madeleine Mitchell, Sasha Grynyuk and many many others

As a musician, what is your definition of success

When the public want to hear or play your music

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

A musician must consider how he can most effectively serve the art of music, whether as a soloist or a member of an orchestra or a singer in a choir or a manager of music business. One should only go into a professional music life if one really loves music more than anything else in one’s life. Many become disgruntled when they cannot rise to the heights of virtuoso soloists, but many many others are happy to be one member in an orchestra, or a chamber group or play jazz or rock or electronic or who knows what?  There is a multitude of possibilities!  Every type of music has its own character and its own particular value in eternity. I often quote my name-sake William Blake: “Eternity is in love with the productions of time”

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

Here

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Being well and healthy and able to work and create whilst still having time for friends and family

What is your most treasured possession?

My children and good health

What do you enjoy doing most?

Composing and performing my music with people who love it.


Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians states that ‘Howard Blake has achieved fame as pianist, conductor and composer.’ He grew up in Brighton, at 18 winning a scholarship to The Royal Academy of Music where he studied piano with Harold Craxton and composition with Howard Ferguson. In the early part of an intensely active career he wrote numerous film scores, including ‘The Duellists’ with Ridley Scott which gained the Special Jury Award at the Cannes Festival, ‘A Month in the Country’ which gained him the British Film Institute Anthony Asquith Award for musical excellence, and ‘The Snowman’, nominated for an Oscar after its first screening. His famous song ‘Walking in the Air’ was the chart success that launched Aled Jones in 1985, whilst the concert version for narrator and orchestra is performed world-wide and the full-length ballet for Sadler’s Wells runs for a season every year in London. Concert works include the Piano Concerto commissioned for Princess Diana, the Violin Concerto commissioned for the City of Leeds; the Clarinet Concerto commissioned by Thea King and the English Chamber Orchestra and large-scale choral/orchestral works such as ‘Benedictus’ and ‘The Passion of Mary’ both recorded with the RPO. He is increasingly adding to his catalogue of CDs which includes Sir Neville Marriner conducting the woodwind concertos with The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and ‘Walking in the Air’ – the piano music of Howard Blake – recorded by Vladimir Ashkenazy. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 1988 and received the OBE for services to music from the Queen in 1994.

Read Howard Blake’s full biography

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I’ve always loved the ceremony of nine lessons and carols from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. For me, someone who doesn’t really “do Christmas”, the opening notes of Once in Royal David’s City signal the start of Christmas.

The Christmas “music” which fills shops, cafes and other spaces in the run up to the festive season is mostly trite and trashy with irritatingly catchy tunes which quickly become an unshakeable earworm.

Christmas carols are, however, another kind of music, in a special, much-loved league of their own. Aside from the poetry of their texts, there are the lovely memorable melodies (some carols such as In the Bleak Midwinter have several versions) and rich harmonies, often underpinned by wonderful organ playing. I’m not a churchgoer, but I do love the music of the Christmas festival.

51pfArkvBxLWhen I was at secondary school in the early 1980s (a large state comprehensive school in Hertfordshire), we always performed Handel’s Messiah at Christmas and a few days later had our own ceremony of nine lessons and carols, performed in the church next door to the school by the senior choir and orchestra, pupils and staff (the Headmaster always read the final lesson, booming “IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD…!” at us in stentorian tones). In addition to traditional carols (marked “All” in the service sheet), we sang other Christmas songs, many of which were taken from ‘Carols for Choirs’ (my particular favourites were Adam Lay YBounden (Boris Ord’s version) and Torches by John Joubert). I loved singing in the choir and playing in the orchestra, with that special sense of common purpose and a shared enjoyment and excitement in the music we were performing.

At the time, the huge amount of music which went on in my school was taken for granted. The school prided itself on its music provision and I remember this was one of the main factors which influenced my parents’ decision in applying to the school – and I’m very glad they did. The music department was run by an energetic and hugely committed teacher, (whose enthusiastic teaching inspired me, in part, when I became a piano teacher, and who retired only a few years ago). As well as two choirs and orchestras, a madrigal choir, recorder group and various other smaller ensembles, there was plenty of provision for instrumental lessons (I learnt the clarinet so that I could join the senior orchestra), plus opportunities to go on European tours with the orchestra or sing at the Royal Albert Hall (as I did when I was about 15).

Looking back, I now realise that I was very privileged to have access to and be surrounded by so much music at school, and also at home, and to be encouraged in my love and practice of music by inspiring music teachers and supportive parents. Music was very much a part of my day-to-day life and I never considered it particularly special or privileged (though I was teased a lot at school for being “good at music”). With the serious erosion of music provision in our state schools, what I enjoyed in my teens is now very much the preserve of a comfortable middle-class upbringing, and music and music lessons are in danger of becoming the exclusive preserve of the better off.

The benefits of learning a musical instrument are well-documented and I have observed and experienced many of them at close quarters through my teaching and my own studies when I returned to piano lessons as an adult. Learning a musical instrument equips us with important life-skills. If you can perform in a student or school concert or a public music festival, you can also stand up before a room of people and give a paper at a conference. Music stimulates brain function and can improve memory, cognitive and motor skills, concentration, time management and organizational skills, and creative thinking. Playing an instrument is both stimulating and therapeutic, as the physical activity of playing releases the same “happy hormones” (endorphins) which sportspeople enjoy. Learning and playing a musical instrument fosters self-expression, and can bring a deep sense of fulfillment and personal achievement. Meanwhile, playing in an ensemble, orchestra or band, or singing in a choir, offers a wonderful sense of a shared experience while also encouraging team building, sociability and cooperation. For children with special needs or learning difficulties such as dyslexia and ADHD, music can offer an important outlet and allow them to shine when they may be struggling in other areas of their school life.

We need music, and we need committed, skilled and enthusiastic people to encourage and train the next generation of musicians and to foster an appreciation of and excitement in music, whatever the genre. The devaluing of music, along with the other arts, by former education secretary Michael Gove and continued by the current encumbent and this philisitine government in general, is an outrageous attack on a crucial aspect of our cultural landscape and heritage. Music and arts education is simply not safe in this government’s hands.

We need music. Support music in schools, music hubs, local ensembles, national orchestras. Encourage your children to learn music, sing in a choir, join a band, form their own band, go to concerts, talk to musicians. Write to your MP and urge him or her to take music education seriously. Listen, engage, and above all enjoy. Please.

Carols from Kings – BBC Radio 4