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

When I was a student at university I was expecting to begin a career as a classroom music teacher.  It was only through watching fellow choral scholars begin their professional lives in London choirs that awoke me to the idea that you could sing for a living.  My colleagues and I often have people ask us, post concert, “so what’s your day job?” but that could so easily have been me asking that question.  It was when I observed the early career paths of ex-students like John Mark Ainsley and Paul Agnew that it dawned on me that this was an actual profession and that I might have a go at it.  I have my wife to thank for giving me the impetus and courage in my early twenties to give up my teaching job and try becoming a freelance singer.

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

My musical education has been fairly sponge-like and I have been happy to learn from anyone.  My earliest singing teachers gave me a grounding which I never forget: Valerie Heath Davis was a chorus member at ENO who gave me my first singing lessons outside school and taught me how to breath for singing.  She prepared me for my choral trials.  Janet Edmunds looked after me during university and introduced me to this thing called Lieder.  One of her mantra’s was ‘Sing for the joy of singing’.  I never understood it at the time but I most certainly do now.  Then came David Mason and David Pollard, the latter introducing me to the idea that I could be a soloist and that I might consider retraining at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.  All these people have had a huge influence on the direction of my life and career.

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

I don’t feel my career has been that full of challenges in all honesty.  It’s not that I’ve taken the easy road, but that I have enjoyed myself in practically everything I do.  I try not to commit to work that I think I am unable to fulfil – something that is too high, too low, to heavy a voice type or whatever – and so far I think I have sung within my comfort zone. I have been surrounded by people who support what I do, especially my family, and this has made my life pretty easy, in the scheme of things.  I have no complaints.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

I have very warm memories of Vaughan Williams’ The Pilgrim’s Progress at Sadlers Wells with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Richard Hickox.  The cast was magnificent and made up pretty much of my friendliest colleagues.  I hugely enjoyed that experience.  I also treasured being Billy in Britten’s Billy Budd at Opera North last year, directed by my sister-in-law Orpha Phelan and conducted by Garry Walker.  That was also a perfect storm of artistic elements.  I try not to listen to my own recordings in general; I’m very glad other people enjoy them but it’s too much like listening to your own voice on your answer-phone message.

Which particular works do you think you perform best?

I like the ambiguity of this question because it implies that, although you might think you play or sing something especially well, others listening might shake their head in disbelief.  One’s own perception of a performance is often at odds with how others witness it.  Sometimes I have been in vocal difficulties, have managed to make it through a show on a wing and a prayer, and people have come up afterwards and said how wonderfully they thought I had performed.  On the other hand, times when I’ve thought I was in glorious voice have sometimes been met with a friendly nod.  I have no real answer to this question otherwise.

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

Repertoire choice is not always something over which one has final control.  In terms of recital programmes, I can offer promoters my current choice (and my Schubert cycle project at the moment is very palatable, it would seem) but even then music societies and festivals often have a particular theme or composer’s anniversary that they would like you to match and I do my best to accommodate that.  As for opera roles, I have very little choice in what is offered to me.  I can accept or decline the work; that’s where my power ends.

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

There are two recital venues I have sung in recently that have stood out in my mind as being exceptional and for different reasons.  One is the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, one of the wood-panelled, upstairs officers’ quarters that are used for recitals.  The acoustic was so generous to me as a singer, without being too washy, that I hardly felt I needed to sing at all.  The other is the small studio at the Crucible, Sheffield, home of Music-in-the-Round where I am singer in residence.  I love the intimacy of this venue and its re-invention of the concert space.  It re-defines one’s relationship with the audience.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

The 2014 Last Night of the Proms was very memorable although, when I think back on it, my time on stage was a bit of a blur.  What I remember most is finishing my last item, rushing back to my dressing room as the post-adrenalin hysteria began to kick in, changing out of my tails and into normal clothes and slipping back into the hall, high up in the audience, so that I could witness the last few pieces on the programme.  The atmosphere was electric.  I also vividly recall Peter Sellar’s semi-staging of Bach’s St John Passion at the Philharmonie in Berlin, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.  I didn’t have all that much to sing in fact but the experience of performing Christus right in the centre of that drama was overwhelmingly intense.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

This is a question I sometimes ask of conservatoire students – otherwise we may not always be sure what it is we are aiming for.  I’ve decided my goal is to be happy, to be able to work with wonderful musicians at a high level, enough to live comfortably but not so much that the stress becomes a burden.

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

All the predictable things, really: professionalism, which means decent preparation, time keeping (as in one’s diary rather than being on the beat!), being an open, supportive colleague, self-discipline, that sort of thing.  Those things form the basic grounding that I would hope any musician, any person, would value as being important.  The idea that being an extraordinary artist allows one to overlook these ‘because you’re special’ doesn’t really wash with me.  Other than that, for singers especially I would promote honesty of communication with one’s audience as being something worthwhile fostering.

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

Still working at the highest level I can manage but also ready for approaching retirement, whatever that may mean.  If that means teaching/coaching a little more, perhaps writing more music, then so be it.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

The knowledge that the people I love are safe, comfortable and happy.  A beautiful view on a glorious day with me striding through the middle of it.  I don’t even need to be with my loved ones, I am happy to be on my own in peace and quiet, but to know that they are content while I’m out and about puts me in my best head-space.

What is your most treasured possession?

I thought a lot about this question; in the end, I guess I’m not so keen on the idea of a possession being that important to me.  People are important but of course I do not own any of them.  So my answer has to be my voice.

What do you enjoy doing most?

This is a really hard question too; doing something for fun, like hiking a beautiful trail in wonderful scenery or doing professionally?  The most enjoyable thing?  I don’t know.  But It’s very likely to be singing, especially in rehearsals.

What is your present state of mind?

I’m content.  That’s what Billy says in Billy Budd and it struck quite a chord with me then.  “That’s all right, Sir, I’m content”.  Yup, that’s me right now.

RW: Here’s an extra question for fun.

If I weren’t a singer, what would I like to have been?

In my next life, I want to come back as a dancer.  I wish I could move like those amazing dancers, classical ballet, jazz, tap, latin, I don’t mind what.  And I wish I could lead my partner with confidence rather than have them tut, give up on me and just take over.  Happens every time!

RW: And another – is there anything you wish you could do better?

I can’t hula-hoop.  Every time I try, it has my wife in stitches of laughter.  It just drops off my waist and round my ankles.  Very embarrassing.  Also, when I try to swim front crawl but legs alone, with a float or whatever, I go backwards.  My wife finds this hysterically funny also.

Roderick Williams’ new CD, with Susie Allan, piano, ‘Celebrating English Song’ is available now on the SOMM label. Further information here

 

Roderick Williams encompasses a wide repertoire, from baroque to contemporary music, in the opera house, on the concert platform and in recital. He won the Singer of the Year Award in the 2016 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards and was awarded the OBE for services to music in June 2017.

He enjoys relationships with all the major UK opera houses and is particularly associated with the baritone roles of Mozart. He has also sung world premieres of operas by, among others, David Sawer, Sally Beamish, Michael van der Aa and Robert Saxton.

Roderick Williams has sung concert repertoire with all the BBC orchestras, and many other ensembles including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Philharmonia, London Sinfonietta, Manchester Camerata, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé, Britten Sinfonia, Bournemouth Symphony, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Russian National Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Academy of Ancient Music, The Sixteen, Le Concert Spirituel, Rias Kammerchor and Bach Collegium Japan. His many festival appearances include the BBC Proms, Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Aldeburgh, Bath and Melbourne.

In 2015 he sang Christus in Peter Sellars’ staging of the St John Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle – a performance now available on DVD.  He will sing this role again with both the Berlin Philharmonic and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in 2019.

Recent and future engagements include Oronte in Charpentier’s Medée, Toby Kramer in Van der Aa’s Sunken Garden and Don Alfonso/Così for English National Opera, the title role in Eugene Onegin for Garsington Opera, Van der Aa’s After Life at Melbourne State Theatre, Van der Aa’s Sunken Garden at Opera de Lyon, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and with Dallas Opera, the title role in Billy Budd for Opera North and at the Aldeburgh Festival, Papageno Die Zauberflöte and Ulisse  Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, a concert performance of Ned Keene/Peter Grimes with Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Last Night of the 2014 BBC Proms, as well as concert performances with many of the world’s leading orchestras and ensembles. He is also an accomplished recital artist who can be heard at venues and festivals including Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, LSO St Luke’s, the Perth Concert Hall, Oxford Lieder Festival, London Song Festival, the Musikverein, Vienna, the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and on Radio 3, where he has participated in Iain Burnside’s Voices programme.

His numerous recordings include Vaughan Williams, Berkeley and Britten operas for Chandos and an extensive repertoire of English song with pianist Iain Burnside for Naxos.

Roderick Williams is also a composer and has had works premiered at the Wigmore and Barbican Halls, the Purcell Room and live on national radio. He was Artistic Director of Leeds Lieder + in April 2016.

 

(Artist photo: Groves Artists)

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Arnold Schoenberg – Drei Klavierstücke, Op 11

Pierre Boulez – Troisième Sonate pour piano

Anton Webern – Variationen für Klavier op.27

Gilbert Amy – Sonate pour Piano

ZeD classics

It takes courage and chutzpah to play this kind of repertoire, but James Iman clearly relishes the special challenges of this music, both interpretative and technical. He’s a keen advocate of 20th and 21st century music and his enthusiasm and commitment to it is impressive (we are friends on Facebook and his posts about the repertoire he is working on – from the “great” works of the 20th century such as Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time to newly-minted music for piano – are intriguing and exciting, and have also introduced composers and music hitherto unknown to me). While some may regard this approach as “uncompromising”, I prefer to see James Iman as an intrepid musical adventurer. So first off, bravo to him for committing this music to disc. It is not performed that widely, programme planners and promoters regarding it as “too difficult” or “inaccessible” to sell to audiences (my view is that if this music is excluded from concert programmes, how on earth can audiences decide if it is too difficult or not…..?). And for the pianist, this music presents special challenges in the learning and practice process –  as James Iman says, the works on this disc “lack almost entirely the comfortable octaves, thirds, and sixths of common practice music…..[and] the conventional gestures pianists are comfortable playing, arpeggios, chords and inversions, etc.” In addition, Boulez and Amy pose unique problems in that “they offer freedom for the performer to order the material — though this is within the confines are certain rules set out by each composer. This means that a lot of time is spent reading the rules and searching the score to understand the basic ‘lay of the land’“.

Iman’s adventurous approach is amply reflected in this his debut disc: here is piano music by four composers all imbued with a boundless spirit of adventure, experimentation, and innovation. Schoenberg’s Op 11 is the jumping off point for this pianistic and compositional adventure: the Op 11 had a direct influence on Boulez’s Third Sonata. Meanwhile, Gilbert Amy wrote his own Piano Sonata in the years following the premiere of Boulez’s Third. Webern had a significant influence on the way Darmstadt composers used the twelve-tone note row: Gilbert Amy introduces certain stylistic features of the Variation’s into his Piano Sonata. In addition, Boulez and Amy also make use of non-conformist scores – printed in multiple colours with innovative bindings they are almost artworks in their own right.

For me what distinguishes all the music on this disc (and I freely admit that I do not hear this kind of repertoire that frequently) is its composers’ interest in exploring and utilising the piano’s timbre and its percussive qualities – and this pianist’s acute response to this. It is not “tuneful” nor melodic music; rather it reveals piquant juxtapositions of sounds, individual notes, unexpected intervallic relationships, repeated motifs, rhythmic clusters, fermatas and silences. It’s all exceptionally well-executed, Iman’s playing admirably tempered to the resonances and micro nuances of this music, which is mirrored in the quality of the recording. His performance of the Boulez Third Sonata equals Maurizio Pollini’s animated performance of the Second Sonata at the Royal Festival Hall back in 2011. Few can rise to the challenge of this music and meet it head on with conviction, musicality, and a supreme alertness to its myriad details and quirks: James Iman more than achieves this. Indeed, throughout the album one has a very clear sense of his total commitment to this music, and also how comfortable he feels in this repertoire.

To those who claim this music lacks emotion, I would direct you straight to Schoenberg’s Op 11, played here not only with precise attention to detail, sonic clarity and rhythmic vitality but also a profound sensitivity to this music’s intensity, its fleeting writing and ambiguous emotional landscapes.

It’s no easy thing to be a specialist in 20th and 21st century music. As a performer the music itself is taxing. It’s also difficult to overcome the intensely visceral reactions people can have (the invective that can be deployed is occasionally overwhelming!).

James Iman

Recommended

Meet the Artist – James Iman

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Guest post by Tara Yonder

All it took was one comment. From someone whom I previously regarded as a friend but later realised was in fact a “frenemy”. I always knew that Wagner would tear us apart, to misquote the song by Joy Division. That composer above all others seems to provoke the most extreme reactions, divides people down party lines and creates a polarity of opinion akin to the binary contretemps one sees on Twitter virtually ever day: if you don’t agree with me (about Wagner) you are against me. He’s the Marmite composer.

“Perhaps you are growing up” said the Frenemy in response to my posting a picture of the score of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, transcribed for piano by the late great Glenn Gould. I’d been meaning to learn the piece for some years, having first heard it on the soundtrack to the film ‘A Dangerous Method’, and I’d managed to find a score of the Gould transcription in Foyles (which has an excellent sheet music department). I was looking forward to getting my fingers on it and to treating it as a long-term project (it’s about 16 pages long).

“Perhaps you are growing up“. The primary inference is that Wagner is for grown ups, for “proper” mature connoisseurs of art music. This of course is ridiculous. Music should, and does, cross generations and age groups. I have friends in their 20s and 30s who adore Wagner – and friends in their 70s who do not. It reminded me of a comment from a friend a few years ago, “Did you start to like classical music when you reached your 40s?”, thereby immediately reinforcing the common misconception that classical music is only for old people. No, I replied, I’ve always liked classical music. I grew up with classical music, I cut my eager concert-going teeth on the CBSO’s thrilling concerts at Birmingham Old Town Hall under the baton of Louis Fremaux and later a young, rookie conductor with wild tousled curls…..

What stung more was the Frenemy’s patronising tone, all too evident even in an impersonal email, like some elderly uncle from the 1950s chiding a gauche youngster.  Because it was not the first time this person had taken this tone with me – commenting negatively on my writing, nitpicking my reviews, criticising my proof-reading skills (which was pretty rich coming from someone whose own emails were regularly sprinkled with literals and spelling errors), even once telling me I needed to be “taken down a peg or two“, sneering at my liking for certain concert pianists, describing one of them as “the emperor’s new clothes” without actually having heard said artist in a live concert……(you can hear the pianist in question playing Schumann at the end of this article – it brings me to the brink of tears).

***

I caught sight of the score of the Siegfried Idyll on the lid of the piano and felt the hurt, the insult welling up inside me again. Tinged with anger too, because why shouldn’t I change my mind about a composer? Why shouldn’t my tastes shift and alter? Such things are not set in stone, and it’s certainly not about “growing up” – I am already a fully-fledged grown up, I’ve had a mortgage and a “family car”. It’s about changing taste, and exploring the rich and varied repertoire, and finding music to play which will challenge me as well as giving me pleasure.

But the music was ruined for me. I couldn’t play it, couldn’t even lift my hands to the piano to play the opening phrase – so poignantly beautiful, so delicately romantic. So I shoved it right at the back of my bookcase, returned to practising Chopin’s First Ballade and Schumann’s Romance in C, and opened Ravel’s Miroirs beside the piano, with the intention of tackling Oiseaux Tristes.

All of this is uncomfortably redolent of a comment I once received via Twitter in response to my early explorations of a late sonata by Schubert. Someone had the temerity to suggest that, as a non-professional pianist, I was not “worthy” of this music. It’s an attitude I’ve encountered occasionally amongst professional pianists, that certain repertoire should be “off limits” to amateurs (notably Gaspard de la Nuit and Islamey). To which I assert, the music was written to be played – whether to a full house at Carnegie Hall or at home in the privacy of one’s living room. Brilliantly or badly, we should be playing this fantastic repertoire we as pianists are so lucky to have.

One day, when the hurt has healed, I’ll return to the Siegfried Idyll. Meanwhile, I’ll take refuge in my beloved Schubert, and Schumann and Chopin. If the Frenemy reads this, I suspect he would accuse me of being “over-sensitive” or of having “a sense of humour failure”. But I’m a writer, and a musician, and sensitivity is woven into every fibre of my being. And I’m glad it is, because that sensitivity allows me to shape the music I play, to linger over a piquant harmony or interesting intervallic relationship, to sculpt and contour a phrase, and to remain alert to the micro-nuances and shifting emotional landscapes of the music I love to play and listen to.

 

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In this guest post Roman Rabinovich explores the interrelationship between the visual and performing arts and composition

Ever since I was a kid I have loved creating things, whether sculptures out of randomly found objects and dirt (I didn’t yet know about Robert Rauschenberg), improvising little character pieces on the piano, or compulsively drawing my family members and friends. It seemed at first that these were unrelated and separate activities, but I soon realised that they all came from the same impulse – the need to create my own emotional world in which I could freely express myself. I imagine that most kids are like this, but sadly many stop as they grow older.

I come from a family of musicians and piano playing was the only activity for which I had proper teachers, so I would say I’m primarily a pianist who also paints and composes. That is not to say that I’m less serious about painting and writing music. In fact, I had a difficult time deciding what I would do when I grew up. I’m happy I didn’t have to choose.

Performing and composing are two seemingly different processes. We perform music that composers notate with black dots on the page. However, these black dots are not music. Music emerges only when a performer transforms notation into real sound. A performer’s goal is to get into the composer’s world and mind, similar to an actor who seeks to inhabit a character role. We are taught to analyse a composer’s every mark with uncompromising detail and base our interpretation on the clues the composer leaves us in the score. But just following what’s written in the score is not enough. A compelling performance breathes life into and shines new light on a work. In this sense, performance becomes an act of creation. The process begins with imagining the sound in one’s mind. Fingers are the last factor. As András Schiff said, “fingers are just the soldiers, the General is the mind”.

In composition, on the other hand, there are no instructions; the possibilities are endless. There are rules of counterpoint, voice-leading and form, but the whole “game” is about creating one’s own rules and then breaking them. Every piece follows a different process and it has its own inner logic so there are no shortcuts. Sometimes the process is quick and smooth but more often it is painfully slow and daunting. I feel that it is quite unproductive to impose ideas on a piece. It has to unfold naturally and it takes time for the narrative to unveil itself. When in a state of flow, it feels like a piece writes itself, and as a composer I just listen to what it has to say.

Composing helps me understand how the great masterpieces were crafted. Through this process I also learn so much about myself. I love making these “sound sculptures” and I love the struggle it takes to create art: to be completely lost and not know how to proceed; to try out different options before gradually landing on the right solution. It is a fun way to spend a day. When I wake up, the first thing I do is go straight to the piano. It is a productive time to improvise and explore musical ideas while the brain and the body wake up. There is no inhibition, expectation, nor doubt yet. Often after a few hours of work I hit a wall and it is very helpful to take a walk. Somehow things come into focus when you are outside and moving. No wonder most composers were avid walkers.

I have always been fascinated with painting because, unlike music, it is permanent. The main difference between visual art and music is the perception of time. Music unfolds in real time. When you experience a live concert and the last chord ends, that’s it, it will only remain in your memory. With visual art you take time to absorb it. You can go away, come back and the painting will still be there, unchanged. You change; the painting doesn’t. Taking time is part of your experiencing it. One of my favourite things is to look at a painting, analyse it, and try to figure out how a great master organised two-dimensional space and made it look three-dimensional. In the last few years I’ve been making images on my iPad. It’s a new and exciting medium, and it works differently from paints on a canvas, because you are drawing with light. It is a completely different sensation. When you are drawing on paper or painting on canvas there is a limit to the number of layers before it starts to look overdone. In a similar way, a musical passage can be out of balance if there are too many notes in a chord and all the notes are played with the same volume, making it difficult for the listener to know what to listen for. With digital painting, you have unlimited layers and textures at your disposal.

Just like music, painting is about space and spatial relationships. Our perception of sound changes in relation to the space we are in. We have a visceral reaction to it. The same music will be perceived entirely differently depending on the venue in which it is performed – a small chapel will sound worlds apart from a 3,000-seat hall. Similarly, a painting’s effect is totally dependent on the space, lighting and framing around it.

Music is an abstract language and most of the time it doesn’t need any help from other art forms. However, sometimes I find it useful to visualise structures in music, especially if it is a long and complex piece. For example, when one plays a Bach fugue, one can envision a great cathedral and observe it from the bottom to the top. It all starts with one brick at a time, as with one voice at the beginning of a fugue, and slowly, layer by layer, develops into a marvellous structure. Similarly to decorative art, which has threads or visual motives, composers like to develop pieces from small and simple cells.

In my piece ‘Memory Box’, a suite of six miniatures which I performed at my recent Wigmore Hall recital, music and art merged. The opening movement, “Forgotten dreams”, is based on one of my oil paintings, and part of a series called Memory Box. My piano piece came out of the same creative impulse as these paintings – they are cousins, if you will. In this work I explored the theme of dreams, fantasies and the subconscious. Both the music and the painting are quite fragmented. They are full of gestures and bits and pieces that never seem to resolve and evoke a dream-like state.

Despite the discipline and the daily work routine, it is important for me that whatever I create comes from a place of spontaneity and playfulness. We must not forget to have fun and stay curious. For me, the initial impulse in a creative act has to be instinctive, whether it is improvising or just throwing colours at a canvas. I want to see how the art materials respond, or how the notes react. I can edit things later, but I try to compose with no concrete thoughts – they are often distracting and limit the imagination. I like to keep the integrity of this initial impulse as much as possible. We live in a crazy world full of distractions and it is rare to have a moment of quiet, a moment of being fully present. Art is a very powerful thing and it can give these moments, this sense of purpose to anyone at anytime.

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Roman Rabinovich was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; raised in Israel; and is now based in the USA. A multifaceted musician, praised by the New York Times for his “uncommon sensitivity and feeling”, Rabinovich is also a composer and visual artist, and often creates artwork to enhance his musical performances.

Full details at: www.romanrabinovich.net

Meet the Artist……Roman Rabinovich