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Whether or not to meticulously observe the exposition repeat in Schubert’s final sonata, the D960 in B-flat major, is a question which continues to trouble pianists, musicologists and listeners alike. The debate concerns aspects such as authenticity, personal taste, prevailing musical fashion, and timing. It has cropped up the press this autumn as British pianist Paul Lewis completes his cycle of Schubert’s sonatas, and has exercised myself, colleagues and other musical friends in discussion.

The opening bars of the first movement of Schubert's Sonata in B-flat Major D960
The opening bars of the first movement of Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat Major D960

When I first started learning the D960, the day my new piano arrived from Chappells in January 2007, I did not doubt the correctness of adhering to the score and repeating the exposition. Throughout my musical studies, I had been taught to trust the composer’s intentions, that composers know what they are doing, and that repeats are there for a reason.

In Baroque repertoire, sectional repeats are commonplace, often used to reinforce material and to offer soloist and/or ensemble the opportunity for some interesting extemporisation or ornamentation in the repeated material. At a recent harpsichord masterclass I attended at Handel’s House with some of my students and those of a teaching colleague, the harpsichordist, Claire Williams, encouraged students to experiment with different effects in repeats, such as using the upper manual of the harpsichord, or employing a lighter touch. Bach and his contemporaries would have expected and encouraged it.

In the piano sonatas of Mozart, for example, a repeat of the exposition in the first movement is often a reinforcing device, a reminder that this is a sonata, in Sonata Form (Exposition, Development, Recapitulation). And Mozart would have expected his keyboard player to offer some extemporisation – changes in dynamics, ornamentation and so forth – in a repeat. As musicologist, pianist and noted Mozart expert Robert Levin states:

“If you take a repeat, for instance, heaven forefend you should play exactly the same way you did before. It’s like telling somebody, ‘Look, if you could go back five years and relive your life would you change anything?’

Some people might say, ‘Nah, I think I basically did what I wanted to do,’ but a lot of people would say, ‘Oh boy. I can name you a dozen things that I would done differently.’ A piece of music is an almost cinematic opportunity to revisit a situation and reinterpret it.”

In a repeat of the exposition, the musical experience does not stay the same – there can never be a “straight repeat” because we are human and do not seek to replicate MIDI recordings – but the repeat of the same material helps the listener to assimilate the musical ideas expressed in the composition, and makes it easier to comprehend the structure of the piece.

In Schubert’s last sonatas, the repeat sign is written for an exceedingly long exposition, while the material of the exposition is repeated a third time in the recapitulation with little alteration. This has led some pianists to omit the exposition repeat in performance. But in the last Sonata (and, indeed in the penultimate Sonata, D959 in A), the first ending of the exposition contains unique material, leading the music back to the movement’s opening. If the music is performed without the repeat, this material is missed out completely as it does not appear in the second ending of the exposition (if one does not observe the repeat, one goes straight to the second time bar and thence to the development section). These bars contain striking material, which does not appear anywhere else in the piece, and is significantly different from the second ending. When the exposition ends a second time, Schubert introduces an extraordinary bridging section, three ethereal chords a single bar, which seem to come from somewhere else completely, and lead the music into darker, minor-key territory.

The first and second time bars at the end of the exposition
The first and second time bars at the end of the exposition

British-Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff feels that the omission of the exposition repeat is as “the amputation of a limb” (Schiff, “Schubert’s Piano Sonatas”), while Alfred Brendel declares the exposition repeats in the final two sonatas to be “unimportant”, that the transitional bars in the D960 are too unconnected to the rest of the movement, and that their omission actually contributes to the coherence of the piece. Brendel also states that “repeat marks must not be taken as orders to be automatically obeyed, as if the repeatable section were written out by the composer.” (“Schubert’s Last Sonatas: An Exchange”; Frisch and Brendel). But the last two sonatas have more than mere “repeat marks”: the bars of music specifically written out by the composer suggest that Schubert requires the repeat to be observed.

Personally, I have never doubted the inclusion of the exposition repeat, and it irritates me when I hear performances, either live or on disc, which omit it.

In reading reviews of live performances of Schubert’s last three sonatas, it strikes me that many pianists omit the exposition repeat/s simply to save time. Most concerts last around 90 minutes (plus interval); any longer and the audience starts to get restless, worrying about last trains etc. Critics, who praise the omission of the exposition repeat, are similarly impatient, presumably keen to get out of the Wigmore and into the pub before last orders! Played in its entirety, with all repeats intact (including in the third movement Scherzo), the D960 comes in at around 40 minutes.

Another issue which relates to this is the tempo of the first movement. It is marked Molto Moderato, and in some pianists’ hands (Richter), this can verge on Adagio! Moderato means “not rushing or dragging”, and Schubert also used the German term mässig, implying the calm flow of a measured allegro. A quick glance through Spotify of recordings of this work reveals that most versions which include the repeat come in at around 20 minutes; Richter’s is 25 minutes, which is verging on self-indulgent, while Pollini’s is 18 minutes. At this length, the opening movement of the D960 is as long as an entire sonata by Haydn or Beethoven.

It is customary to programme Schubert’s last three sonatas together, just as Beethoven’s last three are, to stress the interrelations between the three. The D958 and D959 are played in the first half of a concert, and the D960 after the interval. It can feel like a long haul for the audience, and one of the solutions to this problem is to shorten the programme by omitting repeats, mainly those of the opening movements’ expositions. However, it irks me when I read reviews of pianists such as Paul Lewis (a protégé of Brendel), who is completing his survey of Schubert’s piano and lieder music with performances of the final three sonatas, in which critics praise the omission of the repeat without outlining at least a little of the background to this ongoing debate. I feel that without the exposition repeat the audience is cheated of the opportunity to experience Schubert’s compositional intent, and the drama, which comes from the tension between the contrasting harmonies in the exposition, and the transition between exposition and development, is lost.

To my mind, a well-played opening movement of the D960, with repeat, need not feel unnecessarily long. The music has an spaciousness (its key and scale always calls to mind, for me, a great river charting its final course towards the sea) which is offset by a considered interpretation of the Molto Moderato marking. I particularly like Pires and Uchida in this work. I have enjoyed all three sonatas in a single concert, or the D960 on its own, preceded by one of the D899 Impromptus in a lunchtime recital at the Wigmore (Andreas Haefliger – repeat omitted!). Both programmes work equally well.

Here is Maria Joao Pires

Maria João Pires – Schubert : Piano Sonata No.21 in B flat major D960 : I Molto moderato

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Tra Nguyen

Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?

I was growing up in Hanoi right after the war so taking up piano was not exactly my conscious decision, given the trying circumstances that we were all facing.  My father, though, was a violinist, a graduate from the Moscow Conservatory, had noticed that I had some musical abilities and was very persistent that I would take up an instrument. After my refusal to play the violin (too difficult !), he miraculously found a second-hand piano that I was much more happy to get on with. My father certainly had ignited the love for music that has become my close companion since.

Who or what were the most important influences on your playing?

I do find that most things are closely interconnected: human voice plays a substantial part in my understanding of sound – innate and comparative; literature helps me to understand the psychological architecture and the narrative sense of a music composition; visual arts inspire me to explore different spectrums and shapes of sound and, more importantly, the relationships with people in my life teach me to understand the emotional meaning of all the above.

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

The greatest challenge so far is to view what I love doing most as a career. I constantly struggle with this concept since certain things that are considered to be good for the ‘career’ nowadays can kill true creativity. We are living in an era where most things are expected or forced to happen instantly while the truth is ars longa, vita brevis.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?

I don’t have one that I am totally happy with – but when it happens that the music directs me, draws out unexpected things in concerts or in the recording studio, it feels quite good!

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?

As long as there is an audience who wants  to listen, am in it.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

I love to play many things (not always from the solo repertoire) but performing the ‘Andante’ from Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto brings a deep sense of wonder. It feels very special to be a living part of such an ethereal sound world, breathing and creating it on spot with other musicians.

I listen all the time so on top of a very long list, can I have more Lully and Medtner’s songs?

Who are your favourite musicians?

There are so many musicians that I admire: Edwin Fischer, Clara Haskil, Henrich Neuhaus, Carlos Kleiber, Kathleen Ferrier are the first ones that came to mind. When you listen to these performers, music is what you hear first, not the “performance” nor “interpretation”.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

There are two: the first one is listening to Richter playing a Bach recital by candlelight in Moscow when I was a child. Time simply stopped. I hadn’t known until then that  such beauty existed.

Second is witnessing Sir Colin Davis conducting Sibelius Fifth Symphony in London:- in the finale, just a few seconds before the famous climax reached its height, he stepped back, stopped conducting altogether and let the musicians continue by themselves. That was a great gesture of trust and the result was that as if the music was set to be free, it  flew up and exploded into a firework of sounds and emotions – very moving.

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

For learning as well as performing: listen with your mind but see with your heart.

If you are a pianist, go out and make music with your fellow musicians: learning Schubert’s Winterreise is as important as learning Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier!

What are you working on at the moment?

A selection of piano sonatas for my upcoming recital at the Wigmore Hall:

Clementi Sonata in f sharp minor op.25 no.5

Schubert Sonata D664

Scriabin Sonata no.6 op.62

Chopin b minor sonata op.58

What is your most treasured possession?

My windows. I live in a small place but it is quite high so the far-reaching view keeps things in different prospective. The ever-changing sky accompanied by London’s diverse rhythm is the most valuable live painting that I could ever own.

Tra Nguyen is making her Wigmore debut on 16th December 2012.  For more information and tickets please visit the Wigmore Hall website

Tra plays Annäherung (Reconciliation) from ‘Frühlingsboten’ (Spring Harbinger) op.55, by Joachim Raff

British-Vietnamese Tra Nguyen gave her first concert when she was ten, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K488 with the Hanoi Conservatory Orchestra. Since then she has continued to engage audiences worldwide. Past and future performances include Queen Elizabeth Hall, Tokyo Opera City, Hong Kong City Recital Hall and Wigmore Hall amongst others. Her imaginative programming balances core repertoire and lesser-known music, winning critical praises. Her discography introduces many world première recordings of neglected music. Her most recent recordings of the piano music of Joachim Raff were chosen as Album of the Week by the Independent in March 2010 and in April 2012.

Tra studied with Lev Naumov at the Moscow Conservatory and with Christopher Elton at the Royal Academy of Music.

www.tranguyen.org

Interview date: December 2012

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***UPDATE*** Loving Miss Hatto will be broadcast on the BBC on 23rd December 2012

The name Joyce Hatto has been in the news again this week, as the BBC announced it will be making a TV film about her, to be shot on location in Dublin. Starring Alfred Molina and Francesca Annis, Loving Miss Hatto is scripted by British comedienne and writer, Victoria Wood, which immediately set alarm bells ringing in my head and that of a pianist friend: “It will be sentimental!” he declared. “It will be Joyce’s story told through the medium of ‘Acorn Antiques'”, I replied. All this remains to be seen until the film is broadcast….

It was perhaps inevitable that someone, somewhere would eventually pick up the Joyce Hatto story and run with it. In an unremarkable town in Hertfordshire, an astonishing fraud was born out of passion and ambition, a CD recording scam so jaw-droppingly artful it rocked the polite world of classical music, and provoked a firestorm of talk in internet forums and chat rooms around the world.

When the story broke early in 2007, I recall discussing it with aforementioned friend. I remember finding the story of Joyce Hatto and her devoted husband William ‘Barry’ Barrington-Coupe rather touching: a supreme act of love for his terminally ill wife. The whole story turned out to be a tale of plagiarism on a grand scale, a scheme so clever it left the musical establishment questioning everything they knew. It was quite probable that Joyce had colluded with Barry in the scam.

But why? Was it really an act of love, or was it to cock a massive snook at the stuffy, pompous classical music world and to raise two fingers to the critics who had panned Joyce’s last recitals, given when she was said to be sick with the cancer which eventually killed her (one critic said of her: “it was impolite to look ill” and, after adverse comments were made about her appearance on stage, she abandoned performing altogether in the 1970s)?

When her recordings started to appear on CD, critics praised them to the rafters, eulogising over her skill, her range, her technical prowess, and describing her variously as “the indomitable champion of Liszt” (Daily Telegraph), and a pianist with a broad and rich repertoire not seen since Busoni. The music critic of the Boston Globe declared her “the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of.” Clearly, in the years since she retired from the concert platform, she had been working hard producing wondrous recordings, with the help of her husband, Barry, who owned the Concert Artists label. Her output was as astonishing as the wide range of her repertoire. She was compared to some of the greatest pianists of all time, such as Claudio Arrau, Dinu Lipatti and Sviatoslav Richter.

Her recordings were still receiving glowing plaudits when she died in 2006, but there were detractors too, as pianophiles in internet chat rooms around the globe gathered to discuss her oeuvre. How was it possible that every single CD was perfection? Was she really such an exceptional pianist, who could turn her hand to anything with apparent ease? A number of people began to suspect they might be prey to some sort of hoax, but when critic Jeremy Nicholas, who had staked his reputation on Joyce Hatto, made an open challenge in Gramophone magazine to anyone who had evidence of fakery to present it in a court of law, no one came forward. He had reckoned without the technology of iTunes…..

The rest, as they say, is history. After her recording of Liszt’s ‘Transcendental Studies’ was found to have been manipulated and “doctored”, more recordings were examined, and evidence of the forgery became clear: put simply, Barry had been ripping off recordings of other pianists – Lazlo Simon, Marc-André Hamelin, Ingrid Haebler to name a few – and, with a little clever technological tweaking, passing them off as Joyce’s. Gramophone broke the story in February 2007, and the furore quickly earned the nickname ‘Hattogate’.

I started to collect articles and other snippets and morsels about Joyce with the intention of writing a short story or novella about her. The story of her life, her marriage to Barry, the scam itself seemed at once the stuff of fantasy – and self-delusion – and proof that truth is stranger than fiction. In reality, she probably wasn’t that great a pianist: there is very little biographical and documentary information about her, but patchy reviews from the 1950s, when she married Barry, reveal something about the true nature of her playing and her pianistic personality. It also emerged that statements about Joyce’s family were untrue, and that Barry had spent a year in prison in 1966 for wrongful tax submissions.

Did the recording scam start out as a game, a bit of fun that got out of hand? Or was there more malign intent on the part of Joyce and Barry to hoodwink the music press? It’s unlikely we’ll ever know for sure as Barry maintains tight-lipped on the subject. The only thing he has stated, and restated, is that he did it for love.

And what of the artists whose recordings were plagiarised? Some have enjoyed renowned acclaim and recognition as a consequence, proving that the scam has had a curiously double-edged effect. A number of the artists who were involved could call for criminal charges to be brought against Barry, but it seems that quite a few people just feel sorry for him.

It’s a peculiarly English tale, in my view: the domestic setting, the eccentric characters, the lame attempts to invent orchestras with which Joyce was said to perform (such as the National Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra). And fakery like this is nothing new: remember the Hitler diaries, or Van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers? The acclaimed author William Boyd invented an artist, Nat Tate, wrote a biography for him, and even produced some pictures by him (in fact, Boyd’s own doodles). I suspect people do this simply because they can (the technology Barry used to fake Joyce’s recordings was not particularly complicated), and there’s a certain amount of delicious schadenfreude to be gained in sitting back and waiting for the reaction of the critics and the so-called ‘experts’. I admit I rather enjoyed it too.

Let us hope that the film of Joyce Hatto’s life is balanced, sympathetic and unsentimental. The story certainly has plenty of scope for comedy, but I would hate to think the main players were turned into figures of fun as a result. Meanwhile, it’s still possible to find a handful of Joyce’s recordings on eBay.

These are my personal thoughts on ‘Hattogate’, and do no reflect the views of anyone else or any music publications. This post was first published in spring 2012.

Trailer of forthcoming BBC tv dramatisation:

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Claudio Monteverdi

The Vespers of the Blessed Virgin – Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Saturday 8th December 2012, Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington

Twickenham Choral Society & Brandenberg Baroque Soloists

Sopranos: Philippa Boyle & Grace Davidson

Tenors: Peter Morton & David Webb

Basses: Lukas Kargl & Charles Rice

Conductor: Christopher Herrick

Twickenham Choral Society, with the Brandenberg Baroque Soloists, and six solo singers, gave an enjoyable and very committed performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers to a sold out Landmark Arts Centre in Teddington.

Contrary to popular musical myth, Monteverdi did not write the Vespers especially for St Mark’s in Venice, though they may have been performed there. Nor were they specifically an ‘audition piece’ for the post of maestro di cappella. The work may have been written for wedding festivities in the church of St Andrea, Mantua, for the text contains the sensuous love poetry drawn from the Song of Solomon. The birth of the composer’s daughter, whose namesake was that of the Blessed Virgin, may also have been a motivation for the composition. Whatever the origins of the work’s composition, it is Monteverdi’s first sacred work. Published in Venice in 1610, the work is monumental in scale, requiring a choir large enough to cover up to 10 vocal parts in some movements, and split into separate choirs in others. The choir is also required to accompany several soloists.

Vespers were recited or sung in the evening, and the text of Monteverdi’s vespers adheres to the traditional order of the office of Vespers: it includes recitation of psalms, the singing of the Marian office hymn Ave Maris stella, and culminates in a Magnificat (the Song of Mary). The psalm settings are those used for the feast days of Mary and other female saints. In addition to these standard movements, Monteverdi also included motets for one, two, three and six voices, and an instrumental sonata movement into which the chant Sancta Maria ora pro nobis is skillfully woven. The work has become one of the most popular from this period of late Renaissance/early Baroque music, not least because it combines the profundity of the liturgy with secular music, and presents an array of musical forms – sonata, hymn, motet and psalm – without comprising the scale or cohesiveness of the complete work.

The venue for the concert, The Landmark in Teddington, a deconsecrated church turned arts centre, was perfect for this music in both atmosphere and acoustic, and there were times, particularly in the Concerto: Audi coelum, a tenor duet with “echoes” and choir, during which one of the tenors sang the echoes from the back of the apse, to the accompaniment of theorbo, when we might have been in San Marco, Venice 400 years ago.

The choir were joined by the Brandenberg Baroque Soloists, a new orchestra which plays period instruments, including three sackbuts, chamber organ, Baroque cornetti and theorbo. They provided an authentic accompaniment, underpinning the singing with devices distinct from this period such as ground basses, drones, and some fine ostinato ‘cello lines.

Founded in 1921, Twickenham Choral Society is an amateur vocal ensemble, which draws its membership from a wide area of west London, and has a proud tradition of performing a broad repertoire from every era. They rose to the many challenges of Monteverdi’s music and text (it is isn’t always easy to sing well in Latin) to give a highly committed performance which combined great clarity of diction and attention to detail, dynamic shading and colour, and at times deep emotion and drama. The polyphony and counterpoint were handled with aplomb, allowing us to enjoy the many strands of Monteverdi’s writing, and the choral set pieces were complemented by intimate writing for solo voices, accompanied by a single instrument, such as theorbo or ‘cello, or the choir. The first half closed with a rousing Psalm 147: Lauda Jerusalem, which shone with the celebratory joy implicit in the text.

This was an impressive and meticulously prepared performance, brought together under the skillful baton of conductor Christopher Herrick, who has been working with Twickenham Choral Society since 1974. I look forward to further performances by the society.

For further information about forthcoming concerts, please visit www.twickenhamchoral.org.uk

Brandenberg Baroque Soloists