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An exhibition at The Georgian House in Edinburgh, opening in June, will tell the remarkable story of Felix Yaniewicz (1762-1848), a celebrated Polish-Lithuanian violinist and composer, who settled in Scotland and co-founded the first Edinburgh music festival in 1815. Alongside the exhibition, there will be a programme of talks, lecture-recitals and musical performances.

Josie Dixon, Yaniewicz’s great-great-great-great-granddaughter and founder of The Friends of Felix Yaniewicz, says: ‘Putting this exhibition together has illuminated so many aspects of Yaniewicz’s colourful story, featuring a Polish King, his encounter with Mozart in Vienna, escape from the French Revolution and a lost Stradivarius. We are thrilled to be sharing with the public for the first time a remarkable collection of heirlooms reflecting his life and career, in celebration of his musical legacy in Scotland.’

After a cosmopolitan career in Europe, Felix Yaniewicz arrived in London around 1790 and eventually made his way to Edinburgh where he lived from 1815 until his death in 1848. It was the discovery and restoration of a historic square piano bearing his signature that led to new research on his career and a project to celebrate his role in Scotland’s musical culture.

The Yaniewicz & Green square piano was the subject of a crowdfunding campaign in 2021, in partnership with the Scottish Polish community, with donations from all over Britain, Poland, Germany, Norway, France, Italy, Switzerland and the USA. Its arrival in Scotland last year was celebrated with two recitals hosted by the Polish Consulate in Edinburgh. The exhibition at The Georgian House will be the first opportunity for this beautiful instrument to be seen in public.

The exhibition ‘Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz’ brings together a unique collection of musical instruments, portraits, manuscripts, silver and gold personal possessions, letters and autographs, many of them passed down the generations in his surviving family, and almost none of them seen in public before. Together, these will offer fascinating insights into the career of this charismatic performer, composer, impresario and musical entrepreneur, who left a lasting mark on Scottish musical culture.

This exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

Barbara Schabowska, Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, says: ‘The figure of Felix Yaniewicz, an internationally renowned Polish-Lithuanian violin virtuoso, is a perfect example of how remarkably universal the language of music is. The exhibition, celebrating his fascinating travel-filled life, is a chance to initiate transnational dialogue – not only between Scotland and Poland, but also with everybody who finds themselves moved by Yaniewicz’s music.’

The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of events in Edinburgh, including illustrated talks, lecture-recitals and musical performances at the Georgian House, and an ‘in conversation’ event at Ghillie Dhu with critically-acclaimed writer and broadcaster Armando Iannucci on music, migration and Scotland.

The exhibition ‘Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz’, hosted by National Trust for Scotland and organised in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, takes place at the Georgian House, Edinburgh, from 25 June until 22 October 2022.

Events

Plus a special event for our festival weekend, at Ghillie Dhu:

Armando Iannucci
Account of the first Edinburgh Music Festival
Yaniewicz & Green square piano
Felix Yaniewicz
Yaniewicz & Green square piano

yaniewicz.org

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Birmingham International Piano Competition (BIPC) is to make a welcome return after a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic. Under the proud custodianship of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC), part of Birmingham City University, Head of the Department of Keyboard Studies, Professor John Thwaites, will act as Artistic Director, with the initial rounds taking place in June and grand Final open to the public at the Bradshaw Hall on Sunday 3rd July 2022.

The Bradshaw Hall

Rejoicing in the revival of this important annual performance platform and contest for the brightest keyboard stars of the future, the City can continue to celebrate the long-cherished place it has occupied for so many years within the cultural life of Birmingham.

Professor Thwaites said, “We have designed BIPC 2022 to offer a wonderful opportunity to a wide variety of international artists currently living in the UK. The entrance fee is modest, we are allowing Free Choice programming, and all our live rounds take place in the Conservatoire’s flagship concert venue, Bradshaw Hall.”

With state-of-the art performance facilities, including the Conservatoire’s exceptional fleet of concert grand pianos, the Bradshaw Hall provides an ideal venue for the Competition heats and the Final.

“My hope is that those who travel to Birmingham will feel that the Competition has done everything possible to help them play at their best and to be rewarded accordingly”, added John Thwaites.

Professor John Thwaites

Proud Birmingham history

The BIPC has a legacy going back to 1979 when it was founded by and later named after, Gladys Lily Brant, who administered the Competition in the city for nearly two decades. The administration then passed to Town Hall/Symphony Hall and in 2017 the event was rebranded as Birmingham International Piano Competition before being inherited by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, part of Birmingham City University, in November 2021. Previous winners of the BIPC can be found on the BIPC website, and include Mark Bebbington and Di Xiao, both of whom are on the RBC piano faculty.

Exciting future development

Now, as one of the foremost international performance platforms, and with a designated Administrative Director, Ella Lee, in place, this stellar event continues to provide young pianists aged from 18 to 28 an opportunity to further their career and perform in a world-class venue.

“Going forward, I feel the competition will really embody exactly what the Conservatoire is about: a unique atmosphere that challenges everyone to play at their very best, whilst never losing the wonderful undercurrent of support and community”, said Ella Lee. “It seemed an only natural fit for the Competition’s new home to be Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, given that it plays a major role in Birmingham’s musical landscape, and the Bradshaw Hall has already welcomed a myriad of world-class artists in the few short years since its opening. Ultimately, we are very happy to be providing further opportunity for young pianists to be heard, and to welcome new faces to RBC.”

2022 Competition

Over the course of two preliminary rounds – this year taking place on 23 and 24 June – four outstanding pianists will be chosen for the Final, to be held on 3 July, in which they will each perform a forty-minute recital in front of a public audience.

The international jury is to be drawn from across the music industry and will include Katya Apekisheva, Philip Fisher and Carole Presland.

BIPC programme and how to attend

Bradshaw Hall, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 200 Jennens Road B4 7XR

23 June – preliminary heat (open to the public)

24 June – preliminary heat (open to the public)

3 July, 14:30 – Final (open to the public)

Tickets will be available on the door, and in advance via the website: www.bipcomp.co.uk

Previous winners www.bipcomp.co.uk/recent-winners.html

The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire www.bcu.ac.uk/conservatoire

Source: press release

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

My primary influences are my Catholic faith and the art and folk music of the Slovacko area of South Moravia, to which I am connected through both my parents.

Teachers: the composer Miloslav Ištvan (with whom I studied at the Janáček Academy in Brno) and the way of life of St. Francis of Assisi,

From the European music tradition: Gregorian chant, Moravian folk music, the late orchestral works of Antonín Dvořák and the late works of Leoš Janáček.

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

The greatest challenge in my career has been (and continues to be) exploring the possibilities of unison technique since the end of the 1990s. It has also been a challenge to hide away and completely concentrate on composing to the best of my ability and as much as my own character, my family life and my teaching profession allow.

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

Without a doubt a most special experience for me was my collaboration for over 30 years with the Schubert Ensemble – both with the Ensemble as a whole and with its individual members. This collaboration brought me an independence from the music life of Brno; it is a very important thing in a composer´s life to be independent of one’s position in one’s own birthplace.

I should also mention an important collaboration in Brno throughout my whole working life with the excellent percussionist Martin Opršál

Of which works are you most proud?

My proudest creative works are my three daughters, Magdalene, Veronika and Miriam, and, at one remove, my granddaughter Julia.

How would you characterise your compositional language?

It is not easy to answer this question: I try to clear a path from the mess of complexity to the order of simplicity

Tell us more about your 24 Preludes & Fugues for solo piano. What was the inspiration behind this set of pieces? Were the templates set by Bach and Chopin influential at all?

From the very start the inspiration for my Preludes and Fugues was the Bible. From the point of view of the musical form, I was influenced more by the thinking of Anton Reicha than by the counterpoint of J.S. Bach or by Chopin’s Preludes. But everything I have written is strongly connected to the classical European tradition.

During my military service in Prague (1981-2) I wrote a single Prelude and Fugue for piano, which stands alone. In 1989 William Howard asked me to write something for him. I composed two Preludes and Fugues and the cycle continued from there. The inspiration for the cycle from the very beginning was the Bible.

William Howard and Pavel Novák

Pianist William Howard has recorded the entire set. What was the experience of working with William on this music?

My collaboration with William was like my real composition degree course. Thanks to his extraordinary patience in studying and re-studying my endless corrections, I had the chance to pursue and to develop my own musical imagination – and not just in writing for piano. But certainly it also helped me to develop a new feeling for piano composition, which has continued in further piano pieces (a left hand piece for Steve Warzycki and my 6th and 7th Sonatas, both for William), and has influenced other aspects of my composing. William’s experience as both a soloist and a chamber player has given him a sense of colour and a rhythmic precision that you can admire in the recording of the Preludes and Fugues.

As a composer, how do you work?

I try to imitate the great composers of the past, composing every day, but the result is a bit different. They wrote hundreds of fantastic pieces in an extraordinarily short time. I add five bars in the morning and cross out seven bars in the afternoon every day…

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

I remember some successful premieres (my piano quintet ‘Royal Funeral Procession on Iona’ at Wigmore Hall with the whole Schubert Ensemble, the premiere of my Third Symphony for piano and strings at Dartington with William at the piano, the UK premiere of the Preludes and Fugues at St. Giles, Cripplegate in London), some great occasions, friendly audiences, nice reviews, perfect recordings, ongoing collaborations with musicians…. but then I think of Schubert and of Van Gogh and reflect that there are other ways to define success in the world of art. Maybe for the composer success is also the perfect score, the ideal piece, without the need for any response from the world around. And for a painter it is the ideal picture, regardless of how it is perceived in the artist’s lifetime.

What advice would you give to aspiring composers?

1. Write the first version of your pieces by hand. It is all too easy these days for us to become greatly estranged from our own work.

2. Rewrite pieces by classical masters (e.g. Perotinus, Bach, Webern). By following every note of their scores your imagination will develop and you will be able to compare your own solutions and your own ideas with their way of thinking. I am worried that two thousand years of well-tried and tested techniques are in danger of being lost.

3. Maintain a basic classical music education; play a string instrument and sing in a choir. When composing you can easily lose connection with live instrumental and vocal performance.

4. Do not interpret your own music! Sit in the audience and listen. Players have quite different worries from composers.

5. Sit at home and work every day. Do not organise performances of your pieces – they will come by themselves.

What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music audiences?

In the Czech Republic, programmes for bigger ensembles and for orchestras could be improved – they repeat famous pieces from famous composers again and again. They should play more early works by well-known composers (e.g. the early symphonies of Dvořák and Ives…..) and they should perform more early music on modern instruments (e.g. Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Bach…..). Glenn Gould showed us how to play this repertoire on a modern instrument in his recordings of early music.

What are your most treasured possessions?

My faith, my family, my musical gift.

Pavel Zemek Novák’s “dazzlingly original” 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo piano is now available in a newly published edition, available as a digital download from Music Haven Ltd. Find out more

Pianist William Howard has recorded the 24 Preludes and Fugues on the Champs Hill Records label

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Composer Colin Riley writes: “ISOLATED PIECES is the culmination of the work of 27 contributors from across many genres of music. As an experiment on ‘connection’ and ‘trust’ during the isolating period of lockdown, I asked musicians I knew to respond to several small fragments of piano music I’d created. Everyone said yes and emailed back all kinds of unexpected fragments of connected material. It came in from percussionists, string players, singers, poets, and electronic musicians. This was my box of musical Lego. I set to work building the music from these disparate elements, knowing that at their root, there was some DNA that held them together. After a 18 months the album was complete.”

A good deal of music – and art, poetry and more – has come out of lockdown as composers, musicians, artists and writers have tried to make sense of, or cope with the strange situation we found ourselves in during 2020 and 2021.

Despite the isolation, composer Colin Riley found connections with fellow musicians through his online project Isolated Pieces. Begun in 2020, the project is based on musical “trust”: none of the 25 musicians involved in Isolated Pieces knew who else was part of the virtual musical ensemble (called Assemblage). The music on the album is the result of a back-and-forth exchange of fragmentary responses in the form of short audio files which Colin then assembled to create a larger whole, an album of 18 pieces released in Spring 2022.

The 27 artists involved in the project come from a range of musical genres as well as poetry, and include up-and-coming artists as well as established names such as Steve Hackett (guitarist with Genesis), keyboardist Roger King, jazz pianist Liam Noble, and dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah.

The pieces are miniature musical haikus, a matter of a few minutes in length, 5 minutes at most, with pithy titles which, for me at least, reflect some of the sensations and scenarios many of us experienced during lockdown – for example, ‘Sunlight Patterns’, ‘Most of My Day’, ‘Ease the Pressure’ or ‘Look Back’. While each piece is different, Riley employs repeating textures, instrumentation, electronics, loops and other sound effects, which make connections between the pieces and create the sense of an album as a whole, rather than an assemblage of disparate fragments. There are elements of jazz, folk, minimalism, experimental music and spoken word within these fleeting pieces, and the result is an intriguing compilation. The range of moods is interesting too – some pieces are intimate, reflective, at times almost painful (Dislodged) while others are upbeat (Twister), moving forward with pulsing rhythms.  I found the vocals of Savannah Roberts particularly haunting in the opening track Sunlight Patterns.