By |

This week I was reminded that it’s a year since the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, the Wigmore Hall and countless other music, opera and theatre venues shut their doors in the wake of the growing coronavirus pandemic.

At the time, it felt shocking, because for those of us who frequent these venues (and despite living in Dorset, I was travelling up to London at least twice a month to attend concerts and opera performances) it was a stark reminder that this virus, which until that point had felt rather unreal, was something we should now be taking seriously. That week, I had tickets to hear Chick Corea and Yuja Wang in concert at the Barbican; both events were of course cancelled, and now the virus had encroached directly upon my world, and my cultural and working life. The directors of a music festival, with whom I was working, hung on until the absolute last minute to announce the postponement of the festival, and then all my publicity/PR work dried up. The next weekend, the UK went into its first lockdown.

Looking back, I recall feeling anxious; I wasn’t worried about catching the virus (in fact, I think I almost certainly had it in January 2020 when I had what I can only describe as “a weird ‘flu”), but I was very concerned about my family, in particular my chef son who was out of work, and my mother-in-law, who lives on her own. When previously I might have taken refuge in music to alleviate or distract myself from the stress, I found I could not play the piano nor listen to classical music on the radio, or on disc. It just served to remind me what we had lost, and I found the prospect of no live music for goodness knows how long a depressing one.

In those early, anxious months of the first lockdown, the only classical music I listened to was the complete Beethoven piano sonatas performed by Jonathan Biss. This was special music – and I don’t need to elaborate here why Beethoven’s music is so meaningful to many of us – not only because I thought it was one of the most interesting interpretations of the piano sonatas I had encountered in recent years but also because the last concert I attended at Wigmore Hall was given by Jonathan Biss, playing a selection of Beethoven piano sonatas, just a few weeks before the Hall was forced to close. So this music felt significant for a number of reasons.

Meanwhile, amateur pianist friends were filling Facebook and YouTube with videos of them playing all manner of repertoire. For many of my pianist friends, this period of enforced isolation was a wonderful opportunity to do more practising, and, confined to their homes, they found they had the luxury of time. I wished I had their motivation – there was plenty of music I wanted to learn and play – but instead I felt a growing sense of estrangement from the instrument and music which I loved. My piano was out of tune as well (the tuner was due to come in the last week of March) and that quickly became another excuse not to practice.

So BBC Radio 3 and my classical playlists on Spotify were exchanged for my son’s playlists of hip hop and rap, reggae and (curiously) mixes of 80s pop music which took me back to my teens and student years. We listened to this music when we were cooking and it quickly became the soundtrack of most of 2020 (my son left London to live with us during lockdown). Occasionally, I would dip back into the music I thought I loved, but it just served to remind me, yet again, of what we missing.

By the early summer of 2020, things began to feel a little more positive and the Wigmore Hall launched a series of livestream concerts which were at once brilliant and incredibly poignant (I cried while watching Stephen Hough’s opening concert – it was wonderful to see beloved Wigmore Hall again but rather tragic to see it devoid of its audience).

As society began to unlock in early summer 2020, my piano tuner was able to work again and came to give my 1913 Bechstein some much-needed TLC. I played a little after that – the piano sounded wonderful and I had some new repertoire to learn and old favourites to revisit, but still I felt a strong sense of estrangement from the instrument and its literature.

I know I’m not alone in feeling this. Several professional musician friends expressed similar feelings of detachment from their music and instrument – perhaps understandably since the covid restrictions had decimated their concert diaries, and without the prospect of performances, and the focus and motivation which these bring, there seemed little point in practising.

The issue I have now is that I have spent too long away from the piano. It sits in its room in the basement of my house, and where previously I found its presence benign, I now find it rather hostile. It seems to be challenging me, and I feel guilty for neglecting it.

Of course I have nothing to feel guilty about. I don’t earn a living from playing or teaching the piano and it is entirely my choice whether or not I play it. But I am mindful of the fact that without regular practice, or simply playing for pleasure, it becomes harder to get back into the routine of playing. And routine is what I need.

I hope that when the concert halls reopen and I can enjoy live music again, with other people, the sense of estrangement will pass and the stimulation to play the piano once again will return.

By |

Guest post by Adrian Ainsworth

It’s not often I take up my pen in literal anger, writing to purge myself somehow of an irritation that has been eating away at me for a day or two now. I speak – as you have no doubt guessed – of the latest BBC Proms recruitment ad, seeking candidates for roles in ‘Live Events and Communications’.

“Here’s a short video,” the BBC Proms Twitter account chirped, “to give you a taster of what it’s like working at the Proms.”

With a cute ‘technical-glitch’ shimmy, we’re immediately introduced to a freshly-minted young BBC publicist. Against a percussive, rhythmic soundtrack, she says: “One thing about the Proms that people don’t know is that it’s not all just about classical music like Mozart and Beethoven.” Cue frantic burst of definitely-not-classical music. She continues, over montages of Proms passim: “The Proms showcases so many different music genres and styles from House, Ibiza music, to Sci Fi film music, to breakdancing music. So there really is something for everyone, and you don’t necessarily have to have a background in classical music to work at the Proms.”

Then we switch to a colleague, whose ‘stand-out moment’ when working for the Proms was dressing up as an astronaut and jumping about on stage during a performance by the band Public Service Broadcasting.

Perhaps anxious to avoid the tone becoming any more ‘space cadet’, the video returns to our first correspondent, who says that “Working at the BBC Proms helped me to build up so many skills. This allowed me to get another job at the BBC working in publicity for TV programmes instead.”

We finish with the Spaceman warmly recalling the various teams within the overall Proms department feeling like a large, happy community, with further images from concerts in which, thankfully, some classical musicians are included.

It may be a feature of lockdown, and the slightly dislocated mental state it can produce, that the oddest and most unexpected things can really push your buttons. THIS really pushed my buttons. I checked to see if it was 1 April. On a second viewing, I felt like gnawing my own arm off, and by a blinking, disbelieving third, I wanted to cry. I assure you, my flippancy is disguising – perhaps not very well – a deep-seated hatred of this advert and the thinking that went into it.

When the ad first appeared, some people reacted with distaste, sadness or horror – similar responses to mine, in other words. Others played its impact down, more or less saying that it’s only aimed at getting a certain type of dynamic, can-do employee through the door and that the ‘audience’, in this case, is not the audience. And yet – it’s out there for all of us to see, isn’t it, as circulated by the BBC Proms team? They endorse this ‘message’.

And what a message. Taking it from the top, what have we got?

  • Luckily, the whole thing isn’t just classical music ‘like’ Mozart and Beethoven. Boooo-ring!
  • The Proms offer a wide range of musical genres, but I don’t know what any of them are. I thought they had quite broad, well-known names like jazz and soul, but someone handed me a piece of paper with ‘Ibiza music’ and ‘breakdancing music’ on it.
  • For those of you who aren’t really interested in the music aspect at all, there’s the jumping astronaut element.
  • After all, you’ll only be using the skills you learn at the Proms to get another job doing what you really want to do.

Forgive me: it turns out I am still angry.

This ad was put together by people who are, unaccountably, embarrassed by classical music – to the point where they feel the need to sideline it, to apologise for its irksome presence. They couldn’t be bothered to give their poor participants some kind of script or direction to sound at least vaguely interested – let alone well-versed – in music of any shape or form. Why bother, I suppose, if they’re only going to hang around for a minimum length of time before moving on?

The Proms is the world’s ‘largest’ classical music festival. I believe this claim is undisputed. Normally, I’d be the first to say size doesn’t matter, quality over quantity, and so on. But I think the sheer scale of the Proms says something positive. It would be pointless, unseemly and of course, wrong to say we have all the ‘best’ venues, singers, players, and so on: this is the arts, not sport. But the ambition shown simply to mount the Proms year in, year out – notwithstanding the virus wrecking the 2020 season – sends a signal about how much we care about classical music. Under the BBC’s stewardship, some 80 concerts take place each year, which reach well beyond the capital: every minute of Proms music goes out on BBC Radio 3, and a handsome amount makes it to TV on BBC4. Programming is deliberately wide, and at its inventive heights it seasons the classical music line-up (which, let’s get this straight, is the absolute backbone of the repertoire) with forays into other genres which complement the whole. The diversity can be itself diverse: macro – full concerts foregrounding musicians from all corners of the globe – or micro – lining up premieres from living composers alongside the old ‘warhorse’ pieces to ensure new music is heard. And as everyone involved knows, there’s still a lot more the festival can do, and a lot further it can go.

I try to get across in all my writing (and occasional speaking) that classical music is approachable and accessible as long as you treat it as such; as vital, vibrant and valid as any other style of music. As a result, the Proms recruitment ad felt like a kick in the teeth. It could have placed classical music proudly alongside the genres it inspires, supports, complements and interacts with… and accordingly, win over some applicants who would want to work in a classical music environment and stay there.

Instead, everything good the Proms sets out to achieve, this unthinking dumbshow throws into reverse. I hope they accidentally recruit some excellent communicators.

(This article first appeared on the ArtMuseLondon site)

Adrian Ainsworth is, by day, a copywriter specialising in plain language communications about finance and benefits. However, he spends the rest of the time consuming as much music, live or recorded, as possible – then writing about it, often on Specs, his slightly erratic ‘cultural diary’ containing thought pieces, performance and exhibition write-ups, playlists, and even a spot of light photography. He has a particular interest in art song and opera… and a general interest in everything else. He is a regular guest writer for The Cross-Eyed Pianist and a reviewer for its sister site ArtMuseLondon.

Twitter @Adrian_Specs

By |

This quote from a Meet the Artist interview with pianist Antoine Préat perfectly expresses my relationship with many composers and their music.

When I returned to playing the piano seriously in my later 30s, after a break of some 20 years, there were pieces which I felt I “should” be playing but which never felt comfortable to me. This feeling grew when I co-founded a piano meetup group where members played all sorts of repertoire. I envied those who seemed so at home with the music of Chopin or Ravel, two composers whose piano music I adore, but which does not necessarily love me back.

Of course, we should never feel obligated to play certain pieces or composers out of a sense of duty; the “tyranny of the shoulds” is often inculcated in our childhood music lessons, reinforced in music college, and – for the professional musician, further emphasised by teachers, peers, agents and critics – or for the amateur, at piano clubs and on courses. Students and those at the beginning of their career probably feel the pressure of this sense of obligation most acutely, and it takes confidence to stand firm against the tide of opinion that says one should be playing certain Beethoven sonatas, etudes by Chopin and Liszt, or the concertos of Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky or Grieg in order to be recognised and endorsed by those who may help further one’s professional career and reputation. 

We’re very lucky as pianists; we have a vast repertoire to choose from and this means there is music within it to suit our varied, wide-ranging tastes. It is interesting to note that some of the greatest pianists have chosen to focus on a fairly narrow corner of the repertoire – for example, Alfred Brendel, Andras Schiff or Maria Joao Pires. It really isn’t necessary to have an affinity with or be able to play everything, though of course there are some pianists who seem perfectly at ease with a very broad sweep of repertoire, namely Maurizio Pollini or Marc-André Hamelin. Stephen Hough is quite open about his “uneasiness” about playing the music of J S Bach and I think it is a mark of a pianist’s honesty to admit that certain repertoire or composers do not suit them. 

Our affection for the music we choose to play is, I believe, one of the greatest assets in the learning process. It is what helps to keep us focussed and ensures we will return to the music day in day out to practice and refine it. If you don’t love the music you’re playing, it’s unlikely it will love you back, and the practice of practising will feel arduous and challenging. I recall feeling like this quite a lot of the time when I was having piano lessons as a child, where my first teacher would always select the music I was to learn, without giving me any choice (when I taught piano, I made sure my students played music they liked and enjoyed). It was only when I had passed my grade 5 piano exam, and moved to a new teacher, that I had the foundations of technical facility and the confidence to explore repertoire on my own. It was at this time that my love of Schubert’s piano music developed – and it remains amongst my most favourite music still. 

One of the great pleasures of being an amateur pianist, perhaps the greatest pleasure, is that you are not – or shouldn’t be – under any obligation to play music because someone else said you “should”! Of course sometimes a teacher will suggest repertoire which they feel may help with an aspect of technique or simply that it may appeal to your musical taste and sensibilities – and a good teacher should know and appreciate their students’ tastes. But if it doesn’t appeal, have the confidence to say “it’s not for me”. It’s also worth bearing in mind that our tastes change, and, as our technical facility improves, repertoire we previously loved but might not have been able to play, becomes more accessible.

If the music doesn’t love you back sufficiently for you to play it yourself, simply enjoy hearing others play it – on disc, on the radio, in concerts and via streaming services.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0040HIDPnaB4s3V2TydLeB?si=0ZLyu5RtQTSK6XfW3fxEWw

By |

The Friends of Felix Yaniewicz are raising £6,000 to rescue a unique and historic instrument associated with the composer Felix Yaniewicz, and bring it to Edinburgh to celebrate his musical legacy. Yaniewicz was a Polish-Scottish violinist, composer and co-founder of the first Edinburgh music festival in 1815.

Two decades ago, a square piano dating from around 1810 came to light in a private house in Snowdonia.  Despite its dilapidated condition, it was recognised as an instrument of historical interest by Douglas Hollick, who bought it for restoration and embarked on a research project to discover more about its provenance and the link to Yaniewicz.

Above the keyboard, a cartouche with painted flowers and musical instruments bears the label ‘Yaniewicz and Green’ with the addresses of premises in fashionable areas of London and Liverpool.

Yaniewicz & Green square piano
Inside the piano, a signature in Indian ink has been matched with those on the marriage certificate and surviving letters of Felix Yaniewicz (1762-1848). 

DONATE here