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For his autumn concert tour, which begins on Sunday 9 November, British pianist James Lisney places Beethoven’s late sonatas at the centre of this rich programme of masterpieces, not the least of which is the ricercar that Bach performed for Frederick the Great in Potsdam in 1747. “Old Bach of Leipzig” improvised on the King’s theme while using a newly developed fortepiano; the finished composition can thus lay claim to be the first major piano work.

The preludes by Chopin and Shostakovich are similarly written out versions of improvisatory pieces, whilst Myra Hess’ beloved chorale prelude, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, is a reminder of her close association with Beethoven’s final triptych of piano sonatas, and is included in this programme to honour the anniversary of her death on 25th November 1965.

James Lisney says, ‘I have returned to Beethoven’s late sonatas on many occasions over the past forty years. Each study period is a time of intense contentment that reveals new insights, greater pianistic authority, and a reflection of personal growth in terms of musical and extra-musical experience. The great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau stated that passion deepens with age, and Beethoven’s late works are certainly ‘appassionato’, communicating ideas that stretch human experience.

There is a lifetime in this music, an inexhaustible well of ideas that defeat our perceptions of time during performance. I have long wanted to add preludes to this music, easing the listener into a new universe and refreshing the palate. The death of Shostakovich fifty years ago provided inspiration; Dame Myra Hess (d. November 1965), a peerless interpreter of these sonatas and the music of Bach, provided further items for the programme, not least her enduring transcription of the chorale prelude ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Ricercar à 3 is a further example of a composition that represents a preludial improvisation, one executed by a master of the increasingly archaic art of counterpoint who was not above adding galant flourishes to a theme provided by Frederick II of Prussia. An example of an artist “speaking truth to power?”’

Myra Hess
James Lisney

CONCERT DATES & VENUES

9 November, Bradshaw Hall, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

18 November, St George’s Bristol

21 November 1901 Arts Club, London

22 November, The Red Hedgehog, London

28 November, The Quay Theatre, Sudbury, Suffolk

4 December, The Stoller Hall, Manchester

5 December, Stamford Arts Centre, Stamford, Lincolnshire

7 December, The Red Hedgehog, London

Find out more

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Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall, 13 June 2017

Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Opp 109, 110 and 111

I first heard Igor Levit in this sonata triptych back in 2013. It seemed a bold programme choice for a young man, yet Levit’s assertion that this music was “written to be played” makes perfect sense and is a view I’m sure Beethoven would concur with. Then I felt there was room for development and maturity, important attributes for any young artist in the spring of their professional career. Now I hear an artist who has lived with – and in – the music and has crystallised his own view about it.

He crouches over the piano like an animal coiled for attack, yet the sound in those opening bars of the Sonata in E major, Op.109, was so delicate, so lyrically ethereal, it felt as if the music was emerging from some mystical outer firmament, entirely appropriate for these sonatas which find Beethoven in profoundly philosophical mood. It is music which speaks of shared values and what it is to be a sentient, thinking human being; it “puts us in touch with something we know about ourselves that we might otherwise struggle to find words to describe” (Paul Lewis). The Prestissimo second movement, urgent and anxious in its tempo and atmosphere emphasised by some ominous bass figures, contained Levit’s trademark “shock and awe” stamping fortes and fortissimos, only to find him and the music back in meditative mood for the theme and variations, which reprised the serenity of the opening, the theme spare and prayer-like with more of that wonderfully delicate shading at the quietest end of the dynamic spectrum that he does so well.

Read my full review here

 

 

 

(photo ©Igor Levit)