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Guest post by William Howard

Two years ago I wrote some words on Howard Skempton’s piano music for this site, having just recorded a cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues that he had written for me in 2019. Skempton was inspired to write these pieces after hearing (and reviewing) my recording of another cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues, written for me by the Czech composer Pavel Zemek Novák between 1989 and 2006. Skempton’s 24 Preludes and Fugues were published by Oxford University Press within a year of their completion, but it is only now that Novák’s extraordinary cycle has become available, thanks to a new edition released this month by Music Haven.

Both cycles of Preludes and Fugues were composed to be performed in their entirety, but whereas Skempton’s are typically pared down and distilled, with very few notes on the page, Novák’s are written on an epic scale. His cycle, which lasts 75 minutes, is inspired by the Bible, the first twelve Preludes and Fugues based on the Old Testament and the second twelve on the New Testament. Composer David Matthews has described the work as ‘one of the finest piano works of our time, a worthy companion to Ligeti’s three books of Études’. This is a bold claim, given the fact that Novák’s music is comparatively little known, but it is one that I fully support myself. I am confident that other pianists around the world will now take up this powerful and dazzlingly original work.

I first came across Novák’s music in 1987, when composer David Matthews invited me to take part in a concert at the King’s Lynn Festival featuring works by Brno composers. I was sent a number of recordings to listen to in order to choose a programme and liked many of the works that I heard, but one that made the by far greatest impact on me was a tricky-sounding piece for oboe, cello and piano, which I had an immediate desire to play. I had been passionate about Janáček’s music for many years, and something about Pavel’s oboe trio made a similar kind of impact on me. Its strong, almost acerbic flavour seemed to me distinctly Moravian. Pavel made his first visit to the UK to hear the performance of this work, The Garden of Delights, in King’s Lynn, and for both David and myself a much-valued friendship was born.

William Howard and Pavel Novák

At the time Novák was hardly known outside his hometown of Brno. As a practising Christian working under a communist regime, and unwilling to be a party member, he could expect to be offered very few opportunities as a composer. Since that time his reputation has grown, both in the Czech Republic and abroad. For some years, he received more performances of his music in the UK than in his own country, composing several new works for the Schubert Ensemble and for myself, and receiving commissions from Chroma, the Composers’ Ensemble, the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, and Dartington International Summer School. In the last couple of decades his most important commissions have come from major institutions in the Czech Republic, including the Czech Philharmonic and Brno State Symphony Orchestras.

As a student, Novák was immersed in the Janáček tradition of building form through working with small motifs and fragments, but he went on to develop his own distinctive style and to explore a wide range of other kinds of music. Believing that dissonance had had its day and that everything that could be said with it had already been said, he arrived in the 1990s at a new means of expression through imaginative use of consonance and unison, with voices supporting each other rather than working in opposition. The integrity and purity of his musical voice has its roots in his deep Catholic faith, which is the ultimate source of inspiration for all his music.

If his music has not been more widely performed, the reason is at least in part because scores have been unavailable. Fortunately, this situation is now changing. Many pieces are now available through the Czech Music Information Centre’s database and a few chamber works have been published by Madrid-based Da_sh Music, including a superb piano quintet, Royal Funeral Procession to Iona, that he wrote for the Schubert Ensemble in 1995.

In the case of the 24 Preludes and Fugues, several music publishers took an interest in the work following the positive reaction to the London premiere of the work in 2007 and to the recording (released in 2011) but found the scale and the complexities of the hand-written manuscript too daunting to take on. The great news is that, with the help of a handful of sponsors, three years of heroic typesetting by the composer Cydonie Banting and many dozens of hours of proof-reading and editing by the composer and myself, the score is now finally available.

 Before and after typesetting/editing (Prelude 23)

The complete score is now available on the Music Haven website.

William Howard has recorded Pavel Novák’s 24 Preludes and Fugues on the Champs Hill Records label. 

Listen to the album via Spotify

 

William Howard is established as one of Britain’s leading pianists, enjoying a career that has taken him to over 40 different countries. His performing life consists of solo recitals, concerto performances, guest appearances with chamber ensembles and instrumentalists. In 1983 he founded the Schubert Ensemble, with which he performed for the full 35 years of the Ensemble’s existence (it gave its final concert in June 2018). Winner of the 1998 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Best Chamber Ensemble, the Schubert Ensemble earned a worldwide reputation as one of the finest piano and string ensembles, as well as setting up several ground-breaking educational projects and commissioning 50 concert works.

His solo career has taken him to many of Britain’s most important festivals, including Bath, Brighton and Cheltenham, and he has been artist in residence at several others. He has performed many times in the Wigmore Hall and the South Bank in London and has broadcast regularly for BBC Radio 3. For many years he has been invited to perform and teach at the Dartington International Summer School.

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Piano Day was founded in 2015 by composer and pianist Nils Frahm, and a group of like-minded others, and it celebrates all things piano – the instrument and those who play it, its extensive repertoire, and other piano-related projects. It takes places each year on 29th March, the 88th day of the year, chosen because the piano has 88 keys.

“Why does the world need a Piano Day? For many reasons. But mostly, because it doesn’t hurt to celebrate the piano and everything around it: performers, composers, piano builders, tuners, movers and most important, the listener.” – Nils Frahm

In a year when pianos in concert halls have largely fallen silent, Piano Day seems even more significant to me. I have to admit a certain estrangement from my own piano – I have not felt much motivation to play over the past year, despite having more time to devote to an instrument which I love, but in spite of this, I have made some new musical discoveries which I would like to share here.

Woven Silver from Seven Traceries – William Grant Still

A chance hearing of this piece on BBC Radio 3 one morning led me to listen to the entire suite and order the sheet music direct from William Grant Still’s estate in the US.

Chaconne – Jean-Henri d’Anglebert

Another piece which I discovered via BBC Radio 3, listening late one evening to the Night Tracks programme which is broadcast after 11pm

Every Morning, Birds from The Book of Leaves – Rachel Grimes

I discovered Rachel Grimes’ piano music when I was invited to suggest music for the new London College of Music piano syllabus. This atmospheric miniature is from her Book of Leaves album.

Blue Air from Colour Suite – Madeleine Dring

In 2020 I was asked to contribute teaching and performance notes for Trinity College of London’s new piano syllabus, and this was one the pieces for which I wrote notes. I like its lazy swinging rhythms and piquant, jazz harmonies.

Quiet Rhythms: Prologue & Action No. 9 – William Susman

This piece appeared in one of those “if you liked that, you’ll like this” playlists which the Spotify algorithm creates based on one’s listening.

Some Other Time – by Leonard Bernstein, played by Bill Evans

This is very similar to Evans’ Peace Piece, which I play quite frequently, and it shares its tranquillity and ostinato bass.

Allegro Moderato from Gargoyles – Lowell Liebermann

Another chance discovery, the sheet music for this piece by American composer and pianist Lowell Liebermann was included in an issue of International Piano magazine. It’s been on my piano for awhile, but I haven’t yet got round to learning it properly, beyond a brief sight-read. (Read my review of Lowell Lierbermann’s Personal Demons here)

Film en miniature, H. 148: III. Berceuse – Martinu

Track 14 https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/catalogue/item.asp?cid=190295242428

I don’t know very much of Martinu’s piano music and I discovered this piece through French pianist Bertrand Chamayou’s wonderful ‘Good Night!’ album (one of my favourite recordings of 2020 – review here).

Elf Dance – Moondog

American composer Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin, May 26, 1916 – September 8, 1999) was blind from the age of 16 and wrote most of his music in Braille. I like the Baroque/folksy flavours of this miniature, which appears on Vanessa Wagner’s disc Inland.

Listening back through these selections, I notice that most have a rather meditative or ambient quality, perhaps reflecting my taste for quieter, more reflective music during the past year.

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Guest post by Doug Thomas

I create in order to learn; there has not ever been a piece of music that I have composed without the wish to discover something and develop my artistry.

While it is, I believe, observable in all my works, it is most obvious in Portraits, and the soon to be released Landscapes. 

With both projects, I intend — through microscopic study — to portrait composers that I have found influential or with whom I have spent considerable musical time. My creative approach consists of identifying the subjective elements that define these composers and, through a process of translation, make them mine. 

Through a broad selection that spans over each main period of Western classical music, I have selected Couperin, Vivaldi, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Glass and Stravinsky. Some influences are quite noticeable in my works already, some much less, and some will perhaps become more prominent as I evolve musically.

Let’s take “Vienna 2”, the first of the eight pieces of Landscapes that I have recorded and released, and examine how I have composed it and what the result has been. 

The first phase of creation for this piece is one of learning; through a selection of some of Schubert’s motifs, and rhythmic, melodic or harmonic cells, I analyse, transcribe and identify the elements that make the music so interesting to me. I immerse myself in the composer’s world in order to bring the personality traits out and understand his creative process. It is similar to the work of the archaeologist, who brushes the dust and reveals the keys and symbols. It is a process of listening, reading and copying. 

The second phase is then an opportunity for translation and creation. It is how I adapt Schubert’s vocabulary to mine, how I reappropriate his sentences and make them mine. 

This last phase is crucial for me as it is the one that decides whether the piece will sound like a simple pastiche, or whether it will have the flavours of Schubert’s music, while being truly my own musical DNA. It might translate into improvising over the elements until something emerges or an intellectual process of shuffling the pieces and structuring new elements together. 

What I find truly interesting with such an approach, aside from the enrichment, is the end result. What I see as being very much Schubert’s words out of my mouth has actually become my own expression. Had I not mentioned Schubert, “Vienna 2” might have been perceived very differently, and the secret would have been intact. 

When Richter wrote Infra, a large inspiration was also Schubert’s, and his Impromptus, yet although the musical material is very similar, it is no one else but Richter’s works. 

Hopefully, I can say the same about “Vienna 2”, Portraits and Landscapes. Ultimately, I feel richer. 

Doug Thomas is a French composer and artist based in London. He also publishes articles, interviews and reviews, and is a regular contributor to this site and its sister site ArtMuseLondon.

Doug Thomas

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Piano music commissioned and recorded during lockdown to support musicians struggling during the Covid-19 crisis

There have been many initiatives to keep the music playing and support musicians during these difficult times. What all of these initiatives demonstrate is that musicians are, despite straitened circumstances, determined to keep playing and to continue to share their music with audiences. It also sends a powerful message to government that the industry is determined to survive, to let the music play, come what may.

I have a personal interest in this wonderful project by pianist Duncan Honeybourne: Duncan and I are friends, and also colleagues – together we run a lunchtime concert series in Weymouth.

During the UK lockdown, Duncan decided to offer short video recitals from his home every day. He called them ‘Piano Soundbites’. The series proved very popular and within a few weeks, Duncan had the idea to approach composers to ask them to write new piano pieces for him, to be premiered as ‘Contemporary Piano Soundbites’ in his video recitals. Alongside this, Duncan set up a Just Giving page to raise funds for Help Musicians UK (formerly the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund). The response was incredible – the project, which was ranked in the top 10% of Just Giving fundraisers nationally during April 2020, has already raised well over £2000 for Help Musicians UK, supporting musician colleagues struggling in the current situation.

‘Contemporary Piano Soundbites’ celebrates the diversity of styles embraced by a broad cross-section of professional composers working today. Featured composers include Sadie Harrison, Graham Fitkin, John McLeod, David Lancaster, Francis Pott, Luke Whitlock and John Casken, as well as younger and emerging composers, and each piece is no more than 6 minutes long at the most. These piano miniatures represent an important contribution to the ever-expanding repertoire for the instrument, to be enjoyed by amateur, professional and student pianists alike.

pianist Duncan Honeybourne

“….it was an invigorating experience to record an entire disc of pieces which hadn’t existed less than four months earlier! Especially stimulating and exciting is the juxtaposition of several leading senior composers with some of their most gifted younger colleagues. Several young composers make their first appearances on disc.

My objective, as I stated in my invitation to composers, was fourfold: to imaginatively harness the zeitgeist of our present situation: to bring comfort and enjoyment to a large ready-made audience stuck at home, to aid musicians badly affected by the “cultural lockdown” and to add to the contemporary repertoire, creating an artistic keepsake of this extraordinary phase in our history.

My long term plan is that, as well as helping our colleagues at a time of need, the collection will provide a snapshot of reflections and musings by some of the finest and most distinctive composers of our time at a unique and unprecedented moment in our history. I hope the disc will make for a refreshing, enriching, stimulating and quirky listening experience too!”
Duncan Honeybourne, September 2020

The music was recorded in late July 2020 in the new Gransden Hall at Sherborne Girls School, Dorset.

The disc is released on the Prima Facie label and is available to order now

For review copies, sample tracks, interviews with Duncan and other press information please contact Frances Wilson

Meet the Artist interview with Duncan Honeybourne

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