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Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music?

My great-grandmother, Freda Loaring, was a significant influence and I was lucky enough to know her for the first few years of my life. She must have been an able amateur pianist as I have inherited her scores of works including the Grieg Concerto with her own markings. She played for Santangelo’s Orchestra in Guernsey which often accompanied visiting singers and silent films at the old Royal Hotel. She encouraged my sister to play and once she had been playing for a while, I showed an interest in starting too.

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

Every one of my teachers has had a huge impact on my playing. Mervyn Grand’s teaching back in Guernsey motivated me and he and his son Sebastian (a pianist, now a great friend of mine and an exceptional conductor) were one of the major early inspirations that turned a hobby into a career. I studied with Murray McLachlan for six years at Chetham’s and RNCM and he really worked wonders on my technique and the way I thought about music and artistry more broadly. In America I’ve studied with Boris Berman and James Giles. I think what I’ve learned most from them is a more nuanced sensitivity to different styles and, physically, how to find appropriate sounds and colours for those styles.

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

Everyone tells you that music is competitive as a profession, so this comes as no surprise, but I think the greatest challenge so far for me has been the gradual realisation that there’s not a ‘divine’ justice determining success. I think I used to believe that if you worked hard enough and played well enough then someone would look after you and see that you got where you deserve to. I now realise that you’ve got to go out and make it happen for yourself. That might seem obvious, but it has been a gradual learning curve.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud  and which works do you think you perform best?

In terms of live performances, I have very fond memories of performing Rachmaninoff’s five works for piano and orchestra with Guernsey Sinfonietta and with Stockport Symphony Orchestra. I’ve always felt a very immediate connection with Rachmaninoff’s music, as many young musicians do, but as I have gotten older that connection has only deepened. This gives me the courage of my convictions. I feel I have an authentic and meaningful personal approach and can be more authoritative as a result.

When recording Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons and Ireland’s Sarnia, I set out to record a disc that comes as close to a live recording as possible. This approach, together with the possibilities offered by the piano and acoustic at Chethams’ Stoller Hall, allowed me to find sounds and colours that I am happy to hear back (once in a while).

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

Programming is a delicate balance between what I feel I can play with personal authenticity and conviction, what the promoter(s) might want and what the audience might like to hear. It is also sometimes quite practical, for instance prioritising larger Romantic masterpieces like Liszt’s Sonata, Schumann’s Fantasie, Chopin’s Preludes and Brahms’ F minor Sonata so as to get them in my fingers and to start a journey with these pieces sooner rather than later. This has sometimes led to very unusual and ambitious programmes. One of these included Ireland’s Sarnia, Beethoven Sonata Opus 110, Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka and Liszt’s B minor Sonata in one evening!

Most of all I look for music that I like and that means something to me, and I try to thread a theme through the programme if I can. I also like creating global tonal schemes through a programme. Ideally all of these concerns come together in the same programme!

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I love playing on home ground. I’m very proud of my island home of Guernsey and I’m lucky to be able to return home to play for a very supportive and appreciative audience in one of the country’s best acoustics for piano and chamber music at St James. I also just love the place itself. It’s not surprising that it has inspired artists from Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Victor Hugo to John Ireland, Julie Andrews and Oliver Reed.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Performing in Wigmore Hall in 2016. Of course, it’s a great hall for solo piano music but you can’t help but be inspired by the history. Backstage, the framed photographs and signatures from great musicians of the past and present are both humbling and inspiring.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

This is a difficult question to answer but I think, if we are honest, there is an ideal and a practical answer to this. Ideally, a successful musician is one that stays true to themselves and to their artistry. Someone that ‘successfully’ connects to others in their performances, in their teaching and in everyday life. Practically, if you can make enough to continue striving for this ideal then I’d say you’re a successful musician.

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

As a teacher, I am always working towards the independence of my students. There are day to day concerns like how to analyse a problematic passage and practice it more efficiently on their own and how to make interpretative decisions more independently, but eventually the student needs to be equipped with a sure sense of self (and what it means, to them, to be an artist) in order to be a happy and successful musician. Artistry for me is about inward truth, outward connection and continual striving and I try to share that with my students.

Tom Hick’s recording of John Ireland’s Sarnia and Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons is available now

Hailed as an artist of ‘magnificent pianism’ with an ‘engaging personality,’ Guernsey-born pianist Tom Hicks has gained first prize in competitions including the Wales International Piano Competition, the Croydon Piano Concerto Competition and the EPTA UK Piano Competition and was also a finalist in the New York International Piano Competition and a semi-finalist in the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition. In addition, Tom has won awards such as the Richards’ Prize for Piano and Musicianship and the Dennis Midwood Keyboard Prize from Chetham’s School of Music; the Faculty of Humanities Outstanding Academic Achievement Award, the Keith Elcombe Prize for Best Overall Performance and three Proctor-Gregg Performance Prizes from the University of Manchester; and the Gold Medal Award and Peter Frankl Piano Prize from the Royal Northern College of Music.

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Not Now Bernard and other stories is an irresistible album of music for all the family revelling in the magical colours of childhood memories, featuring world premiere recordings of pieces for narrator and chamber orchestra by British composers Judith Weir, Malcolm Arnold, John Ireland and Bernard Hughes, performed by the Orchestra of the Swan, conducted by Tom Hammond, and narrated by leading actor, TV star, comedian and broadcaster Alexander Armstrong.

The album is the brainchild of composer Bernard Hughes and conductor Tom Hammond. Bernard and Tom have worked together on a number of projects since 2009, including Tom commissioning Bernard’s pieces on the album for two of his orchestras. The aim of this album was to bring together a diverse selection of pieces in high-quality performances, plugging holes in the recorded legacies of great British composers alongside Bernard’s pieces. It was also their ambition to bring a sense of fun to the music, celebrating works that are intentionally enjoyable and funny. Bernard Hughes’s settings of classic children’s stories are the most recent pieces, using vividly imaginative, witty and tuneful music to bring to life three wonderful stories by David McKee and James Mayhew. Alexander Armstrong gives a hilarious and touching performance as narrator, his distinctive voice characterising each piece brilliantly to explore humour and human nature. The result is an engaging, lively and thoroughly entertaining collection of music and words which all the family can enjoy together.

The album is produced by Bernard Hughes himself and is released on 7 February by Orchid Classics, one of Britain’s leading classical labels.

The pieces and the composers

Malcolm Arnold – Toy Symphony. Arnold was one of the towering figures of British music in the twentieth century, whose prodigious output included nine symphonies and over 70 film scores. Composed in 1957 for a musicians’ fundraiser, the Toy Symphony pits a quintet of professional players against a battery panoply of novelty instruments, including a train guard’s whistle, a quail whistle and three parping toy trumpets, to hilarious but brilliantly musical effect. This is one of the few major Malcolm Arnold pieces in his ‘occasional’ style never previously commercially recorded, showing a combination of winning melodies with absurdity.

Judith Weir – Thread! Written in 1981 near the beginning of her stellar career, Thread! is a setting of texts sewn into the Bayeux Tapestry, and is a vivid re-telling of the Battle of Hastings, from the Norman perspective. This piece has also never been commercially recorded, although it is a personal favourite of the composer. An exciting and vibrant piece that deserves a wider audience.

John Ireland – Annabel Lee. A melodrama for piano and narrator in a new chamber arrangement by Bernard Hughes, setting a chilling, atmospheric poem by Edgar Allan Poe.

Bernard Hughes – Not Now, Bernard, Isabel’s Noisy Tummy and The Knight Who Took All Day. These pieces are based on children’s books by David McKee (Mr Benn, Elmer the Patchwork Elephant) and James Mayhew. Originally scored for narrator and symphony orchestra, this recording features the versions for chamber orchestra. In Not Now, Bernard a young boy, neglected by his parents, meets a monster in his garden, with shocking results. Isabel’s Noisy Tummy tells of a girl who is troubled – but eventually redeemed – by a misbehaving stomach. The Knight Who Took All Day tells of a knight confronting a dragon – with the timely help of a princess. All three are enchanting stories told with humour and melodic, friendly music

Not Now Bernard and other stories is released on 7 February by Orchid Classics, one of the UK’s leading classical labels. The album is available to pre-order now.

Bernard Hughes, Alexander Armstrong, Tom Hammond

Orchid Classics website

 

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John Ireland (1879-1962)

 

The splendidly intimate and elegant 1901 Arts Club played host to Steinberg Duo on Friday evening in a concert of music by John Ireland and Edward Elgar. Steinberg Duo, which comprises husband and wife Nicholas Burns and Louisa Stonehill, are regular performers at the 1901 Arts Club and curate a series of concerts there.

The music of John Ireland is, perhaps unfairly, rarely performed. The majority of his output was piano miniatures and songs. He studied with Charles Villiers Standford at the Royal College of Music (who also taught Vaughan Williams, Holst, Howells and Butterworth, amongst many others) and by the end of the First World War had emerged as a celebrated composer following the overnight success of his second Violin Sonata, of which more later.

The Steinberg Duo have been praised for their “warm musicality” and virtuosity and this was more than evident throughout their programme which opened with Ireland’s first violin sonata in which the influence of the French impressionist composers Debussy and Ravel was evident in its adventurous harmonic palette. The work is no gentile Edwardian drawing room piece and it was played with requisite muscularity and poise by Louisa on violin, with a nimble and sympathetic accompaniment by Nick on piano.

Ireland did in fact meet Edward Elgar and described the few hours in Elgar’s company as “the finest lesson I ever had”. To celebrate this meeting, Steinberg Duo performed a group of miniatures which represented the kind of salon music which was popular at the end of the nineteenth century and entirely appropriate for the small music salon at the 1901. These short but charming works were a pleasant and contrasting interlude between the sonatas by Ireland.

The second part of the concert was occupied by John Ireland’s second Violin Sonata, the work which made him famous. Since the composer was unfit for military service during the First World War, he was able to continue composing. The Violin Sonata No. 2 was premiered on 6 March 1917 by Albert Sammons and William Murdoch, who performed in uniform, and was an immediate success, so much so that the published Winthrop Rogers was on the composer’s doorstep before breakfast the following day. The first edition sold out before it was put on sale, and the work secured Ireland’s success and reputation.

By 1917, the British populace had developed a weary stoicism about the progress of the War. The work perfectly captured the mood of the period by avoiding sentimentality. Instead, it is imbued with pathos in its arresting themes, striking chromatic twists and turns and harmonic and rhythmic motifs redolent of Debussy’s Violin Sonata or Ravel’s Piano Trio. The middle movement is one of great poignancy with a simple song, on the violin, at its heart. Its expressive melancholy suggests a musical anthem for doomed youth, but also a requiem for a way of life destroyed by the War.

Speaking of his own music, Ireland said “Whatever I have to say is said in the music, and if this does not speak for itself, then I have failed”. This powerful and emotional work was given a passionate and involving account by Steinberg Duo who allowed the music to speak for itself.

Steinberg Duo

1901 Arts Club