Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?
When I was young there was always music at home: my father was an amateur pianist and my parents used to play old records with all sorts of classical music: opera, lied, symphonic repertoire and piano music.
Who or what are the most important influences on your musical life and career?
Studying with truly wonderful piano teachers: Peter Feuchtwanger, Bernard Roberts at the Royal College of Music and Hamish Milne at the Royal Academy of Music. But also the legendary German baritone Hermann Prey with whom I was fortunate to work in my early twenties.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 3, I guess.
Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?
I’d rather leave this for the critics to decide! But I am quite happy with my latest recording, Ravel’s complete works for piano solo.
Which particular works do you think you play best?
I have developed a very soft spot for Schumann since I started recording his entire piano oeuvre four years ago.
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
Generally, the concerto repertoire is decided by the orchestras and conductors. The choice of chamber music pieces, in turn, is a result of a dialogue with the chamber partners I love working with. For my solo recital repertoire I am almost 100% in the driving seat in terms of making the decisions. Often I try to programme pieces I am about to record during or just after a given season.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
The Wigmore Hall in London and the Musikverein in Vienna – wonderful acoustics and atmosphere!
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
Beethoven’s Piano Concertos
Who are your favourite musicians?
Martha Argerich, Leonard Bernstein, Chick Corea, Jacqueline du Pré – at least one for each letter of the alphabet…
What is your most memorable concert experience?
2007 in Caracas: performing Penderecki’s Piano Concerto under the baton of the composer with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
True passion for what you do, hard work, patience, perseverance and a good sense of humour
Your new disc is the complete solo piano music of Maurice Ravel. What is the particular attraction of this composer’s music for you? And what are the special challenges of his piano music?
Ever since my childhood I have been in love with Ravel’s music: the colours, the atmosphere, the exotic beauty and inner lucidity of his writing. The special challenges: an enormously nuanced virtuosity, subtlety of hearing and colouring.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Being with my family.
What is your present state of mind?
Onwards and upwards!
Florian Uhlig’s new Ravel: Complete Solo Piano Works is available now on the Hänssler Classic label.
Born in Dusseldorf, pianist Florian Uhlig gave his first solo recital at the age of 12. He studied with Peter Feuchtwanger and continued his studies at the Royal College of Music and at the Royal Academy of Music in London where he now lives, as well as in Berlin.
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?
I was fortunate to be playing many instruments as a child and conducting choirs and chamber orchestras. Then suddenly I met a great pianist and person- Felicitas LeWinter- she has been a pupil of Emil von Sauer who had been a pupil of Liszt. She had the most amazing sound and talked about Friedman’s sound. She inspired me- I was 16 – and I was then determined to be a pianist- I had had wonderful teachers in Ireland but she had a very distinctive and important lineage of course! Later on I was touched when she said that I had finally achieved the Arthur Friedman sound!
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
I studied with John Barstow at the Royal College and he was very important in my musical development- great passion for music and all music including opera- he opened my eyes. Then Maria Curcio who had studied with Schnabel was central in a very different way. She had a complete command of the piano and a great integrity – there was no showmanship unless it helped the expression of the music.
Other influences are of course- Richter, Giles, Carlos Kleiber and all the wonderful musicians I have worked with and continue to work with such as Svetlanov, Kurt Sanderling, Previn and Maazel – all great conductors.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Right now I am recording the complete Brahms and Schubert solo works for Chandos – this is a huge task and very daunting but I am taking it slowly and methodically and I am learning so much.
Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?
I love all my recordings. However, the ones I did with Janowski in Paris hold a special place for me. And of course I love these Chandos recordings.
Which particular works do you think you perform best?
I am not sure – I wouldn’t like to say. It is for others to decide I guess?
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
I play anything that inspires me and that I feel I bring something to. Of course Brahms and Schubert figure a lot at the moment- that is a privilege!
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
I don’t have one. There are great acoustics all around the world, there are great halls in beautiful places, there are places I like because of personal connections, like Ireland.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
I don’t often listen to music per se as I want to concentrate on my own solutions – but I adore opera and go to performances a lot. When I was 18 and fresh in London I practically lived in Covent Garden and the ENO.
Who are your favourite musicians?
I love my friends who come to my festival every August in Clandeboye, Northern Ireland. They are warm passionate and brilliant people. I love Alison Balsom – she played with my orchestra Camerata Ireland many times. I love Lynn Harrell the cellist and Chio Liang Lin the violinist – we worked together often.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
I think there are many – too many. I can’t choose one in particular.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
You must be true to the music and be honest. Performance is not for show, but it must also look good- it is an entertainment (a refined one of course) but people want to see and hear something that will change them, and inspire them.
What are you working on at the moment?
My next Brahms and Schubert CDs – sonatas, Impromptus and intermezzi and the Paganini and Schumann variations of Brahms,
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Sitting in Provence reading a book by the pool – perfect antidote to the pressurized concert season!!
What is your most treasured possession?
Apart from my family whom I don’t “possess” of course…….my Steinway piano I guess, and my Audi Quattro!!
What do you enjoy doing most?
Driving around Provence in the summer and eating a long lunch
Barry Douglas has established a major international career since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, Moscow. As Artistic Director of Camerata Ireland and the Clandeboye Festival, he continues to celebrate his Irish heritage whilst also maintaining a busy international touring schedule.
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?
I don’t remember the inspiration per se; just remember that I liked it from the beginning!
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
Leaving Japan at the age of 18 and coming to the UK. For a long time I was undecided about whether to stay in Japan to study or to emigrate to see the “wider” world. I feel the choice I made was the right one and I’m still here.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
It often feels like extra work, having to learn pieces that are really hard and that I know I won’t play again for a while, if ever. Then again, I do this all the time, as I love the so-called rarities so I can’t exactly complain…
On a slightly different note, I had a period when I seriously considered a career-change in the middle of my undergraduate studies. My confidence level was at a record low then. In the end I came through to the other side and I am glad I didn’t change career only to escape the negative feelings I suffered from.
Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?
For my latest Haydn disc from Artalinna, I intentionally chose his middle-period sonatas for harpsichord and fortepiano and recorded on a huge Steinway. I think it worked out pretty well. I’ve been in love with these sonatas ever since I found out about them when I was a teenager and there’s a talk of doing Vol.2. Please help us to make this happen!
The two great piano concerti (Catoire and Sherwood) I recorded with the RNSO for Dutton back in 2011 are both world-première recordings and I am rather proud of it too.
Which particular works do you think you play best?
Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op.111
Boulez: 12 Notations
Chopin: Sonata No.3 Op.58
Elgar: Enigma Variations
Grieg: Ballade in G minor
Medtner Sonata minacciosa Op.53 No.2
Parry: “Hands Across the Centuries” Suite
Schumann: Concerto
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
I love exploring the lesser-known repertoire, both new and old, so if it is appropriate, I like putting together a whole programme with my recent discoveries. That’s why I love playing in places like the Husum “Rarities of Piano Music” Festival in Germany. At other times, I tend to recycle my old mainstream pieces as the framework of a programme and insert a few curios.
I am becoming more and more aware that I don’t have forever to learn everything I love, so I try to digest a few pieces from my “Learn by 40” list every season.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
Not in particular.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
I keep finding new favourite pieces. My pattern is that I obsess over a piece for a while then move onto another obsession. I remember my first real obsession was Ravel’s La Valse: I would listen to it numerous times day after day when I was 13. Most recently, I’ve just graduated from Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites.
When I want to relax, I might listen to Nancarrow’s player-piano studies: they never fail to make me have a good laugh. Songs by Miyuki Nakajima are also on the list. She is a singer/songwriter who has an iconic status in Japan.
Who are your favourite musicians?
In no particular order and just off the top of my head – I’m bound to be missing many more.
Nelson Freire
Roger Muraro
Krystian Zimerman
Oleg Boshnyakovich
Rudolf Serkin
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Glenn Gould
Pierre Boulez
What is your most memorable concert experience?
This is more to do with the state of mind I would love to be in before each performance: I was preparing to go on stage in Salzburg. My mental conditioning was as best as I could imagine. I was not nervous but felt calm yet so sharp, I could feel I was going to play really well. Then I went to the bathroom. The lock in the cubicle was a kind which I was not used to. And because I was so concentrated on my imminent performance, I couldn’t work out how to open the door and panicked thinking I got locked in.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
I mostly find musicians who have serious non-musical interests inherently more interesting, not only as people but also as musicians.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m always trying to raise funds for the next recording projects, which I have so many! Also just starting to push my new CD of Haydn CD mentioned above.
To coincide with this release, I will be presenting a programme including two of the Haydn sonatas, Nancarrow & Prokofiev in a new festival in Paris Festival Piano-Oxygene on 3 October 2014.
Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?
In a South American jungle looking for butterflies and orchids.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
I had a great cigar lesson with the great Cuban pianist Jorge Luis Prats recently (with his custom-made Havanas). As a master of that art like him, one might get close, or at least I was made aware that that was the objective of the cigar culture. For this knowledge, I thank you, Jorge! My whole body stank of cigars for the next two days though.
What is your most treasured possession?
If music-related, it would be the first edition copy of Medtner’s book MuzaiModa (The Muse and the Fashion) signed by the composer.
Heralded by The Times as “just the sort of champion the newest of new music needs”, while being praised as “impeccable in his pianism and unfailing in his idiomatic grasp” by Gramophone, Takenouchi’s curiosity and a natural penchant for integrity makes his playing and vast repertoire unique amongst his generation of pianists: his love for the music of classical masters – particularly Haydn, Beethoven and Chopin – sits side by side with his passion for the music of Medtner and Rachmaninov, lesser-known British composers such as Sterndale Bennett and Parry, and the contemporary repertoire.
As a soloist, he has recently appeared on many concert platforms including the Wigmore Hall, Tokyo Opera City, the South Bank Centre. He has also performed at festivals in Bath, Cheltenham and Salzburg and given recitals in the UK, Japan, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy and Canada. His future engagements will take him even further to the Far East, including performances in Singapore and Vietnam. His more unusual recent appearances include the Rarities of Piano Repertoire Festival in Husum (Germany) and the BBC Four documentary The Prince and the Composer on the life and music of Parry alongside HRH The Prince of Wales. Takenouchi’s discography includes Cosmos Haptic: Contemporary Piano Music from Japan (LORELT) as well as the world première recordings of works by James Dillon (NMC), Edwin Roxburgh (NMC) and Jeremy Dale Roberts (LORELT). 2012 saw two further releases: two piano arrangements of Delius’s orchestral works (SOMM with Simon Callaghan), and a highly acclaimed disc of piano concertos by Catoire and Sherwood (another world première recording) with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Dutton Epoch).
Since 2012 Takenouchi has been teaching piano at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Glasgow). He also returns every summer to give masterclasses at the Poros International Piano Academy (Greece) and Ingenium International Music Academy (UK).
Stephen Hough’s recording of Liszt, ‘Bénédiction de Dieu dans le solitude’, Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S.173/III on the CD Rhapsodie espagnole; Mephisto Waltz; Bénédiction de Dieu released on Virgin as 724356112926.
There are moments when the piano ceases to sound like a box full of hammers being thrown against metal. It ceases to be a blacksmith’s instrument, all anvil-struck notes, all blows and impact.
Stephen Hough’s performance of Liszt’s ‘Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude’ is one such moment.
I first heard this recording when I was still relatively unversed in the nineteenth-century piano repertoire. I had listened to some Chopin and knew a few of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words.I wasn’t familiar with anything by Schumann and knew no Thalberg, Alkan or work by any of the other virtuosos.What little I knew of Liszt I had learnt from reading, and not least from those references to him in Proust.
Like so many other happy cultural discoveries, I first borrowed the CD on which this recording is to be found from the local library (Barnsley). It was there on the racks with the other discs, compilations, popular classics, opera box sets and the like. Stephen Hough, Liszt: Rhapsodie espagnole; Mephisto Waltz; Bénédiction de Dieu.I turned it over, looked at the track listing on the back, weighed it up and then walked it to the desk. I thought, ‘Why not?’
The love I immediately felt for the ‘Bénédiction’ made me a confirmed musical Romantic.There is something in its combination of simple melody and complex accompaniment that, from the very first notes, seems to care for me, the listener, and seeks to protect me. This is not just music to love but music by which one is loved. I’ve only ever had this same feeling with a few other recordings, including Björk’s song ‘Undo’ from her 2001 album Vespertine.
Under Hough’s hands, Liszt’s notes spread outwards; they diffuse themselves. There is nothing struck here, or so it seems, nothing metallic. All is radiated.
Hough’s gestures respect both the work’s grandeur and the composer’s profound religiosity whilst never straining for emotion or effect. Consider, for example,the moment when the right hand part is extended by a series of arpeggios (the passage marked ‘poco a poco animato il Tempo’ on the score). The upper notes seem to open out of the main melodic material, as though the chord was always already there, in the tune, and has only now risen to an audible volume.What great touch on the keyboard; what pedal control!
No other performance of the ‘Bénédiction’ has affected me in quite the same manner. Leslie Howard’s recording of it for Hyperion is undoubtedly brilliant but its brilliance is that of the bright midday sun reflected off of polished stone surfaces. It’s a little too insistent, too sharp edged, a performance whose volume and clarity causes the overall effect to be lost. The more Howard makes things visible the harder it is to see the work. I own a recording of Claudio Arrau playing this piece that is, by contrast, seemingly formed of those reflective stone surfaces themselves. It gives the impression of blocks of notes being moved into place. The Andante is especially hard, too clearly delineated, too marked in outline.
For all its wavering poetry, Hough’s performance is unwaveringly certain of the work’s coherence. As the piece stretches out to over seventeen minutes this is very welcome – essential, even. To take some examples: we can sense the connection between the partial melody in bars 44-49 and that in the later ‘quasi Preludio’ passage; and at the end of that same Preludio, just before the return of the main melodic material, Hough calls our attention to the communication between the hands, the passing backwards and forwards of the notes. In the Coda we can feel everything combine in one final, calm cadence.
Hough’s recording has affected my own playing. I’m only an enthusiastic amateur at best and doubt that I’ll ever be able to play the ‘Bénédiction’ properly and in full (I can play the comparatively simple Andante and quasi Preludio sections). However, my joy at listening to this recording did lead me to learn Liszt’s ‘Schlummerlied’, another work in F♯ major, one with a similar, albeit much simpler, repeating C♯-D♯ right hand figure. When I worked at this piece it was like working at a ‘Bénédiction’ in miniature, only one within my ability range.
As the piece ends, as the last chord dies away I have felt myself suspended, unwilling to speak or move, to intrude into the space created by Liszt and Hough.
Dr James Holden was born in Ashford and educated at Loughborough University. He graduated with his PhD in 2007. He is the author of, amongst other things, In Search of Vinteuil: Music, Literature and a Self Regained (Sussex Academic Press, 2010). His website is www.culturalwriter.co.uk and he posts on Twitter as @CulturalWriter
The Cross-Eyed Pianist is free to access and ad-free, and takes many hours every month to research, write, and maintain.
If you find joy and value in what I do, please consider making a donation to support the continuance of the site
The Cross-Eyed Pianist 