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Tuesday 24 June at 1.15pm St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London EC4Y 8AU

World premiere performance of ‘Metropolis’, six songs by British composer Bernard Hughes and lyricist Chinwe D John that capture the pulse of a modern metropolis. These songs, which explore aspects of urban life, romantic love, and resilience, bring the emotional essence of our shared experience into stark and beautiful view. Soprano Isabelle Haile and pianist Asako Ogawa infuse their sublime artistry through the songs, creating an unforgettable musical experience.

This free lunchtime concert also includes music by Francis Poulenc, chosen to complement the songs. Find out more here

Metropolis appears on the album ‘Songs for Our Times’, released to critical acclaim in 2023 on the Divine Art label. ‘Songs for Our Times’ features composers Bernard Hughes and Staurt MacRae, lyricist Chinwe D John, pianist Christopher Glynn, soprano Isabelle Haile and tenor Nick Pritchard. The project, from its conception by Chinwe D John to the enthusiastic participation of the artists, exemplified by the premiere organised by soprano Isabelle Haile and pianist Asako Ogawa, speaks to the spirit of collaboration and shared interest in engaging current and future listeners.

Composer Bernard Hughes says, ‘I hadn’t written any solo songs when the opportunity to work with Chinwe came up. It was really interesting to work with lyrics by someone from such a different background to me. She pointed me towards some music styles I wouldn’t have otherwise encountered, and these formed the inspiration for the piano parts of several of the songs. It was a very collaborative process…I liked working on the songs as a cycle: there is a definite thread running through them. It was a delight working with Isabelle Haile on the recording. She is an exceptional talent and I’m so pleased she is giving the live UK premiere of Metropolis.’

Praise for Songs for Our Times – Metropolis

‘As a poet writing texts for songs, John has a very clear, direct voice, with the ability to craft memorable, evocative phrases and use short bursts of lyricism. Rarely do her texts feel too wordy or too over-written, there is space for the music….. Haile sings with a lovely bright, focused soprano tone’ – Robert Hugill

‘Here is music to enjoy but to make you think as well!’ – British Music Society

‘This is a capable and sensitive player who is intelligently inside the music, and quite capable of drawing us into it.’ – Early Music Review on Asako Ogawa

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The penultimate weekend in March saw me in London for two exceptional concerts in particularly lovely settings. The experience was enhanced by the company of friends and a delicious meal with a wonderful view across Smithfield (former meat market, now the new site for the Museum of London) to St Paul’s cathedral.

A Season to Sing is a reimagining of Vivaldi’s evergreen The Four Seasons for mixed voices by British composer, vocalist and music director Joanna Forbes L’Estrange. A co-commissioning project between the composer, The Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) and over 50 choirs around the world, A Season to Sing was written to mark the 300th anniversary this year of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

The London ‘launch concert’ took place on Saturday 22nd March at historic St Bartholomew-the-Great, a beautiful ancient church in the City of London. Luminosa Music, an exceptional amateur choir (who impressed with their pitch-perfect timing and exquisite, colourful sound) performed the music, the first half comprising choral pieces by Joanna, her husband Alexander L’Estrange, and works by Monteverdi and Thomas Morley, all with a seasonal theme. This set the scene nicely for the second half and A Season to Sing.

The Four Seasons is a perenially popular work, and this is is not the first time it has been ‘reimagined, Max Richter’s Recomposed, being the most famous example. But A Season to Sing is the first time this music has been reimagined for voices. As Joanna says in the concert programme notes, ‘...re-imagining in no way diminishes our respect for the original compositions. On the contrary it offers a new perspective….’ – this latter point being the most striking and magical thing about A Season to Sing.

Think you know The Four Seasons? Think again! Here, the orchestral version is transformed into a colourful extravaganza of sound which makes full use of the human voice (and other parts of the body) to bring Vivaldi’s seasons vividly to life – from whistled birdsong in Spring to “body percussion” to evoke the storm, a bagpipe’s drone and even some Swingle-style wordless ‘scat’ (Joanna was music director of The Swingle Singers for seven years, and the middle movement is dedicated to the group’s founder, Ward Swingle). New details from the original orchestration are revealed by the choir, such as interior lines and textures, and the entire piece feels as fresh as a spring shower. It’s full of affection too, and wit and warmth. It’s a wonderful tribute to this much-loved music.

The Four Seasons is the first piece of classical music I remember listening to as a child. I have very vivid memories of dancing around the room to the 3rd movement of Autumn

Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, composer

A Season to Sing is being performed around the world by the choirs who took part in the commissioning project (find details of all performances here). The score will be published by the Royal School of Church Music on 1st June (pre-order here).

Sunday afternoon and another concert at a lovely venue, this time the 1901 Arts Club, London’s most stylish and convivial small venue. This was a special concert to celebrate the 340th birthday of J S Bach and to launch American pianist Eleonor Bindman’s new album ABSOLUTE – her own transcriptions for piano of Bach’s Lute Suites BWV 996-998.

A lifelong love of J S Bach has led Eleonor Bindman to produce a number of important transcriptions for solo piano and piano duo of his music for other instruments, including the evergreen Cello Suites and the Brandenberg Concertos. In this latest addition to her catalogue, Eleonor has turned her attention to works originally composed for the lautenwerk or lautenwerck (lute-harpsichord), one of Bach’s favourite instruments, similar to the harpsichord, but with gut (or nylon today) rather than metal strings.

The small size of the music salon at the 1901 Arts Club lends itself to “haus konzert” style performances (such as Bach might have known) and the ambiance at this concert was warm and friendly.

Like Joanna’s reimagining of The Four Seasons, Eleonor sees transcriptions as a vehicle to “revive interest in original compositions”, shine a new light on the original work and “increase their popularity”. And just as in A Season to Sing, new details of dynamics, texture, counterpoint and more are revealed in this transcription for solo piano.

But for me the most satisfying aspect of Eleonor’s concert was her ability to bring so much colour and nuance to the music. Her range of sound was impressive, but never too much nor too little. Perfectly balanced to suit the small size of the venue, she brought both intimacy and grandeur (we can thank Bach for that!) to the music. I don’t think I have ever heard the Steinway at the 1901 played better!

The following day I met Eleonor for a most enjoyable, leisurely lunch, replete with much ‘piano chat’ and conversations about food.

ABSOLUTE is out now on the Orchid Classics label and on all major streaming platforms.

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‘The World of Yesterday’ – written & performed by Sir Stephen Hough with the Bournemouth Syphony Orchestra, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth. Wednesday 26th February, Lighthouse, Poole

British pianist Sir Stephen Hough hadn’t intended to write a piano concerto. But during the dark days of the COVID pandemic, he was approached to write a score for a film about a concert pianist writing a piano concerto… With little to do but take Zoom calls, “it seemed like a wonderful way to keep me busy”, and, intrigued by the film’s plot, he began jotting down ideas.

As the world emerged from the pandemic, the film project stalled and Stephen’s concert diary began to fill up again, but he still had the sketches for the film score and, with the support of four orchestras (the Utah, Singapore and Adelaide symphonies, and the Hallé) he wrote his piano concerto ‘The World of Yesterday’. It received its world premiere with the Utah Symphony Orchestra in January 2024 and a recording made with the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder is available on the Hyperion label.

I had the pleasure of hearing Hough perform his concerto with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in a well-conceived programme called Notes of Nostalgia. Given its theme, the concerto sat perfectly between Brahms’ Third Symphony and Elgar’s Enigma Variations – all three works infused with a certain wistfulness interposed with personal reflection, warmth and wit.

Hough’s concerto takes its inspiration, in part, from Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s atmospheric memoir of the same name, which depicts Vienna and Viennese culture in the last golden days of the Habsburg Empire before Europe was torn apart by war. You can almost smell the aroma of Viennese coffee and taste the Sacher-Torte in the quieter passages of the piece.

The music is rich in nostalgia, but without the heart-tugging poignancy of Chopin, for instance: it’s a more reflective yet positive reminiscence of another time. Scored in a single movement but with distinct sections, ‘The World of Yesterday’ has a filmic quality (“something from the 1940s”, my husband commented as we left the concert hall) – you certainly hear nods to Korngold’s film scores, and it shares Korngold’s romantic sweep, but there are also references to Rachmaninov (particularly in the very glittery virtuosic solo sections), Copland, the Warsaw Concerto…but at no point do these references feel like pastiche. And if you’re familiar with Hough’s wonderful transcriptions of Rodgers and Hammerstein, you’ll find similar idioms here (I half-expected Hough to segue into the Carousel Waltz at one point). And yes, there is a waltz too – not so much a Viennese waltz but something more sultry, redolent of Bill Evans and a smoky, late-night jazz club.

Hearing the composer play his own work was like a bridge across time to another world of yesterday, a time when composers wrote piano concertos which they performed themselves: Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev all performed their own concertos. Showcasing their prowess and personality as both performer and composer, these works becoming their “calling cards” as they toured to give concerts.

The music has an almost “vintage” quality: surprisingly traditional in its direct communication with orchestra and audience, and its idioms, motifs and references to other composers (there’s not a hint of that “squeaky gate” atonality one often associates with contemporary classical music). The piano enjoys Brahmsian interactions with the orchestra and Rachmaninov-esque cadenzas, but Hough’s does break with tradition in a few significant ways. First, the concerto has a narrative title, rather than just an opus number or key, which undoubtedly guides the audience, even without a programme note. Additionally, the cadenza, traditionally heard at the end of a movement, comes very early, after an orchestral ‘prelude’. Here the piano is solo, notes and motifs sparkling in the upper register (later mirrored by the piccolo).

Above all, The World of Yesterday is a richly textured, virtuosic and joyful celebration of past influences, rather than a poignant glance back to a better time. It’s full of warmth and wit, affection and humour: it made me smile, it thoroughly uplifted.

After all, isn’t that what music should do?

‘The World of Yesterday’ is released on 28 February on the Hyperion label

Stephen Hough
Sketch of what would be Hough’s Piano Concerto (credit: Stephen Hough)

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Guest post by Karine Hetherington

With, ‘Variations’, pianist Joanna Kacperek has chosen to focus on the humble variation. Like many other composers before them and since, Beethoven, Robert and Clara Schumann, Brahms and Chopin, composed many variations. On this album, Kacperek artfully displays the creative possibilities of these variations, which were a way of exploring a theme for these composers, often not their own, and taking it to the next sublime level.

Variations have also been the means by which one composer honoured another. Thus, we hear Robert Schumann’s little-known variations, based on a theme by Beethoven, in this case, Beethoven’s Symphony no.7 and more precisely the Allegretto movement. To hear Beethoven’s solemn theme being repeatedly played and tweaked and then transformed by Schumann, is a thrill and gives the much-loved Beethoven melody a new mesmeric quality.

Clara Schumann’s variations meanwhile, celebrate the rich relationship (musical and emotional) she enjoyed with her husband, Robert. These intimate variations reveal every facet of their emotional life; joy, pain, yearning, eventually unfolding into a marvellous resolution where gratitude seems the overriding emotion.

Impressed by Kacperek’s debut album, Karine Hetherington from ArtMuseLondon went to interview this breakthrough artist.

Had you always planned to have a musical career and become a professional pianist?

Actually, yes! I started my private piano lessons at the age of 6. From the age of 7 onwards, I was educated in state music schools in Poland that are quite strict and take your musical development very seriously. 

Of course all this wouldn’t’have happened without the support of my parents. 

What led you to the idea of doing an album of musical variations? What does it bring to the listener?

I really love the idea of taking something really simple, like a 16-bar theme, and developing it in any way possible; I find it really exciting from both a pianistic and musical point of view. In a way, it feels like pushing the boundaries – how far can we go? How creative and expressive can we be, starting with such simple musical material? 

The album started with my obsession with Clara Schumann’s Variations Op. 20 which she composed on her husband’s theme – I just knew this piece was special. The other thing that influenced this programming was my discovery of Robert Schumann’s Studies on a Theme by Beethoven – a composition that survived (thanks to Clara) and was not published during Robert’s life. It is such a tremendous set that deserves more spotlight! Then, I started adding other sets of variations that complemented the ones by the Schumanns – hence Beethoven Op. 34 (which links to Schumann-Beethoven Studies), and Brahms Op. 18b (the birthday present from Brahms to Clara Schumann). 

Because all of the works I have mentioned had a personal story behind them, I decided to add Dutilleux’s Choral and Variations from his Sonata Op. 1 – the piece dedicated to, and premiered by his wife, concert pianist Genevieve Joy. Then – Cecile Chaminade’s Thème varié Op. 89  – a little gem, so rarely performed and recorded (my recording is only the 4th in the world!) showcasing yet another brilliant pianist-composer; finally Chopin – which is not only a nod towards my Polish roots, but at the same time it links to Dutilleux and Chaminade through their Paris residency. 

Where are you performing next? What musical projects do you have in the pipeline?

2025 looks exciting. I have performances planned in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Ireland and of course in the UK. January will start with two performances in West London of Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto with an incredible arrangement for a string quintet.

How do you relax?

Playing the piano can be a lonely profession, so to relax, I love being around people.I enjoy the gym and group fitness classes that involve cardio, boxing or dance. Apart from that – quiet evenings with my cat on my lap is also one of my favorite things. 

Joanna Kacperek’s album Variations is available on the Rubicon label and via streaming

joannakacperek.com

This article first appeared on The Cross-Eyed Pianist’s sister site ArtMuseLondon.com

(Artist photo by Paul Marc Mitchell)