British Music Society of York: Daniel Lebhardt, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, December 1
FEW pianists are able successfully to combine both accompaniment and solo work. But less than a week after he had appeared in a supporting role in Helmsley, Daniel Lebhardt was back in Yorkshire for this solo recital as part of the British Music Society of York’s 102nd season.
He opened with four ballades by Brahms, but thereafter interleaved Scriabin and Bartók with three Ligeti preludes. The ballades are a product of the composer’s early twenties and grouped in two pairs, the minor and major keys of D and B; they are mainly in three-part song form.
Lebhardt played them lovingly, concentrating on their melodies and keeping accompanimental figures in the background. Nowhere was this more successful than in the last, which was beautifully sustained.
We were to hear little of this approach in the rest of the programme. Ligeti’s 18 preludes are nowadays becoming de rigueur in piano recitals (two days earlier Danny Driver had included some here).
They are frequently volatile, often fast-moving, and a supreme test of virtuosity. Lebhardt was unlucky with No 6, Autumn In Warsaw, where he had a memory lapse that a re-start could not surmount, although we had sensed the falling leaves well enough. The prestissimo ending of No 15, White On White, given later, was thrilling.
The audience stayed on his side and he came back even more determined. So much so that he took out his anger on the ‘Drammatico’ opening of Scriabin’s Third Sonata, with exceptionally strong accents.
But he still managed to convey its ebb and flow. He had regained composure by the third, slow movement, which was gentle, bordering on sentimental. Fire was to return with a vengeance in the finale; it was to become a chorale by the end. He also made strong contrasts between high and low registers in Scriabin’s Vers la Flamme.
Born in Hungary, but now based in this country, Lebhardt showed a particular empathy with Bartók. The three Studies were wonderfully crisp; they must have acted as stimulants for Ligeti. The first was a whirlwind of close harmony, while in the second he brought out the theme with great clarity in the left hand. There was not much evidence of the ‘Rubato’ the composer marked in the third, but it was neatly structured nonetheless.
Bartók’s ‘Out Of Doors’ suite (Szabadban) had a special ring of truth. Lebhardt found the humour in ‘Musettes’ (although it needed to be a touch lighter), and ‘The Night’s Music’ was appropriately eerie.
‘The chase’ was highly percussive and riddled with cross-accents, in true Allegro Barbaro vein. Indeed, if there were a quibble about the second half, it would be that too much of the music was percussive, allowing the pianist’s lyricism little rein. But his virtuosity – with the one exception – was never in doubt.
Variations: Sarah Beth Briggs’s 50th birthday year recording
YORK international concert pianist Sarah Beth Briggs releases her new album, Variations, today.
Available worldwide through AVIE, it follows the success of her Austrian Connections disc, which received a five-star review from Musical Opinion.
“Lyricism and dance are the watchwords of Briggs’s beautifully prepared performances…a player at the height of her powers,” the reviewer enthused.
Recorded at the Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, Wales, with support from the Nimbus Foundation, Variations finds Sarah exploring five sets of Variations by great masters of the genre, some of them relatively rarely heard on the concert platform.
Mozart’s exquisite late Duport Variations pave the way for Beethoven, who, after “‘showing the British what a treasure they have in God Save The King”, threw out the rule book of traditional variation form in his beautifully crafted yet still much overlooked Opus 34 set.
Before concluding with Brahms’s deeply poignant tribute to Robert Schumann, Sarah plumbs the depths of Mendelssohn’s much recorded Variations Serieuses, true to the spirit of the title, which indicates the composer’s desire to go far beyond merely demonstrating a pianist’s virtuoso capabilities.
“For my 50th birthday year recording, I was keen to highlight the progress of Variation form through the classical and romantic eras and wanted to contrast a much performed and recorded set (Mendelssohn’s Variations Serieuses) with some of the lesser known and performed variations by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms,” says Sarah.
“I first learnt Mozart’s Duport Variations in my teens, and they were a test piece when I played in the first round of the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg. I’ve loved them ever since – there’s so much that’s joyful (and very operatic!) about them!”
Sarah recorded Beethoven’s Seven Variations on God Save The King purely by chance, but now, serendipitously, they could not be better timed for King Charles’s upcoming coronation.
“It’s strange to think I was recording Beethoven’s God Save The King Variations when Queen Elizabeth II was alive, never imagining that the timing of the release would be shortly before King Charles III’s coronation,” she says.
“I’m particularly delighted to have included them in the album programme at what turns out to be such an appropriate moment in history. Beethoven made it clear that he believed the British had a ‘treasure’ in God Save The King and he has a lot of fun embellishing it!”
Sarah continues: “His Opus 34 set is much less frequently performed than the Eroica set that immediately follows it, but my love of these variations goes back to growing up with my own late teacher Denis Matthews’ recording of them. They’re beautifully crafted, yet certainly showing Beethoven the revolutionary – throwing out the rule book of traditional variation form.”
“The key for me here is to view the variations as truly great music, rather than purely for their virtuoso qualities,” says Sarah Beth Briggs of Mendelssohn’s Variations Serieuses
Mendelssohn’s Variations Serieuses need little introduction to classical music lovers, says Sarah. “I’ve had a soft spot for them for as long as I can remember,” she reveals. “I approached them from the early days of studying with Denis with a real wish to understand the importance of Mendelssohn’s title – the word ‘serious’ distinguishing them from the sometimes frivolous variations of the time, which were largely about showing off.
“The key for me here is to view the variations as truly great music, rather than purely for their virtuoso qualities, and much of the excitement of playing them is keeping something in reserve so the whole set can build to a really exciting conclusion.”
Sarah finishes with the Brahms Schumann Variations. “They have almost overwhelming depth and sadness, alongside moments of high drama,” she says. “I see this set as a true masterwork. A wonderful tribute both to Robert Schumann (who had just been admitted to an asylum following his attempted suicide) and to his wife Clara (the dedicatee), who was at the time pregnant with their seventh child.
“It is hard to believe that this is the writing of a 21-year-old man, but certainly indicates Brahms’ great genius. It feels a suitably great work with which to conclude this particular musical journey.”
Discussing her performance plans for Variations, Sarah says: “While I have previously performed the works that feature in my album individually, I’ve chosen to wait to perform a programme built on a larger part of this release until the autumn season.
“I look forward to performing Variations Plus (featuring some of the disc programme alongside other works that take the form of variations but aren’t actually titled as such!) in numerous venues throughout the UK.”
Sarah’s Yorkshire appearance will be in November as part of the Music In The Round series at the Sheffield Crucible. Watch this space for more details.
“Part of my programme planning has centred around linking my great interest in Hans Gál (whose music I have made several recordings of) with my latest Variations project, so at the heart of my Variations Plus programme is Hans Gál’s Piano Sonata from 1927, which includes a set of variations as its rather haunting third movement,” she says.
“That ties up nicely with my first live performance of the Gál Piano Concerto (which I made the world premiere recording of) later this year in Germany with the Hofer Symphoniker.”
See Sarah Beth Briggs’s album preview below:
Sarah Beth Briggs: Variations
Mozart: Variations on a Minuet by Duport, K573
Beethoven: Seven Variations on God Save The King, WoO78
Beethoven: Six Variations on an Original Theme in F major, Op 34
Mendelssohn: Variations Sérieuses, Op 54
Brahms: Variations on a theme by Robert Schumann, Op 9
Martin Roscoe: “Let’s his fingers do the talking. They are certainly eloquent“
PIANISTS do not come much more deceptive than Martin Roscoe, who closed the British Music Society of York’s season with this recital of Schubert, Brahms and Liszt.
He goes against convention by using a score – no harm in that, especially if you consult it as little as he did. Having walked unassumingly to the keyboard, he plays without fuss or histrionics. In other words, he lets his fingers do the talking. They are certainly eloquent.
Although Schubert’s second set of impromptus, D.935, was not published until 11 years after his death, he had presented them as a foursome to his publisher (who, incredibly, rejected them). There is no suggestion that they are the movements of a sonata, but there is undeniably a feeling that they are related – for one thing, the first and fourth are in the same key, F minor. Certainly, I have never felt them to be so closely linked as they sounded here.
There was an understated elegance in Roscoe’s approach. He unfolded the opening Allegro moderato gently, melting smoothly from the minor to the major key and back again. There was a touch more emphasis in the second, marked Allegretto.
The ‘Rosamunde’ variations were beautifully contrasted: the three different voices in the second variation, for example, emerged with lovely clarity. The sense of impromptu, essentially improvisation, was kindled most keenly in the final dance, especially in the link to the return of the main theme.
The three Brahms intermezzi, Op 117, which are late, autumnal pieces, emerged as if they were the composer’s innermost thoughts, at once intimate and revealing. A lovely cantabile flow permeated the first, while it was the inner voices of the more sombre second that gleamed to the surface in turn. The syncopations of the third, which might have felt more restless, were not allowed to disrupt its serenity.
Petrarch’s Sonnet 104 finds the poet in a confused state over a burning love affair. Liszt’s reaction to it was first to set it as a song and then, more famously, to transcribe that into a piano piece, which appears in the Italian volume of his Years of Pilgrimage. Roscoe treated its harmonies tenderly, as if aware that the topic was sensitive, and it unfolded logically to its bitter-sweet close.
In both the remaining Liszt pieces, there must have been plenty of temptation to treat the piano as an orchestra; Liszt piles on the pressure relentlessly. Roscoe resisted. Isolde’s Love-Death, his transcription of the closing scene from Wagner’s Tristan Und Isolde, reached a passionate but controlled climax, with the lovers finally achieving satisfaction together after death.
Even more orchestral was St Francis’s triumphant walk on the waves, its rushing, stormy figurations not disrupting the relentless flow. Here we had the only out-and-out fortissimo of the evening. After that, a quiet Beethoven Bagatelle seemed the perfect antidote as encore. An evening of impeccable taste and considerable virtuosity.
