Recording Ravel

26 July 2010

I'm sitting with Jeannie on the plane to Boston, en route to Massachussetts to spend time with her family; her twin nieces were one a couple of days ago so we're catching the tail-end of the birthday celebrations. A long flight like this gives me the first chance in a while to think about writing. It has been a hectic month, the dominant feature of which was three days of recording Ravel solo piano music. Nothing Ravel wrote is easy, even the pieces which sound it; he doesn't seem to know what feels comfortable at the piano. This might well be connected to the fact that he was a pretty mediocre pianist, a fact attested not only by a smattering of recordings (one cannot always rely on early recordings to give an accurate picture), but also contemporary accounts. Yet, perversely, he had an astonishing instinct for the colouristic possibilities of the piano, and while it may not be the most grateful music to learn, it is supremely effective and satisfying to play. Ravel was notoriously defensive in person, capable of being cold and sarcastic even to his good friends, and I think one senses the effect of this defensiveness also in his music. It is not that his music lacks emotion - quite the opposite - but the emotion is often buried under the surface, particularly beneath apparent innocence or playfulness. It is a fascinating solution to the conundrum of how a man who is scared to reveal himself in person can cope with revealing himself through his music, and this conflict produced, in my opinion, some of the most touching and vulnerable music ever written. I've recorded Le Tombeau de Couperin, Sonatine, Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, and a bunch of little pieces; I'll record the remainder of his piano works in September for a double CD of his complete piano music to be released early next year.

Since then I've hardly been at home, but for once it's not work-related: I attended a marvellous 3 day birthday party on the Scottish island of Rum (SCO cellist Su-a Lee hired a whole castle for more than 100 of her friends!), and then visited my great friends the Pigotts in Totnes where I helped make little icing men for a swimming pool birthday cake and played the Lego Harry Potter computer game with the kids. It's nice after the intensity of recording to do something brainless!

Two Little Slices of Heaven

15 June 2010

Last night I played the last concert of an exceptionally busy month. It seems that every concert has had different repertoire, including a number of very tricky works in close succession (Brahms 2nd piano concerto, Ravel Gaspard de la nuit and La Valse, Rachmaninov Corelli variations...). I have eagerly awaited this day of freedom, and am presently sitting in London pub with a pint of beer waiting for the football to start. Bliss!

In the midst of all the busyness during the last month, I had a brief but wonderful break from in Achiltibuie to celebrate the birthday of my friend and colleague from Hyperion, Mike Spring (a man who possibly knows as much about piano music as anyone on the planet). Achiltibuie is a very special place, situated in the far northwest of Scotland, 30 minutes along a single track road where one's desire to stare at the fabulous scenery struggles with one's desire not to hit the sheep which keep crossing the road. The village looks out over the Summer Isles and the surrounding area is just idyllic, with some spectacular walking. We stayed at the Summer Isles Hotel, a place renowned for fabulous cuisine; this also happens to be where I started my honeymoon with Jeannie. The only sad part is that Jeannie could only join us on the final evening - she got a call at the last moment to play principal clarinet with the Bergen Philharmonic, which meant she missed the 14 mile walk from Lochinver past Suilven. Jeannie and I did manage to have a quick jaunt up Stac Pollaigh on the morning we left however. This blog post is brought to you by the Stupendous Scotland Tourist Board.



Pebble beach by the road heading up to Achiltibuie





About to get caught in a hail storm up Stac Pollaigh





Hail storm receding





Happily hail-free





North of Suilven looking west

A mammoth journey

17 April 2010

I wonder how many classical performers found themselves stranded over the last few days thanks to the Icelandic volcano eruption (my headline of the year goes to the Daily Mail: "AWESOME POWER OF THE FIRES OF HELL. Poison gas, famine, catastrophe. How all the technology in the world can't save us from Mother Earth's fury".) Certainly, it's in the nature of our profession that on any given day there's a good change we're going to be abroad. As for myself, I was in Copenhagen to perform with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot (one of the most genial and intensely musical collaborators I've had the pleasure to work with). I was due to fly back on Friday morning for a concert that night in Carlisle with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. By late Thursday night, it was becoming clear that I was going to miss the concert, and I was trying to work out simply how to get home at all. In the end and after much research, I managed to book a berth on a night ferry from the Hook of Holland to Harwich leaving yesterday, which gave me time to make the trek down from Denmark (departing 7.45am on a train bursting at the seams with displaced air passangers, and arriving at the ferry terminal after many changes of train after 8pm). I arrived at 6.30 this morning in Harwich and am now, at 1.40pm on the last little train journey from Edinburgh to Linlithgow. I got off fairly lightly, because there were many at the terminal unable to get on the ferry, with the word being that there were no places available for several days. I knew I had a 2 berth cabin, so was able to take someone with me. The bizarre thing is that when I got to the cabin there were 4 beds in it. I know at least one other person who found the same. Moreover, while I was able to give a spare bed to someone, I know others who were not allowed to, being told the ferry was already full. So it seems like there was a great waste of capacity. There must have been many, like me, travelling alone and forced to book larger cabins because there were no single ones left. The refusal to allow those beds to be filled seems to me inexplicable.

NEWS: RACHMANINOV PRELUDES CD NOMINATED FOR CRITICS AWARDS AT 2010 CLASSICAL BRIT AWARDS

13 April 2010

My altercation with the back doorstep

23 March 2010

Shortly before Christmas I was woken by the sound of the bin lorry coming down our little cul-de-sac and bolted out of bed to get the bin out in time. Unfortunately it was the first day of the cold snap, and the ground was covered in ice: as a result I went flying when I stepped outside and landed with full weight on left middle finger. At first I didn't think any real damage was done because although it was pretty sore and inflamed it looked otherwise normal. As a precaution I got it X-rayed and was shocked to discover it was actually broken: a tiny flake of bone had been pulled off by one of the ligaments. As breaks go this is relatively minor, but the recuperation time is still significant. 3 months on, it is well on its way to being fully recovered, but I still have slight limitation in movement at the extremes of the range and weakness due to having been unable to use it properly over a long period. I've avoided writing about it until now because I knew I would have to cancel some concerts but wasn't sure how many, and I didn't want to needlessly alarm promoters (the truth is I was also pretty freaked out by the experience and didn't want people asking me about how serious the injury was until I knew if myself). I managed to cancel fewer concerts than I expected but what I had to cancel was really disappointing - a tour of 10 concerts with my wife around Scotland. Some of these were taken over by a couple of other pianists - Aaron Shorr and Scott Mitchell - but thankfully some were moved to this month (we're on our way to Inverness for the penultimate concert as I write). The first concerts I did after the accident were Schubert duets with Paul Lewis at the end of January, and for these I had to refinger everything to avoid the injured digit. Needless to say, this was very irritating! Since then, as luck would have the repertoire has increased in intensity gradually - Beethoven 4th concerto last month, Britten concerto a couple of weeks ago. These I was just about ready to perform when they came up, my finger gradually being able to withstand more stress. By now, the only real limitation I feel is a reluctance to play full power with it. In a month I expect I'll hardly notice there was ever a problem. The only significant obstacle left is my first performance of Rachmaninov's 1st piano concerto next Monday. The problem is not so much a question of power (the other fingers can compensate), as of simply playing the notes: due to the injury I lost several weeks practise time, and what practise I could subsequently do was at first severely restricted to stop my finger swelling up. So I feel like I'm much less prepared than I would normally be for a first performance. I'm pretty frustrated by this, but at the same time I'm grateful I can play the concert at all. And anyway, the whole experience might not be wasted: you have to suffer to play the blues... and Rachmaninov.

Recording and concerts with Paul Lewis

16 February 2010

A few posts back I talked about the fun of rehearsing Schubert piano duets with Paul, and we have just completed a run of concerts and a recording of the works (comprising four pieces from the last year of Schubert's life, including the great Fantasie, and two sets of variations)

Piano duet is perhaps the most difficult medium for a pianist to work in. Of course, the first thing is that it is physically awkward, with elbows jostling and fingers getting tangled up, but that's just the start. Only one person can pedal at a time, so someone has to cede control of this crucial tool to their partner who inevitably has different pedalling instincts. Even if they didn't, the instinct is initially to pedal in accordance with one's own part which can ruin the sound of the other part. On the other hand, pedalling in a way which supports a melody you're not yourself playing can be surprisingly tricky. And sometimes pedalling conflicts are impossible to resolve, forcing one to chose between the character of one part or the other.

Then there is the problem of timing. Piano notes have a very percussive start, which means that it is exceptionally hard for two players to make chords sound together - any discrepancy of more than one or two hundredths of a second is audible. This can be a serious headache for music which needs rhythmic flexibility.

Finally one has to create a good balance between the different parts, and this can go strongly against a pianist's instincts. It's the nature of piano playing that one deals in foreground and background, projecting one line above the others; it's rather rare that everything one plays needs to be in the background, even when accompanying another instrument. But in piano duet, it is extremely easy to make the texture very cluttered and to obscure the most important line or lines. As a result to play at the right level sometimes feels as if one is hardly playing at all.

So much for the difficulties. In spite of these, or perhaps even because of them, this has been one of the most enjoyable projects I've ever participated in. The process of rehearsing was great fun as it needs to be for piano duet, I think - otherwise it gets very irritating constantly being told to play quieter! As ever, playing music with friends makes all the difference. The people at the Aldeburgh Festival kindly provided us with a space to rehearse for three days, away from all distractions except for Adnams bitter and one of the best chippies in the country. Our first concert in Norwich already felt very good, and the subsequent concerts got better and better. Finally there was the recording in Potton Hall, taking us full circle back to Suffolk. This was a really inspiring experience, both for what I learned from Paul (everything he does is full of quality) and for the feeling of joint commitment and musical understanding which seemed to unite us. It will be a few months before we get to hear the result of our labours, and probably the end of the year before it's released, but I already feel confident that this is a CD of which I'll be very proud.

As a footnote, Paul has just launched his website. You can find it here: www.paullewispiano.co.uk

Turangalila and Roulette in Monte Carlo

06 December 2009

I'm in the middle of a mini-tour of tax havens at the moment. Currently I'm staying with some very dear friends in Vevey, who were my hosts when I played in the Clara Haskil competition almost 20 years ago (I have a couple of concerts with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra at the beginning of this week). And last week I played Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic and Yakov Kreizberg. This was a rather exceptional experience, and not only because of the monumental feeling that Kreizberg brought to the piece. It was a much-awaited event for the orchestra and audience because he had been ill for a number of months and this was the first concert he was able to undertake as the orchestra's new chief conductor; the combination of these facts and the great performance led to the most crazy, seemingly endless ovation I ever experienced. It is one thing for an audience to love a performance but to see an orchestra respond with such respect and admiration for a conductor was really touching, and it was clear that Kreizberg got the message.

After a post-concert meal, I went to the grand casino to play roulette with Cynthia Millar, who had just performed her 100th Turangalila on that electronic marvel, the Ondes Martenot. Neither of us had ever gambled in our lives before, and strangely enough I had a really good feeling about it in the afternoon. In the event I went in with 40 euros and came out with 210! There are many activities in life where one can be successful the first time because one is not yet aware of the difficulties, and my instinct was to imagine this was the case with my roulette experience. My wife tells me she also was very successful the first time she went to the casino. But of course, roulette is a game of pure chance - there is no skill in picking the right number. I don't think you can even maximise your chances according to what kind of bet you place because the return of a winning bet seems to be strictly related to the amount of risk you take, so I suspect that a monkey would do just as well as the most seasoned roulette player. And if I think back on the day, I remember I had lost my 'lucky feeling' by the evening, and I won anyway. So why should I connect my success to my lucky feeling and not to my lack of it later on? I guess it is more attractive for the ego to imagine one has a subtle influence over these things than to acknowledge one is helpless in the face of pure chance. I think this desire to believe in a control we do not have must be true to an extent because, absurdly, there is a display beside the roulette table showing the previous 15 or so numbers to come up. What possible reason can there be for this except to encourage people to find patterns, to feel that they can give themselves a better chance of winning next time?

Computer joy

23 November 2009

The title of this entry is ironic. I'm currently making an arrangement of a few songs from Porgy and Bess to perform with my wife on tour in January, and decided it might be worth investing in some music notation software. I already have a Yamaha electric keyboard which I used for practising in Singapore while Jeannie was still playing with the Singapore Symphony, and the thought of being able to play the music from it directly into the computer with a MIDI connection was very appealing. The first problem - how to hook the keyboard up to the computer? I bought a cable which looked like it should do the job, but no joy. Emails to Yamaha and the software manufacturer; no response. Much searching online for a solution, to no avail. Finally I bought another cable, 10 times the cost of the first, hooked it up to my laptop, but it didn't work. My frustration was starting to rise at a considerable rate. In desperation I tried connecting it to my PC. Still no luck. I fiddled about with every setting I could think of and to my amazement suddenly the connection was there. Funny the way technology can make one feel helpless! It turns out the instructions in the Yamaha keyboard manual were wrong.

Having the ability to play music directly into the computer is only the start of the process, however. I still have to learn how to edit what appears on the screen and this is a bewildering process. I printed out the list of keyboard commands to study - all 18 pages of them! I spent yesterday morning experimenting with them and inflicting all kinds of indignities on the British national anthem in the process. Gradually, I'm getting to grips with the logic of the system, and I have the sense that computer joy may in fact not be so far away after all.

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