Newcastle under Lyme Festival

Earlier in the month I participated in 3 classes at the Newscastle festival- playing nocturnes by Frederic Chopin (F minor) and Nancy Litten and Franz Schubert's Hungarian Melody. An interesting afternoon - mainly teenagers competing, but it's always useful for playing experience (mine and theirs!). Here's Nancy Litten playing her nocturne - a certain influence of that Chopin Nocturne(!) I didn't dress up for my performance!..

I've been playing regularly at the Alberti piano group - which now has meetings on line and in person.

Here's my latest performance from the online meeting. Arnold Bax's Nereid - a watery tone picture very gentle with a few ripples (a nereid was a (one of many!) daughter of poseidon). I'll be playing the Schubert again at the Alderley festival in May.

Two Op 1s!

An interesting day musically - piano meetup at z-arts - 4 Rachmaninov preludes by different players, a stunning Berg sonata (Op 1) I've never heard it live before and this was I assume an amateur playing it! Someone else played the first movement of the Beethoven Op 111 sonata- I played some Bach (fugue from WTC in G min we had a lot of that key from various people!) and then in the evening to the Northern chamber orchestra chamber evening with the Mozart clarinet quintet (played with the contrabass clarinet version) some Schubert songs for baritone acc by string quartet - including the Erlkönig (another Op 1!) and then the Schubert string quintet a wonderful performance. The string quintet was interrupted when the second violin's bow broke at the end of the scherzo, but a performance of intensity throughout. The baritone Matthew Sharp doubled as the second cello in the Schubert!

Here's Glenn Gould playing the Berg Sonata

Demidenko

On Saturday we had a trip out to Holmes Chapel to hear Nickolai Demidenko performing at the Music Society there. We turned up on spec - our local music society often suffers from poor numbers - things were rather different on Saturday - we guessed that there isn't the musical competition that there is within Macclesfield - and the closer link to Manchester. We were put on a waiting list until they checked that full season ticket holders didn't seem to have turned up. So we were lucky!
It was an all Schubert recital the Impromptus D899, the 3 Klavierstücke D946 and the C minor sonata D958. Concentrated interior pieces (maybe that goes without saying with Schubert). I used to attempt the Klavierstücke and they're very strange works with stabbing chords and rhythms, there's a set of podcasts on the Guardian Website from Paul Lewis which are worth hearing. Both the middle one of the Klavierstücke and the last Impromptu have excursions into the wild key of Ab minor, Demidenko played these works with a intimacy and control. Then the C minor sonata which I remember for the seemingly endless loop of the finale - Beethoven looms large here (throughout the sonata) but it's taken in Schubert's own direction and the finale almost manic obsessive rhythms were powerfully communicated.
Demidenko played the same concert at the Wigmore Hall last night - the Independent review is here - I don't find exuberance in that final movement - and we got an extra (3rd!) encore of a Glinka Farewell - all the encores having a Russian connection.(A review from the Guardian has now appeared)

Der Frühling will kommen

This is no doubt deeply contrary, but here is Elly Ameling singing Schubert's "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" (the Shepherd on the Rock)

Contrary, because on hearing of Margaret Price's death today I was looking around for her performance I was looking for a performance of this work. I've not heard it for many years, I used to have a tape of a performance by Price (I'm pretty sure) of this work as part of a 1970's concert from London consisting of Schubert and Webern (both minaturists) and ending with this gloriously sad work. Make sure you listen to part 2 - a vocal and clarinet cadenza. The words and English translation are on the youTube page.
I don't like the switches in scale of the score for when Ameling is singing, two bars at a time is far too little!