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| Daniel Grimwood |
A lot of pianists talk about projection but there’s another way of doing it which is less about projection and more about drawing people in
“The thought of performing my favourite composer on the
modern piano that most suits him gave me the idea of playing an all Schubert
concert, because he works so beautifully on Bösendorfer pianos. These pianos
have a tonal aesthetic that harks back to the nineteenth century. The original
Mr Bösendorfer was taught by Brodmann, one of the great builders of the
Viennese hammerflugels. Bösendorfers
have been built in an unbroken line since the early 19th Century, (I believe
Czerny owned one), and there’s something of the refinement of tone of the old
Viennese instruments that’s being carried through.
I recently recorded on a Bösendorfer Imperial model; it’s a
great big beast of a piano and you can create this huge wall of sound, but
nonetheless it’s still always very transparent and very refined. Which pretty
much are the same words I would use to describe Schubert’s keyboard music;
transparent and refined.
But this time I was recording piano works by the German
composer Adolph von Henselt; a hobbyhorse of mine. He was the teacher of
Rachmaninoff’s teacher, born in Bavaria but he moved to Russia. I think you
can’t overestimate the importance of the influence that his output had on
Russian composers.
As long as I like the music it matters to me little who
wrote it. I try to have as encyclopaedic a knowledge of repertoire as possible;
I think it’s not sufficient to know that Chopin was a great composer, for
example. I think I need to know everything about the world in which he was
writing, and that means the music that he performed and taught, the music that
was being performed at the same time. Sometimes you come across music that’s
not as great as the Greats that we’ve received, and that shows us what really
is great about those composers. But sometimes you come across a composer who
really should be better known. And then we have composers like Schubert, who is
one of the most famous, but there’s a lot of his music that is never performed.
For example, I think to date, there are only two or three complete recorded
cycles of his string quartets. How often do you hear the first three symphonies
performed in concert? Almost never! If he’d been two composers and if one had
written the early works and the other the late works, I think the early works
would be heard more.
Schubert scholarship is going through a period of change at
the moment. For example, Schubert’s Beethoven Project by Gingerich which talks
in depth about how Schubert was trying to build on Beethoven’s achievements.
After his year of crisis he starting writing fantastic masterpieces in the
Beethovenian genres - the piano sonata being one of them. It’s also interesting
to understand what position the piano sonata had in European society at that
time; it was predominantly a domestic form. As we know, none of Beethoven’s
piano sonatas were performed in public during his lifetime and likewise,
Schubert sonatas wouldn’t have been considered to be public music. The sonata
was a feminised and domestic art form. There were of course virtuoso male
performers who were starting to emerge at that time in the wake of Beethoven,
but that wasn’t what Schubert was expecting to be published for (what little of
it that was published in his lifetime).
There was a tradition of keyboard sonatas being published in
threes, and for some time now it’s been considered that Schubert’s three last
sonatas belong together, they are cut from the same cloth. I’ve played these
three before and I don’t like separating them because they work so beautifully
together. Having become accustomed to that, I always feel they seem a little
out of place when they’re not in the company of their brothers and sisters, so
to speak. The sonatas that I’m currently preparing to perform are the three
that proceed the final three.
As I’m preparing this programme I’m starting to feel quite
strongly that I’m not practising three sonatas, I’m practising three gigantic
movements of a huge structure. It’s definite that Schubert intended them to be
published as one set and they are also cut from the same cloth. There are
thematic similarities; there’s this curious knocking rhythm that begins in the
first movement of the first sonata and finishes at a structural point in the
final movement of the last sonata. It’s a strong rhythm, like someone knocking
on the door. I’ve spent time in the south of Germany and Austria in landscapes
that Schubert would have felt at home in, very similar to the landscape
surrounding Vienna … and there are qualities in Schubert’s orchestral writing
such as the way he treats the woodwind … the horn calls … all of the things we
associate with German Romanticism that were largely inherited from Weber … all
of these things that come from the land, and I picture these when I’m playing
Schubert. I had a moment once when I was walking through Vienna and I was on
one of the bridges over the Danube and I could just hear in my mind’s ear the
trio section from the Scherzo of the Great Symphony …
My attitude to venues and audiences is quite simplistic;
give me a piano that works and people who want to listen and I’ll do it
anywhere. I don’t have a favourite venue because the venue gives me less than
the people listening to me. I have given salon style concerts, most recently in
the Gregynog Festival in Wales. I took up my 1801 Broadwood square piano, which
is an elegant toned instrument and invites a more intimate form of music
making. Concert giving should be intimate. A lot of pianists talk about
projection but there’s another way of doing it which is less about projection
and more about drawing people in. I went to hear Richard Goode perform the last
three Schubert sonatas at the Royal Festival Hall. Even though I’d bought my
ticket at the last minute and had to sit far back, Mr Goode’s unique skills
drew in the entire audience and the room shrank. I’m lucky enough to be one of
the few pianists of my generation to have heard Richter perform in concert and
again, it was this sensation of the room actually shrinking to fit the
performance; it was quite beautiful.” (Daniel Grimwood was speaking with
Markson Pianos Composer in Residence Lola Perrin)
******
July 27th at 7pm
Daniel Grimwood performs at Markson Pianos Concert Series
3 Schubert Sonatas
Sonata in A minor, Op. 42
Sonata in D Major, Op. 53
Sonata in G Major, Op. 78
St Mary Magdalene Parish Church, Munster Place, London NW1 3PL
Tickets £6/£4 on the door
*****
Daniel Grimwood first discovered the piano at a neighbour's
house aged 3 starting a musical journey that has led him to share his music
with audiences across the world amassing a repertoire ranging from Elizabethan
Virginal music to works of living composers.
He enjoys a solo and chamber career that has taken him across the globe,
performing in many of the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals,
including the Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room in London,
the Rachmaninoff and Gnessin Halls in Moscow, the Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall in
New York, as many others throughout the world.
Winning a scholarship to the Purcell School of Music where he became
head boy, and later completed his studies with Vladimir Ovchinnikov and Peter
Feuchtwanger. Please visit his website for discography.
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