angela hewitt - wigmore hall

ANGELA HEWITT

ON HER BACH ODYSSEY

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MENDELSSOHN EXPLORED IN THE NEW SEASON A WIGMORE HALL LEARNING CASE STUDY: PARTNER SCHOOL PROJECT AN INTERVIEW WITH FLORIAN BOESCH 2020/21 SEASON HIGHLIGHTS

CONGRATULATIONS

First, though, a return to the continuing 2019/20 Season; it was a great joy for me when Angela Hewitt agreed to take on her marathon project A Bach Odyssey which concludes in June, and it will be a pleasure to present her with the Wigmore Medal that evening. It’s amazing to think that the project was conceived way back in 2014, but such is the nature of advanced planning for the artistic programme.

We welcome several new writers to this issue of The Score including Hugo Shirley, Berlin-based writer and musicologist, and jazz editor Sebastian Scotney. Hugo interviews one of our 2020/21 Season artists in residence, clarinettist Martin Fröst, on page 3, and pulls together our three major strands of focus on Mendelssohn during the new season in an article on pages 6-7. Sebastian speaks to American double

bass player Christian McBride, who holds a jazz residency in 2020/21, on page 13. I’m also delighted that Julia Fischer and Francesco Piemontesi participate in very interesting Q&As in this issue. A major pillar of the 2020/21 Season is the focus on Martinů’s seven string quartets surrounded by other Czech repertoire, and I’m delighted that the Pavel Haas Quartet accepted my invitation to take this project on.

It was wonderful and heartening to have a full Hall of supporters for the 2020/21 Season launch, which is still available to view online: wigmore-hall.org.uk/ whats-on/2020-21-wigmore-series The evening included a conversation with Andrew Marr and outstanding performances from Ema Nikolovska with Simon Lepper and the Chiaroscuro Quartet. It’s hard to believe that these annual events started as a preview for a small group of about two

dozen people 17 years ago. So much has changed in the Hall during that time thanks to your ongoing support.

There will be a final edition of The Score this season in July; until then, I hope you enjoy hearing about highlights of this season and the next in this issue.

John Gilhooly, Director

COVER Angela Hewitt © Keith Saunders

Knights Bachelor Sir Humphrey Burton, classical music presenter, broadcaster and lecturer, who was the BBC’s first Head of Music and Arts in 1965 and created the Young Musician of the Year competition; CBE Errollyn Wallen, who is the subject of the Royal Northern College of Music’s Composer in Focus day at Wigmore Hall in May 2020;MBE Helen Grime, who was Wigmore Hall’s first female Composer in Residence in the 2016/17 and 2017/18 Seasons; MBE 21-year-old award-winning cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who won BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 and had his Wigmore Hall debut in May 2019.

Congratulations to everyone recognised for their service to the arts.

The New Year Honours list recognises the achievements of a wide range of extraordinary people across the United Kingdom. In 2020, Wigmore Hall was delighted to see the following musicians included:

LEFT Helen Grime

RIGHT Errollyn Wallen

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ABOVE John Gilhooly

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I’m very pleased to welcome you to the Spring issue of The Score. We take a look at many of the highlights of the 2020/21 Season, which we launched at the end of January.

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PICTURED Martin Fröst

Now, some 20 years on, the Swedish clarinettist and conductor returns to the Hall for a residency in the 2020/21 Season which will see him playing chamber music as well as directing the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, in a concert featuring the baritone Peter Mattei. ‘When you play chamber music,’ Fröst explains, ‘it’s always the feeling going from a friend to a friend, and that is so much the feeling in this building. That’s what I’ve always felt when I come back. It’s always been like a second home, and it feels like relaxation to come here – cosy relaxation!’

It seems that, with Fröst’s 20/21 residency, he’ll feel doubly at home. ‘I love these situations when I come back to a hall several times in a year. First of all, you really get to know the audience; second, you’re able to present different programmes.’ Indeed, the residency promises classics of the clarinet repertoire – there’ll be Brahms and Mozart, with regular Fröst collaborators including violist Antoine Tamestit and pianist Shai

Wosner. But it’s also set to include the sort of performances that have helped Fröst establish a reputation as one of the most innovative musicians on the global scene.

For Fröst himself, it will additionally provide an opportunity to take stock, to reflect on his past and present as an artist, but also look to his future. ‘It’s about the balance. To stay creative, not to grow out of it when you get older – I’m 50 now. You have to ask: why did I start with this, where am I going from here, what do I want to look back on? It’s important to ask these questions: why am I doing this, what am I thinking, what am I achieving?’

Few would ever accuse Fröst of standing still – either metaphorically or, in the case of performances that have included elements of dance, literally. But the clarinettist and conductor makes a surprising admission. ‘I’m a very conventional guy at bottom, and raised by parents who were super conventional. But at the same time, I always get a little bit frustrated and worried that

I won’t move forward. I want to open a window to the future when I have been doing the same thing for a while.’

A residency, he says, is one way to do that. ‘You have a bigger frame, a little bit more freedom. You know you can play around and you have a sense of excitement that you can do a little bit more of things you want to do. And that’s a great feeling!’

Hugo Shirley is a Berlin-based writer and musicologist, music critic and former editor of both Opera and Gramophone

TWO DECADES AT THE HALL

Martin Fröst’s Residency begins in September 2020:Tuesday 22 September 2020 7.30pmTuesday 16 February 2021 7.30pmSaturday 15 May 2021 7.30pmSunday 16 May 2021 11.30amMonday 17 May 2021 1.00pm

Martin Fröst remembers his Wigmore Hall debut well. But it’s perhaps not for the reasons one would expect. ‘The electricity went off on Oxford Street and Wigmore Street. Everything went off, the radio broadcast was cut, and we had to change the programme, because one of the pieces used electronics.’ It all went well in the end, though, he recalls. ‘And it was the start of a long journey with Wigmore Hall.’

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THERE AND BACH AGAIN

You can still attend the last events in Angela Hewitt’s Bach Odyssey series:Saturday 28 March 2020 7.30pm*Tuesday 2 June 2020 7.30pm, including presentation of the Wigmore MedalWednesday 3 June 2020 1.00pm – Angela Hewitt Masterclass*Sold out at time of printing

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‘It was John Gilhooly’s idea,’ says Angela Hewitt of the origins of her Bach Odyssey, a four-year project to perform the complete keyboard works of Bach at Wigmore Hall.

‘He called me into his office in early 2014 and told me he’d spent a whole weekend listening to my Bach recordings and really wanted to do something big with me. I take my hat off to him, because I wouldn’t have done it otherwise, that’s for sure. And it’s been a great thing, and come at the right time of my life, I think.’


‘I think Bach on the piano is terrific if it’s treated just as a pure musical instrument that can imitate the human voice.’

PICTURED Angela Hewitt

Coming as it does from an artist more closely associated with Bach than any other living pianist, Angela’s last remark is surely significant, suggesting that she is arriving at a point where stock can be taken, and achievements recognised. She made the first of her many Wigmore Hall appearances in 1985, the same year that she moved to London from her native Canada and won the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition. Between 1994 and 2004, she recorded the complete Bach for Hyperion in a series that has sold over 400,000 units and prompted the BBC Music Magazine’s critic to declare that ‘I know of no musician whose Bach playing on any instrument is of greater subtlety, beauty of tone, persuasiveness of judgement or instrumental command than Hewitt’s is here’. The 12 Bach recitals end this year with concerts on 28 March and 2 June 2020, and following the June performance – which will feature Bach’s final composition, The Art of Fugue – she will be presented with the Wigmore Medal. 18 days after that she also receives the City of Leipzig Bach Medal.

Although Angela’s repertoire extends well beyond Bach of course – she has performed and recorded the complete works of Chabrier and Ravel, for instance, and has a nearly-completed Beethoven sonata cycle on the go – she has always been perfectly happy to be thought of primarily as a Bach pianist. And she doesn’t consider Bach to have been an easy option. ‘It’s actually a very special study,’ she says, ‘and the greatest one for developing your musical intelligence and your technique at the piano. It’s a shame that more pianists, amateur or professional, don’t get better training in it, because people tend to get bad habits like putting the pedal down all the time so they don’t learn a proper finger legato. Or they don’t really learn to articulate a fugue subject so that it makes sense, or about fingering when you’ve got four parts and have to articulate all of them. It doesn’t get any easier either. I’ve certainly built up my technique by playing Bach, especially in my fingering, but then again with age you have to keep up the practising and keep the brain going.’

Neither does she have any doubts that the piano’s expressive qualities make it the perfect vehicle for Bach: ‘I think Bach on the piano is terrific if it’s treated just as a pure musical instrument that can imitate the human voice. After all, it was invented because they needed a keyboard that could imitate the cadence of the voice, that can sound like an orchestra, an organ or an oboe if you have imagination enough. And all those sounds are in there in Bach’s keyboard music; I hear and see them,

and I will use anything like that to get away from the fact that it’s just notes on a keyboard. You know, I love going to a harpsichord if it’s in the room. I’ll play it, and it’s important to do that. But then after a while I’ll get tired that I can’t follow the rise and fall of the musical line.’ For the record, Angela admires Bach harpsichordists as well as pianists. Among the former are Trevor Pinnock, Gustav Leonhardt, Ton Koopman (‘with all his ornaments!’) and Ralph Kirkpatrick, while the latter include Sir András Schiff, Rosalyn Tureck, Jörg Demus, Glenn Gould and Edwin Fischer. But a bigger influence on her playing, she says, was her father Godfrey, organist of Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa from 1931 to 1980, and ‘a great one for getting the right articulation and timing, and the whole drama and architecture of it all’.

Angela’s Bach Odyssey is also being presented in New York, Montreal, Florence and Tokyo, but it is the Wigmore concert in June that will bring it to a fitting conclusion. ‘I have so many memories of the place. I really didn’t know anyone in London when I first arrived, and for the first 15 years I did most of the promotion of my Wigmore recitals myself – doing the leaflets, sending out all the notes and putting the stamps on the envelopes. But John Gilhooly and William Lyne before him were so wonderful in believing in me and giving me the chance to do so much. The recitals I did at Wigmore were always my most important ones, and the repertoire I learned for them, from Brahms’ F minor Sonata to the Barber Sonata to the Liszt Sonata and the complete Ravel, was always crucial to my development.’

After receiving her medals, and once her annual festival at the Italian town of Trasimeno is over, Angela will take a three-month break ‘to clear the brain, clean out some cupboards, stretch the body a little – no concertising. This project has been so encompassing and so fulfilling that I need a bit of space before I can take on anything else.’ It will be her first such break for many years, she says, but she will be back after that, refreshed and eager to make the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata the last piece in her Beethoven sonata cycle jigsaw, explore music by Scarlatti and his Spanish baroque contemporaries, reacquaint herself perhaps with that Brahms Sonata and, of course, return to the music of Bach, this time carefully selected. She laughs. ‘Now I’ve done the complete works again, I can choose which pieces I want to keep!’

Lindsay Kemp is a Senior Producer at BBC Radio 3’s Music Department and Artistic Director of the London Festival of Baroque Music


But Felix Mendelssohn, who is celebrated at Wigmore Hall through interlocking concert series throughout the 2020/21 Season, is a composer who is eminently easy to underestimate.

His notes seem to flow with such ease, sparkling and babbling like the surface of a brilliant stream; memorable melodies trickle from his pen; his counterpoint twists and turns in graceful, apparently effortless choreography. Few have denied Mendelssohn’s stunning facility – in the face of his Octet, composed when he was just 16, it would be impossible to. But the surface brilliance has sometimes been accompanied by a question: where’s the depth?

Wigmore Hall’s 2020/21 concerts look set to answer that question. Two series focus on different parts of Mendelssohn’s output: the Lieder and the chamber music. Pianist Julius Drake is joined by singers including Roderick Williams, Dame Sarah Connolly, Ian Bostridge and Julian Prégardien for concerts juxtaposing Mendelssohn’s songs with those of Franz Liszt – born just two years later. The Elias String Quartet covers the string quartets, quintets and octet. Andrew Carwood and The Cardinall’s Musick, meanwhile, will feature in a trio of concerts of Mendelssohn’s unaccompanied choral music, placing the composer in the context of works by his predecessors and contemporaries, as well as the generation that followed him.

It all adds up to a rare opportunity to delve deep beneath the composer’s brilliant surface. And that’s something, Julius Drake admits, that’s not

FELIX MENDELSSOHNUnderrated would seem a strange word to describe a composer who’s never been out of the concert hall, who’s a mainstay of music-making for both professionals and amateurs, was the toast of Victorian England and who, for many, counts as a greater prodigy even than Mozart.

Elias String Quartet © Kaupo Kikkas


MENDELSSOHN IN CONTEXTSome of Mendelssohn’s choral music is among his most popular. Three Mendelssohn in Context concerts in the 2020/21 Season, however, offer a rare opportunity to sample the richness of his sacred output for unaccompanied choir. ‘There are some wonderful pieces which don’t get out enough,’ says Andrew Carwood, who presents the series with The Cardinall’s Musick.

The reason for the neglect is largely one of programming: ‘It’s fallen between two stools, because until recently you wouldn’t have done them in church, and in concert you’d have gone more for the secular part songs, some of which are not so strong.’ And what can listeners expect? ‘He likes a lot of eight-part writing,’ Carwood explains, ‘which can be quite dramatic, on quite a big scale, and gives him a lot more opportunities for different colours. But I suppose the crucial thing is his use of harmony: the music is just gorgeous.’

As the title of the series suggests, its aim is also to show these works within their musical context. When it comes to forerunners, one name unsurprisingly dominates: Bach, whose 19th-century revival Mendelssohn spearheaded. But Carwood is also interested in Mendelssohn’s contemporaries and successors, in exploring ‘the line that Mendelssohn is part of’. This covers key names of German Romantic music and a development from religious spirituality to something more universal. ‘It’s a yearning for the beyond,’ Carwood explains, ‘but what is it?’ A big question, no doubt, but one that Mendelssohn in Context promises to go some way to answering.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Julius Drake is joined by several acclaimed singers in the Mendelssohn/Liszt Song Series:Wednesday 30 September 2020 7.30pmMonday 7 December 2020 7.30pmThursday 4 February 2021 7.30pmMonday 29 March 2021 7.30pmTuesday 29 June 2021 7.30pm

Join The Cardinall’s Musick for Mendelssohn in Context:Monday 26 October 2020 7.30pmMonday 11 January 2021 7.30pmWednesday 30 June 2021 7.30pm

The Elias String Quartet kicks off its cycle in April 2021:Saturday 24 April 2021 7.30pmThursday 27 May 2021 7.30pmTuesday 22 June 2021 7.30pmWednesday 14 July 2021 7.30pm

always easy to do. ‘Speaking personally, Mendelssohn is a much more wonderful composer than I realised he was,’ the pianist says. ‘The songs can be played very superficially and reasonably successfully. But once you delve into them you realise how intricate and fully thought out and emotionally connected they are.’

Several factors have played into the fact that Mendelssohn is easy to underestimate: his fluency runs counter to romantic notions of genius and hard-won creative battles; his life, though tragically short, was similarly far

too comfortable to fit the standard template. A whiff (or sometimes a downright stench) of anti-Semitism coloured many attitudes to this precocious grandson of the great Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

Drake also detects something in his style. ‘It’s almost as though he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. He was a “good boy”, he wanted to please, and I feel somehow that he didn’t want you necessarily to find real fire and passion in his music.’ The contrast with the “bad boy” Liszt, he notes, is telling.

Matters are different for string players, and especially the Elias String Quartet, which takes its name from Mendelssohn’s most popular oratorio (‘Elias’ is the German title for ‘Elijah’). As its cellist, Marie Bitlloch, explains, the composer’s Op. 13 Quartet is closely tied with the ensemble’s own history: ‘It’s one of the first pieces we played together and one of the first pieces where we found each other and our voice.

‘Mendelssohn just wrote really well for the instruments, and I also think there’s a real honesty in his works,’ she goes on. ‘There’s depth and real insight. For me he’s got such a personal voice in all his music, and such intimacy.’ But there’s also a lot of fun to be had, for players as much as listeners. ‘The Octet is so fresh and beautiful and full of vigour. Having two quartets together playing that music is like a party! And the fact he was only 16 when he wrote it is mind-boggling.’

The quartets, meanwhile, run from that early Beethoven-inspired Op. 13 work to the tragedy of Op. 80, written shortly after the death of his sister Fanny and just months before Mendelssohn’s own death. ‘It’s almost by a different composer,’ Bitlloch says. ‘Where there was poise and joie de vivre before, there is darkness and anger.’

Has the time come for a fuller appreciation of Mendelssohn? ‘For a while people just thought his music was light and frivolous,’ says Bitlloch, ‘which I completely disagree with.’ And Drake wonders if there’s a parallel with the reception of Schubert, thought in previous generations to be superficial, lacking in gravitas. ‘It’s only in recent generations that we’ve realised how passionate Schubert’s music is, and deep and emotional – and it’s similar now with Mendelssohn. I hope we’ll be able to draw people’s attention to the real emotion that’s behind the music.’

Hugo Shirley is a Berlin-based writer and musicologist, music critic and former editor of both Opera and Gramophone


Bach seems to be a constant in your repertoire. Do you play some Bach every day?I do. Bach is like meditation for me. And the solo repertory for violin is limited, so there are not so many other options for playing just to myself.

You won the 1995 Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition junior category as well as all the special prizes at the age of 12. Did this put a great deal of pressure on you at such a young age?Actually not at all. It gave me motivation and wonderful memories. I met some very inspiring musicians and kept in contact with members of the jury as well as other competitors.

You have been very clear in interviews that ‘a musical career is always about the music and not the career’. What do you mean by this and should aspiring young professional musicians take a similar mantra on board?If you become a musician in order to make a fast career, I think it is the wrong profession for you. I also think that a true musician will always find his path.

You have made chamber music a central part of your performing career. Does it inform other parts of your playing and how you approach bigger repertoire?Every repertory influences everything. Chamber music is as important to me as violin concertos or solo pieces. Music is a form of communication and chamber music for me is the purest form of communication.

Please tell us a little about your 1742 Guadagnini violin.I bought it in London in 2004 and have been playing it since then. It has a beautiful sound and by now I know the instrument so well that I don’t feel any limits.

What were your first impressions of Wigmore Hall, and especially its acoustic?I do very much appreciate the acoustics today. My very first performance makes for a lovely musical memory: it was in 2000 and I played a recital with Jean-Yves Thibaudet. I was just 17 and I learnt a great deal from him. I will be forever grateful for that opportunity to work with such a great musician at such a young age.

A Q&A WITH JULIA FISCHER

‘If you become a musician in order to make a fast career, I think it is the wrong profession for you. I also think that a true musician will always find his path.’

© Uwe ArensGerman violinist Julia Fischer will present solo Bach across two evenings this autumn:Sunday 18 October 7.30pmMonday 19 October 7.30pm


In the 2020/21 Season, Wigmore Hall welcomes emerging stars of tomorrow, and leading artists of today

Artists in Focus The Hagen Quartet celebrates its 40th anniversary with a Mozart String Quartet series. Frank Peter Zimmermann (violin) and Martin Helmchen (piano) perform Beethoven’s violin sonatas, and violinist Julia Fischer focuses on Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas in October. Wigmore Hall welcomes back pianist Sir András Schiff for four recitals over the year while Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov comes to Wigmore Hall twice over the season in both a solo recital and an evening with acclaimed cellist Gautier Capuçon. Violinist Leonidas Kavakos will perform two recitals accompanied on the piano by Enrico Pace and Yuja Wang.

Song Highlights We look forward to a dazzling array of song recitals from names such as Christian Gerhaher, René Pape, Diana Damrau, Gerald Finley, Marianne Crebassa, Sabine Devieilhe, Sir Simon Keenlyside and Alice Coote.

Yuja Wang © Norbert Kniat / DG

S E A S O N

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Manfred Eicher © Kaupo Kikkas

Season-long Residencies Multi-concert residencies at Wigmore Hall allow artists to present special projects and collaborations which are unique in the musical life of the UK. In the new season, we look forward to chamber music residencies from cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and clarinettist Martin Fröst. Pianists include Pavel Kolesnikov, Beatrice Rana, Jeremy Denk and Bertrand Chamayou. Further residencies include Austrian baritone Florian Boesch and jazz with American bassist and composer Christian McBride. La Serenissima, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Arcangelo, The Sixteen, and Dunedin Consort will appear several times across 2020/21, and Stile Antico is also in residence and will perform a special concert to mark 400 years since the Mayflower’s journey to the New World.

ECM Records at Wigmore Hall John Gilhooly has invited German record producer and founder of ECM Records Manfred Eicher to present four concerts across the season, exploring the exceptional artists heard on ECM’s iconic Jazz and New Series releases in the company’s 50th anniversary year.

920/21 SEASON | WIGMORE-HALL.ORG.UK

Morton Feldman: a 20th Century PioneerWigmore Hall collaborates with Apartment House in January for a three-concert focus day on American composer Morton Feldman, preceded by a performance from Igor Levit which includes the composer’s Triadic Memories.

Proust Festival French novelist, critic and essayist Marcel Proust forms the focal point for a festival of chamber music in November 2020. The series is devised by cellist Steven Isserlis at John Gilhooly’s invitation and overlaps with pianist Jeremy Denk’s own residency. Showcasing works by Proust’s great musical contemporaries, the Festival also includes performances from violinist Joshua Bell, the Castalian String Quartet and Trio Gaspard.

Britten Sinfonia © Benjamin Ealovega

The triennial Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition returns in April 2021. Embracing the entire string quartet tradition, it requires competitors to perform Classical, Romantic and contemporary repertoire.

We look forward to welcoming Austrian Thomas Larcher as our 2020/21 Composer in Residence. The new season encompasses a Larcher focus day in November, a cycle of the composer’s string quartets throughout the year, a newly commissioned song cycle performed by baritone Andrè Schuen, and an evening of his chamber music performed by Britten Sinfonia.

Thomas Larcher © Eduardus Lee

Igor Levit © Robbie Lawrence

Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition

Thomas Larcher, Composer in Residence

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A Song Cycle for Mental Health This season, Wigmore Hall supports a song project focused on mental health and male suicide prevention. Starting on Blue Monday, tenor David Webb will cycle from Truro to Wigmore Hall, to be joined here by friends and colleagues for a special performance of Winterreise, raising funds for mental health charities.

In-depth Repertoire Explorations In the 2020/21 Season, Wigmore Hall explores Beethoven’s piano sonatas with Igor Levit, Schubert’s piano sonatas with Llŷr Williams, and the complete Martinů string quartets, performed by the Pavel Haas Quartet. The Doric String Quartet focuses on late Schubert in July.

In 2019/20, Francesco Piemontesi began a Schubert piano sonata cycle which will continue through the 2020/21 Season. Pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet will kick-start a three-season-long Debussy project in November.

Wigmore Hall hosts performances of music spanning eras and cultures, including the following 2020/21 Season highlights

Doric String Quartet © George Garnier

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Roderick Williams © Benjamin Ealovega

Seasonal Celebrations There are several programmes of seasonal celebrations throughout the year, including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Dunedin Consort, a Spanish Nativity with Stile Antico, a St Patrick’s Day programme featuring A Nocte Temporis and Reinoud Van Mechelen, and a programme for Holy Week from the Irish Baroque Orchestra.

Celebrating Felix Mendelssohn Our 2020/21 programme focuses intensively on Felix Mendelssohn. Over the course of the season, the Elias String Quartet performs Mendelssohn’s quartets, The Cardinall’s Musick explores his unaccompanied sacred choral works, and pianist Julius Drake is joined by star singers such as Dame Sarah Connolly and Roderick Williams.

Stile Antico © Marco Borggreve

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Christian McBride’s Residency spans three concerts in the 2020/21 Season:Friday 18 September 2020 7.30pmwith Jason Moran Friday 15 January 2021 7.30pmThursday 13 May 2021 7.30pm

RETURNING TO

A SPECIAL PLACE

‘I fell in love with the place.’ As jazz bassist Christian McBride takes on a Residency for the 2020/21 Season, he reflects on a happy association with Wigmore Hall.

The 20-25-minute drive from Christian McBride’s home in Montclair, New Jersey to the studios of WBGO 88.3FM in Newark is a route he knows well. He has been taking it regularly since 2014, when he became host of the hour-long radio show Jazz Night in America. JNIA is National Public Radio’s weekly flagship jazz programme, broadcast throughout the USA via a network of around 200 radio stations.

A popular, charismatic musician and a powerful communicator, McBride has taken naturally to becoming a radio anchor. But it is far from being his only noteworthy role: in 2016 he took over as Artistic Director of the Newport Jazz Festival from George Wein. Wein had run the US’s oldest and most established festival ever since it started in 1954. As the veteran passed on the mantle to McBride, he took evident pleasure in referring to the bassist as ‘the special someone to continue my legacy.’ McBride’s contract to run the Newport Festival is indefinite.

In the three decades since he arrived in New York from his native Philadelphia to take up a Juilliard School place studying classical double bass – and was promptly snapped up by alto saxophonist Bobby Watson to play in his quartet – McBride has come a very long way indeed. His recordings now run into the hundreds. He has won six Grammys from a total of 12 nominations, and has released 15 recordings as either leader or co-leader.

The five concerts which McBride has played at Wigmore Hall show the wide range of different musical collaborations to which his bass presence can deliver such a powerful and enlivening contribution. He

plays purely acoustically, and yet the scale of his sound always takes the listener by surprise. His first experience of the Hall was in 2013 with Joshua Redman, at the saxophonist’s invitation (that duo concert was a rarity to say the least: it has only ever appeared on stage twice). There have been other duos, one with the great pianist Chick Corea, and another with fellow bassist Edgar Meyer. McBride enjoys duos: ‘The feeling of intimacy that you get with just two people on stage, that almost always works if you know the person. If you have made music together, if you have history together with the person you can really get to some interesting places.’

McBride also masterminded a highly successful evening of jazz with another regular collaborator, Renée Fleming. Another night, ‘a magical gig’ (FT), the 2015 performance by his trio with the then rising star pianist Christian Sands has stayed in

McBride’s memory. ‘I remember that concert REALLY well. I was looking forward to it and it came off even better than expected.’

The recollection of a great concert prompted the bassist to reflect on why he likes Wigmore Hall so much: ‘It’s just such a great place to play. If you have the right musicians who pay attention to acoustics and the way the room sounds, you can really have an amazing time there.’ And did something special happen? ‘I fell in love with the place and I’m always happy to come back and play there.’

Sebastian Scotney is editor of LondonJazz News, a regular contributor to BBC Radio 3 Jazz Line-Up and the German magazine Jazzthetik, and baritone saxophonist in the Stan Reynolds Big Band

Christian McBride © Chi Modu


WRITING MUSIC WITH

Our Learning department has been busy devising creative music projects with our Partner Schools, and we wanted to share a recent highlight with you...We have been working with Chestnuts Primary School in Haringey to embed music across their curriculum, using creative music making to enhance and enrich children’s learning, and ensuring quality music experiences are taking place throughout the school.

In our most recent project, Year 5 children worked with music leaders from Wigmore Hall to write songs inspired by their classes’ namesakes: suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and composer Shirley Thompson.

Across four days, children worked together to compose two new songs, write their own verses to Shirley Thompson’s

New Nation Rising, and to learn the protest song Factory Girl.

The children shared their songs with families, the rest of the school and Shirley Thompson herself!

As well as giving them the chance to take part in enjoyable, enriching activity, this project enabled children to have their voices heard and valued, to work together collaboratively, and to explore musical creativity, and it gave teachers the opportunity to devise and co-lead musical activity, developing their confidence and skills in teaching music.

For information about supporting the Partner Schools Programme please get in touch with Wigmore Hall’s Development Team at [email protected] or call 020 7258 8220.

CHESTNUTS PRIMARY SCHOOL AND SHIRLEY THOMPSON

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New day is dawn ing,- Just feel it call ing.-

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We have the right to choose who we love.

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Love should ho ver- like a dove. Love is free.

18

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Trees give us life, trees breathe and we re ceive.-

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Trees give us life, trees breathe and we re ceive.-

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34

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Shirley J Thompsonand Pankhurst and Thompson Classes

Chestnuts Primary

New Nation Rising

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Thompson ClassChestnuts Primary School

with Jessie Maryon Davies

We Will Be Remembered

Wigmore HallNovember 2019

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© James Berry


LEFT ABOVE: Pupils showcase artwork inspired by listening to Shirley’s music LEFT: Trainee Music Leader Karyma Ellis leads a chorus of pupils during performance ABOVE: Year 5 pupils spontaneously share violin performance with Shirley Thompson, project leader Jessie Maryon Davies and their peers as part of Shirley’s visit to the school

‘The opportunity to meet and perform for Shirley Thompson took this experience to another level for [my child] and made quite an impression on him ...The idea of learning one of her compositions to perform to her, and the quality of the musicians leading them, raised his performance and his appreciation of the music.’ Parent

‘I have practically made my dream of meeting our class namesake!’ Student

‘Thank you for the amazing opportunity for me to visit and speak to students of Chestnuts. It was an awesome experience and so inspirational. The level of musicianship that the students exhibited was very impressive and their questions to me and my work, equally so!’ Shirley Thompson, Composer

‘It made me feel more confident and brave.’ Student

‘It feels like [the children] are seeing themselves as songwriters/composers which is fantastic … As a parent … we have observed a definite cognitive leap [with our child] … and he has re-engaged with reading in a way that he hadn’t been for a few months. His personal confidence has also really risen.’ Parent Governor

‘I liked it a lot because we learned new songs [and] shared our ideas.’ Student

© James Berry


You have a great role model and mentor in Alfred Brendel. Has he informed your approach to Schubert? He certainly has! He is the only person I know who is able to convey every detail in the music verbally. At the same time, he is able to characterize every passage with words and to give you very coherent images about the structure of the piece. Also, we spent a great deal listening to historical recordings of Schubert by artists like Edwin Fischer, Wilhelm Kempff and the Bush Quartet. He was always pointing out details and telling me, ‘Listen to this phrase, listen to that diminuendo, to that colour’. I learned a lot about this frame of mind thanks to those listening sessions.

You have a very varied career managing to work with conductors, in solo recital and plenty of chamber music. How do you manage to balance all of that?It is a challenge indeed: especially because the sound projection is very different in every instance. In a recital you can choose your sound without any compromise, but with a big ensemble you have to play in a way which cuts through the sound of a powerful orchestra. In chamber music, you are often too loud. I sometimes played chamber music, concerto and recitals within one week and almost went crazy!

You are Artistic Director of the Settimane Musicali di Ascona. What does this involve? I choose the programme and invite the artists. A challenging task but a very rewarding one; I get to invite the people I really want to hear because I believe in them musically. Big names and marketing don’t play a role: the public knows me well as an artist there and trusts my musical taste.

You impressed Wigmore Hall audiences greatly with your Mozart interpretations. What does Wigmore Hall mean to you?I always feel at home at Wigmore: I love the acoustics, the atmosphere in the Hall, the intimacy of the whole venue, and you are treated very well. I am looking forward to many more concerts there.

You have recently recorded a great deal of Liszt. Will there be any more…?Yes, the 3rd year of the Années de pèlerinage together with his B minor Piano Sonata.

A Q&A WITH FRANCESCO PIEMONTESI

Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi began a three-year Schubert Cycle in the 2019/20 Season which will continue in 2020/21. Forthcoming dates in the series:Wednesday 27 May 2020 7.30pmSaturday 19 September 2020 7.30pmThursday 6 May 2021 7.30pm

Francesco Piemontesi © Marco Borggreve


Bohuslav Martinů is a fascinating figure, whose vast and diverse output deserves far greater exposure than it receives. Born in 1890 in the bell tower of the church in the small Bohemian village of Polička, where his father was bell ringer and church warden, he showed his musical talent early: his very first composition was the programmatic piece Three Horsemen, written for string quartet when he was 12.

Studies followed in Prague, where he subsequently played violin in the Czech Philharmonic; but in 1919 he left his native country to continue his career in Paris, where he took composition lessons from Albert Roussel.

Martinů remained in Paris until 1940, when the arrival of the Nazis drove him on to the USA: after the war, he was unwilling to return to Czechoslovakia due to the 1948 Communist coup d’état – though he did move back to Europe, remaining there until his death in Switzerland in 1959.

The string quartet genre held great significance for Martinů: in November 1946, while working on his Sixth Quartet, he wrote to his friend and future biographer Miloš

One of the most interesting artistic strands in the 2020/21 Season will be a complete cycle of Martinů’s string quartets performed by the Pavel Haas Quartet, whose previous explorations of its national repertoire at Wigmore Hall have been greatly admired.

Šafránek, ‘In pure chamber music I am always more myself. I cannot express what pleasure it gives me when I start to handle these four parts in a chamber composition’.

Straddling the years 1918 to 1947, Martinů’s seven canonical quartets reveal the immense stylistic range of a composer open to diverse contemporary influences: Czech folk music, neo-classicism – even jazz, as Peter Jarůšek, the quartet’s cellist, explains.

‘One can certainly feel the folk-music influence, although it is worth highlighting that there are clear jazz idioms too, and the big-band influence is particularly strong in his use of syncopated rhythms.’

It has taken a while for the ensemble to focus on this comparatively neglected figure. ‘Although Martinů’s quartets form an important part of the Czech repertoire, it was only five years ago that we decided to work on his Third String Quartet – the shortest of the seven; after rehearsing and performing it we realized how much we enjoyed it. Martinů’s is a unique style, very different from that of any other Czech composer’.

There’s also a strongly personal element to several of the works, three of them

memorialising Martinů’s relationships with women he loved. ‘He actually dedicated each of his final three quartets to a different woman, two of them pupils as well as lovers: the Fifth String Quartet to the Czech composer Vítêzslava Kaprálová; the Sixth Quartet to the American Rosalie Barstow; and finally the Seventh Quartet, known as the Concerto da camera, to his wife, Charlotte Martinů.’

Though Peter wouldn’t want to over-emphasize these connections, he does believe that ‘one discovers everything behind a piece of music in order to complete the puzzle.’

As he and his colleagues have come to know these highly individual and attractive pieces, their overview has developed enormously. ‘Each of the seven quartets exists in its own separate and independent world, with its own specific character. To play all seven is simultaneously challenging, exciting and fulfilling – and we are very much looking forward to bringing them to Wigmore Hall.’

George Hall is a music writer specialising in opera. He is a regular contributor to The Stage, and has written for The New Penguin Opera Guide and the Oxford Companion to Music.

EXPLORING

MARTINŮ’S QUARTETS

Pavel Haas Quartet © Marco Borggreve


FLORIAN BOESCH IN CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD STOKES

Florian Boesch’s 2020/21 Wigmore Hall Residency comprises three concerts:Thursday 17 September 2020 7.30pmThursday 11 March 2021 7.30pmSaturday 12 June 2021 7.30pm

Florian Boesch © Lukas Beck


Ahead of his Residency at Wigmore Hall in the 2020/21 Season, Austrian baritone Florian Boesch talks to Richard Stokes about his relationship with Wigmore Hall, how he prepares for a recital, and Werktreue.

What is your view of surtitles in Lieder? Does it annoy you when you see the audience bury its head in the programme?I believe very strongly that every word I sing should be understood by the audience. I want to be understood musically and linguistically, and if that means taking advantage of technical assistance, so be it. Understanding text is paramount.

How do you prepare, physically, for a recital? Do you, for example, avoid alcohol during the day before a concert, or have a special diet?Sleep is the most important preparation. At least 7 hours, perhaps as many as 10. Rest for voice and body. No red wine – the tannins play havoc with the vocal cords. No cigarettes either. I often go for a longish walk.

How do you keep fit? Do you work out in a gym?I once had a gym membership but found that it was not for me. Too boring. But I will occasionally take advantage of a fitness centre in a hotel. In my youth I played a lot of sport, so I’m still in reasonable shape, despite a slight paunch. I love physical labour: gardening, digging holes, manual work.

What is your view on Werktreue? Should one always try to obey a composer’s markings? Or are they, rather, more suggestions than commands? I remember you, for example, performing the end of Schubert’s ‘Ihr Bild’ in a gradual crescendo, ending fff: ‘Daß ich dich verloren hab’. It was electric; but Schubert marks a decrescendo on ‘dich verloren hab’. Does that matter?Heiner Müller once remarked: ‘Grosse Kunst ist immer grösser als das Werk’ (‘Great art is always greater than the work’). We cannot be true to ourselves if we automatically obey all the composer’s markings. We have to find our own personal and individual way. And each age has a different way of doing things: just compare film footage of a 1930s performance of a Hamlet monologue with a modern rendering of the same speech! If your interpretation of a song is serious and honest and convincing, the composer will surely forgive you if his markings are not followed in every detail.

Richard Stokes is a leading lecturer on German Lieder at the Royal Academy of Music and has dozens of publications and lecture appearances throughout the UK

‘I do not sing differently, but this intimate hall’s wonderful acoustic gives you extra confidence, makes you feel freer, and more relaxed vis-à-vis technical issues.’

You made your Wigmore Hall debut in March 2007. Has your voice changed much in the intervening years?My voice has remained much the same – it’s my ability to use it as I wish that has changed. I don’t have to guide it so much; it now does things much more naturally.

You have been partnered by five different pianists in the past 12 years at Wigmore Hall. Are there advantages in having a variety of duo partners?I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the finest accompanists of our times. My longest association is with Malcolm Martineau, but I have also been partnered by Justus Zeyen and Roger Vignoles for long periods. This continuity is crucial for my way of singing – which is spontaneous and unpredictable. Because I never wish to define the way in which a song should be performed, I need a partner of great flexibility. But it’s always very interesting to work with a new pianist, and it was a huge pleasure to be accompanied by the great Graham Johnson in the opening recital of Wigmore Hall’s recent Schubert series.

Wigmore Hall is widely praised for its excellent acoustics and intimate atmosphere. Are you aware of singing differently here than in larger venues?I do not sing differently, but this intimate hall’s wonderful acoustic gives you extra confidence, makes you feel freer, and more relaxed vis-à-vis technical issues. The voice never sounds boomy. Wigmore Hall is the finest venue for Lieder recitals, but let’s not forget the unique audience that attends these recitals.

One of the most memorable Wigmore Hall recitals in recent years was your performance with Roger Vignoles of Ernst Krenek’s Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen, which you sang from memory. What are your views on using the score? Does it jeopardize communication with the audience?I know many colleagues who use a score with great skill, and there are audiences who are fine with that. But the reason that I don’t use a score is because it disturbs me. If I have a score in front of me, I read ahead, and am no longer in the moment. The inspiration of the moment is crucial for me. I am much more concentrated if I don’t have a score. Even if I am not so familiar with a piece, I like the element of risk, of possible catastrophe in not having the music in front of me. That’s how my system, my brain functions best.


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