A Leap of Faith, aka Mozart from Daniel Ben Pienaar

OK, I know this animation isn't exactly JDCMB usual style. But I want you to hear the piano playing on the soundtrack. Currently it is all I can find on Youtube of Daniel Ben Pienaar playing the Mozart piano sonatas.  

Pas mal, hein? I've recently been sent the complete set to review -- it is just out on Avie Records, though the above video suggests that bits have maybe been floating around Magnatune for a while -- and as a whole it's the most fresh, vital, intelligent, inspiring Mozart playing I have heard in literally years.

If you enjoyed my post 'Let's hear it for.. the Mozart Piano Sonatas', then you'll love this recording. Daniel Ben plays the C minor Fantasy and Sonata as if it has stepped straight out of Don Giovanni. The sicilienne slow movement of the early F major sonata is as raw, painful and amazing as that of the big A major piano concerto or Pamina's 'Ach, ich fuhls..'. There's brilliance aplenty, too, as you can hear above. But essentially DBP (as a growing circle of pianophile admirers call him) meets the sonatas head on, throws out all the silly received opinion crap about them being tinkly salon pieces or rarified only-for-fortepianos early stuff, and embraces them as the full-on, every inch WAM, works of genius that they really are. I'm far from being the only critic who loved them: he's been highly praised in The Sunday Times and Gramophone as well, for starters. Get the album here.

So where has DBP been all our lives? I first came across him some while ago when he was recording Bach -- his Goldberg Variations is again among the richest, most thoughtful and provocative accounts of the work I've come across -- and I know he lives somewhere in London and teaches at the Royal Academy of Music, whose principal, Jonathan Freeman-Atwood, is the producer of the Mozart set and has recorded trumpet and piano works with him. He is South African and won the big competition in Pretoria a while back. He has also recorded more Bach, Orlando Gibbons (yes, on the modern grand, and jolly good it sounds) and lots of Schubert.

But that animation isn't so silly. In recording all the Mozart sonatas, and not being afraid to make his own very personal and profound statement with them, DBP has indeed taken a leap of faith. He has the air of an artist who will take a plunge from a high tower and sprout wings at the crucial moment. In the week of Mozart's birthday, I'd like to suggest that perhaps this set will be those wings.

Speaking of wings, those who tweet might like to know that there'll be a Mozart party on Twitter on the birthday itself, Thursday 27 Jan. Use the hashtag #mozartchat ... see you there.
@jessicaduchen

Friday Historical: Menuhin and Kentner play Schubert

There is nobody like Schubert. There was nobody like Menuhin. There was no pianist like Kentner. So, just because we can, just for the sake of incredible music and musicianship, here they are. For the rest of the recording, click through the video to Youtube and you should find the other three parts pop up in sequence.

A Magical Musical Tour at Southbank Centre

Here's my piece from today's Independent: meet Olly Coates, artist-in-residence at Southbank Centre and "curator" of the Harmonic Series. All you have to do, for a fiver, is pitch up by the box office at 7.45pm on the appointed day and Olly will lead you to a surprise space for a weird and wonderful mix of magical new sounds. No.1 is on 30 January with pieces by, amongst others, Michel Van Der Aa, Zemlinsky, Mara Carlyle and, with Streetwise Opera, Emily Hall's The Nightingale and the Rose. But where? Dunno. See you there.

Curiouser and Curiouser!

I couldn't interview Tchaikovsky about Swan Lake, but had a great time talking to Joby Talbot, who's written the first full-length original score commissioned for a new ballet at Covent Garden in 20 years. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland opens on 2 March and sounds, well, curiouser and curiouser. Joby tells me about writing a waltz that is like "Johann Strauss gone bananas" and what the White Rabbit will have in common with the Great Gonzo. All here in today's Independent.

Pity we went to print before I could grab @LondonBallerina Lauren Cuthbertson's latest tweets from rehearsals (she's dancing Alice on opening night), which involve the Duchess, a frying pan and a foot - hers. "Lesson learnt.... dont get your foot hit by a pan if you wanna get on point any day soon :(" and then "it wasnt hot.... the duchess did it in the kitchen scene!! Booooo!!!!" The Duchess is being danced by one Simon Russell Beale. Off with his head?

Here's the video trailer at the ROH site. There's more info, too, in a section aptly entitled READ ME. And here is the site for booking.

For tree's a jolly good fellow

Why doesn't Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony get played more often? Last night it was the climax of the Budapest Festival Orchestra's big Hungarian EU Presidency London concert and proved one of the most heartwarmingly delicious musical experiences you can have with a full orchestra. And instead of a rostrum, a tree - quite a tall one - appeared on stage in front of Ivan Fischer, the leaves high enough not to block his view of the players and vice-versa.

The players themselves popped up in odd places: the first flute, oboe and clarinet in tandem with the front desks of the cellos and violas, the second woodwind dispersed amongst the back desks of the strings. The double basses arranged as a wall along the back of the platform (a placing I always love: it gives a wonderfully solid grounding to the whole sound). The first violin entry in the fifth movement was played by the leader alone; and all the way through a sort of beatific stream of joy seemed to envelop the whole lot of them. No detail escaped Fischer's eye and ear; perfect clarity made the piece shine as if it was chamber music -- yes, I know it's a cliche, but hey, that's how it was -- and every so often you'd catch yourself thinking, "blimey, Beethoven really is the best, innit...".

It was indeed Beethoven at his best, and the Hungarians at theirs. When else, I wondered, have I sat beaming and transported to a better plane all the way through a piece of music like this? It used to happen with the old Takacs Quartet, in the Gabor Takacs-Nagy days. It happens frequently at Andras Schiff's performances, especially chamber music, but I seem to remember it at his St Matthew Passion with the Philharmonia some years ago too. It was definitely the case listening to Gabor Takacs-Nagy conducting the Elgar Introduction and Allegro in Verbier. Yes, it has something to do with the Hungarian musical tradition: all-giving, all-consuming passion, concentration, pride, rigour and fun, rolled up into one fabulous musical palacsinta...

Haydn's 'Oxford' Symphony -- written not all that long before the Beethoven -- was the opener, again filled with attention to detail, yet inhabiting rather a different world, one very much of 18th-century grace and elegance. Then came Birthday Boy Ferenc, in the persona of Stephen Hough: perhaps the perfect Lisztian, he stormed, dreamed and philosophised the First Piano Concerto into something much more worthwhile than it often seems. The terrific Anglo-Hungarian mix of Hough and Fischer took the work seriously and met it on its own terms, to dramatically colourful effect. Hough gave us the shortest, quietest Liszt encore you could imagine, and at the end the BFO added a Brahms Hungarian Dance (the one that segues with utter glee into the last section of 'Hejre Kati') and the Strauss Peasant Polka, in which the Hungarian-dancing orchestra started singing too. Result: audience on feet, yelling. Everyone happy. Time to party.

Upstairs, the wine flowed and the mini cherry strudels virtually evaporated the minute they appeared. The Hungarian chargee d'affaires explained that Hungary is basing its sixth-month presidency on the notion of Strong Europe; jokes were made about the placing of the storm before one can emerge into the sunny uplands of the fifth movement; many pan-European, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Liszt fans were making friends and we all sang happy birthday to Ed Vaizey's mother, led by the evening's maestro himself (pictured left, with your blogger).

There will be a terrific Hungarian Liszt festival at Kings Place next week, from 26th to 29th Jan, featuring some amazing artists including violinist Barnabas Kelemen, pianist Denes Varjon and a folk group... Check the programme here and do come along. But more on this very soon...

As for the Hungaryfurore... The latest development is that Andras Schiff has expressed the view that he is now completely persona-non-grata in his native land and thinks he may never play there again. But meanwhile, Hungarian friends here with their fingers on the pulse of the media law issue have told me that the English translation of the legal pages in question is about to be presented to the EU powers-that-be and that if its contents do not meet with EU approval it will be changed accordingly. It may be worth remembering, at this juncture, that that is exactly what the EU is really for. Time to add Beethoven 9 to Beethoven 6? Complete, I hope, with tree.