Mitsuko and Mozart's dad

In today's Independent Mitsuko Uchida talks to me about the plight of prodigies who are pushed too far, too fast. She has some interesting words about her own experiences as a youngster, and it's clear that she possesses a remarkable facility for self-criticism, plus ferociously high standards that exceed those of most... The chocolate, incidentally, really was amazing.

Please note that she is actually doing a whole weekend of concerts with the Borletti-Buitoni Trust from 17-19 May at the South Bank, not just 18th.

Hope you've had a good bank holiday weekend, dear readers. I spent Saturday night at one of the best opera performances I've ever been to, and I go to quite a lot. More of that soon. For the moment - if you can beg/borrow/filch/pay through the nose for/get a return for/ Don Carlo at the ROH while Anja Harteros is still in it, then do.

Piano Passion in...Perivale and Ealing?

There've been some rather amazing noises coming out of what used to be a quiet corner of west London. Two churches - St Mary's, Perivale, and St Barnabas, Ealing - have in recent years sprouted extraordinary programmes of intense music-making, under the artistic direction of retired doctor and passionate pianist Hugh Mather.

With innovative schemes involving big screens for a better view, tickets issued on the door only and a Chopin Festival, which is coming up fast (11-12 May), comprising ten hours of piano music from a plethora of rising stars each playing for 20-30 minutes, it seems that Perivale and Ealing are reaching - with remarkable ease - ideas upon which bigger promoters fear to tread; and, best, making a success of them.

How does Hugh do it? I asked him for a JDCMB Q&A session...

JD: Hugh, you were a medic and now you're a concert promoter! Please tell us your own story? How did you get started in the music scene?

HM: I was a chorister at Westminster Abbey, and played the piano and organ from an early age, gaining the FRCO diploma while still at school, and subsequently the ARCM piano performer’s diploma. I then studied medicine at Cambridge and in London, and was appointed Consultant Physician at Ealing Hospital in 1982, specialising in diabetes. However, I always combined medicine with music, and continued to have piano lessons with the eminent teacher James Gibb, initially at the Guildhall and then privately, for over 30 years. I gave many concerts as a solo pianist, including concerti by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Chopin, Grieg, and Schumann, and played Beethoven’s 'Hammerklavier' sonata at the Guildhall and elsewhere. In 1986 I commenced weekly classical concerts at Ealing Hospital, providing performing opportunities to musicians living around Ealing, and these continued for 20 years, with approximately 800 concerts. I retired from medicine in 2006 and since then I have developed a second career, promoting about 100 concerts per year - about 600 concerts since 2006 - at two contrasting Ealing venues, namely St Mary’s, Perivale, and St Barnabas Church.  

JD: Tell us about your two west London venues, St Mary's Perivale and St Barnabas Ealing - what makes them great places to play and listen to music?

HM: St Mary’s, Perivale, is a small, 12^th-century Grade 1-listed church hidden away within Ealing Golf Course, just off Western Avenue in Perivale, near the Hoover Building. It became redundant in 1973 but is now a flourishing concert venue, run by a charitable trust, the Friends of St Mary’s Perivale, of which I am Chairman. It is a stunningly beautiful building with a magical ambience, and provides the perfect setting for small-scale concerts, particularly instrumental and chamber music, with a capacity of 70. It has excellent acoustics, a good piano, and the audience appreciate being closer to the musicians than in most other venues. 

We cultivate a ‘club-like’ informal atmosphere, with free admission, free drinks and nibbles at the end of the concert. We hold about 50 concerts per year, most of which are ‘double concerts’ with different musicians performing in each half, as can be seen from the Archive section of our website (www.st-marys-perivale.org.uk/events.htm ). This has details of around 320 concerts since 2006, with performances from over 180 pianists and 100 violinists. The standard of performance is very high indeed, and is rising year by year. Musicians love the both the venue and our enthusiastic audience, and are invariably keen to return.  

We have informal links with the Royal Overseas League, who send their top prizewinners to play, as well as with the Royal Academy, the Royal College and the Guildhall, so we have a constant influx of the best new talent. We have excellent in-built video recording facilities, and produce a high-quality DVD recording of every performance, which is sent free of charge to all the musicians.  We have recently commenced putting some highlights onto our Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/user/StMarysPerivale) and so far have uploaded about 60 performances. These amply demonstrate the high calibre of our concerts.

St Barnabas Church, Pitshanger Lane, Ealing, is a large active Anglo-Catholic church built in 1916 with a fine choral tradition and a magnificent, newly-installed pipe organ. I have attended the church as a parishioner for many years, and in 2007 I bought a very good Bosendorfer concert grand, previously used by the BBC at the Maida Vale Studios for broadcasts, from Harrow School. This fine instrument has been the basis of all our subsequent concerts. The church has a much larger capacity than St Mary’s Perivale, and is used for Friday lunchtime recitals and occasional large festivals, such as the forthcoming Chopin festival. Since 2007 we have had 260 Friday lunchtime concerts. We have also held eight major festivals devoted to single composers, listed in www.barnabites.org/concerts/concertarchive/, and three series of Summer Proms, each with 12 concerts. About 170 pianists, listed in our archive, have played in concerts at St Barnabas. Concerts are held in the ‘round’, with the piano in the nave and the audience seated as close as possible.

We have developed a novel ‘big screen’ system. This was originally acquired for organ recitals, but is now proving immensely beneficial in piano festivals, enabling everyone to see each pianist in ‘close-up’. The concerts have been used to raise funds to pay for the new organ, and to date have raised over £130,000.       

JD: We hear that you don't sell tickets in advance - people just come along on the night and pay what they like in a retiring collection at the end. How does that turn out in practice? How do your musicians respond to this?

HM: We don’t sell tickets in advance, and all concerts at St Mary’s Perivale are indeed free admission with a retiring collection. This simplifies the administration of concerts, and encourages more people to attend.  In practice, the amount donated varies from £1 or less to £20 or more, and averages at about £6-7 per person. This attracts Gift Aid, raising the total to approximately £8 per person. Our Wednesday concerts at St Mary’s Perivale are ‘double concerts’ with different musicians in each half, so that we can provide more performing opportunities and the audience have a more varied and interesting evening. Soloists usually get paid around £100 for half a concert, or £200 for a whole recital, depending on the size of the audience, and we usually give ensembles £50-60 per person. We aim to give the musicians about 70% of our receipts and to keep 30% to pay our overheads. All musicians also receive a high-quality DVD of their performance free of charge.
       

At St Barnabas, our Friday lunchtime concerts are also free with a retiring collection, and we pay our musicians a fixed fee, namely £100 for a soloist, £120 for a duo, £150 for a trio and £200 for a quartet. We do charge a fixed fee for our festivals of £12 per session (afternoon or evening) (£6 for young people).

JD: Why a Chopin Festival, and why this very unusual format? Please tell us how it's going to work, why you're doing it and what you hope to achieve with it?

HM: The Chopin festival repeats the well-tried and successful formula used in previous festivals, as detailed in our archive www.barnabites.org/concerts/concertarchive/. These have covered all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas (twice), Liszt piano music, Chopin piano music, Haydn sonatas, the music of Schumann and Schubert (including chamber music as well), and an organ festival.

The formula really does work brilliantly well in practice. It is infinitely more interesting and rewarding to hear many different pianists playing similar repertoire on the same piano, rather than have a single artist, however good or eminent. We have an inevitable bias towards piano events because there are so many excellent pianists based around London who need  and deserve performing opportunities.

The St Barnabas Chopin Festival will take place on May 11^th and 12^th 2013 from 2.30-6.00pm and from 7.00-10.00pm on each day. A flyer with the detail, and full information on the pianists, their programmes and brief biographical notes, is on www.barnabites.org/chopinfestival/.

We have 21 pianists, including many prizewinners from international piano competitions, giving short recitals of 20-30 minutes, including virtually all the most famous Chopin works, comprising almost 10 hours of piano music. Admission is £12 per session, or £40 for the whole festival (four sessions), half price for young people under 16. No tickets will be issued beforehand – just turn up on the day. The church is large and admission is guaranteed. Free parking is available in nearby residential streets. There are regular breaks for refreshments, and tea and supper will be available.

All piano fans, and all lovers of Chopin, are encouraged to come along to this festival of fine piano playing. I am grateful to the support of both the Chopin Society and Liszt Society in helping to advertise this event. I have no doubt that it will be as successful as our several previous festivals have been.

JD: What are your aims for the future of your series ?

HM: My overall aims with my concert-promotion activites are threefold, namely 1) to provide vital performing experience for the best musicians based in London, particularly at the start of their careers, 2) to provide concert-goers in Ealing with much pleasure in their locality, without having to travel into central London, and 3) to raise funds to preserve St Mary’s, Perivale, in pristine condition for future generations, and funds to support St Barnabas Church. It is gratifying to see several of our regular musicians starting to make waves in the musical world.

As regards pianists, two of the finalists in the Leeds competition last year – Jayson Gillham and Andrejs Osokins – are regular performers, as are many other rising or established piano stars, such as Viv McLean, Ashley Fripp, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Mei Yi Foo, Ivana Gavric, Rustem Hayroudinoff, Jianing Kong, Meng Yang Pan, Konstantin Lapshin, Ji Liu, Evelina Puzaite, etc, and many of the best string players and chamber ensembles based in London have played at both our venues. 

JD: Anything you'd like to add?

HM: Only that organising 100 concerts a year, with all the fixing, advertising, publicity and sorting out arrangements, has now become a busy full-time job, but is an excellent and rewarding way of spending my retirement!       

Friday Historical: Isolde Menges plays 'Hejre Kati'

This sweet-toned, quick-witted performance of Hubay's version of Hejre Kati was recorded by the British violinist Isolde Menges in the 1920s. The sound quality is remarkable for the time and the whole thing beautifully bridges the divide between high-art classical playing and the rather earthier Csardas that Hubay transcribed. Menges is definitely inclined more to the classical side of things...

...but the recording is nevertheless getting me geared up for the Hungarian Dances concert-of-the-novel, for which our new team - David Le Page and Anthony Hewitt - has rehearsal no.1 next week. This piece ends our programme. First concert will be in the Ulverston Festival on 8 June, then the St James Theatre Studio on 11 June and we're going on Radio 3's In Tune to talk about it, and play some, on 3 June.

Colin Davis In His Own Words - new film to screen tomorrow

Shortly before his final illness, Sir Colin Davis talked at length to the film director John Bridcut about his life, beliefs, passions and working method.

The poignant interview, Colin Davis: In His Own Words, will screen on BBC4 tomorrow night, Friday 3 May, at 8pm. The production team has pulled out all the stops to finish the film as a timely tribute to the late, great and, as it turns out, rather reluctant maestro. Don't miss it!

In the Right Hands: A guest post about Dorothy Taubman

In this rare and special JDCMB guest post, Ilona Oltuski from New York pays tribute to the late Dorothy Taubman's work in seeking to help pianists avoid injury at their instrument.

In The Right Hands – Music-Pedagogues Save Musicians From Injury 
By Ilona Oltuski

“Life does not end with injury – you can get out of it!” Alexey Koltakov, pianist

Thanks to the late Dorothy Taubman’s essential body of work whose convincing insights convey the underlying principles of a ‘natural’ piano technique, there are no more secrets in today’s world of music to how pianists can avoid getting injured at the keyboard.

Based on physics and physiology, Taubman’s “natural” approach, which includes an understanding of all kinds of tension-related, repetitive-motion-syndrome injuries, and can be applied to other instrumentalists as well, identifies where personal limitations can be overcome by avoiding tense and restricting movements.  Her theory encourages musicians to avoid bending fingers in--or rather out--of shape, with over-exerting exercises, and detrimental, endless repetitions, of inherently wrong movements.

And yet, it still happens all the time!  Young musicians get caught up in intense training at their instrument without heeding serious warning signs, and as pianist Alexey Koltakov puts it, end up “taking a course towards the iceberg!”

The Ukrainian pianist felt his first symptoms of problems while partaking in the 2001 Van Cliburn competition. “I felt some sort of limitation in my right hand – compared to my left. I could not play octaves as freely, but at first it was just minimal. I was told to practice more by my teacher, Viktor Makarov, who used special training methods to build a faster technique and better endurance, and who had a good track record of other competition winners. Some years later, I was supposed to perform at the Arthur Rubinstein competition and three days before the supposed performance, I found myself unable to play any octaves at all. I had not wanted to face the fact that something was really wrong; but I could not control my right hand properly. I came to Veda (Kaplinsky) and she had a pretty good idea right there – focal dystonia – later also diagnosed by a neurologist. I had let things go too far, and the only recovery possibility was that I had to re-learn my motions for playing the piano. Where I had been curling my fingers with excessive pressure and tension before, pulling the fingers from the key, I had to consciously regain a tension-free approach. After a five-year period, I now retrieve an enormous amount of pleasure from playing the piano, again. Now I need around 3-4 hours of daily practice and I get much better results. I feel much more secure in my music making, able to express nuanced sound, in the way I choose to. My octaves are strong and there is none of the previous tension in my forearm. It’s a completely different, effortless touch,” says Koltakov, who gives testimony to the fact that Taubman’s principles, when well-applied by specialized pedagogues, can make all the difference.  Koltakov shares his experiences with other musicians freely, hoping they will avoid undergoing his hardship. He wants to get the word out that there is help available and reassure them that, “life does not end with injury – you can get out of it!”

“Alexey went into denial and started to compensate, never questioning what he was taught. He had to retrain his muscles, - not unlike a stroke victim, and it took a lot of perseverance on his part and almost three years. But when I listen to him play today his hands are completely healthy, and I am moved to tears,” says Veda Kaplinsky, Chair of Juilliard’s Piano Department.

“Taubman changed my own life and put me on the course, that I am on today,” Kaplinsky continues, “Until I met her, I was under the assumption that you were either talented or not, and that there were no “technical problems”, only technical deficiencies. One had to practice blindly to overcome them and only later did I understand the importance of examining how you move and approach your physical contact with the instrument. Understanding Taubman’s approach, I was confident and able to explain to my students the reason behind it all. That made a huge difference in my ability to penetrate walls of resistance which I sometimes encounter, when introducing sometimes drastic, necessary changes. Of course, I have an average of 30 students a year and you develop your own way of imparting the information and every student needs something else. I can’t separate anymore where Taubman ends and I begin, but some of the basic principle images and expressions I use up to this day. I remember how the title, for the planned but never published book about her approach, inspired me: ‘The piano plays you,’ got me thinking: that brilliant concept of using the mechanics of the piano instead of fighting the instrument is so foreign to what I was used to, yet worked so well.  It was rebellious to many things we did intuitively, and were trained to do. It was predominantly her diagnostic ability that impressed me. She could look at a pair of hands and immediately know what’s wrong and what needs fixing.” Kaplinsky herself claims to have developed a bit of that x-ray vision, which allows her to quickly recognize the causes of pain and tension, even if the artists themselves ignore their symptoms. 

“Physical discomfort prevents you from controlling the instrument in a way that enables you to express yourself musically,” she says. An artist’s physical habits at the piano become very much part of their perception of how expressive they can be. If something goes wrong, the whole essence of the musician’s well being is endangered. It’s important for people to realize that changing their injurious physical habits will not endanger their ability to express. On the contrary, freeing one’s hands enables them to explore greater possibilities and to be more consistent. Discomfort leads to loss of control and motivation to practice. But ultimately this knowledge hast to become so ingrained, like second nature. Moving correctly means removing all harshness and roughness from your sound, balance well and avoid all glitches from your finger work; in short, it is to achieve everything from pearly articulation to powerful projection,” which is, of course, a pianist’s dream come true.

In some cases, Kaplinsky will refer some of her students to Taubman specialist Edna Golandsky, who was Dorothy Taubman’s close protégé, assistant and co-lecturer for many years. Golandsky, co-founder of the Golandsky Institute, which offers its annual summer residence at Princeton-University, teaches out of her studio in New York. 
 

Photo: Dorothy Taubman(left), Edna Golandsky(right)

 Kaplinsky, who knew Taubman before she recently passed away at the age of 95, had initially heard about her work from Golandsky, who studied with her “already 45 years ago,” says Kaplinsky, who initially was critical of what she had heard. Accompanying her college roommate in an attempt to “save her” from falling into the “cult” of Taubman, Kaplinsky changed her mind the moment she was “greeted by this very warm and sweet lady, who was not at all what I had envisioned.”  Kaplinsky says, “I remember, how the sound of my roommate at the piano changed immediately, after Taubman was touching her elbow slightly. I was in total amazement – asking her, would you listen to me too? – That’s when I started studying with her.”

Even though Kaplinsky did not publicly announce Taubman training as part of her specialty, it was always a well-known fact that she believed strongly in the Taubman principles, and integrated them into her teaching. Kaplinsky was recorded at the Piano World Conference, talking about her personal relationship with Taubman, and embracing her method.  That recording is now out of circulation, but there are a number of recordings that have been released by the Golandsky Institute that are a great starting point for familiarizing oneself with Taubman’s principles; some are also available on the Naxos library website, and are accessible through music colleges and public institutions. 

What counts are true results! Alexey Koltakov performed in a concert this week at Juilliard's Morse Hall, and announced on his Facebook page: “Tonight I had my first ‘controlled’ public performance after five years of focal dystonia in my right hand!" 

Congrats!

By Ilona Oltuski, getClassical.org