Tiberghien - Illean and Beethoven, 25 October 2024

Wigmore Hall

Lisa Illean: Sonata in ten parts (world premiere)
Beethoven: 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, op.120

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

How to present the Diabelli Variations? What better way than commissioning a new, related piano work to precede them? I should never have guessed that Lisa Illean’s Sonata in ten parts was her first work for solo piano, so assured was the writing, realised beautifully and meaningfully, as if a classic work, by Cédric Tiberghien. Each of the ten ‘parts’, which I think we might consider in some sense variations – the interesting question being variations on what? – is derived from a short passage, often as little as a bar, from Beethoven’s set. Interconnections in Illean’s own work were sometimes clear even on a first hearing; I suspect there will be more to be discovered on levels subterranean and subliminal. The opening seemed designed, both in work and performance, to invite us in, questing and uncertain (in a positive sense), full of potential. It was not Beethoven so much as Debussy and Schoenberg who initially came to my ears, though his ghost certainly visited the feast later on, perhaps as much through passages of unmistakeable dignity as through thematic connection. So too did others, Chopin and Brahms included. Not that these were necessarily overt references or even reminiscences, more points in common via, for instance, exquisite voice-leading (again both Illean’s and Tiberghien’s), use of the sustaining pedal, or horizontal employment of chords. Here was a splendidly old-school beauty of pianistic sonority put to contemporary musical ends, to the distinct benefit of both. 

Tiberghien elected to offer his engaging spoken introduction to the Diabelli Variations immediately after Illean’s Sonata, leaving us to ponder during the interval before launching into the fabled Schusterfleck. That worked very well, I thought, both in forging a greater whole and in rejuvenating a Beethovenian shock of the new. The Waltz, at any rate, was delectably sprung, without affectation, the first variation an excellent alternative beginning, as if Beethoven were saying – and surely he is – ‘that aside, now let us begin afresh’. As soon as its successor, we were in definably ‘late’ territory, kinship to the composer’s early years apparent in the third, for a distinct virtue of Tiberghien’s performance was sympathy to the multiplicity of voices, letting them sing to combine in the unmistakeable single voice of Beethoven. Here were humour, vigour, sheer élan, the knowingly wayward, and so much more, stretching in reference from the beguiling contrapuntal legacy of Bach, through heartfelt Mozartian equipoise, to Boulezian ‘organised delirium’ (to borrow the title of Caroline Potter’s new book). Formal command and communication were crucial, however lightly worn: one experienced groups of variations as something akin to sonata movements, whether in the rapt hush of a slow movement or the display of a finale. Overall balance and individual character were equally well judged, a Beethovenian hour passing in the twinkling of an eye. The composer’s apparent, readily explicable unwillingness to let go for (almost) the last time was captured to near perfection, as heart-rending as it was truthful. We had come home, though home would never be quite the same again.

Tiberghien - Sweelinck, Bach, Benjamin, Beethoven, and Mozart, 1 June 2023

Wigmore Hall

Sweelinck: Six Variations on ‘Mein junges Leben hat ein End’
Bach-Brahms: Partita no.2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004: Chaconne
Benjamin: Shadowlines: Six Canonic Preludes for Piano
Beethoven: Thirty-two Variations on an Original Theme in C minor, WoO 80
Beethoven: Twenty-four Variations on Righini’s arietta, ‘Venni amore’, in D major, WoO 65
Mozart: Piano Sonata in A major, KV 331/300i
Beethoven: Six Variations on an Original Theme in D major, op.76

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

What variation there can be in variation, especially in the hands of do discerning a pianist and musician as Cédric Tiberghien. From Sweelinck to Benjamin, every performance a jewel, this was a recital as enjoyable as it was ingenious and instructive. 

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s Variations on ‘Mein junges Leben hat ein End’ were imbued with an air of melancholy such as is perhaps more likely on the piano than the harpsichord, the gap between our age and Sweelinck’s paradoxically both more and less pronounced. More important, though, were clarity of line and beauty of touch. Ornamentation told, without distracting. The art of variation had been properly announced, Tiberghien’s second variation boasting pinpoint accuracy and rhetorical flair, his third marrying surface nonchalance with deep harmonic understanding. The fifth emerged as if carved from Carrara marble. All the while, harmony and counterpoint wove their magic. 

Little less than a month earlier, I had heard Benjamin Grosvenor in this same hall play Busoni’s transcription of the Bach Chaconne. Now it was Brahms’s turn; and, Busoni devotee though I may be, I must acknowledge Brahms’s as the finer work. I knew, but even had I not, I am sure I would have heard before seeing that this was left-hand only. Brahms’s stroke of genius in confining his transcription to the piano’s left hand liberates the pianist both to sound more like the violin and, in another paradox, also more like itself; or so it sounded here. Tiberghien’s phrasing and touch were both entirely pianistic – what an array of colours! – and yet entirely communicative of Bach’s own conception. The performance could melt in well-nigh Schumannesque fashion too, again without ever veering away from Bach. The advent of D major proved deeply moving, even stirring, which may or may not be quite the same thing; it built wondrously thereafter too. Ultimately, again, harmony ruled. And the return to the minor offered a tragic acceptance that was equally Bach’s and Brahms’s, the final statement of the theme possessed of a nobility that brooked no response. 

George Benjamin’s Shadowlines, written in 2001, is as its subtitle states, a set of six canonic piano preludes. Tiberghien offered finely etched performances, as if presenting a series of musical paintings coming vividly to life before our ears. (‘As if’ may be superfluous.) Process as well as rhetoric, counterpoint as well as harmony, and so much more helped reveal a deeply Romantic imagination at work. Ghosts from the past – Debussy, Messiaen, Boulez, Webern, Stravinsky – could be heard, yet there was never any doubting the individuality of the principal voice. 

Beethoven’s C minor Variations, WoO 80, rounded off the first half. This may or may not be ‘minor’ Beethoven, but who cares? In a performance that took in a host of experience from the balletic to the visionary, revealing at time surprising affinities with Bach’s Chaconne, a new, little suspected world from this pianist-composer opened up before us. Beethoven sang, scowled, and above all developed in variation. As earlier, Tiberghien’s virtuosity was worn lightly and above all musically, just as in the very little-heard early Righini Variations, WoO 65, probably from 1790, published the following year. Here Tiberghien was at his most charming. He drew attention to individual characteristics and possibilities of different variations – leaning into phrases beautifully in the first, the second proving splendidly eccentric – without trying to make them into something they could not be. Many of the anticipated devices of Classical variation technique were there; they never seemed, though, to be mere devices, and even on occasion offered striking anticipations of the future. Syncopations, particular spacing of chords, the structural importance (and orchestral resonances) of certain intervals, and delicious moments of whimsy: all these and more one could enjoy, just so long as one listened. So too were surprises it was difficult not to think of as Beethovenian. 

Mozart’s A major Sonata, KV 331/300i, opens with a celebrated theme and variations, here given with winning flow and lilt, and for the most part a fine cantabile, save when lyricism gave way to something more percussive. The journey as a whole ‘flowed like oil’, to borrow from Mozart’s own recommendation for musical performance, whilst retaining capacity for incident. The turn to the minor offered pathos without exaggeration, duly dignified, whilst the Adagio sounded intriguingly modernistic in its proliferation: Mozart via Boulez, it seemed. A graceful minuet proved similarly full of character and incident, as did its trio: related, yet quite different, almost a variation in itself. One might say much the same of the Rondo alla Turca, here given with deadpan humour and equally well-timed command of agogic accents. Cannily following with Beethoven’s op.76 Variations, whose theme would later be used for the ‘Turkish March’ for the Ruins of Athens incidental music, Tiberghien gave the work as if it were a programmed encore. Its striking concision, redolent of the Bagatelles and some of the sonatas, revealed similarly good humour. 

For an actual encore, we were treated to a transcription – Egon Petri’s, I think – of Bach’s ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ (for which, exceptionally, we surely all use the English form). As Tiberghien remarked in his introduction, transcription is another form of variation. What we heard was as delectable, as poised, and as exquisitely voiced as anything in a programme replete with such delights.

Tiberghien/LSO/Roth - Debussy, 25 January 2018

Barbican Hall
 

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

Fantaisie, for piano and orchestra
Jeux
Three Nocturnes


Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Ladies of the London Symphony Chorus (chorus director: Simon Halsey)
London Symphony Orchestra
François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

 

Pierre Boulez, whom the musical world seems to miss more with the passing of each month, once noted that, as modern poetry had grown from the roots of Baudelaire’s verse, so had modern music been awakened by Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. As the voice and indeed the conscience of new (modern(ist)) music for considerably longer than half a century, Boulez should have known. Whilst he would have been – and was – open to other suggestions, for this is no zero sum game, it is difficult to argue with the truth of his observation. I certainly have no desire to try, least of all this year, the hundredth anniversary of Debussy’s death, when I fear we shall have far too much wishy-washy talk of ‘Impressionism’ and far too little of modernism – or, more to the point of its modernist substance and import. If the former brings people to the latter, all well and good, but it too readily becomes an easy-listening thing-in-itself, obscuring so much of what truly matters in this most radical of composers.

 

Nor, it seemed, did François-Xavier Roth have any desire to try to argue with the claim made by a composer whom Roth himself has consistently championed, not least in the Berlin hall that bears Boulez’s name. Here he is in London as Principal Guest Conductor of the LSO, a welcome appointment he has held since September of last year. The celebrated opening phrase of Prélude à l’après-midi, beautifully, enigmatically floated by Gareth Davies, immediately offered a sense of fantasy, even of magic, furthered by responses, whether from other soloists or the orchestra as ensemble. Roth led the work with a fluidity familiar as much from Boulez’s musical works as Boulez’s conducting, the apparent lack of bar lines well nigh wondrous. Debussy’s Prélude sounded all the more radical, ultimately all the more confrontational, for its apparent lack of overt confrontation, Languor – yes, I know, we all overuse that word when it comes to Debussy – and concision seemed somehow to coexist, even to awaken one another.

 

I can live with the concert title ‘Essential Debussy’ if it attracts more people to the music, but surely it is stretching ‘essential’ beyond breaking point to include the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. It is a fascinating work, at least as much for its atypical qualities, even its skirting (at least) with vulgarity, as for foreshadowings of the later, ‘essential’ composer. One can play spot the influence and inevitably does, to a certain extent, but perhaps it is better simply to take it, as much as one can, ‘as it is’. Such seemed to be the method of the musicians here, now joined by Cédric Tiberghien, in a piano performance both hammerless and directed. In the second movement, Debussy’s melodic and harmonic twists constantly surprised, without any need for underlining, an affinity with the piano Arabesques clear and revealing. In context, one also heard similarities to – I hesitate to say ‘anticipations of’ – Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune in the closing ‘Allegro molto’. I cannot say, though, that I was left regretting Debussy’s turn away from Franck, d’Indy, et al. A splendidly sec encore of ‘Minstrels’ followed.

 

Jeux, which opened the second half, shows Debussy at what is surely his most classically modernist. Its opening marriage of timbre and harmony proved almost melodic in itself, without quite becoming Viennese Klangfarbenmelodie; it certainly had me think again of Boulez. Roth did not neglect, though, the sense of ballet, even of (thin) sporting narrative, the musical to-and-fro evocative and unrestricted, up and until the final drop of the ball. This extraordinary score remained as enigmatic as ever, its form seemingly generated before our ears, inviting and yet resisting ad hoc analysis.

 

If we had heard in Jeux fragments that might – or not – have come from Pelléas et Mélisande, they were more obvious, more frequent in the less kaleidoscopic Nocturnes. In ‘Nuages’, they were especially apparent in that passing between darkness and light without ever quite jettisoning the one for the other. Roth kept the score moving with great skill, almost imperceptible and thus all the more impressive. This is certainly not Debussy that invites a display of ‘personality’. ‘Fêtes’ proved a welcome contrast with bright, almost primary colours delivered and relished by the LSO. Marriage between detail and bigger ‘picture’ was finely judged. I found it irresistible. That, of course, is precisely what sirens should be, and so they were in ‘Sirènes’, the wordless female chorus imparting a sense of something akin to secular plainsong in summer – which returned us, in a way, to the opening work. The ‘cyclical’ takes many paths and forms.

Gould/Tiberghien/Aurora/Collon - Paganini, Mozart, Liszt, and Mendelssohn, 17 September 2016

Hall One, Kings Place

Images: Nick Rutter

Paganini – Twenty-four Caprices for solo violin, op.1: Caprice no.5
Mozart – Piano Concerto no.6 in B-flat major, KV 238
Liszt – Années de pèlerinage: Première année: ‘Suisse’, S 160: ‘Le Mal du pays’
Mozart – Piano Concerto no.5 in D major, KV 175
Mendelssohn – Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’

Thomas Gould (violin)

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

Aurora Orchestra

Nicholas Collon (conductor)

Taking as its theme the touring programmes of musical prodigies, this instalment in the Aurora Orchestra’s five-year traversal of Mozart’s piano concerto, opened with the fifth of Paganini’s Twenty-four Caprices. It was well played indeed by Thomas Gould, intonation spot on, and with plenty of rhythmic impetus. Whether it really added to the programme, I am less convinced, but it did not harm in lieu of an overture.

Cédric Tiberghien took centre stage for the rest of the first half, with excellent results. First up was the lovely, shamefully neglected Sixth Piano Concerto. (Just because Mozart wrote greater concertos, there is no reason for us to forget his earlier works, which put most other composers to shame. The same goes for his operas.) A warm, lively orchestral tutti from the orchestra and Nicholas Collon was answered by Tiberghien with charm and precision, the first movement as a whole receiving a variegated performance, in the spirit of forerunners such as JC Bach, yet also looking forward to Mozart’s later works. Passagework as clean, well-oiled, and, just as important, melodically meaningful. The slow movement had the air of a Salzburg serenade, not least on account of its pizzicato strings, but not only on their account. In its way, this is quite a complicated movement, overtly so: it has little of the distilled simplicity of the later Mozart. Tiberghien cared for the cantilena just as much as he would have done in Chopin or Ravel – and rightly so. The finale was played with good nature, and a sense of fun, whilst still being taken seriously. There was something of Haydn (if only to our retrospectively attuned ears) to it, but equally a sense of drama that was entirely Mozart’s own.

 

Liszt’s Le Mal du pays offered a very different standpoint on the travelling virtuoso’s experience. The starkness of its opening seemed already to look forward to the visionary works of the composer’s old age. Tiberghien showed himself finely attuned to Liszt’s rhetoric but also to the sentiments that underlay the rhetoric. Like Liszt himself, he understood the ability of the piano to ‘speak’ and communicated that. Sadness, even bitterness, made for a poignant, pungent interlude. Once again, we were reminded that no one, not even Mozart or Beethoven, did more to make the modern piano and modern pianism what they are.

 

Mozart’s Fifth Piano Concerto opened with the unmistakeable celebratory fizz of the composer in D major. Collon drove the music quite hard, but it could take it. Tiberghien responded in similarly ‘public’ fashion. That is not to say his performance lacked subtlety, quite the contrary; melodic lines were just as finely crafted as in the previous concerto. Mozart’s surprises registered as they should. Attention to detail from all concerned ensured that music which, in lesser hands, might sound ‘conventional’, emerged as anything but. The orchestra, moreover, sounded as if it were enjoying itself: always a good thing. There was an engaging physicality here and elsewhere to its performances. The slow movement’s performance was eloquent. What again can actually prove quite complicated never sounded fussy; it was well directed, imbued with grace, yet with a place too for rhetorical flourishes. In the finale, we experienced a return to, even intensification of, D major extroversion. Display, as previously, was always musically grounded; the ebullience was impossible not to like. Mozart’s extraordinary achievement at the age of seventeen blazed in all its glory.

 

For the second half, we heard a symphony by another celebrated prodigy, Mendelssohn. Collon offered a performance rather in the spirit of his Mozart: colourful, exuberant, full of life. The second group in the first movement had charm too: Mendelssohn should never grimace; nor did he. The development section, moreover, sounded properly cumulative. At the opening of the second movement, Collon and his orchestra seemed keen to highlight Mendelssohn’s interest in Baroque music, Handel as much as Bach. It was not a dogmatic reading, though: there was plenty of ‘Romantic’ colour to come, not least from the Aurora woodwind. Darkness of mood, far from unrelieved, provided a welcome correction to many other accounts. The Minuet charmed, yet never sounded merely placid; there was much to occupy mind and senses beneath the veneer. Its trio proved just as ambiguous, if differently so. A fast and furious finale stood out for the intensity of the orchestral playing. One truly felt the virtues of a chamber orchestra ‘playing out’, of virtuosic instrumentalists coming together to make music.

Tiberghien - Bartók and Kurtág, 24 May 2016

Wigmore Hall

Bartók – Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs

Eight Improvisations of Hungarian Peasant Songs, op.20
Sonata

Bartók – Three Hungarian Folksongs from Csík

Kurtág – Pieces from Játékok, interspersed with:

Bartok – Sonatina; Pieces from Mikrokosmos, vol.5

Bartók – Six Romanian Folk Dances

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

 

Six months ago, at the end of Pierre Boulez’s ninetieth-anniversary year and thus shortly before his death, Cédric Tiberghien gave a Wigmore Hall recital in which he interwove works by Boulez and Bartók. Alas, I was unable to attend, but this recital, in which he did something similar with Kurtág, made up for some of that disappointment.

 

I say ‘interwove’, but the first half was devoted entirely to Bartók. For so fine a pianist, and so fine a composer of music involving the piano, there is not so much solo piano music as one might expect; or rather, there is not much larger-scale piano music. Even the Sonata, heard here as conclusion to the first half, is relatively brief. Before that, we heard two sets of short pieces. First came the Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs, which Bartók groups into four sections – so not entirely unlike a sonata, with a broad – too broad? – understanding of the term. Tiberghien’s opening, with the first of the ‘Four Old Tunes’, was bold, his generous use of the sustaining pedal providing its own atmospheric justification. Following that mini-‘overture’, we heard Debussyan echoes turned to Lisztian ends, a keen sense of form exhibiting itself throughout. The Scherzo, no.5, once again showed post-Debussyan awareness, whilst retaining very much its own character. The ‘Ballad’, a theme and variations, was exploratory in a way that made it sound close to the (contemporaneous) Wooden Prince, whilst also looking forward to the Piano Concertos. Variation form inevitably brought echoes of Beethoven too. The ‘Old Dance Tunes’ certainly danced, and danced with great individuality. (Think of Mozart’s exquisite sets of dances, which only sound the same to those who are not listening.) Liszt was never far away; when is he in Bartók?

 

The Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs arguably offer more of Bartók ‘himself’, but I am not sure the distinction is an especially illuminating one. Music is music; it is good or bad, or perhaps something in between. This is good, as was Tiberghien’s performance. The first number bore a nostalgia born of still greater mastery, wonderfully conjured up by the pianist with great depth of tone (and, I think, of soul). Mood swings were skilfully integrated in the ‘Molto capriccioso’; here, and not here, I wondered whether there might be something of Bartók answering the aphoristic Schoenberg of the op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces. Schoenberg again came to mind in the penultimate piece, ‘Sostenuto, rubato’, Tiberghien luxuriating in its foreshortened or threatened languor, whilst maintaining a sense of urgency. The ‘sound’ is, of course, nothing like Schoenberg, but perhaps there is something of a commonality of spirit. Bartók’s closing ‘Allegro’ was properly climactic, Tiberghien striking a fine balance between deliberation, disjuncture, and rhythmic propulsion.

 

The Sonata undoubtedly showed the composer of the first two Piano Concertos at work. Tiberghien brought the world of the 1920s very much to the fore; rhythmic comparisons with Stravinsky more than once suggested themselves. In some senses, this is more ‘abstract’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ music, but one can make too much of such oppositions. Integration is more the thing, as it was here in performance too. ‘Sostenuto’ was the word that came to mind before I checked Bartók’s marking for the second movement: ‘Sostenuto e pesante’. Disruptions thereby sounded all the more telling when they came. Build-up to climaxes that were perhaps never quite climactic was unerringly shaped. Kinship and yet also difference from the earlier ‘folk’ music was apparent in the finale. Likewise Bartók’s internationalism that yet incorporates elements of the ‘national’. Perhaps that is another way of saying the same thing. With an almost Schoenbergian wealth of information and Mozartian melodic profusion, this made for a thrilling conclusion.

 

Three Hungarian Folksongs from Csík opened the second half. Charming, unquestionably beautiful, they were definitely ‘earlier’ than that we had heard before. There then followed two of the several pieces extracted from Kurtág’s Játékok. Musical procedure was very much to the fore, Webern-like, in the ‘Hommage à Bartók’. Sonority there and in ‘All’ongherese – Hommage à Gösta Neuwirth 60’ was forever startling, in all manner of ways, Tiberghien’s advocacy as focused as one could wish for. ‘Bagpipes’ could be seen as well as heard in Bartók’s Sonatina, likewise the bears of the ‘Bear Dance’. Tiberghien offered a warm yet pristine performance, sounding retrospectively as an intensification of Kurtág’s post-Webern explorations. Petrushka sounded in the finale, even before I had noticed the cunning follow-up of Kurtág’s ‘Hommage à Ferenc farkas (3) – (evocation of Petrushka)’. In the next three Kurtág pieces, we heard him out-Weberning Webern (‘five-finger play – chromatic exercise), doing just what the title suggested (‘Pen drawing, Valediction to erszébet Scháar), and going still further with the out-Weberning Webern (‘Russian Dance’).

 

Tiberghien then interspersed selections from Mikrokosmos with further selections from Játékok. The first Bartók six (122-127) suggested the falsity of another opposition: this time between technical and ‘musical’ requirements. Likewise the coherence of apparent irregularity. Humour shone through in Kurtág’s ‘La Fille aux cheveux de lin – enragée’, all the more so for being played with all the seriousness of Bartók’s post-Debussyan essays. Radical contrast, whether in simplicity (‘A flower for Márta’) or something akin to miniature Boulez (‘Face to face (János Demény in memoriam)’), ensued.

Bartok’s nos 128-33 seemed very much to set the scene for the next selection from Játékok, which also drew again on that Debussyan inheritance, in an utterly novel way (so it sounded here, anyway). ‘Process’ and ‘music’ were again shown to be as one in Bartók’s nos 134-39, ravishingly performed as part of a particularly fine-woven tapestry. The final three pieces by Kurtág seemed very much to come as fulfilment of so many of the tendencies heard earlier: fine programming and performance. At times almost de profundis, and yet also with what one might call a bearable lightness of being, Tiberghien resolved so much – and yet also left so much open – in ‘The very last conversation with Lászo Dörnyei’. Bartók’s Six Romanian Folk Dances could then sound as almost a written-in encore. If I have taken until now to mention Tiberghien’s fineness of touch, that is probably because it never drew attention to itself.

 

Ibragimova/Tiberghien - Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin, 27 October 2009

Wigmore Hall

No.1 in D major, op.12 no.1
No.4 in A minor, op.23
No.8 in G major, op.30 no.3
No.7 in C minor, op.30 no.2

Alina Ibragimova (violin)
Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

This selection of four Beethoven violin sonatas was for the most part impressive, though the first half was perhaps more consistently impressive than the second – in part, I suspect, a reflection of the greater musical challenges posed by the op.30 works. Though still a young man’s music, it is by no means clear whether young artists are always best placed to perform them.

Of the three op.30 sonatas, two were performed: the third and the second, in that order. The G major, op.30 no.3, certainly had its moments – and, to be fair, rather more than that, the first movement proving especially successful. Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien rightly took it fast, without sounding unduly forced. Indeed, this movement sounded full of life, full of the openness G major implies, especially for a violin. And when the dominant was reached, there were definite echoes of the contemporary Pastoral sonata for piano, op.28, not least in the handling of the warm syncopations. However, particularly during the development section, I wondered whether the performers might fruitfully have allowed for a little fluctuation in terms of tempo. The opening of the second movement was exceptional in that Tiberghien sounded somewhat heavy-handed: not a problem elsewhere in the recital. That opening piano statement was also a little plain, though Ibragimova’s response was more differentiated. The tempo, however, simply sounded too fast: the music needed to relax, to show an easy – a deceptively easy – grace. The finale, though technically impressive, and with some exquisite moments, could be unrelenting at times.

The C minor sonata opened with a magnificently mysterious piano introduction prior to the opening of the Beethovenian floodgates. Yet open though they did, the Beethoven of this movement remained somewhat Apollonian version; Dionysus never quite made his presence felt. Technically, there was much at which to marvel, not least Ibragimova’s flawless double-stopping, yet there was sometimes, though by no means always, a sense of two very good performances in tandem rather than of true interaction between the two players. The Adagio cantabile reminded me once again quite how difficult Beethoven’s slow movements are. This was a valiant attempt, but the noble simplicity at which any performance must strain, that simplicity of which an unbroken line must be part, was not quite achieved. Sadly, the final bars degenerated into an opportunity for to cough along with Cédric and Alina. In the scherzo, the players seemed to be trying a bit too hard; both sounded a bit too nervy. The trio proved hard-driven, contributing to an impression of grimacing rather than smiling at Beethoven’s gruff humour. By contrast, the finale was, in itself, a triumph. I very much liked the rough edges of this disruptied – or disrupted? – movement. Is it early Beethoven or Romantic Beethoven? It is of course both, as the players showed they understood. Their performances exhibited a virtuosity that was furious but not attention-seeking.

Nevertheless, it was the first two performances that I found more consistently satisfying. Op.12 no.1 had a somewhat shaky opening, not from Tiberghien, who sounded magnificent throughout, but in terms of Ibragimova’s uncharacteristically steely, unmodulated tone, at least as far as the second subject. But otherwise this was and sounded like a young man’s music. The second movement instantly sounded more like true chamber music, initially led but not dominated by Tiberghien, until Ibragimova’s gracious elevation for the second variation. A violent eruption characterised both players’ vision of the third variation, whilst its successor exhibited an almost Schubertian rocking melancholy in the piano part, married to richness of tone in the violin’s lyricism. The finale had just the right sense of going beyond Mozart, his spirit both honoured and slightly traduced, especially in the insistence of those utterly characteristic Beethovenian syncopations. Tiberghien’s Tiggerish enthusiasm served this music extremely well.

The A minor sonata, op.23, opened in nervy fashion without falling into the trap of sounding short-winded, for a good sense of line pervaded the work. Beethoven’s contrapuntal mastery was relished by both players, especially during the first two movements; there were times when Brahms almost seemed to be knocking on the door – and quite right too. The second movement was certainly not slow, but nor was it rushed; the players managed the tricky business of poise and flow. Here, there was a true sense of give and take between them. My sole reservation – and not only here – was a rather throwaway ending, which verged upon mannerism. The Romantic urgency that characterised the finale looked forward to the Kreutzer sonata, but there was also a more classically Mozartian aspect to the player’s conception (not that Mozart cannot be Romantic, of course). There was also an open spirit to be heard that sounded authentically – in the best, not the modern debased, sense – Beethovenian. If that was not always captured quite so clearly later on, to do so at all was a sign that Ibragimova and Tibergien are Beethoven performers to be reckoned with.

Tiberghien/Britten Sinfonia - Debussy, Richard Harrold, Thomas Adès, and Fauré, 17 February 2009

West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge

Debussy – Sonata for violoncello and piano
Richard Harrold – Ink (British premiere)
Thomas Adès – ‘Court studies’ from The Tempest
Fauré – Piano trio in D minor, op.120

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Jacqueline Shave (violin)
Caroline Dearnley (violoncello)
Joy Farrall (clarinet)

Each of the Britten Sinfonia’s lunchtime concerts presents a newly commissioned work alongside other chamber or ensemble works; each, moreover, is curated by an established British composer, who selects a younger composer as recipient for the commission. Last month, we had Oliver Knussen and Ryan Wigglesworth; this time, it was the turn of Thomas Adès and Richard Harrold.

Harrold’s Ink had been premiered in Krakow at the weekend, so this was its second performance. Scored for violin, ’cello, clarinet, and piano, it is described by the composer as a ‘neo-baroque study of rhythm and asynchrony’. In the busy opening section, it was unsurprising therefore that it was Stravinsky who sprang to mind, especially the Stravinsky of Dumbarton Oaks. The performance was appropriately metronomical: Stravinsky’s peculiar vision of Bach has a great deal to answer for. A slower section follows, characterised by slow, somewhat mysterious piano chords, whose harmonies were sometimes suggestive of Debussy and perhaps even Schoenberg. Cédric Tiberghien’s beautiful touch and discreet legato pedalling served this music extremely well. The other three instruments develop this material, soon rejoined by the piano, enabling the music to gather pace and the opening, angular voice to be restored. Harrold’s quoted ‘asynchrony’ most strongly characterises the concluding bars: slower again, but with disruptive outbursts. This was well-crafted music, well performed, even if it was difficult to detect an individual voice. That said, this was my first encounter with Harrold’s music, let alone with this piece, so perhaps my ears need time to adjust. So young a composer has, in any case, plenty of time in which to develop.

Adès certainly can lay claim to a distinctive voice. Yet I have often wondered, as again I did here, what he is actually saying with it: shades of Schoenberg’s ‘A Chinese poet speaks Chinese, but what is he saying?’ There is an accomplished, self-conscious brilliance to this music, ‘transcribed ... freely’ for the same forces as Harrold’s piece, from The Tempest, but what lies behind the facade? I had asked myself much the same about Adès’s opera, although the instrumental suite naturally avoided the mother work’s vocal infelicities. Even when the harmonies begin to sound more reflective, they soon become predictable. There is, of course, a playfulness typical of the composer’s work – and very well captured by the performers – but, whilst playing on the ruins of tonality is all very well, it is hardly sufficient in itself.

At least, however, Ades’s music evinces more bite than that of Fauré. A self-conscious distancing from Teutonic tradition is very much part of Adès’s persona – but there might be more worthy candidates for inclusion in such a programme than Fauré’s late piano trio. It goes nowhere in particular, for quite some time. Again, it was well performed, once Caroline Dearnley had – quickly – surmounted some early intonational difficulties. Yet the blandness of the harmonies, even in the final Allegro vivo, which at least boasts greater rhythmic interest, is for me the abiding memory of the piece. It ought to appeal to those members of the English musical establishment who devoted vast swathes of programming time last year to a forlorn attempt to convince the rest of us – and perhaps even themselves – that Vaughan Williams was anything but a minor composer. (It will not, since Fauré was not English.) Tiberghien’s pianism proved on its own terms most impressive, whether in the rippling opening of the first movement or the relatively more virtuosic passages of the finale.

Such musicianship was far better served, however, by Debussy’s ’cello sonata, with which the concert had opened. Tiberghien’s alternation between the virile and the feline perfectly captured the ambiguities of the first movement. Both he and Dearnley showed keen ears not only for the composer’s harmonies but for their rhythmic and structural implications. Shades of old France – Debussy was by now signing himself ‘musicien français’ – were apparent without emblazoning them. The ensuing Sérénade was, if anything, still more impressive, its haunting uncertainty sometimes blossoming into lyricism, yet with appropriate hesitation. Dearnley’s pizzicato and Tiberghien’s bass-register staccato proved a good match, so as not only to imitate but also to blend. Rhythmic control in the finale was impressive, as the sonata reached a duly exciting, yet unexaggerated conclusion. If Tiberghien unsurprisingly remained the musically dominant partner, Dearnley’s performance also impressed, especially when her instrument was singing upon the upper reaches of the A string. The sonata was for me the definite highlight of the concert.

This concert was recorded for subsequent broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Cédric Tiberghien - Brahms and Bartók, 18 September 2008

Wigmore Hall

Brahms – Eight Piano Pieces, op.76
Bartók – Out of Doors, BB 89
Bartók – Three Hungarian Folksongs from Csík, BB 45b
Bartók – Mikrokosmos, BB 105, Book VI: Six Dances in Bulgarian rhythm
Bartók – Six Rumanian Folk Dances, BB 68
Brahms – Ten Hungarian Dances, WoO 1

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

This was a fascinating programme, conceived both as a prelude to the Wigmore Hall’s ‘Bartók Day’ (20 September) and an examination of the differing approaches to ‘folk music’ by Brahms and Bartók. I use inverted commas, since Brahms’s material was based upon gypsy music and often ‘composed’ rather than traditional, although Brahms was largely unaware of this. Bartók on the other hand experienced an epiphany in 1904, hearing a Transylvanian folksong sung by a nurse-maid. What he and many others – including Brahms – had previously thought to be Hungarian folk music was indeed nothing of the kind. Bartók would devote a considerable part of his subsequent career to study of the ‘real thing’, however problematic that idea might be.

Brahms’s Op.76 pieces stand somewhat obliquely to this theme. There are some gypsy rhythms, for instance during the Capriccio in B minor, but for the most part it is better simply to consider this group as a valid introductory set in its own right. (And in retrospect, some pre-emptive respite from folksong, composed or traditional, was maybe not unwelcome.) Cédric Tiberghien proved himself a veritable lion of the keyboard, presenting a Brahms of high Romanticism rather than a progenitor of the Second Viennese School. This is to some extent a false opposition, since an interpretation can perfectly well encompass both of these views and indeed others, and there was certainly a strong sense of motivic development, heightened by telling cross rhythms, in the opening, F sharp minor Capriccio. That said, the general thrust stood closer to Chopin – this is not, after all, late Brahms – and even at times to Liszt, in spite of Brahms’s distaste for that composer. The first piece announced an echt-Brahmsian sonority and sentiment, married to superbly natural flexible tempi, a characteristic that persisted throughout the set, even when, as in the final, C major Capriccio, I wondered whether the Romanticism was a little overdone and we veered dangerously close not only to Chopin but even to Rachmaninov. I mean this purely in terms of sonority, for there was nothing flashy about Tiberghien’s performance; it was simply abundant in passion. Virtuosity was readily deployed, for instance in the C sharp minor Capriccio, but always at the service of the music. Helpful in this respect was a strong underlying rhythmic impulse, apparent throughout. So was a great skill for voicing, without ever tending towards sub-Horowitz narcissism. I was very much taken with the B flat major Intermezzo, in which Tiberghien captured perfectly its unassuming though far from inconsequential nature. It was only really in the sixth piece, the A major Intermezzo, that a refreshingly Schumannesque – Liszt might have said ‘Leipzigerisch’ – inheritance shone though, not least in its quizzical opening and thereafter in the involved thematic development, though once again the performance remained outwardly impassioned too.

Bartók’s Out of doors suite rounded off the first half. I may only have had incidental reservations concerning the Brahms but here I had none whatsoever. From the opening bars of With drums and pipes, with their stomping percussive chords, this was utterly characteristic Bartók – from both composer and pianist. The Barcarolla was splendidly insistent and again utterly attuned to the composer’s sound world. That insistence carried through into Musettes, accompanied by a pianist’s sonorous delight in Bartók’s drones. In The night’s music – a title so prophetic for much later Bartók – one could almost see the insects of the night, so vividly did Tiberghien portray them. Yet his reading was certainly not merely colouristic; there was always clear direction, married to razor-sharp rhythmic definition. It made me want to hear Tiberghien’s Debussy. In The chase we were treated to a climactic, almost Lisztian abandon: Mazeppa or Mephisto, or perhaps both. Tiberghien unleashed breathtaking virtuosity, which enabled great textural clarity without ever sounding clinical. It is no exaggeration to say that he reminded me here of Maurizio Pollini.

After the interval, the opening group of three short sets displayed three different varieties of Bartók’s inspiration and composition: straightforward setting of folksong material, compositional inspiration from folksong rhythm – in this case of the Bulgarian ‘additive’ variety – and elaboration of existing material. In the short Three Hungarian folk songs from Csík, Tiberghien resisted any temptation to over-play these simple folksong settings. There was here a strong, direct simplicity, married to an exquisite touch. The melancholy of the first and second songs shone through but they were never sentimentalised. These songs were simply and rightly presented rather than ‘interpreted’. The Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm from Mikrokosmos, that astonishing set of teaching material – yet think of Bach, as Bartók so often did – were by contrast most definitely ‘composed’ and therefore ‘performed’. Tiberghien nevertheless never overdid the ‘interpretation’; his achievement was such that this once again sounded simply as Bartók. He employed a telling yet natural rubato allied to tight rhythmic command: alive to the twists and turns of Bartók’s dances but never ‘quirky’ for the sake of it. Quickfire repeated notes gave ample and apposite opportunity to utilise rather than merely to display his virtuosity. The ever-popular – in various guises – Six Rumanian Folk Dances were infectiously strident where necessary but were equally characterised by a wonderful delicacy. ‘Eastern’ sounds were full of promise and not without a hint or two of danger. Repetition was exciting rather then tedious, as can sometimes be the case with inherently anti-developmental folksong. But it was above all the melancholy lyricism that will linger for me.

From the outset of the solo version of the Ten Hungarian Dances, it was clear that we had returned to Brahms: the highly Romantic Brahms we had earlier, but nevertheless still Brahms. The German composer’s darkness and charm were equally present. And the difference between Bartók’s Hungarian material and Brahms’s gypsy music was clear. Impassioned nostalgia might be a good way to characterise the openings of the second and fourth dances. In the latter we heard the cimbalom as clearly as we had heard the insects of the night in Out of doors. The syncopations of the third dance were projected with great dramatic flair. If there were occasional hints of rhythmic hardening, as in the fourth, and of matter-of factness, as in the fifth, these should not be exaggerated; they were probably only noticeable because the Bartók performances had been so utterly remarkable. And Tiberghien elsewhere, for instance in the seventh dance, showed that he was quite able to adopt a characteristic gypsy freedom of tempo. The Brahms works, then, were very good, but Tiberghien’s Bartók was quite outstanding, indeed faultless. And yet he surpassed himself in terms of Brahms by providing as an encore a haunting E major waltz (no.2) from the Op.39 set. We were left wanting more – which is just as it should be.

Prom 45: BBC SSO/Volkov, et al., 19 August 2008

Royal Albert Hall

Harvey – Tombeau de Messiaen
Messiaen – Concert à quatre
Harvey – Mortuos plango, vivos voco
Harvey (with Gilbert Nouno and Arshia Cont: IRCAM computer music designers) – Soundings (world premiere)
Varèse – Poème électronique
Varèse – Déserts

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Emily Beynon (flute)
Alexei Ogrintchouk (oboe)
Danjulo Ishizaka (’cello)
Jonathan Harvey (sound projection: Harvey)
Jerémie Henrot and Clément Marie (IRCAM sound projection: Soundings)
Ben Bayliss and Chris Beddall (sound projection: Varèse)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Interesting and intelligent programming may prove to be a hallmark of Roger Wright’s tenure at the Proms. One can only hope so following the previous dispensation, much of which has remained in evidence during this ‘changeover’ season. At the heart of the programme lay the music of Jonathan Harvey, a fine composer, far too often overlooked in his own country. It would seem that his marriage of modernism, not least a keen interest in French spectralism and electronics, and a deep, syncretic spirituality – yes, I too generally run a mile upon hearing that word; but this is the real thing, not the easy-access, synthetic bells and smells of the ‘holy minimalists’ – has not always appealed to the English empirical temperament. All the more reason then to grant him such a splendid opportunity as this. Harvey studied with Messiaen and the two composers’ concerns in various ways overlap. An ongoing association with IRCAM – brain-child of Boulez, another Messiaen pupil – brought us the classic electronic work, Mortuos plango, vivos voco, and a new work, Soundings, co-commissioned by the BBC, IRCAM, and Radio France, as the third and final part of a trilogy ‘referring to the Buddhist purification of body, mind, and speech’. Soundings was composed by Harvey as Composer-in-Association to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, who premiered it this evening. And then, for the third part of the concert, we turned to the still-bracing dawn of electronic music, to the work of Varèse. Having questioned the suitability of the Royal Albert Hall for various more ‘conventional’ works, I am happy to report that, on this occasion, the space worked very well. This may partly have been owed to the vagaries of seating – even sitting a few seats away appears to make quite a difference here – yet the space itself added something important, visually and acoustically, to the electronic works.

Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen, for piano and digital tape, opened the programme. In a brief programme note, Harvey cited Messiaen as a ‘protospectralist ... fascinated by the colours of the harmonic series and its distortions, ... [who] found therein a prismatic play of light’. And so, the tape part of this 1994 tribute is made of twelve piano sounds tuned to the harmonic series, one for each pitch class. The piano part, in equal temperament of course, then plays with these series, both combining with and distorting them: ‘never entirely belonging, never entirely separate’. This interplay was dazzlingly captured by Cédric Tiberghien, as were the bell-like echoes – a slightly nauseous yet colourful pealing – not only of Messiaen but also, I fancied, of the Debussy of La cathédrale engloutie. ‘Echoes’ was also the operative word for the crucial role of the hall. Harvey and Tiberghien exploited the full extremities of the keyboard, before moving to a piercing climax of an almost Messiaenesque ecstasy.

Concert à quatre (1990-92) is Messiaen’s final work, completed by Yvonne Loriod, in consultation with Heinz Holliger and George Benjamin. From the very first notes, it is instantly recognisable as Messiaen, indeed as the work of the same composer who, compositional developments notwithstanding, had written L’Ascension sixty years earlier. Emily Beynon and Alexei Ogrintchouk are both principals with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, whose long experience with French music was surely valuable here, but the BBC SSO too managed to sound convincingly ‘modern French’ (think of the Orchestre de Paris or the Orchestre National de France). In the first movement, the Entrée, it was once again Tiberghien’s opportunity to shine, the piano being treated as a solo instrument apart from the rest of the concertante group. Needless to say, he grasped this opportunity, exhibiting glistening tone and dazzling rhythmical precision. The orchestra’s ten (!) percussionists, including wind-machine, certainly made their presence felt too, though never unduly. For the second movement Vocalise, Messiaen transcribed with ornamentation a piece he had written in 1935 for a series of vocal studies. It is tribute to the constancy of his style and voice, that this in no sense sounded out of place. The beautiful A major melody, ‘warmed’, in Paul Griffiths’s excellent choice of verb, by the composer’s third mode of limited transposition, was passed between each of the soloists in turn, the orchestra here being of secondary importance, timbral ‘warming’ furnished by a limited number of strings. Beynon presented a ravishingly lyrical opening, followed by an equally heart-stopping duet between oboe and piano, Ogrintchouk being possessed, it would seem, of unlimited and luxurious reserves of line and breath. The unapologetically Romantic ’cello entry was meltingly taken by BBC New Generation Artist, Danjulo Ishizaka, who also shone in the ensuing Cadenza. So too did the combined forces of the xylophone, xylorimba, and marimba. For the final Rondeau, Ilan Volkov clearly delineated its verse-refrain form. He and his players also imparted a welcome sense of the apocalyptic. The dialogue between piano and bells took on an aptly ecclesiastical tinge as versicle and response. This movement teemed, quite properly, with life and joy.

Mortuos plango, vivos voco, for eight-channel tape (1980), was inspired by the sounds of bells and choristers at Winchester Cathedral, where Harvey’s son had sung. The largest bell has inscribed upon it the text: HORAS AVOLANTES NUMERO, MORTUOS PLANGO, VIVOS AD PRECES VOCO (‘I count the fleeing hours, I lament the dead, I call the living to prayer’). Harvey cleverly – and movingly – conveys this through the ‘dead’, however rich, sound of the bell and the ‘live’ sound of the boy, the audience inside the surrounding sound of the former, whilst the latter ‘flies freely around’. I was reminded not only of the English cathedral tradition– and of English cathedrals themselves –but also of the strange, threatening, yet ineffably beautiful Venice of Nono. It was interesting to note how very much more human, less alien, this work sounded than Stockhausen’s COSMIC PULSES had a couple of weeks before. This is new music concerned with utterly ‘traditional’ Christian concerns of life and death, nowhere more so than in the dying away al niente of the bell sounds. The hall itself took on an aptly Gothic splendour as the frame for the music.

In Soundings, Harvey explains, he ‘wanted to bring together orchestral music and human speech. It is as if the orchestra is learning to speak, like a baby with its mother, or like first man, or like listening to a highly expressive language we don’t understand. The rhythms and emotional tones of speech are formed by semantics, but even more they are formed by feelings – in that respect they approach song.’ Quite apart from the eloquence with which the composer elucidated the imperative behind his work, this is very much what we heard, for which tribute should also be paid to Volkov and his excellent orchestra. (How very different from the dispiriting Mahler and Damnation of Faust I heard them give at the Proms a few years ago.) The Ur-quality of the opening inevitably brought to mind earlier ‘creations’ of music out of the void: The Creation, Das Rheingold, Berg’s Op.6 Orchestral Pieces. This sounded very much as Harvey described it: ‘like an incarnation, the descent into human life.’ Leader Elizabeth Layton did sterling work with several taxing solos, although she was far from alone in this respect. Swarming strings and Messiaenesque chattering woodwind were keen contributors. The second of the three movements – continuous, yet distinct – is an expansion of the work Sprechgesang (for English horn and chamber ensemble). For Harvey, it is ‘concerned with the frenetic chatter of human life in all its expressions of domination, assertion, fear, love, etc.’, which ‘finally moves, exhausted, to mantra and a celebration of ritual language. The mantra is orchestrated and treated by shape vocoding.’ The voices actually put me in mind of an electronic version of Berio’s Sinfonia, which of course has its fair share of ‘frenetic chatter’. Passages of joy were reminiscent once again of Messiaen, who would surely have understood and shared Harvey’s concerns. There were even Romantic ghosts in the machine in the guise of virtuoso piano (splendidly performed by Lynda Cochrane) and languorous woodwind phrases. For the third movement ‘speech has a calmer purpose; it is married to a music of unity, a hymn which is close to Gregorian chant.’ This was certainly apparent, not least in the ominous monodic passages for brass and electronics. The movement built towards a shattering, almost Brucknerian climax, before reverting to some earlier material, taken in different directions, with some further Messiaenesque activity. Divisions between work, performance and audience broke down as the sound enveloped us and took us somewhere beyond, to the transcendent. ‘The paradise of the sounding temple is imagined.’

Varèse’s Poème électronique, for pre-recorded magnetic tape, was composed for Le Corbusier’s Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. (Those were the days!) It was the architect’s insistence, against considerable scepticism from Philips, which ensured that Varèse would be the composer of precisely 480 seconds of music, created second by second from both ‘real’ and purely electronic sounds. (Interestingly, much of the technical design for the pavilion was delegated to Le Corbusier’s assistant, none other than the young Xenakis.) Although the pavilion was demolished, Varèse’s music was preserved and subsequently transferred to computer. The opening bell sounds provided a link with Harvey, but soon we hurtled into an extraordinary futuristic world with a multiplicity of sounds, from organ to heavy industry. At this distance – we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary –there was occasionally something of the Heath Robinson to some of this, but every work, even that of Varèse, must eventually be classicised and take upon itself something of its own time as well as ours. The closing storm-winds set the scene for the déserts of the following, final work.

Here, in Déserts, for fifteen wind instruments, percussion (all ten players once again, including piano), and magnetic tape (1950-54), we were once again awakened by the chiming of bells. An overriding impression from both work and performance would be summed up by the word Boulez had not so long previously used at the head of the seventh of his piano Notations, as yet unpublished: Hiératique. The ghost of Varèse’s own Ionisation was far from lain. Volkov and his instrumentalists were impressively insistent, accomplishing the paradoxical feat of sounding both variegated and monolithic – in fact, rather like the three interpolated passages of ‘organised sound’. All the necessary precision and timbral starkness were there. The electronic sounds are again utterly of the twentieth century – unlike much tamer twentieth-century music – in their evocation of an age of warfare and ‘technological progress’, of deserts both natural and urban, and of what Varèse called ‘this distant inner space where no telescope can reach, where man is alone in a world of mystery and essential solitude’. Gleaming brass was uncompromisingly Corbusier-like, as opposed to the Bauhaus constructivism of some at least of twelve-note Schoenberg; it is interesting, how often one reaches for architectural simile when thinking of Varèse, more often indeed than one does with Xenakis, of whom one might have expected it. This performance marked a fine end to an outstanding concert.