Horton - Schumann, Stockhausen, and Chopin, 17 June 2025

Wigmore Hall

Schumann: Piano Sonata no.1 in F-sharp minor, op.11
Stockhausen: Klavierstück VII
Chopin: Nocturne in C-sharp minor, op.27 no.1; Nocturne in D-flat major, op.27 no.2; Mazurka in A minor, op.59 no.1; Mazurka in A-flat major, op.59 no.2; Mazurka in F-sharp minor, op.59 no.3; Piano Sonata no.3 in B minor, op.58

Tim Horton (piano) 

Dedicated to the memory of Alfred Brendel, whose death had been announced earlier that day, this latest instalment in Tim Horton’s Wigmore Hall Chopin series offered a programme which Brendel might not have given but of which he would surely have approved. It opened with Schumann’s early F-sharp minor sonata, described in Jim Samson’s excellent programme note as ‘immensely challenging’. Indeed, seems the appropriate response: certainly for the pianist but also, I think, for the listener—or at least this one. Know and love much of Schumann’s piano music as I do, this work I struggle with. Often one needs to wait for such music to knock on the door, which it has yet to do for me. Horton, though, gave a commanding account, properly ‘orchestral’, though unquestionably written for the instrument to hand. The strange ‘Introduzione’ to the first movement, turbulent yet controlled, was given with a sort of tragic dignity that already spoke of affinity with Chopin, as did more ruminative passages later on. Schumann’s unusual conception of sonata form here was given its due: communicated rather than ‘explained’. The ‘Aria’ came initially as Eusebian relief, soon complicated to an almost Brahmsian degree: all over far too quickly, leaving one longing for more. Infectious energy characterised the scherzo, duly balanced by its trio, prior to quasi-Beethovenian struggle in a finale whose range of colour could not help but impress. the ascent to final climax finely prepared and achieved. 

I suspect I may have been in a minority in the audience in finding Stockhausen’s Klavierstück VII less challenging; yet perhaps not, given Horton’s vividly communicative, comprehending performance. It captured both what (as with almost any piece) is ‘of its time’ and what has enabled it to endure as key work in the piano literature. Attack, duration, all parameters were inextricably connected in a ravishing poetic vision of piano resonance and overtones. One could not help but listen in a different, moment-oriented way; one likewise could not help but be rewarded for doing so. 

The second half was given over to Chopin. The pair of op.27 Nocturnes complemented each other beautifully, independence of hands explored in different ways in both. Both were finely shaped, evidently conceived in single, long, ever-varying breaths. Telling rubato made its point without distracting. Both sounded as miniature tone poems: surely what they are. The three op.59 Mazurkas worked equally well as a set and as individual pieces, a fine lilt to the first ushering them on their way. What rhythmic and harmonic subtleties there are here, and what subtle yet unmistakeable pride, which latter quality also helped usher in the Third Piano Sonata. The first movement’s originality may be less startling than that of its counterpart in the Second Sonata, but it was nonetheless palpable in a performance that unfolded with all the time in the world: certainly not slow, yet equally neither hurried nor harried. Will-o’-the-wisp fluttering of the scherzo, turned on its head in the trio, prepared us more in contrast than kinship for the darkness that born in harmony and harmonic rhythm for the slow movement. The fantasia-like quality Horton brought to the finale both surprised and crowned, in a sense presaging similar qualities in the encore, the F-sharp major Nocturne, op.15 no.2, whose tonality also connected us to the close of the Schumann sonata. I look forward to the continuation of this fascinating series.

 

Horton - Debussy and Chopin, 11 December 2024

Wigmore Hall

Debussy: Préludes, Book II
Chopin: 24 Preludes, op.28

Tim Horton (piano)

With this recital of Debussy and Chopin, Tim Horton opened a Wigmore Hall series in which he will present various works by Chopin with music that influenced him and on which he in turn came to influence. It would always be a fitting thing to do, so long as well done, yet somehow it seems all the more so as the musical world continues to mourn the loss of Maurizio Pollini. ‘At seven,’ Horton writes in an intelligent, engaging introduction to the series, ‘my parents bought me Maurizio Pollini’s astonishing account of the Études. I could not believe that the piano could be played, or written for, like this. My obsession with music, the piano, and Chopin has lasted to this day.’ Indeed, with a series encompassing Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel, Szymanowski and Stockhausen, Pollini’s ghost might seem more than usually apparent. Once, he spoke of recording Gaspard de la nuit – imagine! – and Szymanowski was said to be a composer he played in private, though never, I think, in public. The others, Chopin too, featured alongside other composers in the five-concert Royal Festival Hall Pollini Project of 2011. Yet this recital in no sense imitated, nor even evidently paid homage: it announced a major voice in its own right, one with interesting and instructive things to say about and with this music, which I hope to follow in subsequent instalments.

Debussy came first, in the guise of the second book of Préludes, whose sense of a whole, tonal centres notwithstanding, was uncommonly apparent, as if the heir to an early keyboard suite. ‘Brouillards’ announced a number of oppositions and relationships that would persist and transform throughout the set and arguably the recital as a whole. Melting and muscular, the performance showed that atmosphere and precision were far from opposed, but rather mutually dependent. Clarity of thought was paramount and rightly so. Harmonic rhythm and rhythm more generally, sprung yet with telling rubato, played a guiding role in ‘Feuilles mortes’. ‘La puerta del Vino’ intrigued: darker and more dangerous than I recalled, at times verging on the brutal, yet certainly not without charm. Escamillo turned ‘impressionist’, one might say, not unlike the later ‘Général Lavine – eccentric’. There was likewise nothing fey to the fairies in ‘Les fées sont d'exquises danseuses’. Their light shone brought and colourful rather than flickering. I liked the way Horton’s performance of ‘Bruyères’ drew us in to greater intimacy at its heart, again without sacrifice to colour. 

Moonlight pervaded, as surely it must, ‘La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune’, yet there was great musical clarity in and beneath its rays. The same might be said for the waves of ‘Ondine’ and the being they enveloped. Grandiloquent yet affectionate, Debussy’s homage to Mr Pickwick, was admirable here in its clarity, harmonic progressions clearly generative. In some ways, it seemed to prefigure greater abstraction not only to the opening of ‘Les tierces alternées’, but also ‘Canope’ in between. Any false opposition between ‘poetry’ and ‘construction’ was rendered redundant; indeed, the former might well have had a more ‘poetic’ title of its own. The closing ‘Feux d’artifice’, music lying between as in the notes, painted a resplendent picture and climax. 

Hearing Chopin’s twenty-four Preludes after the interval retrospectively brought influence and affinity to bear on our experience. Again, there was great clarity throughout, not only in presentation of the notes but in demonstrating why they were where they were and how. In general, they were possessed with singularity of idea, not so very different from some of the Etudes, whether in the lightly worn yet expressive virtuosity of one sequence of minor-key pieces, or the sadness of some of its predecessors (E minor and B minor, for instance, the latter sharing elements of character with some of the sadder Mazurkas). Expressive qualities arose from the material rather than being imposed on it, the tumult of the E-flat minor Prelude seeming to be summoned by the piano keys themselves. The serene charm of the ‘Raindrop’, in D-flat, and its A-flat companion had them emerge as miniature tone poems, as with all the pieces heard and expressed as if in a single, variegated breath. The simple nobility of the C minor Prelude, movingly shaded, contrasted with an almost Brahmsian, dark-hued passion to the next-but-one in G minor, which in turn immediately contrasted with a leggiero F major, and finally Romantic turbulence and aristocratic pride in D minor. As in all the finest accounts of this book, Pollini’s included, tonal and expressive journeys were as one.

Ensemble 360 - Janáček, Mozart, and Beethoven, 3 February 2018

Wigmore Hall

Janáček: Concertino

Mozart: Quintet in E-flat major for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, KV 452
Beethoven: Septet in E-flat major, op.20
 

Juliette Bausor (flute)

Adrian Wilson (oboe)
Matthew Hunt (clarinet)
Amy Harman (bassoon)
Naomi Atherton (horn)
Benjamin Navarro, Claudia Ajmone-Marsan (violins)
Ruth Gibson (viola)
Gemma Rosefield (cello)
Laurène Durantel (double-bass)
Tim Horton (piano)
 

Ensemble 360 appeared here in its full complement of five string players, five wind players, and pianist, although never (quite) all at the same time. I have no idea why we do not hear Janáček’s Concertino all the time, but then I might say the same about all the music performed here, none of which suffers from over-exposure. Maybe it is just a matter of the slightly unusual ensemble, although it would hardly be difficult to put one such group together from time to time. At any rate, this proved to be a delightful, varied concert of delightful, varied, and yes, great music.

 

The commanding nature of the opening piano figure, both in work and in Tim Horton’s performance, ensure that it lodged itself in the memory securely, ready for what was to come. Soon one could hardly help but imagine oneself, whether musically or even scenically, in the world of The Cunning Little Vixen. The obsessive, obstinate quality of Janáček’s music shone throughout the first movement, and indeed beyond, with splendidly big-boned playing both from Horton and Naomi Atherton on French horn. Vixen-like scurrying announced the second movement’s well-matched partnership between Horton and Matthew Hunt on E-flat clarinet. Music and performance seemed almost to suggest a chamber fantasia on the opera – save for the fact that your common-garden operatic fantasia might seem somewhat vin ordinaire compared to this. (So, to be fair, would your common-garden opera to Janáček’s’s masterpiece.) It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that most chamber writing of this period will reveal a debt, a comparison, or at least a contrast with Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale; the third movement in particular did so here, without ever jettisoning a strong, true voice of Moravian modernism. Resolutely unsentimental as before, it and the final movement proved as colourful as they were rhythmically taut, a sense of joy in the ‘purely’ musical, however illusory, shining still brighter than any partial association.

 

No one with an ear would ever deny the masterpiece status of Mozart’s Quintet for piano and wind instruments. It is difficult to imagine anyone having done so after this performance, again big-boned, more Klemperer- than Böhm-Mozart, if that makes any sense, and certainly none the worse for it. Not that it was old-fashioned, hesitate though I may to use the dubious word ‘timeless’ here. Perhaps it is better simply to say that it was certainly Mozart – and what could be better than that? The grandeur of the first movement’s introduction was certainly communicated. So too, though, was the chiaroscuro of what followed. The work emerged as something close to a predecessor of the Berg Chamber Concerto – and, again, what could be better than that? The import of the development section’s modulatory plan seemed especially keenly felt, occasional very minor slips notwithstanding. I wondered to begin with whether the Larghetto might have yielded, even smiled, a little more, yet it certainly had, in its own way, the virtues outlined for its predecessor. Solo wind playing was delectable from all, likewise the Harmoniemusik as a little band. Any slight reservations I might have had evaporated during the course of the movement. Crucially for a finale, and however obvious they may sound, the final movement worked as something very much more than music that just happened to be placed last. Objectively, whatever that might mean, it was perhaps rather on the fast side for Allegretto, but I did not mind; and, if I did not, I doubt that anyone else would have done. Its character was well judged, a slight loss of tension in the approach to the cadenza notwithstanding, and that ultimately is what matters.

 

I am not sure that I can come up with a single minor reservation concerning the performance of what may well be Beethoven’s sunniest work, the Septet. The first movement, echoing Mozart’s in more than mere tonality, again benefited from an introduction on the grand scale, followed by an especially rhythmically alert performance of the exposition and indeed the rest. Not that, as sometimes, regrettably, happens with Beethoven, an emphasis on rhythm emerged in isolation; melody and harmony were equal partners, at least. Above all, though, this glorious music, which I love more than words could ever speak, made me smile and even shed the occasional tear. In abstracto, I might have thought the second movement again taken a little too quickly. There is, however, no in abstracto when it comes to Beethoven. It worked, flowing in utterly ‘natural’ fashion. The balance, once more, between detail and the longer line, between melody and harmony, could hardly be faulted, and I certainly have no wish to try.

 

Swifter than I can recall hearing, the Minuet likewise worked – with thrilling affection, as it were, in no sense sounding rushed. And yet, at the swift tempo, certain wind notes sounded intriguingly, indeed revealingly, close to Webern. (Maybe we should hear some of his music from these players; I do not doubt they would have something to say about it.) The Theme and Variations unfolded relatively quickly again, yet again without sounding rushed. I loved the viola and cello solos in the first variation for the real sense of the instruments they imparted, if that does not sound too nonsensical. The physicality of playing an instrument was certainly imparted, albeit by musical rather than distracting visual means. Wind instruments taking the lead in the following variation proved an equal, if different – is that not what variations are for? – delight. Every variation possessed and spoke of its own character, whilst retaining a strong, generative sense of relation to the whole. The scherzo proved, in tempo broadly understood and thus in character too, a step on, if only a step on, from the minuet, but that was quite enough. As for the finale, one might simply have asked ‘finale problem, what finale problem?’ The grandeur, again, of the introduction and the sheer joy of what ensued, taking daringly fast – it is, after all, marked Presto – registered with a keen sense of fun. The movement’s sterner moments and procedures, quite properly too; yet, however ‘symphonic’ we may consider this work, its place in the serenade tradition remained unchallenged.