I got well-nobbled 10 days ago at the RSNO's Viennese Gala in Perth when a rather mischievous reader remarked that I had "copped out" of selecting a "highlight performance" of 2014 by saying that it was the wrong time to judge as all the orchestras were in fact just approaching mid-season.
Well, I was actually saying a bit more than that, but never mind.
"So have you a highlight recommendation for 2015?" continued the reader, undaunted. Well, actually, yes I do; unequivocally. I'm sure there will be many orchestral riches surfacing as we get well into 2015, but there is one event that's been shouting at me since it was announced some months ago.
On Sunday March 8, in Perth Concert Hall at 3pm, there will be a monumental recital by pianist Steven Osborne. That fact alone will be quite enough information to trigger anticipation and excitement among many music lovers who might not already have spotted the concert. But it is a remarkable event indeed, for some very special reasons; and here they come.
Steven Osborne is very closely associated with Perth Concert Hall, and has been since before day one. He selected the Steinway grand piano that graces the splendid hall, and about which every visiting international pianist has raved. Most recently, in October, the dazzling young Finn, Juho Pohjonen, declared it "the best piano I have played all year". James Waters, director of the music programme at the hall, recently joked that he should collect all rave comments about the Perth Steinway and run them as a loop, by way of a testament.
Osborne himself launched the first of Perth's new Sunday afternoon series, entitled Perth Piano Sundays, in October 2013 with an all-Beethoven programme, which brings us to the next point. Osborne is universally acclaimed as one of the great Beethoven pianists of our time: he is a man of steel, as well as of sensitivity, with an impressive intellectual mastery of musical structure. And he'll need all of that in his latest programme, coming on March 8. It is a colossus.
With the exception of one of Schubert's Klavierstucke, the line-up is exclusively Beethoven, and late Beethoven at that, with three of the great piano sonatas: the E minor opus 90 Sonata, the absolutely perfect opus 101 in A major, and the Olympian Hammerklavier Sonata, opus 106, an awesome creation that, for as long as I can remember, has scared the living daylights out of me.
It's an imposing, compelling programme. The opus 90 is right on the cusp of the so-called late period. It's short and has only two movements. The first is a quizzical little movement where Beethoven seems to be debating something with himself. The second, which follows without a break, is almost unique in his output: it's a flowing stream of melody, with one of the most beautiful, hummable and instantly memorable tunes Beethoven ever wrote.
The next in line, the opus 101 A major Sonata, is miracle of perfection on several levels. It opens discreetly, as though in the middle of something, rather as though we've walked into a room and Beethoven has already started. That opening returns to prepare the way for the finale, one of the greatest outbursts of exuberance in the composer's output. That finale has an electrifying central section, where Beethoven writes one of his most exciting fugues that whips up an extraordinary tension, building to an amazing climax where the music boils over and the main theme returns, erupting out of the pot.
As for the Hammerklavier - Everest - let me tell you a wee story. A few years ago Steven Osborne contacted me to let me know that he had learned the Hammerklavier and was taking it into his repertoire. But he needed to start "running it in" to get it under his fingers and into his blood. He invited me privately into his class at the RSAMD/RCS where he would run it to his students and analyse it with them.
I sat in the dark, far back in the Stevenson Hall. Osborne bounded in and went through the explosive first movement like a Sherman tank. It was a run-through. It might have been rough around the edges. I wouldn't have noticed: I was bludgeoned into my seat by the sheer power of the thundering Hammerklavier hooves that had just steamrollered me.
I think the students were numbed, because when Osborne turned his analytical questions on them, there was a kind of shock in the atmosphere. "C'mon guys, what's the structure? You've got to know the structure," he bellowed at them, revealing (though we've never discussed it) a shared imperative in the understanding of any piece of music. There was never a man better equipped for the forthcoming challenge.
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