Author Archives: rjuttleycom

Will Eaves : The Point of Distraction

Very happy to have recorded Will Eaves’s piano pieces that feature in his forthcoming memoir, The Point of Distraction, published by Harper Collins / TLS. They’re wonderful pieces, full of colour, subtlety and character. Some are humorous, others intimate and expressive.

The book will link to these recordings, and they will also form part of the audiobook.

At the recording sessions in Milton Court Concert Hall

Update June 2024: we will launch the book and piano pieces in an event at Wigmore Hall on 14th September. Further details and tickets here.

From the Harper Collins website:

“A memoir by the 2019 Wellcome Prize winner Will Eaves that looks at the creation of eight piano pieces.

What lies behind the creation of a piece of music? Does it spring fully formed from a composer’s mind, or take shape in the recesses of the brain, revealing itself in stages over time? Is the creative act deliberate or happenstance? An inspired vision or the result of practice?

Will Eaves, author and musician, shares his experience of writing eight new piano pieces after many years away from the keyboard. Some of the music is found in old notebooks and teenage enthusiasms, some of it is caught on the wing – a response to the resurgence of the natural world during COVID lockdown. None of it is what he is meant to be doing.

But then not all artistic interests are primary or professional interests. Sometimes it’s the second-string activities, the diversions, that bring work – and life – into focus.

The Point of Distraction is a unique account of music-making that embraces Bach, film, jazz, literature, neuroscience and the mystery of will power in its search for meaning. At its heart is a love of skill, an openness to self-doubt, and a belief that we are all more than our declared aims.”

Recording with Johannes Moser

A track from a series of recordings I made with wonderful cellist Johannes Moser last summer for Platoon Records (an imprint of Apple Music) was released earlier this week – take a listen here!

New piece for horn & piano

I wrote this piece in 2022, during a series of recitals with Ben at major halls around Europe. These concerts were extremely important to both of us, and the musical experiences we had onstage left a lasting imprint on me. They also opened my mind and ears to the extraordinary tonal and expressive possibilities of the horn and piano combination, and made me want to write something that would exploit our strengths as players as well as connect to the rich musical heritage of some of the places we played.

The piece has a broad structural sweep similar to the larger of Chopin’s Ballades or Schumann’s Novelletten, with contrasting but related sections that – without being explicitly programmatic – imply a strong sense of narrative. The structure could be outlined as follows:

prelude – theme – waltz variations – barcarolle – toccata scherzando – recapitulation – epilogue

The brief prelude draws on the historical notion of ‘preluding’, whereby a musician improvises informally before beginning the piece proper. The theme that follows is lyrical and searching, and in fact it was Ben’s singing voice that I had in mind as I wrote here. He often sings rather than plays during rehearsals (to ‘save his lip’), and throughout the piece I tried to write in such a way that the nuanced vocal qualities of his playing would be showcased.

One of our recitals together was in the Musikverein in Vienna, and so the idea of including waltz music was irresistible to me. Once the theme has been stated, waltz gestures become the starting point for variations of increasing density. At the culminating point of these variations, the piano acts as a giant cimbalom, hammering out repeated notes that disperse into thick clouds of harmony through which the horn has to pierce. This music eventually gives way to a calm barcarolle (boat song), featuring the horn in its lowest register, evoking distant ships seen and heard across water. A rhythmically driven section (‘toccata scherzando’ – dancing, playful and virtuosic) emerges out of this, gathering momentum until it gets knocked off course and collides with material from earlier on in the piece. When the theme returns, it does so with greatly expanded texture, intensity and scope. Gradually, it rises higher and higher, and there is a feeling of incremental, hard won ascent. In the epilogue, this sense of climb and struggle is transformed into gliding ease.

The structure overall could also be heard as a kind of four-movement Sonata – 1. Allegro; 2. Calm slow movement (Barcarolle); 3. Scherzo; 4. Finale – where the movements flow into one another and share thematic material.

The title is borrowed from Robert Schumann (the second of his Fantasiestücke, op.12), whose music Ben and I play regularly. There are various allusions in my piece to specific works by Schumann and composers whose music he loved (Chopin and Schubert in particular). In the context of Schumann’s piano piece, ‘Aufschwung’ is usually translated as ‘Soaring’, which seemed an apt description for much of the horn writing in my piece as well as the feeling onstage during the concerts that inspired it. ‘Aufschwung’ can also be translated as ‘up-swing’, or ‘upturn’; these meanings connect in my mind to the sense of gathering optimism at a certain point in 2021/22, as live concerts began to be possible again after the Covid lockdowns.

The recording was made at Milton Court Concert Hall on 4th January 2023. Audio-only version available on request. Score and horn part available on request – contact here.

HEA Fellowship

I was recently awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. My submission focused on the work I do at Guildhall School with keyboard students on how thought and action intersect in music making. More information on the HEA (now Advance HE) here. I have taught academic studies at Guildhall since 2014 and my approach has evolved dramatically since then. It has been particularly enriched in recent years as a result my piano teaching the Royal College of Music, and this past year proved a good time to reflect on all this.

New disc with Callum Smart

Callum Smart and I have a new disc out called Transatlantic, with Orchid Classics. Lockdown played its part in presenting us with the time finalise the programme, rehearse and record, though we’d already been talking about the project for some time. Callum wrote the following, which eloquently sums up the repertoire choices:

“This album is a musical selection from the past to present day of the two countries I have lived in, America and England. The programme was born out of the COVID-19 quarantine, and offered me a chance for both outward discovery and inward reflection. It combines music that’s part of my heritage and that I grew up listening to, as well as music I discovered anew but already felt some intrinsic connection to. My programming decisions were purely instinctive, based on music I am deeply in love with, from the two places I call home.”

Elgar : Violin Sonata
Beach : Romance
Kate Whitley : Three pieces for violin and piano
Coleridge-Taylor : Romance
John Adams : Road Movies
Traditional : Amazing Grace (arr. Smart)

It’s been reviewed here (Karine Hetherington, Art Muse London), here (Philip R Buttall, Music Web International) and here (Norman Lebrecht, Album of the Week, La Scena Musicale).


RCM teaching post

I’m thrilled to be joining the Keyboard Faculty at the Royal College of Music from this academic year as a Piano Professor. Teaching has been a big part of what I do for many years now, and I couldn’t be happier to be expanding this further at such a marvellous institution as the RCM.

Naomi Pinnock disc released

I’m delighted to feature on Naomi Pinnock‘s portrait disc on Wergo, titled Lines and Spaces. I’ve written about the work she wrote for me in 2015, which gave this disc its title, here. Having performed the piece many times now, it was gratifying to go back into the studio and record it, as it is to now be able to listen to it alongside others of Naomi’s pieces, all stunningly played and recorded. Simon Cummings has written a characteristically detailed and insightful post on it here.

String Quartet no. 2 for string quartet (Quatuor Bozzini)
Words for baritone and Ensemble (Omar Ebrahim, Beat Furrer, London Sinfonietta)
Lines and Spaces for piano (Richard Uttley)
Music for Europe for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano and harp (Ensemble Adapter)

Kate Whitley premiere

The premiere of Kate’s new piece written for me, The Bells, was this week at City University. It’s inspired by William Byrd’s work of the same name and was the result of our winning the Yvar Mikhashoff Commissioning Award.

The concert also included two other works written for me: Michael Cutting’s I Am A Strange Loop V (pictured below) and Naomi Pinnock’s Lines and Spaces (which I’ll record for the Deutscher Musikrat label in a couple of weeks), as well as Georg Friedrich Haas’s Ein Schattenspiel, a piece I love to play and on which I worked with the composer.

photo © Vitalija Glovackyte

Saffron Hall radio broadcasts

The concerts from the Big Chamber Weekend at Saffron Hall are being broadcast on Radio 3 this week, presented by Tom McKinney. The three concerts will be split across four hour-long lunchtime broadcasts, airing Tuesday to Friday.

Here’s my repertoire list……..

Schumann : Märchenerzählungen
Kurtág : Hommage à R. Sch.
Mark Simpson : Homage to Kurtág
Beethoven : Trio in B flat, op.11
Ireland : Fantasy-Sonata
Mark SImpson : Night Music
Peter Maxwell Davies : Trumpet Sonata
Mark Simpson : Lov(escape)
Mark Simpson : Barkham Fantasy
Gershwin : Preludes
Mark Simpson : new work for trumpet & piano
Bernstein : Clarinet Sonata
Antheil : Trumpet Sonata
Copland : Sextet
Brahms : Clarinet Trio, op.114

And some great collaborators:

Mark Simpson (clarinet)
Simon Höfele (trumpet)
Leonard Elschenbroich (cello)
Adam Newman (viola)
Navarra Quartet

#BEETHOVENESCU

Posts for the Tunnell Trust blog that Savitri and I were asked to write during our tour in Scotland:

Day 1: Dundee Chamber Music

From Richard:

The sensible thing to do might have been to play the same programme five nights in a row, but for our Tunnell Trust tour this week we decided to play all ten Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin and one crazy brilliant piece by Enescu. The basic format is two sonatas per concert, with Enescu’s Scenes from Childhood between them (except in Glasgow tomorrow, which is a lunchtime so no Enescu). The complete Beethoven set is over 4 hours of music, and the Enescu is 25 minutes long – so it’s been a massive undertaking to prepare for this, and one we’ve been planning and rehearsing for for over a year.

Last summer we toured together in China, where we played the same pieces each night. Our programme there included Enescu’s Scenes and the Beethoven ‘Spring’ sonata, both of which feature in our concert tonight – so we’re setting off on familiar ground. In China we were able to enjoy honing our interpretation through repetition. That kind of familiarity is liberating, too, but we wanted to challenge ourselves this time with something different.

One of the motivating factors behind wanting to play all ten Beethoven sonatas was the idea that in order to play any single one of them better it’s worth knowing all of the others too. Over the past month or so we’ve been intensively rehearsing and performing the sonatas we hadn’t already played, and this concept has really rung true. There were points earlier on in the process at which I felt sceptical about it – was the time we spent practising one sonata really having a positive impact on another, or would we have been better focussing on only a handful? Gradually, though, subtle connections and differences became more apparent and meaningful to us, and I feel a much deeper connection to each of the pieces now, knowing them in the context of their family, so to speak. We also had some terrific sessions working on the sonatas with Anthony Marwood and Richard Ireland, through ChamberStudio at King’s Place in London, which I might write more about later on in the tour.

We’ll be writing something each day for this blog, sharing some of the highs and lows of our experiences here. The highlight of the journey so far (we’re currently approaching Markinch) has been the coining of a hashtag – #BeethovEnescu – to promote the tour. It’s been a crushing disappointment (a low, already!), however, that – inspired as #BeethovEnescu clearly is – it’s gained little to no traction on social media. It’s currently languishing at 1 – yes, ONE – ‘like’ on Twitter. If you’re reading this in Pollok, though, which marks the end of our tour, you’d be well advised to order your #BEETHOVENESCU t-shirt now, as the hashtag will almost certainly have gone viral by then and the associated merchandise might become difficult to get hold of.

Day 2: Dundee to Glasgow

From Savitri: 

On arrival at the Steeple Church in Dundee, both Richard and myself did a double-take: there was no piano in sight! This was obviously slightly problematic for #BeethovEnescu, and we didn’t think the ‘supernatural piano’ (see photos) would quite be an adequate substitute. It was very dramatic, would the concert take place or not?! At last contact was made with the piano company and we discovered that (through no fault of Dundee Chamber Music) the piano was still over two hours away! We were extremely grateful to David Robb for offering us the use of the piano and front room so spontaneously, enabling us to rehearse – very necessarily after travelling for 7 hours! 

After these adventures, (ticking off the ‘Spring’ Sonata and op 30/1 from our list), and a delicious post-concert fish pie with our hosts, we had an early start this morning to get to Glasgow for our lunchtime recital at the University. On entering the Concert Hall, we were met with a slightly different sight to yesterday – not one but six keyboard instruments! A Steinway concert grand was laid out for our concert, and behind it stood a whole family of instruments, including a historic ‘Erard’ piano (famous as being Chopin’s favourite piano), a fortepiano, and a harpsichord. What a wonderful collection Glasgow University has! 

It was very enjoyable to play the Beethoven sonatas in E flat op 12/3 and G major op 30/3 – our first performance of op 30/3 together. And quite something to have already played four different Beethoven sonatas and the Enescu ‘Scenes’ in less than 24 hours! Our time in Glasgow was short and sweet, and we’ve now arrived in Falkirk ahead of tomorrow’s concert in the Town Hall. Slightly brain-dead after the intense day, full of yet more delicious home cooking, I’m going to get an early night. Tomorrow’s instalment of #BeethovEnescu features the first Beethoven sonata, Enescu ‘Scenes’ and the demonic ‘Kreutzer’ sonata.

Day 3: Falkirk

From Richard:

Dear reader(s)

I write to you from Dressing Room 2 of Falkirk Town Hall, whilst I await the curtain call for tonight’s recital. Unfortunately I won’t be able to post this until after the concert, as I have no internet access here. I noticed on the way into the hall that Psychic Sally will appear soon at this very venue (our poster is the much smaller one on the left): it’s a pity she isn’t here tonight as perhaps she could have provided me with the WiFi code, which would have meant I could have reached you sooner.

Yesterday we had a lovely time in Glasgow, as Savitri detailed. In fact the Erard she mentioned was allegedly played by Chopin himself when he visited Glasgow! I treated myself to playing the opening of the Polonaise-Fantasy on it during our rehearsal. On the concert organiser’s recommendation we went to the Ubiquitous Chip afterwards, where we had a fabulous lunch (I had the vegetarian haggis), before travelling to Falkirk. Today we’re feeling very relaxed, having had a perfect morning eating, drinking coffee and practising at our hosts’ house before a driving tour of Falkirk that took in The Kelpies (below) on the way to the venue.

Tonight we play Beethoven op 12/1 and op 47 (the “Kreutzer”) alongside the Enescu. Both of the Beethovens happen to be sonatas we worked on with Anthony Marwood. I made notes after our sessions with him, so I could tell you bar by bar what he said in some places, but I’ll save that for some other time. One focus of our work that I will share now, and that will certainly remain front of my mind during this performance, is the old idea of making aspects of the music sound spontaneous. There are unique challenges to this in Beethoven because of how logically worked out his music can appear. There’s a huge difference, however, between a performance that seems as if it’s evolving in real time (where Beethoven’s ‘logic’ comes across as continuous organic development), rather than one where everything sounds inevitable (and therefore, perhaps, predictable). It’s the former we’ll be aiming for tonight. Even Psychic Sally won’t be able to predict what’s coming next.

Day 4: Edinburgh

From Savitri

The final day of our tour has arrived, and it’s 8 down, 2 to go, on the Beethoven countdown. I’m sorry I couldn’t write about our ‘Day 4: Edinburgh’ experience yesterday, but there wasn’t a minute to spare during the day, and by the time we got back to our guesthouse after the concert, the only thought I had in my head was sleep! 

The programme for the fourth instalment of #BeethovEnescu was the sonatas no. 2 (A major) and no. 7 (C minor) by Beethoven, and of course, ‘Scenes’. It was great to contrast these two vastly different sonatas – the A major has to be one of the funniest and silliest pieces Beethoven wrote, whilst in the C minor you feel that Beethoven is really taking on the world, and is (especially in the first and last movements) in a seriously bad mood. We were very chuffed that the audience actually laughed at the end of the A major, a reaction that, as the performer, you often want, but rarely get! 

The venue of Edinburgh Society of Musicians is a charming 1st floor recital room, equipped with not one, but two excellent Steinway grand pianos, and an intimate atmosphere. We actually had about an hour to contemplate the warmth and cosiness of the venue from when we arrived at 6pm, as, due to a miscommunication, we were locked out of the building! The house is situated on a beautiful, and very quiet side street, and as we didn’t meet a soul as we waited, (gently freezing in the Edinburgh chill), we did wonder whether we’d actually be playing to anyone at all, if we ever got in… This must have been our comeuppance for complaining only the other day about the lack of dramatic concert experiences we’ve had. Anyway, thankfully we did eventually manage to make it inside the building, we had a lovely audience, and we managed to thaw our fingers in time for the scales at the beginning of Beethoven op 12/2.

It was also great to have Tom Chadwick of the Tunnell Trust at the concert last night; as we progress through our tour we continue to be extremely grateful to the Tunnell Trust for all their support and in enabling us to make our crazy #BeethovEnescu a reality. 

Day 5: Pollok House Arts Society

From Richard:

I write to you from the Costa Coffee at Southampton Airport, where Savitri and I are on our way to Guernsey for masterclasses this afternoon and a recital tomorrow. Did you think you’d heard the last of #BEETHOVENESCU? You haven’t!

Tomorrow’s concert is a repeat of our programme from a few days ago, and somehow this feels remarkably easy in prospect after the intensity of five different programmes over five consecutive days.

We had a wonderful time finishing off our Beethoven sonatas cycle with Pollok House Arts Society last night. We didn’t play in Pollok House as we’d thought we would, but, rather, in the so-called ‘House for an Art Lover’ nearby. This turned out to be an unexpected treat. The house was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh for a competition run by a German magazine in 1901. Their entry was disqualified for being late and unfinished, but much later – in 1989 – work began on realising the plans, and the house was completed by 1996. It’s full of the detail and style that are hallmarks of the Mackintoshs’ work, making each room exciting to discover. It would be hard to top the recital room, which had an ornately decorated piano built into one of the walls (see below, at the back), but the room we were given as a green room had a bathroom hidden behind the wall-panelling, and as such was also seriously cool.

There was a big dinner afterwards which, so far as I could tell, all of the audience stayed for, and I really enjoyed being able to chat at length to some of the people who’d listened to us.

So what next for #BEETHOVENESCU? Well, we have a number of concerts coming up soon, including Guernsey tomorrow, Weston Music Society later this month and Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge in May. In 2020 we’re presenting two ‘immersive’ days at Stapleford Granary (in February and October), with talks, demonstrations and workshops, focussing on five of the Beethoven sonatas each time. We have various other plans for 2020 and beyond too, so watch this space.

Huge thanks to the Tunnell Trust for arranging the tour for us, which has worked so well and given us a fantastic opportunity to realise a project we’ve loved doing. Thanks too to the promoters connected to each venue, who’ve each helped us out in kind ways and given us a really entertaining and memorable time in Scotland.

Schumann Concerto

Review by Karl Hornsey for Yorkshire Magazine of Schumann Piano Concerto with Hull Philharmonic and James Hendry:

The evening’s programme opened with the overture to Weber’s opera Der Freischutz, or The Marksman, which allowed the clarinet and horns in particular to come to the fore. The evocative horns, four of them to be precise, denote the life of the hunter in the forests of Germany, with the clarinets taking over to bring to bear some of the more mystical elements of Weber’s often overlooked work.

This relatively short, but beautifully played piece, was quickly followed by the arrival of pianist Richard Uttley (pictured above) to the stage to perform Schumann’s Piano Concerto. Despite the German composer’s fine body of work, he clearly had something of a love-hate relationship with the piano concerto in general, as this was the only one that he managed to complete. For some reason he seemed to have trouble finishing what he started when it came to such matters, until his wife and pianist Clara urged him to turn what was initially a one-movement piece into a full concerto. Thankfully he acquiesced and produced a wonderful piece of music that has prospered down the years, and was safe in the hands of such a fine pianist as Uttley.

Uttley, thoroughly immersed in the piece, managed to impressively walk a fine line with his performance, allowing the piano to dominate where necessary, yet not drown out the rest of the orchestra, working alongside it rather than autonomously. This bold yet sensitive interpretation worked perfectly and was a real treat to enjoy.

Vancouver recital video

After my concert the previous day of pieces by Eric Wubbels, Michael Cutting, Naomi Pinnock and Georg Friedrich Haas, I played as part of one of what Music on Main call their “kitchen parties”, at their office space in Vancouver.

Music by Scarlatti, Ravel and Mark Simpson:

Erika Fox chamber disc on NMC

A recording of the chamber music of Erika Fox is on the way from NMC Recordings, with Goldfield  Ensemble. Erika was born in Vienna in 1936 and came to England as a war refugee. I had a terrific time getting to know Erika and her music, and was bowled over by the snippets I heard back in the studio – not least because of the marvellous facilities at Stapleford Granary, and the sound that producer David Lefeber captured.

Goldfield Artistic Director Kate Romano wrote:

It is exceptionally rare to stumble across a virtually unknown / forgotten composer, whose music genuinely excites and delivers, piece after piece. Incredibly, there are no recordings of Erika’s music except for the handful she salvaged from BBC archives. Erika’s extensive catalogue shows a predilection for chamber music and stage works. Her language is bold, uncompromising and remarkably fresh. She is a composer who is constantly energised by sound and its inexhaustible possibilities. The works proposed for this CD form a balanced and varied representation of Erika’s output. NMC and Goldfield believe that Erika is a highly distinctive compositional voice and this CD – and subsequent events – will be the catalyst for her music to become deservedly more widely known. In the words of Harrison Birtwistle ‘Erika’s music is different – it doesn’t sound like anyone else’s’

Programme:

Malincolia Militaire 14’ (2003) (vln, vla, vc , pno)
Paths Where the Mourners Tread 20’ (1980)
(flt, oboe, percussion, harp, vln, vla, vc, double bass)
Kaleidoscope 15’ (1983) (flt, harp, percussion, vc)
Cafe Warsaw 15’ (2005) (flt,cl, vln, vc, percussion)
Quasi Una Cadenza 12’ (1983) (cl, hn, pno)
On Visiting Stravinsky’s Grave at San Michele 10’ (1988) (solo pno)

Release June / July 2019

The project was supported by PRS Foundation, Diana Ambache, the RVW Trust and the Hinrichsen Foundation.

Modulus Festival reviews

Review from Kate Mackin for Vancouver Classical Music of my concerts in Canada earlier this month.

Following on the momentum gained from hosting the ISCM World Music Days in 2017, David Pay and Music on Main continue their 5-day Modulus Festival this year, featuring a rich diversity of artists and offering an excellent sampling of what is current in the world of new music. It usefully complements Vancouver New Music’s ‘Quartetti’ extravaganza of two weeks earlier (24 contemporary string quartet compositions played by seven ensembles) in bringing a heightened new music inspiration to Vancouver’s fall season. Fluidity of form and genres defined the Modulus Festival’s musical offerings, and attention was drawn to musicians who are both composers and performers. Opportunities for mingling between performers and the audience was also an important aspect of the festival. Among the many notable events, Music on Main’s Composer-in-Residence, Nicole Lizée, teamed up with British composer/vocalist Laura Bowler to present a concert of chillingly insightful music, singer and medieval scholar Katarina Livljanić performed Kokla Kokabula, while Eve Egoyan presented dramatically-staged pieces for piano and electronics. Two of the most inspired concerts were by young British pianist Richard Uttley, and the Standing Wave Ensemble contributed their inimitable expertise at the end.

Of the three venues used for the festival, the smaller and more intimate settings of Studio 700 at CBC Vancouver and the Post at 750 produced some of the most inspired concerts of the festival, in particular the performances by pianist Richard Uttley, who has been in the UK spotlight since 2010. His first programme ranged from Eric Wubbels post-tonal Psychomechanochronometer (2013/15) to Naomi Pinnock’s incredibly fun exploration of the overtone series, Lines and Spaces (2015), and culminated in the excruciatingly refreshing, microtonal Ein Schattenspiel (2004) by Austrian Georg Frederich Haas. What I loved about this programme is how much of the emotional payload of this music comes from its temporality and patterned structure as opposed to its harmonic resolution. Uttley’s touch is perfect for such minimalism: he is sensitive and clearly given to introspection, and there is a cleanness and modesty to his articulation. Uttley’s second concert was an intimate and frolicsome affair presented interestingly enough in the Music on Main office canteen. It was most notable as an introduction to the music of Mark Simpson, whose Barkham Fantasy (2009-10) came off as a revelation, a sure cure for the ennui that ails you!

And from Joe Bates:

There was a wonderful selection of British music brought over to Canada due to the festival’s collaboration with hcmf//. Richard Uttley’s concert of piano music with electronics featured Michael Cutting’s superb I Am A Strange Loop Vb. I’ve listened to a lot of Michael’s Strange Loop series but never had the chance to catch one live. It’s an astonishing enhancement of already very rich music. The physical delicacy, the awkwardness of the analogue machines (reel-to-reel tape, Fender Rhodes etc.) adds a thrill that is hard to grasp in recording. When in the room, the tape-button clunk that ends the piece feels like more of an intrusion than it ever could in recording. Haas’s Ein Schattenspiel was a wonderful discovery for me. A pianist plays with his own echo, a precise duet with a lag that gets closer and closer in time while always remaining a quarter tone away in pitch. Richard’s performance was mesmerising throughout, but never more so than in the furious (“RSI inducing”) ending to this piece.

More adventures in China

I’m recently back from my third trip to China, this time with violinist Savitri Grier. I first toured China in March 2017 and have now given 22 concerts there. All but one of these has been in a different city, and in the case of the one hall I had been to before, I only realised when I looked down to check my phone and saw it had automatically logged into the WiFi. There is a certain similarity between many of the halls on the inside – a large number were built by the same company – but the outside is a totally different matter; each is individual, and the most beautiful are like exquisitely-crafted spaceships.


Henan Poly Arts Theatre

Despite the short time-frame in which my visits have taken place, I noticed a real change in the audiences on this trip. The fundamental difference seems to be that they’re now much more happy to use the silent/vibrate setting on their phones – previously the dinging C of the message alert chimed throughout each concert. In the most successful concerts I had a real sense that we took the audience ‘with us’, and that they were quite rapt at points. One of the works on our programme was Georges Enescu’s Impressions of Childhood. I had been concerned beforehand that its expansive structure would be a challenge to audiences that might include many who were young or coming to Western classical music for the first time. In fact its steady, inexorable sweep is masterfully controlled by Enescu, and is what makes the piece so strong, in my opinion. Happily, and perhaps precisely because these audiences are constantly trying new things, they were as open to this as they were to the Franck Sonata (also on the programme), and it was to our great delight that the Enescu was very well received every night.

In some venues I even found the clapping to be different from what I had experienced previously. I had become accustomed to what felt like fairly minimal applause, that stopped before we’d reached the middle of the stage at the beginning and before we’d left it at the end (though I have been assured this isn’t an indication of their not having enjoyed the performance!). This is a surprisingly big challenge to deal with psychologically, and particularly if the applause stops abruptly while you’re making your way across a large stage (it’s like having a rug pulled out from under you). Pleasingly though, in the bigger cities on this trip, I noticed clapping habits to be more similar to those in the West, where we clap at the very least until the performers are on and off the stage. I haven’t played in Beijing or Shanghai but believe the case to be even more so there.


Rehearsal in Chongqing


Photo from a taxi in Chongqing


Rehearsal in Henan


Concert in Zhuzhou

An unexpected difference between the way concerts are organised in China and in the West emerged when the travel for our recital in Zhanjiagang was severely disrupted (due to a typhoon in Shanghai), meaning we didn’t arrive until around 11pm on the day of the concert. Ordinarily this would simply have meant that the concert would have to be cancelled, but in this instance it was rearranged to the following day. I can’t imagine this being possible, let alone suggested, anywhere in the West, and I’m not quite sure what it says about our differing systems, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

The extensive travel meant there was much welcome time for reading, and one of the books I read was Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, which I finished during one of our concerts while Savitri performed the Chaconne from Bach’s D minor Partita for solo violin. There was an unexpected synergy between the closing pages of this novel and the spiralling music of Bach’s Chaconne. I use the term spiralling not only because of the arpeggiated chords at the climax of the piece, but also because the chaconne form involves a constantly repeating bassline, with the parts above varying, and as such the form acquires greater depth as it proceeds. Perhaps exhaustion and adrenaline also had something to do with it, but all of this seemed to chime perfectly with the epilogue of the novel, which flashes forward in time into the next generation of the family it follows, itself playing with notions of constance, renewal and the passage of time.


After concert

One of the highlights of every trip to China has been the food. Needless to say, this is not always straightforward, and with the combination of jet-lag, lengthy internal travel from one city to another, and regular concerts in big halls filled with hundreds of people, it feels especially important to try get this right. Savitri is pescatarian, and I had feared this might lead to problems – often a vegetable dish in China comes generously adorned with meat), but in fact it helped to narrow our choices, and I felt better nourished on this trip than on either previous one. Some colourful descriptions we encountered contributed greatly to this enjoyment – ‘yellow silk of cucumber’ (courgette ribbons), ‘prickly ash’ (chilli), and ‘another person at the table’ (cod – large portion), being some standout examples. On the final night, in downtown Zhuzhou and casting my politely-adopted pescatarianism aside, I indulged in some of the most fantastic barbecue food (a favourite in certain parts of China) I have tasted. I also encountered a rather thought-provoking sign in the bathroom.


Delicious BBQ


Merry Christmas


Not Merry Christmas

Satie with film, Stravinsky & Milhaud in France

After playing Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in the carpark in Peckham last year, Kate Whitley and I devised an expanded piano duet programme for our concert at En Blanc Et Noir – a magical outdoor festival in the village of Lagrasse, France – this summer.


En Blanc Et Noir photos by Barry Lewis

Alongside the Stravinsky, we included music from two other ballets: Milhaud’s Le bœuf sur le toit and Satie’s Relâche. All three works were premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris (pictured below) – the Stravinsky in 1913, the Milhaud in 1920 and the Satie in 1924 – and as such they give a fair indication of what an extraordinarily creative time and place that was. The effects of World War I are acknowledged only obliquely; the Milhaud and Satie are both farcical, typifying the Dadaist mode of mischievious playfulness that was their way of protesting against the bourgeoise intellectualism they saw as a root cause of the war.

The Rite of Spring has overwhelming force in the orchestral version, and though the piano duet version can’t quite compete in terms of scale and volume, it has a power of its own through the sense of a single instrument bursting at its seams to recreate this extraordinary score. It’s also totally exhilarating to be part of a two-player team making this music that would otherwise require over a hundred musicians. In fact the piece’s first incarnation was in this piano-duet form. At a party in 1912, Stravinsky invited Debussy to join him at the piano and read through the completed parts of the work; one guest later recalled, “We were dumbfounded, overwhelmed by this hurricane which had come from the depths of the ages and which had taken life by the roots.”

Milhaud’s Le bœuf sur le toit takes its name from a tango Milhaud heard during a period spent in Brazil and that’s heard throughout the piece. Milhaud said he felt the music well-suited to accompanying a Charlie Chaplin film (and subtitled the piano duet version Cinema Symphony on South American Airs), but before this idea could be realised Jean Cocteau appropriated the score for a ballet. The raucous and entertaining piece gave its name to a cabaret-bar that opened in Paris in 1921 and played regular host to Cocteau and his circle.


Gala dinner at Le bœuf sur le toit, 28 rue Boissy d’Anglas, 1922

The closing work in our programme was from Relâche, Satie’s ballet with choreographer Francis Picabia. We took the music from the so-called ‘Entr’acte’, a film by René Clair that’s shown as part of the ballet. The opening sequence – in which Satie and Picabia are seen on a rooftop in Paris firing a cannon at the audience – is shown before curtain, and the remainder is shown between the two acts. Everything about the film and ballet is subversive – even the titles are misleading, “Relâche” being the standard way of indicating a cancelled performance, and “Entr’acte” of course meaning ‘interval’. The film is a visual delight of surreal, wryly-conceived imagery and imaginative nonsense: people are shown running in slow motion, a dancer is filmed from beneath, a mock-serious funeral march is led by a camel, an egg appears to hover above a fountain before being shot and transforming into a bird. There are cameos from various eminent artists of the time – as well as Satie and Picabia, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Auric and René Clair all also appear.

The practicalities of performing this piece gave Kate and me much to think about. Milhaud – in a nice connection with the previous piece on the programme – made an arrangement for piano duet of most of the orchestral score (we filled in the other parts ourselves from the rehearsal reduction of the full score), but the precise synchronisation with the film is loose and we whiled away many an hour experimenting with this, discovering how we could coordinate with a dancing doll here and a tumbling coffin there. Satie’s music features a lot of repetition, and so is fairly easy to manipulate in order to gain or shed a few seconds here and there if the tempo of the particular rendition has been slightly quicker or slower (obviously the film’s ‘tempo’ never varies); but being able to agree this between the two of us on the fly was quite a different matter, and working out how to do this occupied much of our rehearsals. We also found it advantageous to add repetitions of whole sections of the music – in order to allow for more lively tempos – and were reorganising exactly how we did this up until the final rehearsals. We decided to play from iPad to avoid the flapping pages of a paper score – the square in Lagrasse is prone to unpredictable gusts of wind – and so our annotations ended up being multicoloured, though whether any of these will be comprehensible to us when we return to the piece next year remains to be seen…

We were inspired by the idea of pianist Alexei Lubimov (who together with Alan Newcombe performed this piano duet version with film at the 2016 Satie Festival in Hamburg) to prepare the piano à la John Cage, involving rubber wedges, coins, tin foil and blu tack. The resulting effect – bizarre and surprising – seems to me not only to complement René Clair’s film but also to intensify the Dadaist qualities of the music in a manner of which I feel confident Satie would have approved.

Tombeau de Debussy

As part of the city’s Debussy Festival, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group presented a series of events focussed on Debussy and his legacy. For ‘Debussy’s Heirs’ (in December 2017) I joined Stephan Meier, Julian Anderson and Paul Griffiths at the CBSO Centre for an event looking at how Debussy’s music influenced composers up to the present day:


In ‘Tombeau de Debussy’ (March 2018, 100 years after Debussy’s death), I joined soprano Ruby Hughes, violinist Alexandra Wood and cellist Ulrich Heinen at Symphony Hall, for a programme of pieces from the 1920 publication, Tombeau de Debussy (a set of Debussy ‘homage’ pieces assembled in 1920), and brand new tributes to Debussy. From the original book we took solo piano works by Dukas, Bartók and Goossens, a short song by Satie, and Ravel’s duo for violin and cello. The new works were commissioned by BCMG from Jun-eun Park, Sinta Wullur, Frédéric Pattar and Julian Anderson.

Of the concert, Andrew Clements wrote for the Guardian:

“Among the pieces from the original Tombeau, Richard Uttley’s rapt performance of Paul Dukas’s La Plainte, au (Loin du Faune (a piano elegy haunted by the Prélude à l’Après-Midi) and soprano Ruby Hughes’s account of Erik Satie’s jewel-like souvenir of his friendship with Debussy stood out.

Most striking of all was Alexandra Wood and Ulrich Heinen’s performance of the Ravel sonata movement, not only signalling a new direction for Ravel but in this context suggesting a way Debussy’s music might have gone had he lived longer.”

Richard Whitehouse on arcana.fm:

“The mid-afternoon ‘Tombeau de Debussy’ juxtaposed pieces from the supplement published by La Revue musicale in 1920 with commissions under BCMG’s Sound Investment Scheme. Jungeun Park’s Tombeau de Claude Debussy found violinist Alexandra Wood, cellist Ulrich Heinen and pianist Richard Uttley evoking the composer’s death in darkly ironic terms, then the oblique tonality of Dukas’s La plainte, au loin, du faune … seemed as much a memorial to the creative impasse as to its passing. Highly sensitive here, Uttley was no less probing in the moody ‘Sostenuto rubato’ that Bartók incorporated into his Eight Improvisations; soprano Ruby Hughes joining him for the whimsical profundity of Satie’s setting of Lamartine in En souvenir. Sinta Wallur’s Tagore Fireflies sets three brief verses by the Indian poet in music whose ornamented vocal was complemented by the piano’s gamelan-like patterning. Wood and Heinen found requisite plangency in the first movement of Ravel’s Duo; then cellist and soprano took on engaging theatricality for Frédéric Pattar’s setting of Maeterlinck in (… de qui parlez-vous?). Uttley captured the bluesy elegance of Goossens’s Pièce, before Julian Anderson’s Tombeau united the musicians in a setting of Mallarmé’s tribute to Edgar Allen Poe whose chiselled vocal writing and guitar-like sonorities made for a provocative ending.”

Beethoven & Enescu tour 2019 with Savitri Grier

Next season Savitri Grier and I will play all ten Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin, over five concerts on tour in Scotland (6-10 March 2019). Each recital includes two sonatas, and will also feature pieces by Georges Enescu. We felt we needed something more spacious and yet equally vivid to complement the Beethoven, and the sense of atmosphere and improvisation in Enescu’s music made it seem a perfect fit. We’ve been championing Enescu’s music for a while – we played his Violin Sonata No.3 many times last season, and will play his Impressions from Childhood on tour in China this summer. The tour is supported by the Tunnell Trust and the dates are as follows:

6 March : Dundee Chamber Music
7 March : University of Glasgow
8 March : Classical Music Live, Falkirk
9 March : Edinburgh Society of Musicians
10 March : Pollok House Arts Guild

Further information here.

Livestream with Ian Buckle

Livestream of recital with Ian Buckle, as part of Pixels Ensemble’s Debussy Weekend at Leeds University. Available on demand.

Debussy : Six épigraphes antiques
Grainger : “In a Nutshell” Suite
Debussy : En blanc et noir

Review: Schumann Concerto with Havant Chamber Orchestra

Review of Schumann Concerto, with Robin Browning and the Havant Chamber Orcehstra:

“…Next on stage was Richard Uttley playing Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor. His rendition was flawless. The piano has its moments of being really up front and the soloist carried that off with boldness. But it also blended harmoniously with the whole orchestra when required. It takes real concentration for thirty-eight musicians to play quietly enough not drown out the solo instrument in the quieter passages. But here, the experience and self-discipline of the soloist, players and conductor paid off handsomely…”

In Tune with Vadim Gluzman

From the BBC Radio 3 studio on ‘In Tune’ with Vadim Gluzman, who was in London to play with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican:

During the interview Vadim explained how the Stradivari he plays previously belonged to Leopold Auer, who taught Jascha Heifitz and Nathan Milstein (amongst other greats) – an auspicious heritage…

We played music by Brahms, Bartók and Kreisler. The broadcast is available on iPlayer for 30 days.

Yvar Mikhashoff Award with Kate Whitley

Kate Whitley and I are very pleased to have won the eleventh Yvar Mikhashoff Trust Pianist / Composer Commissioning Project Award. Kate will be writing me a major new work for the 2018/19 season, which I will premiere at the City University concert series. Kate and I sometimes play together in piano duo or duet, so this is a particularly interesting commission as Kate knows my playing intimately.

Mikhashoff was an astounding pianist and interpreter of contemporary work – he worked closely with composers including Cage, Feldman, Scelsi, Nørgård and Ruders. The goal of the competition is to encourage the composition and performance of new works for solo piano reflecting and continuing his legacy.

Brahms ‘An English Requiem’ reviews

With The Choir of King’s College London (directed by Joseph Fort), Mary Bevan (soprano), Marcus Farnsworth (baritone), and James Baillieu (piano duet), on Delphian Records.


‘A well-paced account that achieves a calm and noble strength of expression … James Baillieu and Richard Uttley outshine the competition … with playing of admirable power and refinement … this disc deserves a place in the catalogue to itself.’
Peter Quantrill, Gramophone, December 2017

‘This has to be the least expected record of the year… The English words remain evocative and fit Brahms’s notes uncannily well. I’m not sure I want to hear the German again anytime soon… Mary Bevan and Marcus Farnsworth are angelic soloists, unstressed and deeply engaged… utterly uplifting.’
Norman Lebrecht, myscena.org, November 2017

‘It’s modest, unshowy. Brahms without grandeur. Brahms translated.’
BBC Music Magazine, December 2017

‘An intimate, highly charged chamber performance’
Stephen Pritchard, Observer, November 2017

‘The intimacy does Brahms’ masterpiece no harm whatsoever, especially with the intelligent, flowing choices of tempo, the choral discipline and the fine solo contributions of soprano Mary Bevan and baritone Marcus Farnsworth, getting the scale just right.’
Andrew McGregor, BBC Record Review, November 2017

Bogotá recital review

From El Espectador:

“La vida cultural en Bogotá es impresionante. Hay decenas de eventos sucediendo al mismo tiempo: desfiles, conciertos, danza, recitales, teatro, etc. El domingo 27 de agosto, en medio de esta intensa actividad, la Sala de Conciertos de la Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango nos ofreció un remanso de sonido, el trombonista Peter Moore y el pianista Richard Uttley interpretaron un programa maravilloso, en el que incluyeron obras de Beethoveen, Mahler, Scriabin, Ewazen, Brahms, Hindemith y Pryor.

El trombón es un instrumento que ofrece una gran variedad de sonoridades y sus intérpretes han sabido aprovechar esta cualidad para usarla en diversos géneros musicales. Lo hemos escuchado en música popular como la salsa, la música para banda, el jazz y el ska, entre otros; y en música académica siendo solista en obras de compositores como Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Berlioz y Berio, por mencionar algunos.

Una práctica común en la música de cámara es que los intérpretes escriban adaptaciones, transcripciones y arreglos de obras muy populares o conocidas, y que las incluyan en su repertorio. En este concierto escuchamos cuatro de ellas: la Sonata en fa mayor, Op. 17 de Beethoven, original para corno francés y piano; Urlich (Luz primaria) de Mahler, original para voz y piano; Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121 (Las cuatro canciones serias) de Brahms, originales para voz y piano, y Fantastic Polka de Arthur Pryor, original para trombón y banda sinfónica.

Todas las versiones fueron llevadas al papel y a la escena con gran habilidad y riqueza sensible. Resalto aquí la interpretación de las canciones en las que escuchamos legatos minuciosos, una cuidada afinación y gran diversidad de matices ejecutados por el trombonista. El pianista, por su parte, interpretó de manera inteligente las partes acompañantes.

Dos momentos intensos del concierto fueron la interpretación de la Sonata para trombón y piano compuesta por Paul Hindemith, en la que fue notoria esa unión de timbres y de sensaciones que trajo a la memoria lo maravilloso que es el congeniar con alguien al tocar un instrumento y la interpretación de la Sonata para piano en fa sostenido mayor, Op. 30 de Alexander Scriabin, obra muy exigente en técnica y comprensión del lenguaje pianístico en la que Richard Uttley mostró una habilidad particular.

El concierto cerró con la compleja obra escrita por Pryor quien, al ser trombonista, conoce a la perfección el instrumento y lo aborda de manera virtuosa y exquisita en sus composiciones; la versión de Moore y Uttley de esta pieza desató un aplauso inmediato. El dúo regresó a compartir con nosotros una pieza más, esta vez parte del repertorio clásico del jazz, Misty, de Erroll Garner y Johnny Burke, más conocida por nosotros por la versión del saxofonista Stan Getz.

Me alegra saber que esta música interpretada con gran acierto recorrió otros lugares de Colombia. Morre y Uttley visitaron Ibagué y Girardot además de Bogotá. De seguro la emoción compartida allí fue similar a la disfrutada en la capital.”

Rite of Spring review (Observer)

Having performed Bartók and a piano duo I wrote last year in Multi-Story’s Chamber Music Series at Bold Tendencies, this year Kate and I played Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in its piano duet arrangement by the composer. Review by Fiona Maddocks for The Observer:

Now that the Multi-Story Orchestra has been admitted into the mainstream for the second year running, deservedly, with its inclusion in the BBC Proms, we shouldn’t forget that its activities run at Bold Tendencies, on the disused top four floors of Peckham municipal car park, all summer, and independently, drawing audiences you don’t see at mainstream concerts. It’s hard to stress the importance of the enterprise.

A recent innovation is a chamber series in the more intimate Straw auditorium, sited between the concrete slabs of levels 7 and 8 and made from brass, gold and straw bales. Here last week, Kate Whitley, pianist, composer and Multi-Story co-founder, together with Richard Uttley, gave two performances of Stravinksy’s The Rite of Spring in the piano duet version – which Stravinsky once persuaded Debussy to play through with him ahead of the 1913 full orchestral premiere. Debussy may have been an unflappable chap and a fine pianist but this must have been quite some test. As Whitley explained, it’s fiendishly difficult. Both she and Uttley made a couple of helpful points about the Rite before storming and dancing through the work itself, hands and bodies snaking round each other as they rattled out the complex rhythms of the 20th century’s most influential composition.

Superb skillz @multistoryorguk @boldtendencies 🎶 #riteofspring #multistoryorchestra #boldtendencies #stravinsky

A post shared by Scarlett Bowman (Colicci) (@scarlettbowmanstudio) on

On one piano (the same transcription is more often played on two), inevitably, the thunderous, percussive elements from the bottom of the keyboard stand out more stridently than the lyrical, sustained passages higher up. If the vivid orchestral brilliance is lost, a structural clarity takes its place. The Rite of Spring was the work the Multi-Story Orchestra played at its first concert in 2011. They’re back playing it on 9 and 10 September. It’s worth every long step up Simon Whybray’s cheerful “Hi boo I love you” bubblegum pink staircase, not just for the music, or for the incredible views of London’s skyline. With Southwark council planning to demolish the car park and bid farewell to Bold Tendencies and other occupants when their leases run out, go while you have the chance. It may not be there for ever.

Bath Festival with Madeleine Thien

I was recently involved in what turned out to be for me a very special event at Bath Festival focussed on Madeleine Thien‘s wonderful book Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which has been the recipient of numerous awards as well as shortlisted for the Man Booker and Bailey’s Prizes. I played excerpts from Bach’s Goldberg Variations – which feature prominently in the novel – interlacing a conversation between Madeleine and the festival director, Alex Clark. I also talked about how aspects of the variations and the novel relate.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing weaves large amounts of Chinese historical information into its narrative, spanning the beginning of Mao’s reign to the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre. A number of the characters are musicians connected to the Shanghai Conservatory, struggling to maintain their personal integrity and their commitment – to music and to each other – in the face of an oppressive regime. At times they demonstrate extraordinary courage, and it seems they draw inner strength and character directly from the music they love. There is an episode recounting the interrogation of the Shanghai Conservatory’s director, He Luting, who shouted to his accusers live on television (the authorities had not anticipated this heroic act of bravery and defiance), “Shame on you for lying!”.  The Goldberg Variations, like any major work of Bach, seem to contain all of human experience – from deepest sorrow and profound spirituality, to absent-minded fooling around and life-affirming joy, and everything in-between – here enriching not only the book but the characters themselves.

I read the novel whilst on tour in China earlier this year, and was sometimes in the same city as events I was reading about had taken place, amongst people who’d lived through them. This was an emotional and immediate way to experience it, and when Madeleine talked during the conversation in Bath about contemporary China, I recognised immediately some of the details she referred to. She also described how while writing she’d listened repeatedly to Glenn Gould’s two recordings of the Goldberg Variations (the 1955 version during the first two thirds of the book, and the 1981 version in the final section), and at this point it became clear what deep significance this music holds for her personally, even beyond its role in the novel.

This was the inaugural ‘The Bath Festival’, the first of the numerous Bath festivals to combine music and literature, and this event powerfully demonstrated  what connections can be made between these two art forms, enhanced further by live discussion and debate. It was moving, and indeed a privilege, to play in such a context.

Making Music Selected Artist 2018-19

Each year Making Music promote a handful of artists in their Selected Artists brochure, and I’m delighted to be among those selected for the 2018-19 season after being heard in recital earlier this year. Promoters affiliated with Making Music get special rates on booking, and this year – for the first time – can claim a contribution towards costs direct from Making Music. I give many recitals for Making Music members each year and so am looking forward to visiting music societies familiar and new to me up and down the UK in 2018-19.

China recital tour

Some photos from my tour of China last month. I gave ten recitals, in Shoaxing, Hangzhou, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Taizhou and Suzhou, and spent some time in Shanghai. My wife was able to travel with me, and this was the first time in China for both of us. Very much enjoyed exploring the cities, eating local specialities, and playing in some fine halls to remarkably young and large audiences.

Richard Uttley (Wenzhou theatre)

Richard Uttley (China)

Richard Uttley (Taizhou theatre)

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New Tido Music iPad app videos

I was in the studio again recently to film more pieces and tutorials for the Tido Music iPad app. The new videos – works by CPE Bach, JS Bach, Brahms, Haydn and Hensel – will be released in the coming months.

In other Tido news, there was an extended piece on the app and its founder, Brad Cohen, in classical music magazine La Scena Musicale.

This short gives an idea what goes into making the app:


The performances are filmed from four angles at once, so within the app you can change the view whenever you like, but here’s my Schubert E flat Impromptu in a version for Youtube:

hcmf// 2016 reviews (5:4, Telegraph)

Review from Simon Cummings (5against4) of my recital at hcmf// 2016:

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“Having packed out Phipps Hall at HCMF last year, pianist Richard Uttley‘s Saturday morning recital found him in the considerably more fitting space of St Paul’s Hall. Taking place on a stunningly cold day—local temperatures hovering around -1°C—the audience was healthy in size but not in general well-being, peppering the concert with (in one case, worrying close proximity) blasts of coughage. Quite apart from anything else, Uttley deserves considerable kudos for the way he tenaciously maintained concentration. Similar to Seth Parker Woods’ recital the previous day, Uttley performed four works, two of which involved technology.

Eric Wubbels‘ Psychomechanochronometer displayed a tense relationship with the top end of the keyboard, which repeatedly acted to initiate a motoric pulse. Beneath this, Wubbels introduced increasing amounts of elaborate floridity, Uttley’s fingers glancing off the keys as though they were red hot. Multiple times the music splintered, losing the pulse (and potentially the plot), flying around the keyboard in such a way as to make one realise assorted strings had been prepared. But that high pulse, modifying itself, could never truly be shaken off, the piece concluding under its influence once again in a series of shivering flurries. Careful, poised placement of notes occupied the formative moments of Chaya Czernowin‘s strange, four-minute fardanceCLOSE. Very low, rich tremolandi were ambiguous as to whether they reinforced or undermined this, and the music’s subsequent eruptions into quasi-quotational fortissimo chords hardly clarified things one way or the other. Their presence made for a curious effect, as though all the assorted pitches played hitherto were suddenly aligned, instantly transitioning from chaos to coherence. It was all delightfully strange. Continuing his penchant for mistreating the Fender Rhodes organ, Michael Cutting extended this with the aid of two reel-to-reel tape machines for the world première of his I AM A STRANGE LOOP V. Four movements ensued, each utilising the tape machines in order to record and play back slowly-degrading loops of what Uttley was doing, forming delicately complex duets and trios. The first and last were exercises in relaxed prettiness, the former using the Rhodes like a vibraphone, striking its pickups with a soft mallet, the latter establishing lovely ambient rotations that were (rather nicely) eventually crudely silenced. The second coated assertive chords with cycling analogue grit and fuzz, while the third, very different, focussed on creating an ever more dense cloud of noise (Uttley now thwacking the pickups), ultimately crushing its pitch content. It was as fantastic to listen to as it was to watch, Cutting demanding a great deal more from a pianist than one might expect. Composer-supposedly-in-residence Georg Friedrich Haas had been strangely and sadly conspicuous by his absence since the opening weekend, so the final piece in Uttley’s recital, Haas’ Ein Schattenspiel (‘a shadow play’) was most welcome. This also involved the pianist interacting with a recording of what they had just played, but in Haas’ case the music is shifted up by a quartertone and becomes the basis for what appears to be a kind of infernal machine, pitting the performer to stay on track and synchronise with the subtly altered renditions of themself. Behaviourally, the piece shifts between strict metrics and more fluid episodes, the latter at one point introducing figurations heavily redolent of Debussy. But it was the dread rigidity that dominated, leading to an exhaustingly brutal denouement with Uttley’s hands pounding the keys as though his life depended on it, and then at the very end silently catching resonances from the middle of the keyboard, but looking for all the world as though he’d collapsed from the sheer effort. Another blinder of a concert from Huddersfield’s most radically lyrical pianist.”

and a mention by Ivan Hewett, who reviewed the late-night concert for The Telegraph:

“… However the two stars of the evening were pianist Richard Uttley, who duetted entertainingly with electronic sounds in Olga Neuwirth’s incidendo/fluido, and soprano Peyee Chen, who floated two early songs by Michael Finnissy into the dark space of Bates Mill with perfect grace.”

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Cornwall recital review

from Bude & Stratton Post, by David Robinson:

Richard Uttley thrills the audience at Minstrels Music Centre in Canworthy Water
Wednesday, 30 November 2016
BUDE Music Society was delighted to welcome back Richard Uttley, the young, gifted concert pianist who gave a wonderful recital at Minstrels Music Centre on Sunday, November 20 to a large appreciative audience, writes David Robinson.
On the previous day Richard Uttley had been playing and recording in Leeds and he flew down especially to Newquay where he was picked up and driven to Canworthy Water.
The programme included works by J S Bach, Schubert, Scriabin, Schumann, Chopin and a contemporary composition by Chaya Czernowin and Richard introduced these pieces in a charming and amusing way which the audience found both helpful and so interesting.
The pieces all demonstrated musicianship and a phenomenal technique; the fingerwork was brilliant in the Bach and Schubert and he made the Scriabin sound so easy and convincing.
There were some memorable moments in the Schumann Waldszenen and the ‘Prophetic Bird’ was especially charming and effective in colour and shape.
The recital closed with Ballade No. 1 by Chopin and in addition to the dazzling scalic passages the range and control of tone and colour was evident in every phrase.
Everybody was thrilled and impressed by the sheer range and breadth of tone and colour.
A spokesman said: “Richard Uttley must surely have a really exciting career ahead of him, with his good hands, sensitive pedalling and wonderful memory and it well may be that the members of Bude Music Society will be able to say, that they heard this young pianist in Cornwall, in 2016. How lucky everyone was who came to this recital.”

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RPS / Radio 3 Big Chamber Weekend

The Royal Philharmonic Society and BBC Radio 3 put on a weekend of chamber music at The Venue in Leeds College of Music. Peter Moore and I played a lunchtime concert on 19 November, and Mark Simpson and I were asked to stand in last-minute for Annelien Van Wauwe and Nino Gvetadze (who were unable to play due to illness) for the evening concert. Each concert over the weekend included an RPS commission – Peter and I premiered Francisco Coll’s Chanson et Bagatelle, and in the evening recital I played Naomi Pinnock’s Lines and Spaces.

Both concerts were broadcast this week and are available here (with Peter) and here (with Mark).

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hcmf// 2015 videos

Videos from my recital at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2015:

Tristan Murail : La Mandragore

Michael Cutting : This Is Not A Faux Wood Keyboard

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2016

Following my recital in the opening weekend of the 2015 festival, HCMF have invited me back for the closing weekend in 2016. My programme this year includes the world premiere of Michael Cutting’s I AM A STRANGE LOOP V for Fender Rhodes & tape machines, the UK premiere of Eric Wubbels’s Psychomechanochronometer, Chaya Czernowin’s fardanceCLOSE, and Ein Schattenspiel for piano & live electronics by HCMF’s 2016 featured composer, Georg Friedrich Haas. Parts of the recital will be broadcast on Radio 3 in December.

I will also give the UK premiere of Christian Mason’s In a world of invisible waves: a butterfly and perform Olga Neuwirth’s incidendo/fluido in Bates Mill as part of a live edition of Radio 3’s Hear and Now.

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Matthew Kaner Embedded in 3 Recordings

As part of their 70th birthday celebrations, Radio 3 (in partnership with Sound and Music) are hosting Matthew Kaner as their Embedded Composer, playing his music regularly and inviting him to talk about new music on various shows. For the 70 days of the residency, Matthew has written 10 new pieces, each of which is played every day for a week on the Breakfast show. I recorded Snowbells for violin and piano with Ben Baker, which was broadcast 3-7 October, and Fixations for solo piano, to be broadcast 17-21 October. Both pieces, and Matthew’s other Embedded contributions (including a Lucerne Festival audio diary), can be heard here.

In addition, my recording of Matthew’s Dance Suite (written for me and premiered at St John’s Smith Square last year) will be broadcast as part of Hear and Now on 10 December.

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Michael Cutting : I AM A STRANGE LOOP V (world premiere)

Building on the short piece for Fender Rhodes & delay pedal Michael wrote for me to play at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2015, for my recital there this year he is writing me a much bigger piece, this time for the Rhodes & tape machines. We are extremely grateful to the Britten-Pears Foundation for supporting this commission. Here’s Michael’s programme note to the new work:

“I AM A STRANGE LOOP V is the expansion of This is not a Faux Wood Keyboard, a short work I wrote for Richard’s performance back in HCMF 2015. Whilst that work explored the sonic world of this iconic 1970’s keyboard with help from a simple loop pedal, I AM A STRANGE LOOP V adds multiple tape machines to the setup, making the new work as much about the performative possibilities of tape as of the Fender Rhodes itself.

Whilst the original function of these reel-to-reel tape machines was to give everyday consumers the possibility of basic recording and playback in their own homes, I’ve recently become fascinated by their potential use in live performance. The degradation of sound provides a novel answer to musical development, while the physical presence of moving tape allows for a genuine visual interaction between the live and the recorded.

I AM A STRANGE LOOP V is also the culmination of my I AM A STRANGE LOOP series, a set of varied works responding to Douglas Hofstadter’s book of the same name. Centred on the hypothesis that consciousness is a neural feedback loop generating the illusion of ‘self’, the book is an engaging and often personal journey attempting to understand the meaning of ‘I’. My IAASL series takes as its starting point the book’s focus on self-referencing, repetition and looping, exploring the relationship between difference and repetition, stasis and development, in a musical context.”

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UPDATES: review from the premiere here. I will give the second performance at Klangspuren Festival in Austria, details here.

photo © Stuart Leech

Tour with Mark Simpson

Mark Simpson and I are giving a series of concerts in the UK featuring highlights of the clarinet & piano repertoire both old and new, including both Brahms Sonatas and music by Schumann, Weber, Julian Anderson and Mark Simpson.

18 October : Yamaha Music London
20 October : Aberdeen Citadel (also broadcast Radio 3)
22 October : The Brunton (Musselburgh)
24 October : In Tune (Radio 3)
28 October : Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
29 October : Tonbridge Music Club

Note: programmes vary so check here for further details.

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Eric Wubbels – Psychomechanochronometer (UK premiere)

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Eric Wubbels : photo © Giorgia Fanelli

At this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival I’ll give the UK premiere of American composer Eric Wubbels‘s Psychomechanochronometer. I became interested in Wubbels’s music through the Wet Ink Ensemble, of which he is pianist and co-Director. It was Michael Cutting – while we worked on the piece he wrote for me for hcmf// 2015 – who first put me on to the Wet Ink Ensemble, and a big new piece by Michael for Fender Rhodes and tape machines is part of my programme at hcmf// 2016 too. More on that later… For now here’s a short note I wrote on Psychomechanochronometer:

‘Psychomechanochronometer’: a device for measuring time as it is perceived and felt in the body. The piece keeps time against itself, setting up bare rhythmic patterns whose grooves it then fills with notes at the limits of human and mechanical execution, causing them to trip and glitch. Repeating materials of different lengths are superimposed and, as they orbit each other, generate kaleidoscopically changing surfaces. It ends in pulseless shivers.

Psychomechanochronometer was commissioned by the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music.

UPDATE: Eric’s debut album, Duos with Piano, is now available on Carrier Records.

Tido Music app

The Tido Music app launched last week and is now available through the iTunes Store. At its core, Tido Music is a platform for downloading and reading sheet music on iPad, but the app already also offers content and tools that take it far beyond this.

I’ve been involved with the Piano Masterworks project, which is in collaboration with Edition Peters and presents scores of key works from the piano repertoire enriched with background information, audio recordings, multi-angle films of live performances and masterclass notes. I’ve filmed a handful of performances and tutorials so far (works by Beethoven, Brahms, Grieg, Schubert and Schumann), and these will be appearing within the app over the next few weeks. Other contributors include Daniel Grimwood, Clare Hammond, Roy Howat, Joanna MacGregor and Adam Tendler.

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The Piano Masterworks series is primarily aimed at students and amateurs, but I’ve been looking at some of the others’ tutorials and finding them fascinating myself (including Roy Howat recounting how he played La cathédrale engloutie to Debussy’s stepdaughter – who grew up hearing Debussy playing the preludes – and she was able to confirm a suspicion he had about a quirk of the rhythmic notation).

Frances Wilson has written about the app in depth and in context on her blog The Cross-Eyed Pianist, and Elinor Cooper gave it a 5* review in BBC Music Magazine.

Below is a sample of the content, and there’s a 30-day free trial on at the moment, so you can take a look here..

Nocturne premiere & Bartók @ Multi-Story

This summer Multi-Story ran a chamber music series in the Hay Bale Auditorium at Bold Tendencies (the transformed multi-storey car park in Peckham), alongside their big orchestral projects in the larger space. The main focus of the concerts I was involved with was the Bartók Sonata for two pianos and percussion – with Kate Whitley, Jude Carlton and Elsa Bradley – but we also played the Romanian Folk Dances (arranged for the four of us by Jude and Kate), and my Nocturne for two pianos.

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I wrote Nocturne in 2014 (I only come up with a new piece every few years) and these were the first performances. It was a privilege for me to be in duo with Kate Whitley, whose vivid playing brought the piece to life so well. It’s a piece about falling in and out of sleep, and the fleeting yet lucid dreams that seem to arise from that state – so the summer heat and intimate, unusual space made for a perfect setting. Here’s a point early on in the piece where wakefulness tips over into dreaming:

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One of the things that really struck me about these concerts was the audience. Both performances sold out, and in fact the whole series seemed to do so with ease – without any compromise in the programming. From what I could tell, the people who came were not all necessarily Bartok devotees or connected to contemporary music in some way professionally (which sadly can often be the case with these kinds of events), but rather a whole mix of people who were there either out of sheer curiosity, because they had enjoyed previous Multi-Story events, or as a prelude to an evening at Frank’s Cafe (the rooftop bar). All of this is testament to what Bold Tendencies and Multi-Story have built up in Peckham. Their huge commitment to education carries their work even further, and is already influencing future generations, enthusing them about classical music and making it accessible in all the ways it should be.

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photos © Katherine Waters

La Voix review (ARTAMAG)

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La Voix was selected as ‘Le Disque du Jour’ in French arts magazine ARTAMAG, and reviewed by Jean-Charles Hoffelé:

“Smart’s second recording is once again on a French theme which is executed with flair…It is an inspired idea to open the recording with Poulenc’s capricious Violin Sonata. He plays it darkly and mysteriously with fantasy, with an intensity of the bow that still has a little rawness… Smart perfectly understands this little known masterpiece from the composer of La Voix Humaine, giving it the irony which intensifies the unerring and integrated playing of Richard Uttley. This is certainly an accomplished interpretation, precisely realised. The disc is titled “La Voix” and is particularly fitting to the Fauré, as during the darkly-hued First Sonata the young man plays upon the baritone voice, shading his tone as though he were singing, without ever sacrificing expressive power for aesthetic decoration… Smart adds Pièce en forme de Habanera lightening the mood with a sublime dreaminess; not the least shadow of mannerism, but a moulded singing line with a slight hint of acerbity in the sound that I love.”

La Voix review (The Strad)

The Strad magazine selected La Voix as a Recommended Recording in their June issue. It was reviewed by Julian Haylock:

Accompanied by an illuminating booklet note that captures the essence of Fauré’s A major Sonata as being composed ‘against a backdrop of heartache’, Callum Smart and Richard Uttley gently caress the finest of his early works with a cantabile grace and elegance that distil the composer’s churning emotions into a sound world of captivating restraint. By making light of the Frenchman’s occasionally Schumannesque textural density, they point up familial connections with Poulenc’s Sonata and Ravel’s Tzigane and Pièce en forme de habanera that normally lie hidden from view, whether it be the occasional insouciant gesture or an unmistakably French charm and piquant clarity of thought (albeit with a sometimes unmistakably Hispanic accent).

The Poulenc Sonata’s delicate balance between neoclassical jollity and haunting introspection is keenly felt here, the key moment in the finale when frivolity turns to tragedy being particularly well judged. Smart’s sinewy, silky tone comes into its own in Tzigane, in which the long unaccompanied ‘improvisation’ sounds for once like an introspective meditation rather than the usual excuse for lashings of virtuoso fireworks. Finest of all is the habanera, which shimmers in the twilight as though emerging from some distant gypsy encampment, atmospherically captured in gently cushioned yet tactile sound.

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Night Music release

Night Music, a disc of chamber music by Mark Simpson, will be released on NMC Recordings on 20 May 2016.

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Night Music (Leonard Elschenbroich, cello; Alexei Grynyuk, piano)
Ariel (Mercury Quartet)
Barkham Fantasy (Richard Uttley, piano)
Echoes and Embers (Mark Simpson, clarinet; Víkingur Ólafsson piano)
Lov(escape) (Mark Simpson, clarinet; Ian Buckle, piano)
Un Regalo (Guy Johnston, cello)
Windflower (Nicholas Daniel, oboe)
Nur Musik (Jonathan Small, oboe; Ensemble 10/10; Clark Rundell, conductor)