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Last season’s performance of Cesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy along with the Reno Chamber Orchestra and conductor Robert Franz is being broadcast tonight at 7pm on KNCJ! Such fond memories:-)

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In the coming months, 2 albums will be released on the label Editions Hortus. ‘All’Italia’ is a solo album featuring works by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni: the Indian Diary, 2 of the Elegies, the Fantasia after JS Bach, and the epic Fantasia Contrappuntistica. I’ve been a fan of Busoni’s highly individualistic approach to harmony, and I’m excited to finally release this album! Stay tuned for info!

We’re also close to releasing an album for violin/piano with my partner-in-crime, the French violinist Ambroise Aubrun; featuring Erich Zeisl’s rarely heard Sonata for Violin and Piano, Milhaud’s Second Violin Sonata, and Mozart’s E minor Violin Sonata (the only one in a minor key, and one of Zeisl’s eternal favorites). The disc also features Zeisl’s Menuhim songs, and a World Premiere recording of a very charming early work from his Suite.

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On June 16, 2019, I’ll be playing several works by Wyschnegradsky in San Francisco at the  Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at 7pm, along with dear friends.

Cosmos, op. 28 (1939-40, rev. 1945) US PREMIERE
Sarah Gibson, Thomas Kotcheff, Vicki Ray, Steven Vanhauwaert, pianos;
Donald Crockett, conductor

Étude sur le carré magique sonore, op. 40 (1957, rev 1970) US PREMIERE
Martine Joste, piano

Selections from 24 Préludes, op. 22a  (1934, rev. 1960-70)
HOCKET: Sarah Gibson & Thomas Kotcheff, pianos

INTERMISSION

Étude sur les mouvements rotatoires, op. 45a  (1961, rev. 1963) US PREMIERE  
Sarah Gibson, Thomas Kotcheff, Vicki Ray, Steven Vanhauwaert, pianos;
Donald Crockett, conductor

Three Pieces for Piano, op. 38 US PREMIERE
1. Prélude (1957, rev. 1964)
2. Elévation (1964)
3. Solitude
Martine Joste, Piano

Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, op. 17 (1929-1930. Rev. 1936) US PREMIERE
Tempo Giusto / Scherzando / Lento / Allegro con fuoco
Sarah Gibson, Thomas Kotcheff, Vicki Ray, Steven Vanhauwaert, pianos;
Donald Crockett, conductor

More info here: The Weird and Wonderful Ivan Wyschnegradsky

 

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https://www.laopus.com/2019/01/schubert-and-saint-saens-at-rolling.html

 

REVIEW

Steven Vanhauwaert, Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Church
DAVID J BROWN

If the score of Schubert’s penultimate piano sonata had come down to us with no indication of who’d written it, or when, or even whether it was its author’s only work, there could still be no doubt that he or she was one of the greats. Now add in what we do know—that Schubert was still a young man (but already dying of syphilis), that this was just the centerpiece in a trio of mighty sonatas conceived concurrently, and that even these were but three amongst many masterpieces that he produced in what Benjamin Britten called arguably the “richest and most productive 18 months in our music history.”
While requiring consummate pianism to make their full effect, Schubert’s piano sonatas are not virtuoso showpieces per se. Rather, and in particular these last three, they are spacious tonal structures that can be regarded metaphorically as landscapes comprising many kinds of terrain, or as emotional journeys that encompass everything from unbuttoned joy to anger, anguish, and black pits of depression. To embrace all this, and maintain a steady vision of the whole, is no mean challenge for a performer.
Steven Vanhauwaert.

The Belgian-born pianist Steven Vanhauwaert—a frequent and welcome visitor to the RHUMC “Second Sundays at Two” series (indeed he was last there only in November, partnering violinist Varty Manouelian in sonatas by Mozart and Brahms, reviewed here)—not only has the necessary technical chops but also an Olympian ability to take the long view needed for this music, as his splendid account of Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 20 in A major D.959—the near three-quarter hour piece played entirely from memory—demonstrated.

Despite appearances, this is more
likely to have been a life mask
than a death mask.

Though the first of the sonata’s four movements  is extensive, Mr. Vanhauwaert nonetheless observed the all-important exposition repeat, subtly varying his pacing and dynamics the second time around. Here and later, his careful observance of Schubert’s dynamic gradations was a joy, for instance differentiating to just the right degree between fortissimi (ff) and sforzandi (fz).

Many of Schubert’s late slow movements (the Ninth Symphony and Second Piano Triocome particularly to mind) have the overall shape of a calm or contemplative opening that leads to a central crisis and then by degrees back again. What happens in this sonata’s slow movement (deceptively headed Andantino) is the most extreme of them all: “for a few moments it is almost incoherent in its wild intensity,” as the BBC Music Guidesays, while for the pianist Mitsuko Uchida it is “the greatest mad scene ever written.” The composer’s despairing rage seems to threaten tonality itself, and defy the ability of his chosen instrument to express it. Mr. Vanhauwaert was as vivid and skilled as any pianist I have heard in the way he stormed up to the edge of the pit, peered into the void, and then drew back slowly to safer ground.
After an incisive account of Schubert’s somewhat spiky Scherzo and brief Trio (no Schubertian “heavenly lengths” here), he gave the expansive Rondo finale all the space that it needs. Perhaps it was the impact of listening to such a fine performance live and with score in hand, but I have never before been so struck by the extent to which this movement’s development section comes quite close to matching that of the slow movement in power, albeit without that almost unhinged intensity. With the final return of the rondo theme, and full value given to the six one-measure rests that punctuate its phrases before the presto conclusion, there was the palpable sense of a long voyage safely brought to harbor. A memorable performance indeed.

Saint-Saëns at the piano, 1908.

Mr. Vanhauwaert topped and tailed his performance of the Schubert sonata with the first two of Saint-Saëns’ three Mazurkas, both in the key of G minor and composed in 1862 and 1871 respectively.

Before playing No. 1, Op. 21 as a bonne bouche to precede the main item, he remarked on how little-played and little-known Saint-Saëns’ solo piano music still is, and affirmed his love and esteem for it with a most affectionate performance, quite languid and with plenty of rubato in its opening and close, and smiling mock-severity for its central section.

Mazurka No. 2, Op. 24, as encore after a brief chat with RHUMC Music Director Charles Dickerson, proved more dramatic and epigrammatic than its predecessor, punctuated with trills and crisp dotted rhythms, and just a touch of quasi-“oriental” harmony here and there. Maybe these mazurkas are chips off of a master’s workbench, but what a workbench, and what a master!
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