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1 Introduction to ICA Classics 2.57 FRANZ SCHUBERT 1797–1828 Impromptus D946 2 No.1 in E flat minor 11.05 3 No.2 in E flat major 10.27 Fantasia in C major D760 ‘Wanderer Fantasy’ 4 I Allegro con fuoco ma non troppo – 6.12 5 II Adagio – 6.28 6 III Presto – 4.43 7 IV Allegro – 4.05 ROBERT SCHUMANN 1810–1856 8 Arabeske in C major op.18 7.06 For a free promotional DVD sampler including highlights from the ICA Classics DVD catalogue, please email info@icaclassics.com. For ICA Classics Executive Producer: Stephen Wright Head of DVD: Louise Waller-Smith Music Rights and Production Executive: Aurélie Baujean Executive Consultant: John Pattrick ICA Classics gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Mark Pickering DVD Production DVD Production and Packaging: WLP Ltd Introductory Note & Translations © 2013 International Classical Artists Ltd Cover Photo: © Neville Marriner/Associated Newspapers/Rex Features Art Direction: Georgina Curtis for WLP Ltd 2013 BBC, under licence to International Classical Artists Ltd Licensed courtesy of BBC Worldwide The sound on this DVD has been improved with Enhanced Mono. During the remastering of this original mono programme, the audio signal has been restored to give a wider and more open sound which, though not equivalent to a stereo recording, improves the quality of the original source and provides a richer sound experience. Piano Sonata No.1 in F sharp minor op.11 9 I Introduzione: Un poco adagio – Allegro vivace 10.42 10 II Aria: Senza passione, ma espressivo 3.18 11 III Scherzo: Allegrissimo – Intermezzo: Lento. Alla burla, ma pomposo 5.07 12 IV Finale: Allegro un poco maestoso 10.50 VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY piano Series Producer: Keith Alexander Producer/Director: Hilary Boulding Recorded: Studio A, Glasgow, 22 June 1987 Broadcast: Music in Camera: Ashkenazy Plays Schubert, 1 November 1987 (Schubert); Music in Camera: Ashkenazy Plays Schumann, 8 November 1987 (Schumann) A BBC TV Production in association with Harrison & Parrott Productions and Polyphon Film und Fernseh GmbH With thanks to Sandra Funk (Funk Productions) © BBC 1987 Vladimir Ashkenazy is an exclusive artist of Decca Music Group Limited ICA CLASSICS is a division of the management agency International Classical Artists Ltd (ICA). The label features archive material from sources such as the BBC, WDR in Cologne and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as performances from the agency’s own artists recorded in prestigious venues around the world. The majority of the recordings are enjoying their first commercial release. The ICA Classics team has been instrumental in the success of many audio and audiovisual productions over the years, including the origination of the DVD series The Art of Conducting, The Art of Piano and The Art of Violin; the archive-based DVD series Classic Archive; co-production documentaries featuring artists such as Richter, Fricsay, Mravinsky and Toscanini; the creation of the BBC Legends archive label, launched in 1998 (now comprising more than 250 CDs); and the audio series Great Conductors of the 20th Century produced for EMI Classics. WARNING: All rights reserved. Unauthorised copying, reproduction, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited. Licences for public performance or broadcasting may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London W1F 9DE. In the United States of America unauthorised reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federal law and subject to criminal prosecution. Made in Austria 2 3
VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY AT THE PIANO Filmed in 1987 for the BBC’s Music in Camera series, this DVD captures Vladimir Ashkenazy at the piano in an unusually intimate setting. In the BBC’s Glasgow studios in front of an invited audience, the great Russian-born pianist performs two programmes, each devoted to one composer, respectively Schumann and Schubert. The concerts present his pianistic artistry in his prime and reveal many of his unique qualities as a solo performer. Ashkenazy was celebrated as a pianist long before taking up the conductor’s baton. Born in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) in 1937, he began lessons at the age of six and later studied at the Moscow Conservatory where his teacher was Lev Oborin. His career was launched in no uncertain terms with a triumvirate of top awards: second prize at the 1955 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels a year later and finally joint first, together with John Ogdon, at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1962. He entered the latter under some duress and has spoken of the way that the Soviet culture ministry, infuriated by the American pianist Van Cliburn’s win at the previous contest, put extra pressure on the Russian students to take part. It was a year later that Ashkenazy defected from the USSR, together with his Icelandic wife. The couple moved first to London and later Switzerland. In London during the Sixties, Ashkenazy established flourishing musical partnerships with his peers of this ‘golden generation’, notably Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman and Zubin Mehta. He did not return to Russia until 1989; when he did so, a camera crew went with him to document the experience. As a pianist, Ashkenazy has never been a barnstormer, often choosing the German and Viennese classics ahead of overt virtuoso showpieces, with Schubert and Schumann prime among his choices. His repertoire is nevertheless extensive and varied, encompassing much-loved interpretations of the works of Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Shostakovich. During some fifty years with Decca, he has been one of his instrument’s most prolific recording artists. He has sometimes expressed frustration with the diminutive size of his hands, and in recent years he has played less often in public, partly due to a problem with arthritis. But his musicianship continues to astonish his audiences and his orchestras alike. He has, over the years, added to his roster the chief conductorships of the Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia, NHK, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the European Union Youth Orchestra and, since 2009, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia. Ashkenazy has always been blessed with an extraordinary facility for absorbing music quickly, but also a rare humility in the face of his international celebrity. In an interview with me a few years ago, he commented: ‘Music is an incredible gift from God and nature. I’m only a performer and I don’t have the creative genius of, for example, Bach or Shostakovich, so I feel extremely humble before them. It’s my aim to be a servant to bring this music to life.’ He also pointed out the close connections between playing the piano and conducting: ‘It’s a link like an umbilical cord. For example, on the piano you’re dealing with every register of sound production, which makes you aware, when you’re conducting, that you must remember every part of the sound spectrum from bottom to top. In the other direction, I’d had the sound of the orchestra in my head since childhood and always aimed to reproduce it when playing the piano.’ Ashkenazy sits high and close to the keyboard, eschewing excess movement and gratuitous physical ‘projection’; all his energy is focused on the musical content. Here the small-scale BBC studio enhances his purity of approach, while the camera affords ample opportunity to watch the hands (in his case, amazingly small) of a master pianist at work. The Schubert recital begins with the first two of the composer’s three late piano pieces D946, referred to sometimes as Impromptus and sometimes as Klavierstücke. Both are sectional, based around extreme contrasts. No.1 sets a feverish tarantella against inward-looking passages, with rich chordal textures reminiscent of the composer’s song cycles Winterreise and Schwanengesang. The second opens with a folksong-like melody which is then contrasted with more unsettling episodes. Next comes Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, a grand-scale sonata in four movements played without a break. Its core is the melody of the composer’s song Der Wanderer, D493, stated at the start of the slow movement: ‘Ich bin ein Fremdling überall,’ says the text, a poem by Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck – ‘I am a stranger everywhere.’ Ashkenazy produces a velvety tone well suited to the lieder-like nature of these works, but he also delves wholeheartedly into the flair of the Wanderer Fantasy’s opening and its towering final fugue in performances whose outwardly calm aspect is a cocoon for music-making of impassioned conviction. The Schumann programme features the much-loved Arabeske op.18, followed by the Sonata No.1 in F sharp minor op.11. The Arabeske dates from 1839; the fluid unpredictability of its form pointed forward to the experimental structures that Schumann loved to explore. Although Schumann’s metronome mark indicated a swift tempo, many have thought it too fast. Here Ashkenazy takes time to highlight the inner detail of Schumann’s multi-layered writing, focusing likewise on the work’s poetic ebb and flow. It is Schumann’s passion for the young pianist Clara Wieck – whose father furiously opposed their marriage – that underpins the Piano Sonata No.1. He published it anonymously, headed: ‘Piano Sonata. To Clara, from Florestan and Eusebius.’ These two characters represented opposite sides of his own personality: Florestan extrovert and stormy, Eusebius gentle, reflective and poetic. Portions of the sonata can be identified with each, but there is also a link with Clara: in the first movement Schumann took a figure from a piano piece that she had composed and combined it with a theme of his own. If they could not be together in life, this seemed to say, they could be united in art. Ultimately the couple defied Clara’s father and were married in September 1840. Ashkenazy highlights the sonata’s contrasts by his variety of tone, rather than by choosing extreme tempi. His depth and strength of touch evokes the turbulent power of the opening, while the slow 4 5
Page 1: First DVD Release Vladimir Ashkenaz
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Page 9 and 10: ICAD 5057 Handel: Water Music Suite

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