JOHN LENEHAN - PIANIST, COMPOSER, ARRANGER
  • Home
  • News
    • Diary
  • Biog
  • Recordings
    • Solo CDs - overview >
      • solo CD reviews >
        • Ireland vol. 1
        • Ireland vol. 2
        • Ireland vol. 3
        • Ireland vol. 4
        • Minimalist piano
    • Chamber Music
    • Duo Partnerships
    • Latest releases
  • works
    • Original
    • Arrangements
    • Publications
    • Silent Film Scores
    • Current writing projects
  • Reviews
    • Archived Reviews
  • Listen
    • Broadcast Discussions and Interviews
  • Contact
  • Photos
  • Playlists
  • jlf

Simply Strad

29/10/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
On Sunday 3rd November at 7.00 there is a very special concert to be held in the Duke's Hall at the Royal Academy of Music. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the London Cello Society,there will be a gathering of some of the world’s greatest Stradivari cellos and an amazing bunch of cellists to play them.  During the evening Charles Beare will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the LCS Artistic Adviser Steven Isserlis and I will be accompanying the following players in a variety of short pieces to show off these magnificent instruments. The concert finishes with some arrangements for all cellos together. (See the full programme here).


Christian Poltéra, the ‘Mara’ (1711)
Danjulo Ishizaka, the ‘Lord Aylesford’ (1696)
Raphael Wallfisch, the ‘Archinto’ (1689)
Julian Lloyd-Webber, the ‘Barjansky’ (1690)
Paul Silverthorne, the ‘Archinto’ viola (1696)
Robert Max, the ‘Saveuse’ (1726)
Stéphane Tétreault the  ‘Countess of Stanlein’ (1707)

This will be my second concert that same day as at 3.00 I will be playing piano quartets by Mozart, Brahms and Stanford at St. John's Smith Square with the London Soloists Ensemble!

More details are here......                             http://www.londonsoloistsensemble.co.uk/diary.html
0 Comments

On the trail of Franz Liszt

11/10/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
This portrait of Franz Liszt in old age is housed in the Arts Club, Dover Street, London - a venue I found myself playing in last week. Over the years I have become aware that Liszt visited these shores several times and remember seeing framed posters in Norwich Assembly Halls and a theatre in Limerick advertising his visits. Researching this a little, it seems that there was hardly anywhere at which his stage coach did not stop at least once.
In his early years he covered the length and breath of the country several times over together with a troop of performers giving performances similar to this one in Stamford: 
Picture
I was unaware until recently that he returned several times later on in life (even as late as 1886 - the year he died) and just how many concerts he gave in London alone. In fact these included one in the very room in Dover Street I found myself in recently. It was in London that the words "Piano Recital" were first used to advertise Liszt's solo appearances. It seems that the critics were quite confounded by the spectacle, reporting that Liszt would leave the platform after every piece and chat with the audience! Some found this a "curious exhibition" but the Athenium guaged the importance of these events commenting "we cannot call to mind any other artist who could thus, by his own unassisted power, attract and engage an audience for a couple of hours".
0 Comments

Marvellous Music from Lithuania 

7/10/2013

0 Comments

 
Recently the music of a composer previously unknown to me has left a deep and lasting impression. Together with my good friend Christopher Horner, I was in Wyastone hall, Monmouthshire  to record music by the Lithuanian composer Juozas Gruodis (1884-1948). This is music which is long forgotten outside his native country where his songs in particular are still regularly heard. 
Picture
The new recording features a collection of these songs transcribed for violin and piano and a suite of four pieces for violin and piano. The real discoveries for me however where the violin sonata and the second of his two piano sonatas - both works of great power and emotional depth. Gruodis lived through turbulent times as his country, which was under the of the Russian Empire at the turn 20th century, was re-established as a democratic state after the first World War, then occupied by both Soviet Union and Germany briefly during and after the second. Eventually absorbed once again into the Soviet Union until independence in the 1990s, it's no wonder that Gruodis was infuenced by native musical influences and is seen as a nationalist composer in the line of Bartok and Janacek. He did indeed collect folk song and absorbed its atmosphere into his mature music, but in both of the sonatas it is the Germanic influence of his studies in Leipzig which gives the music its cogency and fluidity. Gruodis was the first Lithuanian composer to write regularly for orchestra. Here is a late work - his Symphonic Variations. In due course I will post some of the new recording.
0 Comments

    Archives

    January 2020
    September 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    November 2014
    August 2014
    April 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • News
    • Diary
  • Biog
  • Recordings
    • Solo CDs - overview >
      • solo CD reviews >
        • Ireland vol. 1
        • Ireland vol. 2
        • Ireland vol. 3
        • Ireland vol. 4
        • Minimalist piano
    • Chamber Music
    • Duo Partnerships
    • Latest releases
  • works
    • Original
    • Arrangements
    • Publications
    • Silent Film Scores
    • Current writing projects
  • Reviews
    • Archived Reviews
  • Listen
    • Broadcast Discussions and Interviews
  • Contact
  • Photos
  • Playlists
  • jlf