2023 Directors' Recital Prize

Directors' Recital Prize St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral 13 June, 2023 7pm Featuring

CarloMassimo Yonina Liss RobertJohnston IndiaReilly

Robert Johnston, French Horn

Anna Michels, Piano

Tre Poemi

ii. Danza d'Orfeo

iii. La gondola funebre

Seasonal Nocturnes

Sonata for Horn and Piano

ii. Winter Hindemith

iii. Lebhaft

India Reilly, Violin

Anna Michels, Piano

Sonata No 1 in G minor for Unaccompanied Violin

i. Adagio

Three Pieces for Violin and Piano, op.6

i. March

ii. Lullaby

iii. Waltz

Yonina Liss, Piano

Preludes Livre Deux

xii. Feux d'artifice

Sonata in C Major, Hob XVI:50 mvt.1

JS Bach

Suggestion diabolique op.4, no.4 Prokofiev

Carlo Massimo, Organ

Hommage à Jean Langlais

Hommage à Frescobaldi

iii. Élévation

Esquisses Byzantines

x. Tu es petra Mulet

Adjudication

Panel

Jo Buckley (Dunedin Consort), Alistair Mackie (RSNO), Gavin Reid (SCO)

Maria Lopez Atanet, Piano

Intermezzo op.117, no.2

John Hall, Saxophone, Carlo Massimo, Organ

Quatre Danses arr. Righetti

i. Source

ii. Danse Populaire

Programme

Debussy Haydn Hakim Langlais

Winner Announced

David Kirchner Elms Britten Brahms Auberson

Biographies

Robert Johnston

Born in Leicester, Robert Johnston is an S6 pupil in his second and final year at St Mary's Music School, studying horn with Rachel Brady. Following encouragement from a music teacher at Morrison's Academy, Crieff, he started learning the horn aged 10 and also learnt under Sue Baxendale for four years at the RCS Junior Conservatoire. Robert has performed York Bowen's 'Horn Concerto' with the Senior Orchestra at St Mary's Music School at their March '22 Spring Concert, performed the premiere of Helen Grime's work 'Braid Hills', for horn duet, and has also played orchestrally in ensembles such as the RCS Juniors Symphony Orchestra, Edinburgh Youth Orchestra and in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (NYOGB) for three years, including a performance at the 2022 BBC Proms. Robert is taking a gap year next academic session, with the intention of pursuing music through conservatoire study thereafter.

India Reilly

India Reilly is a seventeen year old violinist studying with Dr Valerie Pearson at St Mary's Music School. In March 2023 she won first prize with the Winifred Gavine medal in the Edinburgh Competition Festival 15 minute Strings Recital and was awarded Highly Commended in 2022. She has also won Highly Commended in the Nan Christie Memorial Prize for Strings. She has taken part in many masterclasses with violinists including: Jack Liebeck, Gaby Lester, Salvatore Greco, Tamas Fejes, and Lev Atlas.

India is a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and has worked under well known conductors such as Alexandre Bloch and Andrew Gourlay. She currently co-leads the Junior RCS Symphony Orchestra, performing many times, including at the COP26 climate conference.

India greatly enjoys chamber music and is in both the Junior RCS and St Mary’s Music School senior quartets, among other ensembles, recently performing in the Usher Hall as part of a pre-concert program for the RSNO, and as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Future engagements include performing with NYO in the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms this Summer, and looks forward to auditioning for conservatoire study next year.

Yonina Liss

Yonina Liss, an eighteen-year-old pianist from Frankfurt, Germany, began her musical journey at the age of six. She attended Dr Hoch's Konservatorium where she received piano lessons. Yonina went on to win several competitions across Germany, such as the 'Jugend Musiziert' competition and 'Annemarie Schluter' competition in Frankfurt, as well as the Robert Schumann competition near Leipzig. In 2019, Yonina moved to Edinburgh to study at St Mary's Music School, where she was able to further develop her musicianship and technique to a professional level and attend masterclasses with renowned pianists, such as Steven Osborne and Danny Driver.

Looking ahead, Yonina is excited to pursue her career as a pianist at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

Carlo Massimo

Carlo Massimo began playing the organ at the young age of two and a half, however only began his formal musical studies on the instrument while in St. Mary’s Music School. He became a pupil of the school in 2013 and joined the choir of St Mary’s Cathedral as a chorister. Since joining the school Carlo has studied piano with Dr John Bryden and Richard Beauchamp, and organ with Duncan Ferguson, organist and Master of the Music at St Mary's Cathedral. After his choristership, Carlo, choosing to continue his studies at the music school, obtained Grade 8 diplomas from the ABRSM in both Piano and Organ with distinction. He also was a finalist in the last DRP competition. Nowadays, Carlo frequently plays for services and concerts with organisations such as local choral unions and other schools. Most recently, Carlo performed a solo work by Messiaen in the Usher Hall which was described as “breath-taking” by the Scotsman. In September, Carlo will continue his organ studies in Paris to study, in particular, improvisation and the French style of organ playing.

Programme Notes

Carlo Massimo

Naji Hakim – Hommage à Jean Langlais.

This piece is a playful, lively homage from pupil to teacher. Described as a symphonic fresco, this Lebanese composer ’ s work is developed in a rhapsodic style, conjugating the principle of sonata form with the variation. The thematic and certain modal and rhythmical characteristics are inspired by over a dozen organ works by the Master of Sainte Clotilde (Langlais). In the words of Naji Hakim; “This piece is a grateful testimony towards an artist and teacher with a blooming faith.”

Now to give you an understanding of the tonal palate that Hakim is drawing from, we have a slower, reflective movement from another “Hommage”. This is the third movement of an eight movement collection, which was dedicated to his own teacher Marcel Dupré. This movement is full of expressive chromatic chords accompanying a slow melody almost independently of rhythmic pulse, a style which Langlais reserved for mystical liturgical moments, in fact the chant "Homo quidam" appears later in the movement, contrapuntally accompanied.

Henri Mulet – Equisses Byzantines – Tu Es Petra Et Portae Inferi Non Praevalebunt Adversus Te (‘You are a rock and the gates of Hell will not prevail against you’)

We end with this fantastic toccata by the Parisian composer Mulet. Mulet studied organ with Marcel Dupré at the conservatoire under the same teacher, the master of the toccata, Charles-Marie Widor. Unfortunately not much of his music remains as in 1937, following the financial crisis, he destroyed his manuscripts and left Paris forever. Tu es Petra is the last piece of the Equisses Byzantines (Byzantine Sketches) and could be described as the archetype of the "railway toccata" with many fast alternated chords, as opposed to Widor's archetype of the "sewing machine toccata".

Carlo Massimo Jean Langlais – Hommage à Frescobaldi – Élévation

India Reilly

Trained as a violinist in his youth by his father, Bach knew the capabilities of the instrument and expanded greatly upon them. Throughout the unaccompanied violin works and in those for solo cello, Bach showed his mastery at creating polyphony and counterpoint with what is essentially a single-line instrument, often by the use of double stops or rolled chords and also by implying several melodic lines by artful figuration. Bach’s elaborate ornamentation in the 'G minor Adagio' makes a fitting opening to the Sonata and indeed to the entire set of sonatas and partitas. Unlike other baroque composers, he was not content to simply write out a few chords and a figured bass and leave the rest up to the performer. Rather, his ornamentation is carefully notated, though the Adagio gives a free, improvisatory impression.

Britten was born in Lowestoft in 1913, and much of his music was influenced by the view of the North Sea from his childhood home. His mother especially supported his early attempts to compose, and the home was very musical. At age 15, he started taking composition lessons from Frank Bridge, a mentor who had a significant impact on Britten's early career. Britten’s Suite, Op. 6, for Violin and Piano was composed during 1934-35. The first performance of the complete work was given on 13th March, 1936, as part of a BBC broadcast, by Antonio Brosa and Benjamin Britten, who gave the first concert performance of the Suite at the ISCM Festival on 21st April of that year. As originally published the work comprised four movements - March, Moto Perpetuo, Lullaby and Waltzprefaced by a short introduction. At the composer's suggestion, the present edition excludes the Introduction and Moto Perpetuo, but retains the March, Lullaby and Waltz unaltered.

India Reilly

Robert Johnston

Volkner David Kirchner (1942-2020)

Tre Poemi

II. Danza d'Orfeo

III. La gondola funebre

German violist and composer Volker David Kirchner was commissioned to write 'Tre Poemi' in 1986 for acclaimed soloist Marie-Luise Neunecker. The work strikes a balance between paying homage to Romantic character pieces (where the instrument is naturally 'in its element') whilst also finding a more modern approach to horn playing - fully exploring a kaleidoscopic sound world ranging from ethereal to brassy and hard edged. Vivid imagery and a dark world of colour forms the basis for each poem.

The second poem, 'Danza d'Orfeo' depicts the anguish of Orpheus, a magician in Greek mythology who unsuccessfully tried to bring back his wife, Eurydice, from the underworld. The movement is intense, menacingly dark and violent. Beginning in a declamatory fashion, it soon becomes relentless and escalates continually, leading to a crashing conclusion.

The third poem, 'La gondola funebre', depicts a solemn procession of black draped funeral gondolas in Venice, that eventually pass by into the distant horizon by the end of the piece - the title is also a reference to a late work by Franz Liszt that was written after the death of Richard Wagner. This movement is achingly slow and despairing, becoming again anguished in the middle before simply dissipating.

Roderick Elms (b. 1951)

Seasonal Nocturnes

II. Winter

The set of four 'Seasonal Nocturnes' by British composer and organist Roderick Elms began life as a solo piano composition, for a friend across the pond in Cleveland, Ohio, before being orchestrated for horn player Martin Owen and the BBC Concert Orchestra in 1998. The second of this set cinematically depicts the season of winter - the movement begins icily, and ethereally, gradually developing greater warmth as the piece goes on.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

Sonata for Horn and Piano III. Lebhaft

The German composer Paul Hindemith wrote his 'Sonata for Horn and Piano' in 1939, just one year after emigrating to Switzerland with his wife, due to the their part-Jewish ancestry. The work was written out of an endeavour to try and write at least one sonata for every standard orchestral instrument. Coming amidst a period where he was beginning to codify his mature musical language, the Sonata demonstrates a neo-Baroque style, and a complex interplay between horn and piano.

The third movement, 'Lebhaft', is an aggressive, driving movement in rondo form where nature of the 'conversation' between horn and piano constantly evolves - sometimes the conversation is one of harmony, other one of animosity, or sometimes one takes the initiative over the other. The main recurring section is urgent, with broad themes in the horn set against urgent work in the piano, embodying the German tradition of Gebrauchsmusik*. At times the horn draws the piano into introspective, even deeply philosophical interludes before the piano takes the initiative, back to the matter at hand. Eventually, the piano has the final say, enlisting the horn into a German Tanzlied reminiscent of a Richard Strauss tone poem, before the two end in harmony, in an emphatic conclusion.

*Music for use, a specific purpose, 'doing' music

Robert Johnston

Yonina Liss

Achille-Claude Debussy, born in 1862, was a French composer and to this day is seen as one of the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th century. Amongst many orchestral works, he composed a wide range of piano pieces, such as the two books of preludes which were written between 1909 and 1913. Unlike other collections of preludes from earlier periods, such as the preludes from Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Das Wohltemparierte Klavier', Debussy's 'Preludes' do not follow a strict structure of tonal centres.

'Feux d'artifice', in particular, contains some of his most atonal ideas and implies a homage to the innovative piano techniques of Chopin and Bach. The titles written at the end of each work, allows the listener to experience each individual sound without being influenced by the title beforehand. The German-English pianist Walter Morse Rummel gave the premiere of the entire second book of preludes in 1913 in London. Initially, Debussy and other pianists who gave early performances of the works played them in groups of three or four preludes, which remains a popular approach today. The first complete recording of both sets was made in England in 1938 by the South African pianist Adolph Hallis.

Joseph Haydn, born in 1732, was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterhazy family at their Estherhaza Castle. For the most part of his life, this isolated him from other composers during that time which led him to being 'forced to become original'. He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a tutor of Beethoven and for most of his life the most celebrated composer in Europe.

Haydn's 'Piano Sonata in C Major, Hob XVI/50' was written in London in 1794/95 and is one of three sonatas dedicated to Therese Jansen Bartolozzi. Jansen Bartolozzi later published the sonata in 1800 with the title: 'A Grand Sonata for the Piano Forte composed expressly for and dedicated to Mrs. Bartolozzi by Haydn'.

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, born in 1891 and later worked in the Soviet Union. He is regarded as one of the main composers of the 20th century. His most famous works include 'Love for Three Oranges' and the ballet 'Romeo and Juliet'.

Prokofiev's 'Suggestion Diabolique', written in 1908, was inspired by a particularly vicious winter storm in St Petersburg. 'Suggestion Diabolique' opens on the lowest register of the piano and dwells within the very edge of tonality. The piece clearly displays the young Prokofiev's rebelling against the conservative teachings of his professor Anatoly Lyadov at St Petersburg Conservatoire.

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