"We lacked a big pianist,"
While there is copious amounts of Czech piano music, sonatas are few. "We lacked
a big pianist," says Radoslav Kvapil, the eminent Czech musician who returns to
London on February 13 for a mostly Czech evening in the Purcell Room. It's a
little while since Kvapil played a recital in London - "it's one of the most
important things to perform in London." Having finally got him back here, it's
good to know that, after his Purcell Room appearance, Kvapil also gives a
masterclass and a lunchtime recital. He's no stranger to recording either. He
has many CDs of music from his homeland and has recently made a rewarding disc
of Chopin's Studies. What needs to be addressed is having these recordings
generally available in this country!
The "big, sparkling pianist" that Kvapil says was lacking from 19th-century
Bohemian culture, a Liszt or a Clara Schumann, helped determine the "intimate
and poetic" piano oeuvre that is typically Czech, which is "modest only in
virtuosity". Dvorak's American Suite opens Kvapil's recital. "Every composer had
to find somebody to announce him. We did not have a big pianist who could
champion Dvorak's piano music. This is marvellous music; Dvorak wrote it to give
pleasure. It's not for big playing in big halls where the pianist is the hero."
Then it's the Sixth Sonata of Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), a Prague-born pupil
of Schoenberg, who perished at Auschwitz. Ullmann composed seven sonatas, "the
last three written and first performed in Terezin during the Second World War.
Ullmann and all other Jewish people in Terezin were waiting for death. They
created absolutely marvellous culture, which helped them survive mentally.
Ullmann might be one of the most important of these composers. Writing in
Terezin he reflected his situation; I feel this sonata is autobiographical.
I had the opportunity to speak with Edith Kraus, who is still alive and over
90, who performed this sonata for Ullmann in Terezin. He refused to tell her
anything about it. There's a reflection of Janacek in the first movement, maybe
Gershwin after that. The end of the first movement is exceptional: suddenly in
the quick music comes a very slow coda - it's close to Beethoven's Op.111."
Thus, Kvapil's programme includes Beethoven's ultimate sonata and also the sole
example in this genre of Janacek, one of the rare Czech sonatas (and replacing
the advertised On An Overgrown Path selection). "All three sonatas are about
life and death. Ullmann's third movement is a real description of the cruel Nazi
system." Kvapil mentions a particular pianistic effect to be heard in Ullmann's
finale. "If you touch without playing some keys and play other tones, suddenly
those keys you didn't sound you can hear. This is a symbol for people who cannot
speak but you hear their voice." Kvapil gives a masterclass, The Piano Music of
Terezin, at the Royal Academy of Music on the 16th. He is chairman of the
Centre for Czech Terezin Composers - "To help the composers who were victims of
the holocaust during the Nazi times."
One of Kvapil's teachers was a pupil of Janacek, "a Janacek specialist, a
fanatic. From him and from other Janacek pupils I have got Janacek's music in
my blood. It's music that's totally new, the truth of the moment; there should
be big passion and big truth; this music should start from our life and
feelings. It's connected to the Czech language, more exactly Moravian dialect,
because it's a direct intonation of the language." Kvapil closes with two pieces
by Smetana. On the Seashore is "beautifully written for the piano and it's
lovely music." Of Macbeth and the Witches, Smetana "was following Liszt's ideas
for programmatic music. It's really modern; it begins with a whole-tone scale.
Smetana wasn't sure if the audience would accept it, so he kept quiet about it!
This is experimental music from the 19th-century and for me it's a work of
genius, but I will not be surprised if somebody will have a different point of
view!"
Colin Anderson
(Originally published in What's On in London on 5 February 2003)