Reviews for Kenneth Hesketh - Hände

This generously filled disc celebrates the longstanding and fruitful artistic partnership between composer Kenneth Hesketh and pianist Clare Hammond. Dating from 2006 to 2023, the contents includes several works written specifically for the performer. While the music offered here is searching and often technically demanding, the results are invariably engaging and illuminating.

Poetic Conceits (2006) is a set of six, unbroken movements in which the protean material is constantly being viewed in a different light, either through development or by varied restatement. Clare Hammond is poised and persuasive in this challenging piece, whether in the fiery opening Epigram, the impish Epigraph and the volatile Mad Pursuits, or in the vast stillness of the contemplative second movement and eloquent wistfulness of the opening of the fourth. By turns virtuosic, exploratory and visionary, this substantial piece, consummately played, makes a powerful opening statement.

The other two extended works presented in this conspectus are just as vivid and concentrated. Hände (2015), from which this album takes its title, is a wide-ranging, single-movement work that incorporates chiming desk bells and extended piano techniques. These diverse expressive means are employed solely to further a musical narrative that is far-reaching and, in the hands of Clare Hammond, deeply compelling. Written in 2023, Auszüge aus einem kleinen Totebuch ('Excerpts from a little book of the dead') is an elegiac tribute to the composer Joseph Horovitz, a friend and colleague of Kenneth Hesketh. Material from what is arguably Horovitz's greatest work, his fifth string quartet, is included in a musical argument that involves the occasional use of a Tibetan prayer bowel, a hand-held electronic bow, and plucked strings to enhance the music's rapt, devotional character. Clare Hammond's dedicated, poetic and finely realised interpretation touches the heart and always serves the music.

Of the four shorter pieces, two are memorial tributes: Pour Henri (2011) is a gentle, affecting homage to Dutilleux and Lullaby of the Land Beyond, written in 2018 in memory of Oliver Knussen, is mystically evocative. Heu, heu heu (2012) and Chorales and Kolam (2019) are birthday gifts, the first boisterous and the second thoughtful and intricately wrought.

Clare Hammond is an ideal exponent of Kenneth Hesketh's questing and distinctive keyboard scores. Bravura passages are handled with notable assurance and invention and the quieter, more inward aspects of the music are treated with devoted care and profound understanding. Richly documented and effectively recorded, this is an extremely desirable release.

Clare Hammond, who made an earlier BIS album of Kenneth Hesketh’s music issued in 2016, is clearly this composer’s piano muse, with most of the works here written for her. An exception is Poetic Conceits (2006), an intricate suite taking Keats as its initial starting point, and as always with Hesketh, whatever the descriptive titles, the music proceeds for musical reasons primarily. Hammond navigates the webs of thematic, harmonic and rhythmic interconnections with considerable virtuosity, as she does Hände (‘Hands’, 2015), subtitled ‘the life and love of the fairer sex’, designed to accompany a 1928 silent film. It is a magical, at times romantic score for all its use of prepared techniques and six handbells. So, too, is Auszüge aus einem kleinen Totenbuch (‘Excerpts from a Small Book of the Dead’, a touching memorial to Joseph Horovitz who died in 2022), the handbells replaced with a Tibetan prayer bowl. The shorter pieces are conjured from the page with equal assurance by Hammond despite their varied origins, including two birthday celebrations from 2011 - Pour Henri (not inspired by Dutilleux’s death two years later as the booklet claims) and the riotous Heu, heu, heu… for his publisher’s 70th - the wistful Lullaby (in memory of Oliver Knussen) and Chorales and Kolam (2019), dedicated to Hammond’s second daughter, Emmie. An enchanting, challenging, engaging album, superbly played, with first-rate sound.

Kenneth Hesketh (born 1968) is an established figure on the British contemporary music scene, and this album features solo piano pieces representing almost 20 years of his output. Many of the works are tributes to deceased mentors, from Joseph Horovitz to Oliver Knussen to Henri Dutilleux, and more generally, Hesketh’s taste for the macabre and mysterious is foregrounded. Only the short tributes to Knussen and Dutilleux have been previously recorded.

Clare Hammond has championed Hesketh’s piano music for a number of years: she had already recorded a substantial cycle dedicated to her, Horae (pro clara), and other works in 2016 (BIS-2193), and she premiered Hesketh’s 2019 piano concerto, Uncoiling the River. This is a close collaboration that works because, according to Hammond, their personalities are similar: she writes in her programme note that they ‘share a certain frenetic mental energy, which he expresses in his composition. In turn, my playing style has influenced the way he writes for the piano.’

Hesketh is himself a pianist, and his scores teem with detailed expression, performance and pedalling indications. The CD opens with the six-movement Poetic Conceits (2006), the only work on the album that predates the collaboration between pianist and composer. Lasting around 25 minutes, its movements are organised in three groups of two. It opens with ‘Epigram’, a typically voluble piece full of unpredictable dynamic changes and gestural shifts. The much longer ‘Of Silence and Slow Time’ follows without a break. Dedicated to Dutilleux on his ninetieth birthday, it is partly based on a soggetto cavato on the name ‘Henri Dutilleux’, each letter of his name being ‘translated’ into a note. In this movement, somewhat in the manner of the French composer, a mysterious melodic line overlays deep, resonant bass notes. Hammond perfectly controls the progressive increase in dynamics to an aggressive cluster-filled climax, from which the movement dissipates to nothing. The short ‘Epigraph’, in which a beautiful and evocative quiet chordal passage is succeeded by virtuosic brilliance, is paired with the longer, poignant and knotty ‘Cold Pastoral’, and the work ends with a crazy toccata, ‘Mad Pursuits’, with hammered bass clusters enhancing the dramatic mood, to which the brief ‘Epitaph’, with its extreme dynamic contrasts, acts as a coda.

Pour Henri (2011) is a minute-long piece celebrating Dutilleux’s ninety-fifth birthday, described by Hesketh as a ‘jeu d’esprit’, presumably because it evokes Dutilleux’s string quartet Ainsi la nuit, and (more obviously) towards the end, his piano prelude ‘Sur un même accord.’ Its artfully simple melodic line makes this piece a touching tribute to a beloved mentor.

Heu, heu, heu … Eine kleine ausschweifende Feier (Hey, hey, hey… A little riotous celebration) (2012) is dedicated to Dr Peter Hanser-Strecker, the former chairman of Schott Music, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday; it is one of seventy pieces written for this celebration. It starts with a very simple birthday tune, played as an incipit to a truly riotous explosion of notes from which the straightforward melody occasionally emerges. The marvellous performance direction ‘inebriated, like hiccups’ surely hints at the morning after the party.

Hände (2015) was written to accompany a silent film in which the characters are represented by hands. It is hard to believe that this abstract black-and-white film was made (by Stella F. Simon and Miklos Blandy) as long ago as 1928, though the film’s subtitle, ‘The life and loves of the fairer sex’ places it in a bygone era. Hesketh’s score, designed to play in exact synchronisation with the film, is nervy and effusive. The composer delights in the resonances of the piano, and there are interesting brief ‘prepared piano’ sections that sound like a malfunctioning gamelan, in which some strings are activated by magnets and different types of beaters. Towards the end of the piece, a quasi-ritualistic section where the piano strings are struck with a bass drum beater sounds like a ghostly echo. Hesketh is fond of desk bells, and six are used in this piece; they are given a precisely notated part with different pitches indicated, to be played over sustained piano resonances. This is a fascinating work in which, as in much of Hesketh’s music, the expressive and mechanical coexist. Hammond’s compelling performance ensures that the score stands on its own, having no need of the film to cast its spell.

Chorales and Kolam (derivata) (2019) is ‘inspired by patterns drawn by women in India and South-East Asia to attract good fortune’. Again, desk bells expand the sonority of the piano. This piece constantly returns to obsessive focal pitches or dyads, somewhat in the manner of Dutilleux, and while there’s a beautiful floating passage about halfway through, several build-ups to aggressive climaxes mean it is far from being twee and decorative. It is superbly written for the piano, and Hammond is always alive to the rhythmic ebb and flow and the quicksilver changes of mood.

Lullaby of the Land Beyond (2018) is a tribute to Oliver Knussen, another of Hesketh’s mentors. Hesketh notes that the title is derived from Stravinsky’s Le baiser de la fée and is inspired by Knussen’s fondness for lullabies. The three-minute-long piece is layered, slow, reflective, delicate and its spacious, bell-like sonorities perhaps connect the piece to Prayer Bell Sketch, Knussen’s piano piece composed in tribute to his great friend Toru Takemitsu.

Auszüge aus einem kleinen Totenbuch (2023) (Excerpts from a Little Book of the Dead) was composed in memory of Joseph Horovitz, who taught Hesketh as an undergraduate at the Royal College of Music. Hesketh cites material from the fifth string quartet (1969) of his ‘teacher and friend’, stating in his score preface that this is ‘a work [Horovitz] considered to be one of his most personal’. Hammond also plays a Tibetan prayer bowl, and is directed to use an EBow to sustain certain piano sounds just before the coda and as the final gesture of the piece. This is a more substantial work than the other tributes, at just over 17 minutes long. The piece gradually emerges from tentative-sounding rapidly repeating high notes interrupted by bursts of energy. A long single-line passage in the treble register suggests isolation, while rocking figures evoke a comforting lullaby. The Tibetan prayer bowl appears after a maniacal toccata section; as in many other pieces on this album, the extreme contrasts in mood are striking.

Brilliantly performed by Hammond, all the works on this disc would be a welcome addition to the repertoire of pianists interested in contemporary music. The collaboration between composer and pianist is an unusually fruitful one, and one hopes it will continue for many years to come.

The collaboration between Kenneth Hesketh and Clare Hammond has been a durable and fruitful one, including an earlier recording horae (pro clara) from 2016 on the BIS label, a title one should be aware of if you find yourself liking Hände. The Paladino Music label has also worked with Hesketh in the past with In Icto Oculi appearing a year later, so there is a lot of admirable synergy going on with this 2024 piano album.

The programme includes works written specifically for Hammond but opens with a substantial piece that predates their artistic relationship. Poetic Conceits is in six movements, with three of its titles taken from John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn. Neatly structured, this is one of those pieces that has an overarching logic that is wrapped up nicely by its concluding Epitaph. But with a richness of detail along the way that draws in the listener as one might be when reading poetry. These are messages and narratives that are at times enigmatic, at times reflectively poetic and sometimes disturbing if you let your imagination lead you down each contrasting pathway. Virtuoso technique and impressively impactful drama are elements in the writing, but the ear and memory take away more from the atmosphere and sense of narrative rhythm in the work as a whole.

Poetic Conceits has a movement dedicated to Henri Dutilleux on his 90th birthday, and so Pour Henri is a good choice to follow: a miniature composed after Dutilleux’s death in 2013 that weaves in some of his music with a French song Bonne Anniversaire. Heu, heu, heu is another miniature, this time for Doktor Peter Hanser-Strecker’s 70th birthday in 2011. This has elements of pop music and some gestures from Stravinsky’s Petrushka to add intrigue to an intense few minutes of madly celebratory music.

Hände, or to give it its full title Hände: Das Leben und die Liebe eines zärtlichen Gesclechts (Hands: the life and love of the fairer sex) was composed for Clare Hammond and can be performed alongside a 1928 film of the same name, excerpts of which can be found on YouTube. The characters in the film are represented by hands “in an avant-garde, dance-inspired narrative”, and the music follows this imagery closely while having plenty of its own descriptive qualities, so you can create your own mind’s-eye film without any difficulty. The piano notes are at times transformed with the strings being struck using knitting needles, and there are some moments played on a set of small bells, enhancing the timbral contrasts already built into the score. Gestural character is an inevitable part of the nature of this music and there are some sections with plenty of darkness and violence, but Hammond sums up this unusual collaboration of imagery and sound in that “the ethereal soundworld that Hesketh creates mirrors the bizarre and eerie atmosphere of the film.”

Chorales and Kolam reworks some of Hesketh’s piano and orchestra work Uncoiling the River, “reordering and recontextualising it” to bring forward background harmonic progressions and turning them into chorales, with ‘kolam’ referring to intricate patterns made outside homes in India to bring good fortune. Lullaby of the Land Beyond is a memorial, “a small wreath” to Oliver Knussen, initially forming a gentle contrast to the previous piece, but as ever with Hesketh there is always a kernel of restless energy waiting to burst through.

The programme concludes with Auszüge aus einem kleinen Totenbuch (Excerpts From a Small Book of the Dead), which honours another colleague and friend, Joseph Horowitz, who died in 2022. The piece is conceived as a sort of ‘Yahrtzeit’ candle, lit in memory of the departed on the anniversary of their death. This is a deeply atmospheric piece, with a few ‘special effects’ enhancing the mood, but by no means turning the work into a percussion clinic. Hesketh is too tasteful to employ external or unusual effects beyond anything that is in service to musical expression, and this in some ways sums up this programme in the authentic sincerity of its content. This kind of music inevitably won’t appeal to everyone. As with all things well-crafted and built on a foundation of finely honed expertise, these pieces have a quality of permanence and necessity, and there is nothing superficial or thoughtless here, in both the compositions and the performances.

Composer Kenneth Hesketh has written several works for piano, and Clare Hammond has for years been their most dedicated advocate. Hände is a collection of her detailed performances of seven pieces, ranging from miniatures to two substantial works. The first of the latter is Poetic Conceits (2006), a six movement suite of character pieces. “Epigram,” “Epigraph,” “Epitaph,” and “Mad Pursuits” demonstrate colourful post-tonal harmony and angular gestures, while “Of Silence and Slow Time” and “Cold Pastoral” proceed gradually with aching lyricism.   Pour Henri (2013) is dedicated to the composer Henri Dutilleux, with whom Hesketh studied at Tanglewood. It employs several quotations, including the French song Bonne Anniversaire, the composer’s second piano prelude, and his iconic string quartet Ainsi la nuit; all of this in a compact minute and a quarter. It is a moving elegy. Lullaby of the Land Beyond (2018) is another valedictory piece, dedicated to Oliver Knussen. Similarly, it includes a number of Knussen quotations, as well as one from Boris Godunov, a favoyrite of the late composer. Higglety Pigglety Pop, Knussen’s second opera, which concludes with the portrait of a dog’s afterlife, provides a receding, misty ambience for this poignant goodbye to a great figure in English music.   Heu, Heu, Heu… Eine kleine ausschweifende (Hey, hey, hey… a little riotous celebration) (2012) is as advertised and requires staggering virtuosity, which Hammond has here and throughout in abundance. Chorales and Kolam (2019) is less boisterous but also makes a powerful impression all its own. A kolam is a geometric pattern drawn on the ground by women and girls in India and Southeast Asia for luck. The piece is built from reconstituted material from Hesketh’s piano concerto. The chorales are refracted in a series of variations that gradually unthread the verticals into stratified lines, only to have them gradually reassemble into arpeggiations in a shadowy coda.   Hände, Das leben und die Liebe eines zärtlichen Geschlechts (Hands: the life and love of the fairer sex) (2015) was commissioned for Hammond. When one views it live, the pianist plays along with an eponymous 1928 film that uses the play of hands nearly throughout (there are excerpts in the video below). Correspondingly, the musical work is based on the shape of hands. Not only is Hammond called upon to play repeated notes, chordal ostinatos, diaphanous rolls, and fleet gestures, she also plays inside the piano, uses knitting needles to strike the strings, and clangs six small bells set to the side of the instrument. Like the film, elements of surrealism abound. Hände is a major piece, tailor-made for Hammond’s imaginative and risk-taking approach to performing. The recording as a whole is an excellent showcase for both composer and pianist, and is one of my favourite CDs of 2024.

The album design clearly refers to Michelangelo’s famous fresco ‘The Creation of Adam’, which can be found in the Sistine Chapel. This fresco shows two outstretched hands that almost touch: God’s right hand reaches out to Adam’s left hand. This near touch symbolises the moment when God gives life to Adam, the first man. The lack of direct contact emphasises the mystery and tension of this act of creation.

A similar dynamic is visible on the album cover of ‘Hände – Music for Piano’, where a right hand again reaches out invitingly to a left hand. ‘Hände – Music for Piano’ is a layered and varied document of the highly personal and creative collaboration between the acclaimed British pianist Clare Hammond and the contemporary composer Kenneth Hesketh (1968). In the liner notes, Clare Hammond reflects on her long and fruitful collaboration with Kenneth Hesketh, which began after her Purcell Room debut in 2010. She recorded his work Three Japanese Miniatures for her debut album and premiered his series of twelve pieces, Horae (pro clara), in 2013. Their collaboration has resulted in several notable works, including Hände for piano and film (2015), Uncoiling the River for piano and orchestra (2018), and Auszüge aus einem kleinen Totenbuch in 2023.

‘Hände – Music for Piano’ contains pieces specially composed for Clare Hammond as well as previously existing compositions. They all reflect Hesketh’s complex and imaginative style. This album explores themes such as life, death and memory, and is inspired by visual art and literature. The album opens with Poetic Conceits from 2006, a series of six colourful poetic paintings. Three titles are borrowed from John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn. The dynamics vary from whisper-soft as the wingbeat of a hummingbird to splashing streams of sound and heavy thumps. This is followed by Pour Henri, a short homage (01:06) to the composer and music educator Henri Dutilleux, who died in 2013 at the age of 97. As a student during a summer course at Tanglewood, Hesketh took lessons from Dutilleux, who inspired him deeply.

The next miniature, Heu, heu, heu… Eine kleine ausschweifende Feier, was composed in 2011 to mark the 70th birthday of Dr. Peter Hanser-Strecker. At the time, director of Schott Music, he commissioned 70 solo piano pieces from composers worldwide as part of a ‘Petrushka Project’. The opening melody (Zum Geburtstag) is by Norbert und die Feiglinge, a German pop band from Hamburg that was active from 1988 to 1999. The 15-minute title piece Hände: Das Leben und die Liebe eines zärtlichen Geschlechts (‘Hands: The Life and Loves of the Gentler Sex’) from 2015 was the first composition Hesketh wrote specifically for Hammond. During live performances, she performs the piece in sync with the 1928 black-and-white film of the same name by Stella F. Simon and Miklos Blandy. The film uses human hands as characters in a dance-inspired narrative that explores female experience and representation. By drawing on experimental traditions from the international art, film and photography movements of the 1920s, Simon transforms a simple melodramatic love story into an avant-garde feminist short film.

In Hesketh’s adaptation, the shape and physicality of the hands are crucial to the musical score and the role of the pianist. Hammond sometimes uses innovative techniques, such as striking the strings with knitting needles and, for their clear, tinkling sound, a set of handbells. Hesketh aimed to create a soundscape in this piece that would reflect the bizarre atmosphere of the film. Even without the source film, Hände develops a compelling musical narrative, thanks to Hammond’s focused playing and the harmonious fusion of dancing hands and piano – a brilliant pas de deux. Kenneth Hesketh again explored alternative sounds and techniques in Uncoiling the River, a work for piano and orchestra commissioned by the BBC and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. It premiered in 2019 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Hesketh later reworked material from this piece into Chorales and Kolam (derivata). Here, background chords from Uncoiling the River are presented as chorales. The kolam, a geometric pattern from India and Southeast Asia symbolising good fortune, inspired a passage of rapid, repeated notes. Uncoiling the River mimicked this pattern with diatonic handbells arranged in a kolam pattern. For Chorales and Kolam, Hesketh transcribed it as a piano coda.

From life to death with two wreath layings. Lullaby of the Land Beyond is a memorial to composer and conductor Oliver Knussen (1952-2018), known for his appreciation of Stravinsky and his love of lullabies. Hesketh’s Lullaby takes its title from Stravinsky’s neoclassical ballet Le baiser de la fée (‘The Fairy’s Kiss’), a work based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Ice Maiden. The piece alludes to works by Knussen, including his fantasy opera Higgelty Piggelty Pop. In it, the E flat sings: “The birds are gone, my leaves are dead, and soon I will have nothing left but the empty frozen night”. Hesketh wrote the lullaby “as a little floral greeting left on the path to Castle Yonder”, probably as a reference to the dreamlike and fairytale atmosphere of Stravinsky’s ballet. The closing track is Excerpts from a Little Book of Totenbuch – a 17-minute tribute to Hesketh’s colleague and friend, composer Joseph Horovitz, who died in 2022. Hesketh sees the work as a kind of ‘Yahrtzeit’ candle, which in Judaism is lit on the anniversary of a death in memory of the deceased. In addition to the keyboard, Hammond also plays a Tibetan prayer bowl, plucks the strings of the instrument and uses the EBow (Electronic Bow), popular with guitarists (U2’s The Edge), to sustain notes indefinitely.

The work quotes Horovitz’s fifth string quartet from 1969 in fragments. However, the fragments used are often stripped of their original context and are not intended to be immediately noticeable as a quotation. In the liner notes, Clare Hammond refers to Sappho, the famous poetess from ancient Greece who lived on the island of Lesbos around 600 BC: “Like Sappho’s poetic shards, only incomplete fragments of words or sentences remain. For Hesketh, these quotations resonate because of the sense of absence that surrounds them”. From Michelangelo to modern piano: a journey through time and sound. ‘Hände – Music for Piano’ lasts seventy minutes. During these seventy minutes, Clare Hammond’s hands may not reach for the divine, but together with Kenneth Hesketh’s they rediscover the possibilities of the piano on an album where music, life, poetry and visual art merge masterfully.

As ever, Kenneth Hesketh issues musical challenges that are engrossing and ultimately rewarding. Composed between 2006 and 2023, this seventy-minute collection rivets the attention, whether the music is fiercely combative, glacially lyrical, intensely expressive or delicate, the latter quality worthy of Debussy or Ravel albeit in a style different to either.

In Poetic Conceits, one journeys through the six movements, playing continuously, willingly, eager to hear the next chapter in this page-turner of a set; like much of Birtwistle’s output, molten passions beneath the surface tend to rise upwards and spill-over like a volcano. The other substantial pieces – the fifteen-minute Hände and the slightly longer Auszüge aus einem kleinen Totenbuch – are equally vibrant and directional, both highly inventive, with Hände including Tibetan-suggestive chiming timbres in addition to those of the piano, all part of the mysteries, and dramatic eruptions, that this piece exudes; whereas Auszüge aus einem kleinen Totenbuch (Excerpts From a Small Book of the Dead) ripples and explores in memory of Joseph Horowitz. There are four shorter scores, including the touching Pour Henri (Dutilleux) and the pictorial Lullaby of the Land Beyond, in memory of Oliver Knussen, and more enigmatic than the inviting John Ireland- or Cyril Scott-like title might suggest. Once again Clare Hammond is a dedicated, fearless and charismatic champion of Hesketh’s music, well presented and dynamically recorded. Paladino Music PMR0137 is therefore enthusiastically recommended.