The solo pianist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934) was Clare Hammond, who grew up in Nottingham. Noted for her refinement and virtuosity, she brought considerable panache and expressive sweep to the piece. Every section was sharply characterised in a fluently unfolding narrative that struck an ideal balance between playfulness and elegance. Bravura passages were delivered effortlessly, but brilliance for its own sake was never part of this consummate performer’s considered and imaginative approach to the music. Anna-Maria Helsing and the BBC Concert Orchestra provided keenly responsive support, ensuring this beloved mainstay of the repertoire sounded fresh and compelling.

There was a delightful, brief encore from the soloist in the form of Cécile Chaminade’s Etude Op.35 No.5, Impromptu. Clare Hammond was alert to every shift in mood and shade of colour in this delectably mercurial miniature.

MEN'S WORLD UNDER SUSPICION OF PLAGIARISM

The music of women, black people and other marginalised people at the "Rarities of Piano Music” Festival in Husum is not only magnificent. It shakes our understanding of music history. "Rarities of Piano Music" in the castle outside Husum would be a harmless flea market for freaks and weirdos if they only offered us nice additions to the well-known repertoire. But this festival, curated with intelligence and taste by the pianist Peter Froundjian for 38 years, is anything but harmless. In almost every edition it makes sensitive corrections to the understanding of music history as it is cemented by academic teaching and the concert business. But what the British pianist Clare Hammond has to say and play goes beyond sensitive corrections. It fundamentally shakes our image of the early nineteenth century.

While outside the wind from a cold front makes the beech branches dance around the castle in Husum, the former widow's residence of the Danish crown, Hammond appears before her audience in the Knight's Hall in the evening and tells the completely unbelievable story of Hélène de Montgeroult. This French pianist and composer, born in 1764, was six years older than Ludwig van Beethoven. She married a marquis and sought military support to save the monarchy during the French Revolution. The couple were taken prisoner by the Austrians in 1793; her husband died in custody. She made her way to France alone, was arrested again, thrown into the Bastille and was to be guillotined because of her aristocratic origins.

NOT JUST ANECDOTAL VALUE

During the trial, Hammond says, she managed to get a grand piano brought into the courtroom. She improvised variations on the Marseillaise on it, which moved the court to tears. She was acquitted and in 1795 was appointed the first professor of piano at the newly founded conservatory in Paris - with a decent salary.

This story, as stirring as it may be, would have only anecdotal value were it not for the equally stirring compositional work of Montgeroult. From the 114 etudes of the “Cours complet pour l’enseignement du forte-piano”, Hammond first plays seven, then as an encore, number 26 in G major, all of which were written between 1788 and 1812 – between Beethoven’s eighteenth and forty-second years, and therefore mostly before Schubert, Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Chopin were born.

Then we hear how No. 62 in E flat major clearly anticipates the flow and broad singing line of Schubert’s G flat major Impromptu. We hear in No. 67 in B major the lyricism of Beethoven’s late sonatas op. 109 and 110, which had not yet been written; In the A major Etude No. 110 we hear John Field's G major Nocturne and in the middle section Chopin's piano bel canto; the stormy clatter of the G minor Etude No. 111 is so close to the tone of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words that one has to raise suspicions of plagiarism - against Mendelssohn. Other Etudes transport us into the world of Beethoven's Bagatelles op. 126, which were written about twelve years later.

FROUNDJIAN DOESN'T BELIEVE IN SPECIAL PROGRAMMES

There are three things that are shocking about this: firstly, we are witnessing the birth of the romantic piano piece in France during the lifetimes of Mozart and Haydn; secondly, long before Chopin, the etude was transformed from a manual training piece into a form of wordless poetry; thirdly, a woman is now at the forefront of music-historical innovation and originality and no longer in the slipstream of the male avant-garde. Our academic music historiography, including our German-centered understanding of romanticism, is therefore not based on knowledge but on ignorance, on the constant confirmation of established prejudices rather than on real research. And once again, it is the performers who are ahead of science.

Peter Froundjian loves programmes like the one by Hammond, which also plays music by Florence Price and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Both were black and proudly called their works "Fantaisie nègre" (Price) and "Negro Melodies" (Coleridge-Taylor) - terms that would be immediately criminalized by the political language police of our time. Froundjian is not a fan of special programmes with music by women, black people or Jews, as is done all over the country in the good will of doing something against discrimination or for dealing with guilt entanglements. "That just builds another ghetto and perpetuates exclusion," he explained in an interview with the F.A.Z.: "But it's about signalling acceptance and belonging. To do this, you have to incorporate this music into the programmes as a matter of course.” Hammond also played Nocturnes by Gabriel Fauré and Spanish impressions from “Iberia” by Isaac Albéniz this evening.

Froundjian says that when planning the “Rarities” he often works against his own preferences in order to allow for other things that surprise him. As in good antiquarian bookshops or reference libraries, the “Rarities” are not about looking for something, but about finding something. What is next to what you are actually looking for is often much more interesting. At the same time, he wants to keep attracting new pianists to Husum in order to spare his regular audience (85 subscribers with 200 seats) from getting tired.

Read original review in German here.

The main pleasure of the afternoon, however, was the concert by the English pianist Clare Hammond, who presented an unusual solo program, focusing on works by Hélène de Montgeroult and Cécile Chaminade.

Two years ago, Hammond dedicated an entire CD to de Montgeroult, who was born in 1764, which was honored with awards by the BBC and the British classical music magazine Gramophone. Hammond presented three of the Frenchwoman's varied etudes in her Berlin concert, which demonstrated pars pro toto the high level at which de Montgeroult composed. The harmonically interesting E-flat major Etude No. 62 and the urgent G minor piece No. 111 from the Cours complet pour l'enseignement du forte-piano are particularly worth playing more often in concert halls. The pianist gave a brief account of the dramatic life story of Hélène de Montgeroult, who allegedly escaped death by guillotine in 1793 only because of her piano interpretation of the Marseillaise and who two years later became the first female piano professor at the Paris Conservatory.

Like de Montgeroult, Cécile Chaminade, who was almost a hundred years younger than her, was completely forgotten for decades, along with her compositional work. Even if the late romantic tone of Chaminade's etudes seems outdated from the time when they were written, her solo piano pieces are well worth rediscovering as timelessly beautiful music and a challenge for ambitious pianists. Clare Hammond is by no means the only pioneer to champion Chaminade's work, which also includes sacred works and at least one opera. But her concert was a reminder that the majority of audiences have missed out on a great deal of good music simply because works by women have hardly been on concert programs for a long time.

Which does not mean that Clare Hammond foregoes the far more well-known “male” repertoire. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was one of the most popular piano sonatas ever on the programme. Have you heard it a thousand times? Maybe, but thanks to Hammond’s intimate, never pretentious interpretation, the beauty of the three movements was particularly touching. The last item on the programme of the one-hour concert in the Werner Otto Hall were three of Chopin’s Etudes op. 25, with the not-so-bitingly cold Winter Wind Etude No. 11 as the finale. And because the audience wanted to hear even more of Clare Hammond’s light-as-a-feather, precise and beautifully sounding playing, she presented one of her specialities as an encore: a piano etude by Unsuk Chin. She has studied the etudes in detail, which at first glance seem simple but are delightfully complicated. She gives tips on how best to work through them on the Internet and does not hide how complex and difficult she finds these “practice pieces” to be to play. Here too, Unsuk Chin’s etudes are worth playing and listening to. The audience at the Espresso concert thanked her for the rare experience with long-lasting applause.

ORIGINAL VERSION

Der Hauptgenuss des Nachmittags aber war das Konzert der englischen Pianistin Clare Hammond, die ein ungewöhnliches Solo-Programme präsentierte; im Zentrum standen Werke von Hélène de Montgeroult und Cécile Chaminade.

Der 1764 geborenen de Montgeroult hat Hammond vor zwei Jahren bereits eine ganze CD gewidmet, die von der BBC und dem britischen Klassik-Magazin Gramophone mit Auszeichnungen gewürdigt wurde. Von den abwechslungsreichen Etüden der Französin präsentierte Hammond in ihrem Berliner Konzert drei, die pars pro toto belegten, auf welch hohem Niveau de Montgeroult komponierte. Gerade die harmonisch interessante Es-Dur-Etüde Nr. 62 und das drängende g-Moll-Stück Nr. 111 aus dem Cours complet pour l’enseignement du forte-piano sind es wert, häufiger in Konzertsälen gespielt zu werden. Die dramatische Lebensgeschichte der Hélène de Montgeroult, die 1793 angeblich nur wegen ihrer Klavierinterpretation der Marseillaise dem Tod unter der Guillotine entging und zwei Jahre später die erste Klavierprofessorin am Pariser Konservatorium wurde, lieferte die Pianistin in aller Kürze mit.

Wie de Montgeroult wurde auch die fast hundert Jahre jüngere Cécile Chaminade mitsamt ihrem kompositorischen Werk für Jahrzehnte gründlich vergessen. Auch wenn der spätromantische Ton von Chaminades Etüden aus der Entstehungszeit gefallen wirkt: Als zeitlos schöne Musik und als Herausforderung für ambitionierte Pianisten haben ihre Soloklavierstücke eine Wiederentdeckung allemal verdient. Clare Hammond ist bei weitem nicht die einzige Pionierin, die sich für Chaminades Werk einsetzt, zu dem auch geistliche Werke und mindestens eine Oper gehören. Aber ihr Konzert rief erneut in Erinnerung, dass dem Großteil des Publikums bislang sehr viel gute Musik schlicht dadurch entgangen ist, dass Werke von Frauen lange Zeit kaum auf den Konzertprogrammen standen.

Was nicht bedeutet, dass Clare Hammond auf das wesentlich bekanntere “männliche” Repertoire verzichtet. Mit Beethovens Mondscheinsonate stand eine der populärsten Klaviersonaten überhaupt auf dem Programme. Hat man schon zigmal gehört? Mag sein, aber dank Hammonds inniger, in keinem Moment gespreizter Interpretation berührte die Schönheit des drei Sätze ganz besonders. Letzter Programmpunkt des gut einstündigen Konzerts im Werner-Otto-Saal waren drei der Etüden op. 25 von Chopin, mit der gar nicht mal so klirrend kalten Winterwind-Etüde Nr. 11 als Abschluss. Und weil das Publikum dann noch mehr von Clare Hammonds federleichtem, präzisem und klang schönem Spiel hören wollte, präsentierte sie als Zugabe eine ihrer Spezialitäten: eine Klavieretüde von Unsuk Chin. Deren auf den ersten Blick einfach wirkende, aber reizvoll vertrackte Etüden hat sie eingehend studiert, im Internet gibt sie Tipps, wie man sie sich am besten erarbeitet, und sie verschweigt nicht, als wie komplex und schwer zu spielen sie diese “Übungsstücke” erlebt. Auch hier gilt” Unsuk Chins Etüden sind es wert, gespielt und gehört zu werden. Das Publikum des Espresso-Konzerts dankte das seltene Erlebnis mit langanhaltendem Beifall.

Cheltenham’s Pittville Pump Room was the elegant setting for a judiciously chosen programme of piano music played by Clare Hammond on 13 July as part of the town’s annual music festival.

Clara Schumann’s Three Romances, Op.21 (1853) benefitted from Clare Hammond’s searching, freely expressive approach to her craft. There was an unforced depth of feeling to the opening Andante, with its flowing central episode bringing warmth as well as vitality. The touching central Allegretto deftly avoided sentimentality, thanks in part to the pianist’s crisply rhythmic articulation. Her persuasively brisk tempo for the outer portions of the final Agitato made a satisfying emotional contrast with the more introspective, slower middle passage. Revealing without point-making, this carefully considered interpretation subtly underlined the music’s scope and scale.

Two late Nocturnes by Fauré followed. No.12 in E minor was cogently paced and evocatively treated, with an acute sense of unease underlying the shadowy, sultry textures. The elliptical No.8 in D flat major made a rewarding pairing, its delicate theme precisely etched out from within the swirling semiquaver figuration.

New music has always played a key role in Clare Hammond’s repertoire and her recital included the world premiere of a work written especially for her and the Cheltenham Music Festival. Commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society, Sun Keting’s Us, the most fleeting of all (2024) was inspired by lines from the ninth of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies that welcome fleeting, unrepeatable moments of existence. Hence, the music is, in the composer’s own description, ‘a celebration of the ephemeral beauty of life and time’. Ideally suited to Clare Hammond’s naturally fluent, at times almost liquid, pianism, Sun Keting’s set of four intricately woven, toccata-like transcendental studies beguiled the listener with hypnotically recurring motifs and patterns. In this elegantly rhapsodic first performance, the filigree writing’s technical challenges and the expressive demands of creating and sustaining a precise mood were sublimated into a compelling reading of numinous intensity.

Closing the concert’s first half, Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata No.14 in C sharp minor, Op.27, No.2 sounded newly minted. The celebrated, veiled opening movement was approached with gently commanding poise and improvisatory freshness. After a gracefully executed, carefully weighted central Allegretto, the turbulent finale was delivered at white heat and marked by depth of feeling.

After the interval, Mozart’s Sonata in D major, K.311 received a vividly expressive performance, the central Allegretto’s radiant lyricism offset by the outer fast movements’ airy exuberance.
An engaging sequence of French music ensued. Book 1 of Debussy’s Images tempered absolute precision with delicacy and refinement. Cécile Chaminade was represented by an aptly spontaneous-sounding rendering of the ‘Impromptu’ from the composer’s Op.35 set of Étude de concerts and a playful, feather-light account of the Étude romantique, Op.132. Debussy’s spirited L'Isle Joyeuse made a bravura conclusion to the official programme.

After a well-deserved, warmly appreciative response from the capacity audience, Clare Hammond responded with an encore in the form of another world premiere. Written expressly for the pianist, Kenneth Hesketh’s delightfully silvery miniature Le Jongleur Joue, Les Cloches Sonnent (2024) featured the intermittent sounding of a desk bell by the pianist. Its mischievous high spirits and free-flowing discourse chimed perfectly with much of the rest of the programme and provided an ideal way to ring down the curtain on a recital of notable quality and variety.

Clare Hammond’s Nottingham recitals are always keenly anticipated, not only because she grew up in the city but also because her programmes are always so imaginatively planned and executed. On Thursday the music was all French – not just by the usual suspects but featuring rarities by neglected women composers too. 

She opened with three portraits by Mélanie Bonis of legendary women: Desdemona, Phoebe and Mélisande, music of great tenderness and jewel-like clarity, the subtle harmonies suggesting figures in a dream.   

The music of Germaine Tailleferre is better known, although not as much as it should be.  Hers is music of graceful individuality, her taste for the neo-classical evident in the Partita which Clare played, its movements harking back to the world of Bach but steeped in the rhythms and harmonies of the 20th century. 

At the recital’s heart was rather more familiar music. Clare is the ideal exponent of Ravel’s piano music.  Its complexities require a formidable technique – and Clare certainly has that. In fact, it was a joy to see her fingers at work in pieces which require some extraordinary digital gymnastics. The music is seductively sensuous, sometimes brilliant, sometimes darkly menacing, even managing to be both at once.  It is also scrupulously and masterfully crafted, requiring playing of the utmost precision to achieve the crystalline transparency through which his ideas shine.   

This was everywhere apparent in his exquisite Sonatine, which Clare played with limpid grace, and even more in the suite entitled Le Tombeau de Couperin. Written just after the end of World War 1, each of its six movements is dedicated to a comrade who had fallen in battle. It’s not gloomy music, however, Ravel maintaining that the dead are sad enough without his music adding to their woes. In Clare’s hands the opening Prélude bubbled blissfully along, the snappy rhythms of the Forlane suggested a cheerful insouciance, the Minuet was graceful and tender, the Rigaudon was the most joyful of dances – and the final Toccata was a dazzling display of pianistic brilliance. More than anything, Clare’s playing explored the tension between the suite’s surface charm and its subtly darker undercurrents. 

She brought the same sharp insight to her playing of Debussy. It’s easy to see why he objected to being called an impressionist composer. Whereas the artists achieved their effects through broad strokes quickly applied, Debussy’s music suggests spontaneity through the most painstaking precision. It is wonderfully evocative of visual phenomena, of landscapes, clouds, the sea, portraying people and nature in an ambiguous yet immediate reality.   

Clare stated that she thought the first of Debussy’s Images (‘Reflets dans l’Eau’) is the nearest music gets to capturing the colours, textures and atmosphere of Monet’s famous water lilies canvases. Her delicate, shimmering performance was entirely convincing. The same can be said of the four Préludes she performed, each one imbued with luminous precision. Her selection covered a wide range of inspiration, from the bells, dance and song of ‘Les Collines d’Anacapri’ to the antics of an American clown in ‘General Lavine – eccentric’.   

Clare used her musical intelligence to bring into vivid focus the full range of Debussy’s intimacy, wit, brilliance, mystery and unfailing originality.  Just as she had done with the rest of her programme, which also featured some richly mysterious Fauré and the delightful piece of Dutilleux which followed as encore.