"what the British pianist Clare Hammond has to say and play... fundamentally shakes our image of the early nineteenth century." — Jan Brachmann
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.