Stroking the keys of joy and tragedy
Public presentation WHO: Martin Roscoe plays Beethoven.Where and when: WEL Academy of Playacting Humanities, University of Waikato, tomorrow 7.30pm; Auckland Museum, Sat 8pm.English pianist Mary Martin Roscoe is a veteran soldier of the concert circuit. "It's a long road to New Seeland," he says with a hearty laughter when we come together to sing about this weekend's all-Beethoven concerts in Hamilton and Auckland.Inevitably, the main psychic trauma for any travel pianist is the quality of the instrument that awaits."I played a concert at the Brits Embassy in Czech capital," he remembers. "The invited audience included a portion of Czech musicians and the American English ambassador. I flew in, had one hr to practise and establish it was single of the worst pianos that I have ever had to play."However, Prag pales alongside one of Roscoe's experiences game in England - stepping on to a Blackpool stage to rehearse the Brahms Irregular Pianissimo Concerto, he launch the pianissimo pedals were disconnected from the pawn.
"Only, for whole this," he muses, "in that location is as well something quite exciting about the different colours and sounds that various instruments let, providing the bASIC thing kit and boodle."Roscoe has gained an international reputation for his many recordings, frequently of comparatively cloud composers, including the finish piano whole kit and caboodle of Szymanowski.In concert, though, he is best known for more traditional repertoire. Hamilton and Auckland will try Beethoven's Pathetique and Waldstein Sonatas, the lesser-known Piece of music 14 no 1 and the great A flat Sonata of Piece of music 110.For Roscoe, Beethoven's 32 Sonatas ar unity of the "greatest testaments" for the piano player."It's the humanity of the works that shines through and through. Ludwig van Beethoven has the to the highest degree wide-ranging emotional dyad. He is one of the few great composers world Health Organization can give us loudness, calamity and warmth as well as pleasure and humour. Non many composers tin sustain a whole evening of forte-piano music but Beethoven is one of them."I surprise him by quoting Busoni world Health Organization claimed that Beethoven introduced bad temper into music. "He is dead right," Roscoe laughs. "And that's not a criticism."We verbalize specific sonatas. He worries not that the slow up movement of the Pathetique is about to a fault tuneful for its own commodity, having been rifled by Billy goat Joel on the vocal This Night and turned into a sentimental lay."It remains i of Beethoven's rattling greatest melodies, peculiarly set in that warm up florida key of A flat major after the turbulency of the Sonata's start movement."If the Pathetique delivers play and the Waldstein has a tremendous get-up-and-go, then the less familiar Musical composition 14 no 1 is "peaceful, igniter and airier and deserves to be heard far more often".Last twelvemonth, Michael Houstoun gave us an evening of transcendent music-making when he played Beethoven's close trine Sonatas in recital.Roscoe likens apiece of these pieces to a work of philosophy, putt forrader a convincing controversy that the Opus 110, which he will be giving us, is the finest."There's that pastorale, Arcadian low movement, the ridiculous scherzo with its accents and about banal common people tonal pattern and then this incredible operatic dramatic event in the adagio with its recitative and sorrowful vocal, about plumbing system the depths of despair. And Beethoven's answer to that is to function the cerebral form of the fugue to experience him come out of it."When you capture to the end, the elation is almost unbearable."Piano recitals are far from an everyday trade good on our cultural scene, and the chance to hear a top-notch international artist playing roughly of the greatest plant ever so written for his musical instrument, rarer still.With Saturday's Museum concert sold come out, Aucklanders power well deal a trip south on Fri to enjoy Roscoe in the superb acoustics of Waikato University's WEL Honorary society of Performing Art.
TLC
