13 January 2012
In a happy collaboration with Oxford High School and St Helen and St Katharine, who hosted similar events, Abingdon’s pianists, under the aegis of the ever supportive parent body, the Music Society, welcomed the Greek pianist, Giorgos Konstantinou, for a Piano Masterclass on the second Friday of term.
As it turned out, Mr Konstantinou had studied in Budapest with the same teacher, Gyorgy Nador, as our own Lynette Stulting, so there was immediately some common ground and shared experience. And Professor Nador had, himself, presented a masterclass with our pupils at Abingdon only a couple of years earlier.
The event followed the tried and tested format of three 20 minute sessions in each half of the evening, separated by an interval. The masterclasses are exhausting for the visiting musician as he is essentially giving an open lesson to the pupil in front of an audience to whom he must also project and engage. From the start it became clear that this was not going to be a evening of lovely playing and gently poetic observations. No, this was a full-on encounter with each pupil - with repeated demands for them to understand the melodic line, to balance the accompaniment or figuration and, throughout, to find the meaning of the music and to discover a way of projecting this to the audience.
Joe Ereaut, concerto star of the recent Christmas Concerts in Grieg’s Piano Concerto, was the first to take to the Amey Theatre platform with the third movement of Ravel’s Sonatina. Joe responded with his customary intelligence to the demands of Professor Konstaninou as he urged the pupil to play into the keyboard and, taking his shoulder and pushing it whilst he played, showed him precisely what he meant! Sebastian Johns in Schumann’s Faschingswank aus Wien was the next soloist, showing a great command of this virtuosic piece and again responding to passionate persuasion to rethink the balancing of his hands. Alexander Foster was next in Chopin’s sublime Nocturne in B where Professor Konstantinou was impressed by the sheer musical intelligence that was on display.
After the interval, Hugh Cutting played Scriabin’s Prelude in Db, again showing great command and understanding of this work with its restless, agitated quality, quite different to the Chopin. Leon Wu played Liszt’s wonderful Liebestraum No 3 and responded very well to the teaching. Henry Binning concluded the masterclass with some distinguished playing in Prelude No 11 by the Hungarian composer, Rajna, a contemporary piece with plenty to work on.
Professor Konstaninou was full of admiration for the quality of playing that he had heard and the boys are to be congratulated on being both ready and enthusiastic to perform so early in term. This was a fantastic way to get the Lent Term music off the ground. The boys learned much and the audience was hugely entertained.
An amazing novelty item finished the concert. Since both the Kawai and Steinway grand pianos were together on the stage and tuned, Sebastian, Hugh, and Leon were joined by Daniel Tong for a performance of the Sonata for Eight Hands by Smetana, an exciting gallop of a piece which sent the audience happily into the cold night.
