TP2039091 (1811-1886) BEN BEN SCHOEMAN SCHOEMAN FRANZ LISZT Après une Lecture du Dante: 19:04 1 Vallée d’Obermann Fantasia quasi Sonata (Années de Pèlerinage, Second year, Italy, S.161) 15:18 Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este 2 (Années de Pèlerinage, Endler Hall, First year, Switzerland, S.160) South Africa 9:23 Sonata in B minor, S.178 3 LISZT Recorded at: (Années de Pèlerinage,: 77:05 Third year, S.163) Total Luis Magalhães 33:18 on DecemberBen Schoeman18 - 21, 2010 (piano)Gerhard Roux 4 Stellenbosch University Artists: Gerhard Roux Produced by: W. Heuer Musikhaus Tim Lengfeld Balance engineer: Glitz-design Studio 1B Piano tuner: Justin Versfeld, Leon van Zyl Edited and Mixed Masteredby: by: Graphic Design:Photography: 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist for Music Assistants: Bösendorfer 280 concert piano BBenen SSchoeman.inddchoeman.indd SpreadSpread 1 ofof 6 - PPages(12,ages(12, 1)1) 111/03/281/03/28 12:2912:29 Switzerland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. Born into a musical family, Ben Schoeman studied the piano from a young age under the guidance of Joseph LISZT Stanford in Pretoria. After winning all the national music competitions in South Africa he moved to Italy, where he studied with Michel Dalberto, Louis Lortie and Boris Petrushansky at the Accademia His performance Pianistica ‘Incontri col Maestro’ in Imola. of Brahms’ Second There he obtained a Master Concert Piano Concerto with Diploma together with a MMus Degree the Cape Philharmonic in Performing Arts (cum laude) from the Orchestra was described as University of Pretoria. He currently lives “powerful…with enormous musical in London, where he is pursuing doctoral insight and pianistic command” studies at the Guildhall School of Music (Die Burger). and Drama and London City University Ben Schoeman has a lively international under the supervision of Ronan O’Hora performing career. He has played in and Christopher Wiley. prestigious concert halls such as the In 2008 he received the Laureate Award from Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall the University of Pretoria Alumni Association in London, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the for his achievements as well as his contribution Gulbenkian Auditorium in Lisbon and the to music in South Africa. Salon Music and Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest. He UNISA recently launched his DVD-recording of has performed in solo- and chamber music concertos by Mozart and Tchaikovsky. recitals at various international festivals in This debut solo album under the TwoPianists the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Italy, label is sponsored by Standard Bank. BBenen SSchoeman.inddchoeman.indd SpreadSpread 2 ofof 6 - PPages(2,ages(2, 11)11) 111/03/281/03/28 12:3012:30 Ben Schoeman is regarded as one of South During the mid-nineteenth century, the century. The fi gures behind this avant-garde Africa’s foremost pianists. He has won major development of Western art music came envisioned a new music that was part of prizes, including the coveted gold medal and to be shaped by two opposing but equally human experience, as an art amongst the fi rst prize in the Royal Over-Seas League infl uential schools of thought. On the arts. Music was seen as the unifying art par Music Competition in London (2009) and one hand, the tradition of Beethoven was excellence, not only bringing the various art the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for continued, with stress laid on the idea forms together, as in Wagner’s music-dramas Music (2011). In 2008 he became the fi rst of music as an end unto itself, an art where theatre, prose, music and visual art South African to win the fi rst grand prize in transcending the time-bound limitations of were combined, but also in bringing into art the 11th UNISA Vodacom International Piano day-to-day existence. This came to be seen as a refl ection of the sufferings and joys of the Competition in Pretoria. the more artistically conservative viewpoint, human spirit. A regular performer on the main stages of where musical pieces were seen in abstract his home country, Ben has played a wide terms and independent of those who created After a lecture by critic Karl Franz Brendel at range of concertos with the Johannesburg, them: ‘form moving through time’, as Eduard an 1859 gathering of composers and critics in KwaZulu-Natal and Cape Philharmonic Hanslick so famously put it. Traditional formal Leipzig, this avant-garde movement became Orchestras. His recent nationwide genres, such as the symphony, the concerto, known as the New German School. Despite tour received rave reviews and he and the solo sonata and other chamber works, the name, the inspirational fathers of the was praised for his “dazzling were given precedence in the repertoire. This New German School were a cosmopolitan virtuosity” (Pretoria News) ‘art for art’s sake’ standpoint was perhaps bunch: the French Berlioz, the German as well as his “magical embodied most aptly by the thematic Wagner, and the Hungarian Liszt. Also, music-making” cohesiveness and formal intricacies whether they really constituted a unifi ed (Classic Feel of the non-programmatic music school of thought is a bit of a moot point. Magazine). of Johannes Brahms. On the However, in the eyes of critics and historians, other hand, a new and it is a general unifying ethos that renders this daring avant-garde collection of composers a ‘school’. This ethos movement arose manifested itself in the fundamental nature of around the the music that was composed. With Wagner, middle we saw the creation of music dramas, grand of the mythological narratives set to music. Berlioz, BBenen SSchoeman.inddchoeman.indd SpreadSpread 3 ofof 6 - PPages(10,ages(10, 3)3) 111/03/281/03/28 12:3012:30 with his Symphonie Fantastique and Harold the most thematically unifi ed, formalistic works piece even more impressive is that the the piece’. After being en Italie, introduced to music the idea of to ever have been composed by a Romantic majority of the material for the entire work subjected to the scrutiny the program symphony, a multi-movement pen: the B minor Piano Sonata. is derived from only fi ve core thematic of Peter Raabe, musical interpretation of literature or The three suites of piano pieces rallied elements, which Liszt was able to masterfully better known for his role at LISZT autobiography. And with Liszt, we fi nd a beneath the banner Années de Pèlerinage, transform and weave into a piece of epic the head of the National Socialist plethora of programmatic pieces, not only or ‘Years of Pilgrimage’, were Liszt’s musical proportions. If there ever was an example of Reichsmusikkammer than his for piano but also for orchestra, such as the homage to his wanderings across Europe Liszt’s ‘thematic metamorphosis’ technique, musicological acumen, the unsubstantiated thirteen orchestral tone poems. These latter between 1835 and 1839. The fi rst of these this is it. idea that the Sonata portrays the Faust works included Les Préludes and Orpheus, suites, depicting aspects of his travels in As a result of this incredible feat of musical legend was born. Speculation in program with Liszt’s aim being to establish a corpus Switzerland, was composed between 1848 planning, the Piano Sonata has easily notes and in popular biographical sketches of single movement orchestral pieces viewed and 1854, with publication in following in become one of the most analysed of Liszt’s have also resulted in the ever-predictable as serious artworks in their own right. 1855. The original source of much of the works, if not one of the most analysed works autobiographical program being thrust on material for this fi rst set of pieces was an in the entire Romantic canon. The result the Sonata, as well as a plethora of religious *** earlier work, Album d’un voyageur, written of this frenzied analysis has at times been interpretations. But no comment on the between 1835 and 1836 (published 1842). quizzical. Today, we understand more than program speaks more loudly than Liszt’s The centrality of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) The other two volumes of Pilgrimage suites ever about the way human brains pick apart silence on the matter. Perhaps it is best then to the New German School is undeniable. (published 1858 and 1883 respectively) were complex auditory patterns such as music. that we simply accept the mighty B minor Furthermore, the eminence of Liszt’s pupils, inspired by Liszt’s visits to Italy. This period It is certain that very few details of the Sonata not as something to be explained such as Carl Tausig and Hans von Bülow, of extensive travel was not just the result architectural master-plan of such a large-scale against the backdrop of Liszt’s life, but rather have served to make his role as a leading of a yearning for cultural exploration. Liszt work can be discerned by the listener without as another part of the paradoxical puzzle representative of the avant-garde all the also used this time to promote his career prior theoretical analysis. Nonetheless, that is musical Romanticism. And, regardless more apparent. Yet in his output, Liszt, like as a pianist, which later would explode into critics continue to pick apart the Sonata’s of our attempts to categorise the Sonata, to so many other Romanticists, is a composer one of the most remarkable in the history constituent parts, explaining obscure and frame it in terms of the New German School of paradoxes. On this disc, for instance, we of Western music. Furthermore, eloping with questionable relationships in ways that are or formalism or speculative narratives, it fi nd not only programmatic pieces we would his lover, the Countess Marie d’Agoult, was largely irrelevant to the listener’s experience.