FESTIVALS

HURRAHFOR HUSUMThe Schloss vor Husum Rarities ofPiano Music Festival has become anannual haven for pianophiles, asBryce Morrison discovers

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QUOTING ONE'S OWN WORDScan be self-indulgent, but for theSchloss vor Husum Rarities of

Piano Music Festival, I am going to make anecessary exception. As I wrote elsewhere,

'What would we do without Husum?' Started

25 years ago and inspired and guided byPeter Froundjian, it has evolved and erased all

early misgivings to become a unique musicalparadise for those wishing to explore beyondthe safe and obvious, reminding us that thepiano repertoire is immense, too much of it

unknown and unplayed. Of course, there ismuch that deserves obscurity, though evenmusic as banal as, say, Kabalevsky's FoürthPiano Concerto deserves a hearing, if onlyfor amusement value. But it is when youthink of the sneering dismissal of composerssuch as Faure, Chabrier, Alkan, Balakirev andSzymanowski that the blood Starts to boiland something needs to be done.

Having been a College teacher for a largepart of my life, I have been dismayed atthe ignorance of students, particularlythose in the leading schools of music. Tohear a so-called postgraduale Student ata so-called 'centre of excellence' ask of

the Chopin Mazurkas, 'They're dances,arent they?' takes one into a dark place.

' tecall a head of the strings departmentat the Royal College of Music exclaimingln tage at a pupil whose only knowledge

Mozart came from a box of MozartKochen. I myself heard the infamous

Brahms 'cannot exult', while for Alfred

Brendel, Grieg 'is for chamber maids'. How

grateful one is for Sviatoslav Richter, whocomplemented his Bach, Beethoven andBrahms with late Liszt, Hindemith andSzymanowski. Glenn Gould's insistence,on the other hand, that interest in rareRomantic music was no more than a

passing fad has been triumphantly erased

by the popularity of Hyperion's magnificentRomantic Piano Concerto series. Prejudice,

too, against transcriptions (notably thoseby Liszt and Busoni) now seems Httlemore than a lost cause. And similarly, theinfluence of 'Schnabelites' (disciples of a

great pianist who turned his ideas into

a rigid ideology) has mercifully waned.Schnabel's belief that great music is alwaysbetter than it can be played or his teasing

irony ('I am the only pianist who plays a

The festival is basedat the picturesqueHusum Castle

Fanny Waterman telling a luckless Student

not to play enterprising repertoire (in thiscase Schumann's B minor Allegro andLiszt's Third Mephisto Waltz) 'because it'snot good music'.

Great artists - whethercomposers or performers, Creators

or re-creators - are not always

helpful in making a case for particularbyways of the piano repertoire. ForMessiaen, Saint-Saens was 'tres inutile,'

while for Nadia Boulanger, Rachmaninovwas 'tres vulgaire'. Hugo Wolf claimed

second half of a programme as boring asthe first') have now been tempered with a

greater sense of ränge and possibility.

DISCUSSION AT THE 2014festival ranged far and wide, withdebates about the various merits

of past pianists such as Arrau, Giesekingand Horowitz continuing far into thenight (no chatter about Lang Lang atHusum!). In other words, Husum is thereal thing, a festival with a meaningfulrather than superficial difference. Aboveall, it gives pianists a chance to explore >

March/April 2015 International Piano 27

FESTIVALS

Itiswhen youthinkofthe sneeringdismissalof composers such asFaure, Chabrier, Alkan,

Balakirev andSzymanowski that theblood Starts to boiland something needsto be done

(Hamish Milne in Reubke, JonathanPlowright in Bach-Rummel). Let off the

lead, so to speak, most pianists long todabble in lesser-celebrated repertoire.

The chief record companies have hardlyhelped the cause of neglected music. Ican recall asking Cecile Ousset why she

had not placed her masterly Performanceof the Dutilleux Sonata on disc, andthe answer - 'it's not commercial' - was

all too predictable. Appealing to thelowest common denominator, the record

companies have become 'hoist with theirown petard' and it is little wonder thatdisillusionment and falling sales havequickly set in.

All these considerations are at theheart of Husum, of its foundation and

philosophy, of its delight in openingrather than closing doors. For the guestor visitor, everything is made as inviting

and hospitable as possible. My own talkon the brilliant Australian pianist Eiken

Joyce was complemented by a superbglass-case exhibition of my own collection

of photographs and letters. Everythingis done to make the occasion vivid andworthwhile. All young artists shouldvisit Husum and, of course, listen to the

accompanying annual CDs on Danacord,which include selections of each year's

outstanding Performances. I can guarantee

that they will have their vision enrichedand enlarged. They will surely leave freeto think again, to consider and hopefully

have many prejudices removed. }

The next instalment of the Schloss vor HusumRarities of Piano Music Festival takes placeon 21-29 August and features Florian Ublig,

Jonathan Plowright and Xiayin Wang,among others

HUSUM SAMPLERWe have four free tracks todownload from the CD of the2013 Schloss vor Husum Festival,courtesy of Danacord Records:www.rhinegold.co.uk/ipdownload.Digital readers click here forinstant access.

Track 1: Grieg - Dance fromJolster, Op 17 No 5. HävardGimse (pf)Track 2: Christian Sinding -Impromptu, Op 31 No 4.Hävard Gimse (pf)Track 3: Aleksander Michalowski- Mazurka in C sharp minor.Op 17. Ludmil Angelov (pf)

t Track 4: Korngold - Fairy TalePictures, Op 3 No 7, The FairyTale's Epilogue. Artur Pizarro (pf)

March/April 2015 International Piano

The 2014 ipstalment featuredJoseph Moog performingScharwenka's Second Sonata