27 October 2008

MARK BEBBINGTON piano

The critical plaudits which have greeted Mark Bebbington's performances and recordings have singled him out as a young British pianist of the rarest refinement and maturity. Over recent seasons Mark has toured throughout Europe and the Far East and North Africa.He has appeared with the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia orchestras and London Mozart Players, at all the major London concert halls and at Birmingham's Symphony Hall, and he has featured on BBC Television and Radio France.

Mark is also establishing a reputation as a refined and elegant exponent of French music and over recent years he has given South Bank and Paris recitals with special emphasis on French 19th & 20th century pianistic traditions.

Increasingly recognised as a champion of British music, Mark has recorded for SOMM ''New Horizons'' label.  His most recent CD, of Elgar's First Symphony transcribed for solo piano by Sigfrid Karg-Elert coupled with Alan Bush's youthful Sonata Op 2, attracted a 5 star rating in BBC Music Magazine. An earlier disc - music by Constant Lambert and Malcolm Arnold - was Editor's Choice in Gramophone magazine. Both these CDs are initial releases in an ongoing series. The first volume of three CDs devoted to Frank Bridge, has become BBC Music Magazine's 'Benchmark Bridge' and was Instrumental Choice 5 star in 2006. His CD of Ivor Gurney has earned him a maximum 3 star rating in the current Penguin Guide to Classical CDs.

Programme

Ivor Gurney     Sehnsucht (1909); The Sea (1908); Prelude No 4 (1919)

Frank Bridge    Suite: The Hour Glass (1920)

Howard Ferguson    Sonata in F minor Op 8 (1940)

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco   Neapolitan Rhapsody Piedigrotta (1924)

Chopin     Nocturne in F major Op 15 No 1

Liszt/Verdi     Rigoletto: paraphrase de concert

Ivor Gurney was born in Gloucester. He experienced action in World War One that seems to have exacerbated existing mental instability. Yet this selection of his music, which straddles that epic conflict, displays little by way of change of idiom, signs of irrationality, or any lasting influences from being gassed and shell-shocked. In reality, though, Gurney was institutionalised in 1922 and remained so until his death.

Frank Bridge’s The Hour Glass suite was written in 1919/20. The pieces have the flavour of Debussy and Ravel. They evoke a deeper level of response than his lighter, salon pieces, not least in the rapt contemplation of Dusk, with its discreet decoration of a hauntingly repetitive, chant-like melody. The Dew Fairy is a little gem, a virtuoso arpeggio-study of the utmost delicacy with a piping melody on top. And The Midnight Tide, a resonant, sonorous study with an epic sweep and surge, perhaps traces its ancestry back to Debussy’s Sunken Cathedral.

Howard Ferguson hailed from Belfast. His Piano Sonata, first played in 1940 by Myra Hess, is a work of substance, its three movements deeply expressed, turbulent and epic, a big, serious piece in which nothing frivolous or fragrant intrudes into an outpouring of anguish – yet without bombast, obviousness or selfishness.

Florence-born Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a prolific film- and guitar-music composer. His ’film’ pupils having included Henry Mancini, André Previn and John Williams.  His piano works are colourful, rhythmic and languorous. The music is communicative, melodic and appealing, variegated and emotionally wide-ranging especially the exuberance and nocturnal colours of Piedigrotta. This, according to Mark Bebbington is ‘is a real virtuoso 'tour de force' and has gone down a bomb wherever I play it – a riot of Neapolitan colour’.

After that the Chopin Nocturne will serve as a calm interlude before the concert ends with Liszt’s tour de force paraphrase on themes from Verdi’s Rigoletto, a sure-fire crowd rouser guaranteed to bring the house down!

For more information, see www.markbebbington.co.uk, which contains some excellent reviews.