Richard Ormrod received an MA in Musicology from King’s College, Cambridge in 1995. He was a post graduate student of Elisso Virsaladze at the Moscow State Conservatory and also studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the Aspen Music Festival in the USA, where he later served as Artist in Residence. At the age of eighteen he received a prize at the Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv and the following year was a semi-finalist of the Leeds International Piano Competition.

He is in great demand as a recitalist, chamber musician and concert soloist throughout Europe and the USA. In December 2000 he made his debut at the Barbican Centre, London, performing Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Subsequent engagements have included concerti with the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Northern Chamber Orchestra and performing in the USA with the Abilene Philharmonic, Southwest Michigan Symphony, New Hampshire, the Augusta Symphony and others.

In the past year Richard has undertaken a nine-city tour of the USA with the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and made his recital debut in Los Angeles. He is on the piano faculty at the Royal Welsh College of Music and is a piano lecturer at the University of Wales, Cardiff .

Leos Janácek – Sonata "1.X.1905"

Janácek’s only piano sonata can be said to have been composed under exceptional circumstances. Predating the great operas, it is nonetheless by no means a youthful work. Rather it is an intensely personal response to an event, the beating and killing of a student demonstrator on the streets of Brno, witnessed by the composer several years earlier.

The sonata is composed in two movements, the first entitled Presentiment and the second Death. There is no narrative here, no description of the event itself. The work concerns itself exclusively with the internal experience of the bystander, and that response is as if ossified by the passing of time. The “Presentiment” clearly does not engage in the gradual descent into violence, which took place at demonstration. Rather, it is presentiment of in general, a grandiose outpouring of emotional hindsight. And Death contains none of the violence implied in the sonata’s subtitle, Street Scene, but rather the cry of violated from beyond the grave. In this way Janácek evokes the death of one man to represent the deaths of many, expressing something permanent in life’s transience.

Franz Liszt – Sonata in b

Whilst often berated for excessive reliance on keyboard pyrotechnics Liszt’s B Minor Sonata has found universal recognition as one of the crowning achievements of 19th century piano repertoire. Cast in one vast movement the work owes much to the form of the tone poem, one of Liszt’s chief orchestral innovations, whilst the pianistic texture recalls Schubert’s Wanderer-Fantasie, of which he was a fervent admirer.

Although the work is continuous the shadow of a three-movement structure is always present. The exposition is like a first movement in both scale and shape, the development slow movement like in character, and the fugue and recapitulation clearly evoke a finale of huge proportions. In this manner Liszt succeeds in the task of creating a huge movement which remains nonetheless clear and comprehensible. Put crudely, the piece doesn’t seem to last for a long time.

Much has been said of the extra musical sources of inspiration in the music of Liszt, the influence of his literary, philosophical and religious interests, it is noteworthy that in this sonata he entirely avoids poetical allusion. It is as if he is striving to address the questions posed by that last great composers of piano sonatas, Beethoven, and seeks without recourse to nineteenth century fad or fashion, to find sincere answers of his own. It is a challenge to which he proved himself more than equal.

Interval

Frédéric Chopin

Polonaise no. 1 in c-sharp
Fantasie in f
Waltz in b minor op.69 no.2
Polonaise-Fantasie in A flat.

Chopin my not have invented the Nocturne, or been then pioneering writer of waltzes but of the Polonaise he may rightly be considered the first serious composer. This stepped dance, a formal ballroom piece, may seem ill adapted for the free expressive poetic world of the Polish composer, and yet in these works it will be seen that for Chopin even a formal occasion could be an occasion for fantasy.

The C# Minor Polonaise introduces the form as understood by Chopin. It is a clear, proud, dignified rendition. In the Fantasie in F minor the more complex emotional world of the composers later years is revealed. Here the flighty, almost frenetic writing looks forward even to that great admirer of Chopin, Alexander Scriabin. Despite the title the work is concise, great freedom of invention being contained in a rigorous structural framework. Yet neither of these works can prepare the imagination for Chopin’s extraordinary fusion of the two in the beautiful Polonaise-Fantasie. Here all the rigour is gone. Where the music was painted oils, here the polonaise remains only as a line drawing. All is fantasy, apparently without structure and yet not a drop is spilt as the positively minimal material is developed in every conceivable direction, bent to serve every whim and fancy of this consummate poet.

B.B.