How I recorded one of the most challenging piano piece by memory.
(Shedding light on how I did it and what my thoughts are).
Each time as it comes to my recording of Brian Ferneyhough’s “Lemma-Icon-Epigram” and my successful performance of it in public I get asked about how I did it.
Indeed, as I at the first time came across the horrifying looking score of this work in the library of our music university and flipped through its first couple of pages I concluded that no one in the sane state of mind would agree to learn this and put the score back on its spot.
In the summer holidays of 2020, however, I decided to give it a try.
Of course it was not a piece of cake. On one of the first steps I turned with advice to my previous professor, well-known specialist in the field of modern music, whose advice was to forget about the Ferneyhough’s work because it had no sense and that even if I would spend a huge amount of time to master it, I would never find listeners who would be interested in this purely mathematical construction.
So I learned the entire piece myself. Of course doubts paid visits to my mind but I persevered by more and more seeing much music in what for the vast majority of people was just highly-convoluting nonsense.
In the autumn semester 2020 I brought Ferneyhough to a piano lesson with my professor. His feedback was that he was more than impressed by the work I had done but he could not teach me anything about that piece and would rather never listen to it again.
So after a couple of months when I told him about my plan to record Ferneyhough as well as Wolfgang Rihm's fifth Klavierstück in the beginning of the next spring semester starting in April, he, as can be expected, only expressed encouragement accentuating the fact that I could deal with all this music on my own, without his help whatsoever.
The preparation process turned out to be really tough. Having forgotten the piece due to not playing and practicing it at all for several months, I had to again revive its image in my head. And on top of that I had also to prepare Wolfgang Rihm’s piece that was also a monster in its own way.
Luckily one of the teachers from my university as well as one of the students expressed interest in listening to my playing of both works some days before the recording and it was a very nice practice to perform these both pieces completely by memory in front of someone.
The result of the recording process you may see and listen here:
• My thoughts on how to approach such a sophisticatedly noted music
Well, the question is already sort of the answer wrapped in itself. When you see such a complex text in front of you and realise that you would never reach the level of a computer to match all the polyrhythmic figures and huge spectrums of dynamics it comprises, you are then indeed confronting the question about how you should deal with it. The score on itself is already a self-sufficient painting. What would be YOUR interpretation of it, your key to decipher it?
One of the first steps in the learning process should naturally be an acquaintance with the composer's general stylistics and his esthetic views on music. In the case with the given piece it is unfortunate that Ferneyhough's writings and interviews can not be of a big help. He simply does not listen to his own music, that's it. But he points out that once he finishes the composition, it lives its own life. So... feel free to find your own key.
In the case with me I found a couple of prominent patterns in the music material and built my interpretation around it. It is also a curious detail, do not know whether it was an accident or the composer's intention, that this work that at first sight appears an epitome of musical serialism contains a couple of undisguised examples of tonality.
I'm inviting you all to listen to my video-recording and please let me know your opinion upon my interpretation of this unique pearl of contemporary music.
What coupled you to plan this piece? What was the motivation to do so? Just to learn it by without the sheet music must have been mine blowing.