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Programme notes (by Julian Jacobson) and pianist biographies

2.0 pm Domonkos Csabay : Sonata in F minor Op 2 no 1
Allegro — Adagio — Menuetto: Allegretto — Prestissimo

The very first of Beethoven's mighty canon of 32 opus-numbered piano sonatas makes up for its modest dimensions with forceful and original material, some of it reworked from his teenage piano quartets but tightened up in the process. Beethoven must have been perfectly aware that his opening theme is a literal quote of the finale of Mozart's great G minor Symphony, but Beethoven shapes his sky-rocketing arpeggio to very different ends an d his restless truculence is far from Mozart's Olympian majesty. The sweet,cosy Andante, with its cooing appoggiaturas, gives little hint of the depths of Beethoven's later slow movements: could it be a homage to his mother who had passed away just a few years before Beethoven started working on the sonatas? In any case Beethoven returns to characteristic intransigence in the Menuetto, though with a ‘cosy' major key trio with some rather primitive imitation between the hands. The Prestissimo finale is a whirlwind of triplets, ending in an uncompromising F minor with a descending arpeggio to square the circle with the sonata's opening theme.

Domonkos Csabay is a Hungarian pianist who was born in Budapest and studied at the Liszt Academy. He has been based in the UK since 2015. He has given solo performances in many countries, while also performing widely as a chamber musician and accompanist. He has played at many important concert venues such as Town Hall and Symphony Hall in Birmingham or Queen Elizabeth Hall and Milton Court in London, and collaborated with renowned artists and companies such as the CBSO, Orchestra of the Swan or Longborough Festival Opera. He won the Birmingham International Piano Competition in 2016. After finishing his piano studies with Pascal Nemirovski and John Thwaites at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, he obtainedr an Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in répétiteurship, and was selected to become an accompanist at Samling Institute for Young Artists. He made his debut on BBC Radio 3 playing Beethoven. His debut CD is recorded and to be issued by the label Naxos in 2021. Domonkos is currently based in London, where he holds a position as accompanist fellow at the Royal College of Music.

2.25 pm Daniel Lebhardt : Sonata in A major Op 2 no 2
Allegro vivace — Largo appassionato — Scherzo: Allegretto. Minore — Rondo: Graziozo

The second sonata of the set is perhaps the most subtly Haydnesque, though no experienced listener would mistake it for Haydn for more than a few bars. Nevertheless the wit and fire of the first movement, the elegance of the Scherzo and the grace of the Rondo finale - apart from its brusque, somewhat ill-tempered minor key central episode - do recall Beethoven’s dedicatee and great teacher, even if he claimed to have learnt nothing from him. The first movement sustains a mood of cheerful melodiousness and free-ranging harmonic daring. Indeed it has been pointed out that the rising sequential passage modulates far more freely than one would normally expect so early in the movement. Beethoven’s passage is blown away by a boisterous passage in fast sextuplets, fingered by Beethoven in an extraordinary way which is difficult enough on the old keyboard instruments and all but impossible on a modern piano, so that one suspects a parodistic intent from that ‘daring young man on the flying trapeze’. Beethoven follows this with a slow movement, in the subdominant key of D, of great power and almost Handelian grandeur. The texture of the opening theme is remarkable, a solemn chorale-like theme supported by a quasi-pizzicato bass. Returning to A major for the remaining two movements, Beethoven follows his kittenish Scherzo, with its stormier 'minore' Trio, with a Rondo finale of ample proportions. The main theme, a fast rising arpeggio followed by a huge descending interval of an octave and a sixth, must have seemed original to the point of eccentricity in 1795. The third, minor-key section shows that he was not afraid of a bit of crudeness when it suited him. The substantial coda hints at more serious matters before the sonata ends quietly and with exquisite punctuality.

Daniel Lebhardt won 1st Prize at the Young Concert Artists International auditions in Paris and New York. A year later he was invited to record music by Bartók for Decca and in 2016 won the Most Promising Pianist prize at the Sydney International Competition.The 2019/20 season saw Daniel make his Hallé Orchestra debut performing Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5, a work he also performed at his Barbican and Symphony Hall Birmingham concerto debuts. In recital he has debuted at the Lucerne International Festival and in Dublin and Kiev.Last season Daniel gave debut recitals at the Aldeburgh, and Tallinn International Festivals, and returned to Wigmore Hall and Merkin Concert Hall in New York. Other highlights included a return to Paris for a recital at L'Eglise Saint Germain as part of the Week-end à l'Est Festival, and Mozart's Concerto No. 21 at the Royal Festival Hall. Born in Hungary, Daniel studied at the Franz Liszt Academy with István Gulyás and Gyöngyi Keveházi and at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with Pascal Nemirovski. He was selected by Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) in 2015 and is currently based in Birmingham.

2.55 pm Edward Leung : Sonata in C major Op 2 no 3
Allegro con brio — Adagio — Scherzo: Allegro — Allegro assai

As with some of Mozart’s sets, the last of Beethoven’s first set of piano sonatas is on the grandest scale and contains concertante elements, with a cadenza-like passage in the first movement’s coda and some distinctly orchestral writing. Beethoven seems intent on displaying his own pianistic prowess, and we remember more in this sonata than in the first two that his fame at this time was as a virtuoso pianist and improviser, rather than as a composer. At the outset Beethoven presents the pianist with some tricky double-thirds, all the harder for being in ‘piano’ rather than ‘forte’. As in the second sonata, the second subject begins in the minor and modulates widely before finding its way to the dominant major. The development, with its fearless if slightly empty virtuosity, reminds us that Beethoven was the pianisticgrandfather, through his pupil Carl Czerny, of Liszt. The slow movement, in the unusual key of E major is touching in its emotional sincerity and gives more than a hint of the greatness Beethoven would achieve in his mature slow movements. Probably the finest movement is the Scherzo , terse, exhilarating and ingeniously imitative in its texture. Here one feels Beethoven already as the master symphonist. The stormy, minor key Trio leads straight back to the Scherzo, innovatively opening up the classical structure. The playful 6/8 Finale makes great sport with fast rising three-part staccato chords in the right hand, with calmer subsidiary material. The Sonata as a whole makes a fine effect and one should celebrate this vigorous product of Beethoven’s youth for its high spirits and pianistic daring

Lauded as one of '16 Incredibly Impressive Students at Princeton University' by  Business Insider , American pianist Edward Leung has performed in concert halls across North America, Europe, and Asia. Highlights of the current season include concerto performances with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra of the Swan; debuts at the Wigmore Hall and Laieszhalle in Hamburg; recitals in London, Winchester, Wiltshire, Ulverston, and Wye Valley, and a debut commercial recording with violinist Usha Kapoor for Resonus Classics. A 2019 – 2020 Live Music Now artist, he has swept all the major prizes at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, including the Piano Prize, Donohoe Gold Medal, Andrew Downes Performance Prize, Delia Hall Accompaniment Prize, Herbert Lumby Prize, and Sheila and Colina Hodge Memorial Prize. After receiving a Master of Music from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, he continues his studies in the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma programme with Pascal Nemirovski. He is gratefully supported by the Keyboard Charitable Trust.

3.30 Martin Cousin Sonata in E flat major Op 7
Allegro molte e con brio — Largo, con gran espressione —Allegro — Rondo: Poco allegretto e grazioso

This magnificent early masterpiece has somehow never received its full share of attention: yet it has everything - power, virtuosity (sometimes one senses Liszt just over the horizon), strikingly original melodic material and one of Beethoven’s most heartfelt slow movements. Taking some 30 minutes to perform, it is also one of his most generous sonatas; only the Hammerklavier is longer. Sometimes called ‘Grand Sonata’ , it was the first (apart from the little duet sonata Op.6) to be published on its own, not as part of a set - further evidence of its stature in Beethoven’s own mind. If, as Blake says, energy is eternal delight, then Beethoven’s opening movement must be one of the most delightful ever composed. There are a few crudenesses in the part-writing such as would never be found in Mozart and which later editors have ‘corrected’ in various ways: nowadays we can surely take early Beethoven ‘warts and all’ for the powerfully new emotional force he was expressing. There has been some speculation that Beethoven was in love with the sonata’s dedicatee, one Babette von Keglevics, as so often a pupil of his: this has earnt the sonata the occasional and somewhat cheesy nickname ‘Die Verliebte’ . Be that as it may, the slow movement - in the submediant key of C -conveys deep and personal emotion in a new and, one has to say, revolutionary manner. After this, the third movement - generically a Minuet but not so called by Beethoven, showing its looser, more open structure - returns to the tonic, with a stormy, gloomy Trio in E flat minor (an extremely rare key for the period). Beethoven further loosens the formality of the classical minuet-and-trio structure by making the trio lead straight back to the main section. After all the intensity the Rondo finale is all charm and elegance - that is until the tempestuous second episode in C minor (an early instance of Beethoven’s ‘C minor mood’). There are some magical shifts of tonality later on before the movement, and the sonata, ends in rustling pianissimo tranquillity.

Martin Cousin is now regarded as one of the most exceptional pianists of his generation, having been awarded 1st prize at the 2005 Ettore Pozzoli International Piano Competition and Gold Medal at the 2003 Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition. He has appeared regularly in the major British musical venues and performed internationally since graduating from the Royal College of Music, making his London solo debut at the Purcell Room in 1998. Numerous solo recitals followed, notably at the Wigmore Hall in 2001,2005 and 2011. He has performed as soloist with the London Philharmonic, Halle, Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia and BBC Concert Orchestras. 2006 saw the release of his debut CD of Rachmaninov's Sonata No 1 and Morceaux de Salon with SOMM Recordings, which was selected as Classical CD of the week by the Daily Telegraph. His disc of Rachmaninov's Études-Tableaux was released in 2014 and was proclaimed 'a landmark recording' by The Observer with a 5-star review. Fanfare Magazine proclaimed, 'Based on the present disc and on the towering performance of the First Sonata on his debut CD, I am prepared to state that Cousin is among the most distinguished Rachmaninoff pianists of our generation.'Martin's hands are also featured on the big screen in the Oscar-winning film "Shine",for the scenes involving Rachmaninov's 3rd Concerto.

4.05 Li Siqian : Sonata in C minor Op 10 no 1
Allegro molto e con brio — Adagio molto — Finale. Prestissimo

Right away one may notice the extreme tempo markings for all three movements: this sonata is already fully characteristic of what the world knows as Beethoven’s C minor mood - tempestuous, revolutionary, deeply personal. The first movement opens with a bump as if to say: ‘here I am, take it or leave it’. In regular sonata form, the exposition and recapitulation are so terse, with quite complex rhythmic and harmonic phraseology, that Beethoven’s instinctive (though also highly conscious!) feeling for balance leads him to construct his development on a long-breathed melodic ‘episode’. The deeply felt, occasionally ungainly, slow movement in the submediant key of A flat major gives an instant sense of relaxing into a deeply personal space. In the truncated sonata form, its ‘development’ section consists startlingly of a single fortissimo chord - another ‘take it or leave it’ moment. The somewhat drawn out coda, beautiful as it is, shows that Beethoven still had some way to go before he could bring such a movement to a completely convincing close: but, as one of the quickest learners in musical history, he manages this already in the Largo e mesto of Op.10 No.3. Beethoven’s prestissimo marking for his short, tense, humorously disquieting finale shows a man not afraid of provoking. The development is exceptionally short, a mere eleven bars: nothing is allowed to impede Beethoven’s urgency till the coda takes us into the unexpected key of D flat major and slows to a crawl, as if to say ‘Denk’ es, o Seele’ , before the final sprint to the finishing post - a quiet, tense rustle and (again unexpectedly) in the major key.

Li Siqian was born in 1992 in China, and studied at the Central Conservatory of Music (Beijing) and became the first pianist to be awarded the “Best of the Best - Top and Innovative Talent” diploma and scholarship from China's Ministry of Culture. She then obtained a Master of Music Degree at the New England Conservatory (Boston). She is now studying for an Artist Diploma at the Royal College of Music under Norma Fisher. Her performances have taken place across China, USA, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Egypt, Japan, and South Korea, and she has given recent performances at the Annecy Classic Festival, Festival d'Auvers sur-Oise, Dinard Festival International de Musique, Shanghai International Music Festival, and BNP Paribas Rising Star Piano Festival. In 2020, Siqian won the first prize at the RCM Chappell Medal Piano Competition. She is the silver medalist and a special prize winner of the San Jose International Piano Competition 2019, a semi-finalist of the Leeds International Piano Competition 2018, the Grand Prix and a special prize winner of Vladimir Krainev International Piano Competition, as well as awards in many other international competitions. Siqian is a Yamaha Young Artist, Drake Calleja Trust Scholar (London) and is generously supported by the Talent Unlimited Foundation (London). Siqian is a nominated contestant of both the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition (Brussels 2020) and the 16th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition (Tel Aviv 2020). Both competitions have had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis.

4.30 pm Mengyang Pan : Sonata in F major Op 10 no 2
Allegro — Menuetto. Allegretto — Presto

The second of Beethoven’s Op.10 trilogy is the lightest and most genial of the three, as is usual in his early sets (Op. 2 and the Op.12 Violin Sonatas). The somewhat whimsical opening Allegro evokes so strongly Beethoven’s already fully developed independent spirit: not one bar could be mistaken for another composer, for all that this sonata is sometimes referred to as Haydnesque. Beethoven balances the somewhat episodic nature of his exposition, built up from many short contrasted motifs, with a flowing development section in longer phrase units. Already in Op.7 Beethoven had developed the traditional minuet into a more through-composed vehicle for deep expression. He does so again in the second movement of this sonata, contrasting a rather troubled F minor main section with a consoling Trio in D flat major with a singing line and some beautiful harmonic detail. The Presto finale is often described as fugal, though the fugal writing is fairly rudimentary. We can be sure that Beethoven could have written a solid fugue if he had wanted to, but here his intention is surely to liven up and give ballast to a basically homophonic movement in an unmistakable if rather free sonata form. The presto momentum is unstoppable and the movement ends most effectively and without the slightest let up.

Mengyang Pan was born in China and has been living in the UK since 2000. She began her piano study at the age of three before becoming a junior student at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. At the age of 14, she left China to study at the Purcell School in the UK with professor Tessa Nicholson. Upon graduating with high honours, she went on to complete her musical education at the Royal College of Music training under professor Gordon Fergus-Thompson and Professor Vanessa Latarche.The prize winner of many competitions including Rina Sala Gallo International Piano competition, Bromsgrove International Young Musician's Platform, Dudley International Piano Competition, Norah Sands Award,  MBF Educational Award, Mengyang has performed in many prestigious venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, Bridgewater Hall and Birmingham Symphony Hall amongst many others. As soloist, Mengyang has appeared with many orchestras and her collaboration with conductors such as Maestro Vladimir Ashkenazy, John Wilson and Mikk Murdvee has gained the highest acclaim.  Mengyang also finds much joy in teaching.  In 2019, Mengyang was appointed piano professor at the Royal College of Music in London, she also teaches at Imperial College.

4.50 pm Roman Kosyakov : Sonata in D major Op 10 no 3
Presto — Largo e mesto — Menuetto: Allegro — Rondo: Allegro

Often referred to as Beethoven's first completely realised masterpiece among the piano sonatas, this fine work - despite having no nickname - has remained a firm favourite with pianists and audiences and a staple of the repertoire. The only one of the three Op. 10 sonatas in four movements, its opening Presto is irrepressibly energetic yet tightly organised motivically, all the material being derived from the opening: a descending four-note scale and a rising third and semitone. Indeed one can easily show that the entire sonata is based on the opening four bars - ending as they do on a fermata which will come into its own in the finale. The slow movement, ‘broad and sad’, has long been celebrated as a touchtone for Beethoven's ability to express deep personal emotion, and he was rarely so subjective in later sonatas - perhaps until the Hammerklavier . The sweetly singing Menuetto seems to arise out of the gloom of the Largo like balm on troubled waters: its Trio is busy and slightly banal - possibly a deliberate respite on Beethoven's part. The explosively witty Rondo finale opens on the subdominant and Beethoven plays with our expectations throughout, breaking off and restarting abruptly and leading us through all kinds of keys. This movement surely influenced the finale of the slightly later 2 nd Symphony.

Roman Kosyakov is a Russian concert pianist, and Ambassador for Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition. He is a laureate of many nationals and international competitions: 2 nd prize in UK Piano Open International Piano Competition (London, 2020), 1 st prize in the 14th Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition (2018), Gold Prize of the 3 rd Manhattan International Music Competition (2018); 1 st prize and the audience prize in the 10th Sheepdrove Piano Competition (2018). He studied at the Central Music School in Moscow and at the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatoire. Since 2017, he has studied at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with Pascal Nemirovski. Roman's performance career includes engagements in prestigious venues and festivals across the UK, US and Europe. He is regularly invited to perform with the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra, the English Symphony Orchestra and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In January 2019 Roman received “The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire – Silver Medal” by the Musician's Company in the UK, became a member of Musician's Company Yeomen Young Artists' Programme. Roman is a winner of The Denis Matthews Memorial Trust award, Kirckman Concert Society Artist Prize and is a scholar of the Drake Calleja Trust. He has recorded a debut CD for “Naxos” with works by Liszt which was released in late 2020.

5.20 pm Dinara Klinton : Sonata in C minor Op 13 'Pathetique'
Grave. Allegro di molti e con brio — Adagio cantabile — Rondo: Allegro

Second only in popularity to the Moonlight , the slightly earlier Pathétique sustains perhaps an even higher level of invention across its three highly contrasted movements. Although it was his second sonata in C minor (after Op.10 No.1), the Pathétique is the one that first fully articulates Beethoven’s famous C minor mood as seen in the many masterpieces in that key, including of course the final sonata that finishes our traversal. The title indicates that the sonata has to do with pathos, defined as feelings of pity, sympathy and sorrow - a sonata in which elegance and formal perfection make way for a new warmth and humanity as well as a certain degree of melodrama. Beethoven’s innovation in the first movement is the alternation of a slow, weighty, questing introduction marked Grave with a fast, exhilarating yet serious main sonata form Allegro di molto e con brio . Shortened versions of the Grave introduction recur at two key points, the beginning of the development and as the first part of the coda. Not noticeably a great melodist, Beethoven in his slow movement produces one of the world’s most famous tunes - too famous to have avoided the fate of being turned into cheap popular songs ( More Than Love etc). The original is a simple (but not unadorned) rondo based on a theme clearly borrowed from the slow movement of Mozart’s C minor Sonata - Mozart smooth, sophisticated and sublime while Beethoven is human and warmly emotional. Beethoven’s Allegro finale is also a rondo: here the pathos is gentler:wistful, occasionally more urgent or angry, devoid of all pretension. With Beethoven, ‘what you see is what you get’.

Dinara Klinton is an active concert performer and prize-winner of over 15 international competitions. Dinara has performed at many major concert venues including the Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall, and worked with such orchestras as The Philharmonia Orchestra and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. She has also appeared on BBC2 and on Radio 3. As a recording artist, Dinara has received widespread critical acclaim for her interpretations. Among many dazzling reviews, her album Liszt: Études d'exécution transcendante, S. 139, released by the German label GENUIN classics, was selected by BBC Music Magazine as Recording of the Month. Dinara's debut album Music of Chopin and Liszt was made at the age of 16 with an American label DELOS, and the most recent CD is a part of renowned recording series Chopin. Complete Works on contemporary instruments, released by The Fryderyk Chopin Institute. Dinara graduated from the Moscow State Conservatory, has a Master of Performance degree with distinction from the Royal College of Music where she studied under Dina Parakhina and where she now holds a position of Assistant Professor of Piano

5.45 pm Simon Watterton : Sonata in E major Op 14 no 1
Allegro — Allegretto — Rondo: Allegro comodo

The pair of exquisite sonatas Op.14 show how much Beethoven had relaxed and almost been assimilated into polite society by his late 20s: no longer the angry young man from Bonn, he shows himself capable of writing music of great elegance and a sort of shining goodness. Perhaps this is just the calm before the storm: within the next two years Beethoven had to come to terms with his inevitable deafness and had entered his heroic ‘middle period’ style, largely (though not completely) crowding out music of such grace and ‘domesticity’. It is hardly surprising that these sonatas have become such favourites with amateur pianists. They were dedicated to one of his patrons, the Baroness Josefa von Braun, whose husband was the court theatre director in Vienna. Both sonatas have just three movements. The first, in the warm key of E major, opens with a chorale-like theme in long notes. There is a wealth of varied material such as only Beethoven could render as a seamless, organic flow. The development is concerned mainly with a beautiful new right hand theme in octaves - singing octaves, not virtuoso ones! The second movement has the feel of a legendary tale about it: it was apparently a favourite of the composer who used to ‘tear through it’, obviously carried away by his own genius as the movement is quite gentle. A fine Rondo, alternating a singing theme (again in octaves) with scalic passages and a more animated central theme in G major, concludes the sonata.

Wirral born pianist Simon Watterton has given recitals as soloist and chamber musician all across the world. In recent years he has performed in China, Canada, the USA, Sweden and Italy as well as extensively in the UK and Republic of Ireland. He made his concerto debut at London's Cadogan Hall and was featured as a Rising Star in International Piano Magazine at the time of a cycle he gave of all the Beethoven piano sonatas in London. He has appeared at the Wigmore Hall, St John's, Smith Square and the Purcell Room, as well as performing live on Radio 3's InTune and for Classic FM. As a writer on music he selected and wrote the foreword for a new edition of Frank Bridge's piano music published by Dover Publishing of New York, which came out in October 2014 . In November this year he gives the final recital in an eight concert cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas at Riverhouse Barn Arts Centre in Walton-on-Thames.