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Beethoven rules!
Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra celebrates the composer
BY JOHN W. BARKER
MAY 17, 2018
Soloist John O’Conor brought drama and delicacy
The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra finished off its season with a memorable all-Beethoven concert featuring a distinctive guest soloist.
The curtain-raiser at Overture Hall on May 11 was one of a number of overtures by Beethoven that are rarely heard. He wrote it for the stage presentation King Stephen, part of an array of material he composed in 1811 for performance in Budapest. It is a posturing thing, full of fanfares, but even lesser Beethoven is fascinating stuff.
Guest soloist John O’Conor brought a distinction of his own to the proceedings. This Irish pianist is famous, among other reasons, for championing the music of fellow Irishman and Beethoven contemporary John Field.
O’Conor’s vehicle was Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 in C minor. Its key always meant intense drama for composers, and performers of the work have tended to stress the score’s stormy qualities. O’Conor certainly did justice to much of the music’s heroics, but he also approached it with a certain amount of understatement, especially in the brooding slow movement and even in the first one. I heard a good deal of delicacy that made me think of Field — and even of Chopin.
The audience was delighted by the heroics, but for me it was the thoughtful dimension that made this performance memorable.
For an encore, O’Conor played the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata, more of delicate expression by this composer.
What more roof-raising conclusion for the program than Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, that other sensational C-minor work? Once again, Maestro Andrew Sewell bravely barged into familiar big-orchestra warhorse repertoire to show what his “chamber” orchestra can do. And they did him proud, playing with discipline and spirit that many a prestigious orchestra might envy. Sewell’s tempi were somewhat on the brisk side, but always apt. The only problem was that this work is so familiar that it is difficult for today’s listeners to fully appreciate how truly radical and revolutionary Beethoven’s music was.
In this concert, Sewell tried some experiments with orchestra placement. Above all, though, without the “usual” overwhelming string choir to fight, the winds could be heard with valuable clarity, especially the brass, and notably in the overture.
Full article from here.
Pianist John O’Conor’s Magnificent Moment
Story by Elaine Anne Watt
Middleburg Life had the distinct pleasure of getting to introduce John O’Conor in an earlier article prior to his appearance at this month’s Middleburg Concert Series’ fundraiser “Arts in the Afternoon.” His engaging personality and passion for his music was readily apparent, but actually getting to sit and listen to his evocative performances of Schubert, Haydn, John Field and Beethoven was magical.
In the process, O’Conor treated us to some delightful insights into both the composers and his interpretations of their works, bringing us closer to an understanding f the man and his art.
Of Schubert, he called his Impromptus “fantastic with their contrasts of moods and ability to make scales into something beautiful.” Speaking of the 3rd Improptu as one of his favorite pieces he said “Playing it is the closest I ever get to singing,” as he’s been told to “stick to the piano, Johnny”
Every piece had its own exquisite nuances, but the Beethoven selection was delivered as if Beethoven himsefl was working through O’Conor’s hands to deliver his creation as it was fully intended.
John O’Conor to receive NCH Lifetime Achievement award
On Sunday night, pianist Dr John O’Conor will receive the NCH Lifetime Achievement Award 2017. The event will be a gala concert in honour of his unique contribution to classical music in Ireland.
The renowned musician who celebrates his 70th birthday this year is regarded as one of Ireland’s leading pianists. Over the course of his 40-year career O’Conor has been recognised for his masterful playing, sensitive interpretation and extensive work with young players.
A former pupil of Dieter Weber and Wilhelm Kempff, O’Conor won First Prize at the International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna in 1973. He went on to build a career as a renowned concert pianist and recording artist, a celebrated teacher, co-founder and artistic director of the Dublin International Piano Competition and formerly director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He is especially known for his his recordings of the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas.
In this video excerpt, made to mark the occasion, O’Conor discusses his life and work, and in particular his memories of his friends Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel.
Performing on the evening will be a selection of O’Conor’s friends and colleagues, including Tara Erraught, Veronica McSwiney, Finghin Collins, Philippe Cassard, John Finucane, a chamber orchestra of alumni and staff of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. The event will be presented by Olivia O’Leary.
“My relationship with the hall dates back to 1981 when I was invited to perform the very first recital in the newly opened NCH on September 12th of that year,” O’Conor says. “It is a hall I’ve always enjoyed performing in not least because of its acoustic and intimate surroundings but because of the warmth of Irish audiences.”
Simon Taylor, CEO Of the National Concert Hall, said: “John has had a huge impact on the musical life of Ireland – his highly successful international career as performer and teacher has been an inspiration to many and the Dublin International Piano Competition has been a major part of our musical landscape for three decades. It is wonderful to round off the celebration of his 70th birthday year with the highest accolade the National Concert Hall can offer.”
Tickets are still available from nch.ie with proceeds going to the Dublin International Piano Competition.
“John’s performances were magnificent, beautiful, deeply moving, and a great success and remarkable ” season opener” for our concert series. John is a great artist and a very kind man. I believe he enjoyed working and performing with conductor David Gilbert and our orchestra in Greenwich High School’s beautiful new concert hall.”
Mary Radcliffe, Executive Director
Greenwich Symphony Orchestra
October 1 and 2, 2016
Florida Orchestra’s all-Beethoven concert is sublime
By Jon Carter, Times Staff Writer
Saturday, January 11, 2014 4:43pm
“When you find conductors that care about the concerto, cherish them.” So says pianist John O’Conor, who thinks maestros would rather put more energy into the symphony that’s on the second half of most orchestral programs. For the Florida Orchestra’s all-Beethoven concert at the Straz Center on Friday, Brazilian-born guest conductor Marcelo Lehninger clearly relished conducting Ludwig’s third piano concerto.
Lehninger was especially attentive to Irish pianist O’Conor; every entrance was coordinated with care. The communication was especially clear in the first movement, with the themes passed back and forth between the piano and orchestra quite frequently. At one point, the cellists finished a phrase begun by O’Conor and it was just as if the piano’s timbre had been altered with no change in performer.
The second movement to Beethoven’s third piano concerto is truly sublime. If that was all the orchestra played, you would have gotten your money’s worth. However, you wouldn’t have experienced the radical shift in moods from the first movement, which is part of the concerto’s magic. All the power of the first movement melts away, and we are forced to pay attention to every delicate motion. For about 11 minutes, O’Conor brought the audience into his world — and the world of Beethoven — by playing the most beautiful music of the night.
The lively rondo that follows, ripe with trills and scales, is refreshing in a way after the sensual second movement. O’Conor did it justice with just the right amount of liberty taken in key moments. Then the audience heard his most enthusiastic playing of the night during the last 15 seconds of the concerto, when he finished the final descending passage with a fierce intensity.
O’Conor on the Fenway
October 2, 2013
It is difficult to imagine anything better than having one of the world’s leading interpreters of the Beethoven piano sonatas perform three of the composer’s most popular ones in a single concert. Irish pianist John O’Conor performed the Pathétique, Moonlight and Appassionata in the first piano recital at The Boston Conservatory’s renovated Seully Hall on Tuesday night, as part of the school’s Piano Master Series. It was a standing-room only sold-out performance, with a passionate and eager crowd such as you normally see, say, at the Moscow Conservatory.
O’Conor exceeded even these expectations. His Beethoven is brash and brilliant, coarse and unpolished yet Shakespearean in his understanding, and occasionally disarmingly sweet. O’Conor’s Beethoven is both lyrical and savage, played not just with the fingers and frontal cortex but with his entire body. He trusts Beethoven to be a great phenomenologist of human being. His playing is visceral, from the gut, played from the pre-linguistic brain, an earthy, human Beethoven without courtly varnish and not needing it.
Rather than try to convey the full plenitude of the evening, I will comment on a few moments that stood out.
In the first movement of the Pathétique the slow Grave section was given a pained, searching, questioning feeling thanks to a remarkable use of silences, especially in the final recurrence in the coda. The answering allegro, anxious and struggling, was in dialogue with those dark silences, integrating the movement and making sense of the triple return of the introductory statement. In the hymn-like cantabile second movement, O’Conor emphasized the dance rhythms in the final return of the rondo theme. This served to connect it to the slight playfulness he gave the opening of the final movement by using a slight hesitation, almost a rubatto, in the statement of the theme—a Mozartean touch that amplified the contrast of light and shadow in the rondo theme and in the intervening episodes.
The Moonlight was played with only minimal pauses between the movements. The soft dreaminess of the first movement, tinged with fatalism, was brought out with a noble touch and seductive phrasing. The seductive mood continued into the second movement, organically solving the recurrent problem of having the off-beat scherzo seem out of place. The ensuing surging, explosive presto agitato finale—raw, visceral, mysterious, propelled by a force of nature—broke through the overly-saturated reverie to reach an authentic fulfillment.
The opening statement of the Appassionata sets the tone for the entire piece and O’Conor nailed it, conveying foreboding and “wild surmise.” This was a Beethoven set free by transgression, besieged by despair but also by grace. The monumental struggle inherent in this music became an inner one, a fight to unlock creative demons, ending the first movement in an inconclusive deadlock. It made sense then that the statement of the theme in the Andante was forceful and assertive, leading inexorably to the outburst of the Allegro finale. Most memorably, the concluding Presto became a form of Todtentanz, here as a celebration of life while being hurled toward death.
As an encore, O’Conor gave us a bitingly sarcastic, Swiftian reading of the Six Ecossaises, WoO 83, in Beethoven’s original version rather than the more commonly heard Busoni arrangement.
JOHN O’CONOR BRINGS BOLD PIANISM TO TRI-C CONCERT SERIES
By Donald Rosenberg,
The Plain Dealer
Courtesy of Cuyahoga Community CollegeIrish pianist John O’Conor gave a concert Sunday at First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland to open the Tri-C Classical Piano Recital Series.
John O’Conor CLEVELAND, Ohio — When Irish pianist John O’Conor flew to Cleveland over the weekend, his luggage flew to Kansas City. So he showed up Sunday at First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland in the casual attire he had worn on the flight from New York.
The wardrobe matter didn’t matter in the least during this season-opening event in Cuyahoga Community College’s Classical Piano Recital Series. Once O’Conor took his place at the keyboard, his bold, exquisite artistry commanded attention. Even the church’s slightly over-ripe acoustics couldn’t distract from the probing music-making.
O’Conor has close ties to the Cleveland area. His discography includes stellar recordings of concertos and solo repertoire on Telarc, the Beachwood-based label. In 2003, he was a juror at the Cleveland International Piano Competition.
His recital Sunday revealed his authority in Classical and Romantic literature. Even Haydn, a composer some interpreters approach with elegant restraint, became a forceful figure in the pianist’s probing hands.
O’Conor’s treatment of Haydn’s Sonata in B minor emphasized dramatic contrasts, dynamic gradations and flexible tempos. There was no attempt to hold back in expressive terms, but everything also emerged with crystalline clarity.
His penetrating tonal qualities made the stormy thrusts in the first movement of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata sound like suspenseful surprises. Structures were beautifully proportioned, with the yearning episode reaching transcendence and the fervent flourishes catapulted to the hilt.
O’Conor applied similar intensity and patience to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. The opening movement took on a brooding, haunted aura as shaded by the pianist, who blended a light touch with robust urgency in the second movement and brought fierce attack to the finale’s furious demands.
O’Conor’s poetic side emerged in music by John Field (1782-1837), the Irish composer who spent much of his life in Russia. His inventive and rapturous nocturnes influenced Chopin.
Two of the three Field pieces O’Conor played were nocturnes that showed the composer to be a master of lyrical rhetoric. The pianist drew out subtle details and molded the ecstatic phrases in long lines. A third Field creation, “Le Midi,” revels in virtuoso writing and 12 strikes of the noonday bell.
The right hand is especially taxed in this work, which could have been a reason that O’Conor turned next to two left-hand pieces by Scriabin. Actually, the Russian composer had injured his right hand and wrote his Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op. 9, to keep himself occupied. O’Conor’s fluid, soaring performances almost made one forget that only one limb was in action.
And even after playing Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, O’Conor’s two hands were still supple enough to caress the encore, Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2.
O’Conor gives a towering recital
By R.M. Campbell
P-I Music Critic
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
See Original Article:
John O’Conor has spent a lifetime studying the piano music of Beethoven, and that dedication and knowledge was revealed in every phrase of his program, devoted to the composer, Tuesday night at Meany Hall.
For his recital, part of a residency at the University of Washington School of Music, O’Conor chose some of the best-known sonatas — “Pathetique,” “Waldstein” and “Moonlight” — as well as the Six Bagatelles. He played them as if they had been minted yesterday, with conviction and temperament certainly but also freshness. There was no suggestion of pandering to common taste in that the works, save the Bagatelles, are so famous. O’Conor played them as the masterpieces they are, without apology, and demonstrated some of the reasons they have held center stage on several continents for so long.
O’Conor is concerned with coherent structure, a not inconsiderable point with Beethoven, but also all the luminous details that fill the music. Drama was sought and found in passage after passage. If Beethoven sought the universe in his 32 sonatas (one eminent scholar says now there are 35), O’Conor likewise searched for the larger world, including its contradictions and myriad of colors. Despite the occasional smudge, he has a rich technique that he put to superb use in drawing out the music’s bravura. O’Conor possesses a deep, resonant sound that served as contrast to something harder and more metallic.
His music making was one of evenness, of balance and proportion. Never indulgence or empty theatricality. One heard inner voices as well as outer voices. He also knows the importance of silence. O’Conor is a robust musician, but he is also a master of nuance, of shading. Remarkably he manages to be both visceral and poetic. Intense and of high purpose O’Conor is, but he is not without wit.
Completed in 1798, when Beethoven was 28, the “Pathetique” is the earliest of the three sonatas on O’Conor’s program. It is among the most sublimely lyrical pieces of music ever written, full of pathos and drama. Wilhelm Kempff, the famed Beethoven interpreter with whom O’Conor spent two summers in Italy, once criticized O’Conor’s performance as too nice. Certainly this reading had nothing to do with niceness or mere pleasantries. Its blood was hot, and its beauty carried a sense of tragedy and desolation.
The “Waldstein” has been called “the keyboard equivalent of (Beethoven’s) Fifth Symphony.” I would suspect O’Conor agrees, digging deep into its expansive virtuosity. He dashed off technical challenges with a kind of forthright abandon, yet simultaneously captured its emotional resonance. There was unquestioned weight, but it never impeded the sonata’s rampant fluency. O’Conor performance was towering.
To end the evening O’Conor chose the “Moonlight” Sonata. That would not be everyone’s choice, but it worked because the pianist is an expert in drawing out the delicate colors and poetic sensibility of the first two movements yet made the massive final movement riveting and impetuous. O’Conor never has been one to bang away for the sake of effect, but effect he made in the final movement.
O’Conor’s last visit was nearly a decade ago. I hope we don’t have to wait that long for another.
A first-rate pianist shuns the show-off approach for a distinctive coupling
Jed Distler
Beethoven Piano Concertos – No 2, Op 19; No 5, ‘Emperor’, Op 73
John O’Conor pf
London Symphony Orchestra / Andreas Delfs
Telarc ® CD80675 (69′ • DOD)
Beethoven’s Second and Fifth Concertos make for an uncommon yet attractively contrasted CD coupling. More importantly, pianist John O’Conor and conductor Andreas Delfs invest these much-recorded scores with deep feeling, relaxed yet never draggy tempi, and freshly considered details that provide a welcome corrective to the attention-getting elbow-pokes and finger-jabs favoured by certain recent contenders in the name of “interpretation”.
Although O’Conor clearly commands world-class virtuosity, he shares his one-time teacher Wilhelm Kempffs disdain for surface display and propensity for intimate nuance and suggestive colorations. For example, in the B flat Concerto, the way O’Conor’s change of sonority imbues the momentary change of key 4’24” into the first movement with appropriate mystery, or the cadenza’s effectively playful rhythmic fluctuations.
The pianist similarly plays down his bravura opportunities in the Emperor and insists upon being an equal partner. Listen to how flexibly and effortlessly he guides the first movement’s plaintive B major episode back into the orchestra’s military mood, or the chamber-like give and take governing the development section’s sequences of scales. The London Symphony Orchestra provide vibrant and unfailingly alive support under Delfs’s caring leadership, with the heartfelt, singing strings standing out in the slow movements. Even in an overcrowded Beethoven concerto market, these distinctive and excellently engineered performances are well worth hearing.
Piano in the spotlight
By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times music critic
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Keyboard bonanza
A wealth of recent arrivals is good news for piano fans. Here are a few highlights:
Beethoven concertos, John O’Conor, (Telarc): Irish-born pianist John O’Conor has never enjoyed fame commensurate with his spectacular talents, shown here in the seldom-heard Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2 and the beloved No. 5 (“Emperor” Concerto). O’Conor’s subtle touch sparkles in these readings with Andreas Delfs and the London Symphony Orchestra.
“…O’Conor gives a bold, no-nonsense performance, right down to the shimmering piano chords accompanied by phantom drum-taps, and then a dash to the finish at the very end.”
—Atlanta Audio Society
O’Conor lets ‘er rip in “Emperor”
Atlanta Audio Society
Oct. 2007
Telarc CD-80675 www.telarc.com
About the only way you could really mess up Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in E-flat, Op. 73, known to all and sundry as the “Emperor,” would be to employ a dryly academic, scholarly approach using a period instrument and an anemic ensemble (it’s been tried). With Irish pianist John O’Conor at the keyboard of a Hamburg Steinway D and with yeoman support from the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andreas Delfs, there was never any chance of that! O’Conor, who received critical acclaim for his cycle of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas, returns to the scene of the crime (Telarc Records) with repertory in which he obviously feels very much at home.
From the attention-getting cadence at the very opening to the maelstrom that heralds the beginning of the development, the filigree passagework by the soloist above the orchestral accompaniment in the Adagio, and the composer’s innovation of leading right into the Rondo finale without a movement break, this concerto is a bold conception in every respect. And O’Conor gives a bold, no-nonsense performance, right down to the shimmering piano chords accompanied by phantom drum-taps, and then a dash to the finish at the very end.
The companion-piece, Piano Concerto in B-flat, Op. 19, a landmark of Beethoven’s First Period, is often described as “Mozartean” (at least he knew a good model when he saw one). Following the initial fanfare, the opening movement is characterized by engaging lyricism and the parallel treatment of soloist and tutti. The pensive Adagio has more captivating melody in the form of an interesting dialog between piano and orchestra. The finale, a cheerful and ingratiating Rondo, is just the sort of thing O’Conor relishes, and he makes the most of it. Delfs and the LSO lend support sturdily, if not as brilliantly as in the “Emperor” where, to be fair, the composer gives them more to work with than in Op. 19 where the soloist is clearly at the center of attention.
A State of Ivory Satori
Classical Music
BY FRED KIRSHNIT
February 27, 2006
See Original Article:
Any discussion of the “Waldstein” Sonata begins and ends with what Beethoven chose to delete. After composing a lovely if meandering slow movement, he decided at the very last minute to cut it out of the work entirely, eventually publishing it on its own as the “Andante favori.” In its place, he fashioned an improvisatory interlude of only three minutes length, linking the two great, action-packed outer movements, both in C major. As a result, Beethoven established two precedents. First, the piece is the beginning of a series of heroic sonatas that encompasses both the “Appassionata” and the “Hammerklavier.” Second, the new form, with the middle movement introducing the more powerful finale, was employed throughout this creative period, not just in chamber music, but also in the last two concertos for piano and the concerto for violin.
The “Waldstein” was on the program as Irish pianist John O’Conor presented his recital on Thursday evening at the Metropolitan Museum.
I am not a pianist, but 50 years of observation has alerted me to the phenomenon that certain senior keyboard artists have reached a state of satori, of being at one with the music. My two favorite Beethoven interpreters, Arrau and Kempff, fell into that category, and it appears that Mr. O’Conor does as well.
Oddly, I do not feel this way about older violinists or cellists or tuba players. But pianists replicate the creative process of most of our beloved composers.
At the museum, it was possible to think of this recital as being given by Beethoven himself.
Some touches that lent an air of authenticity to this performance were Mr. O’Conor’s supreme confidence in playing quite softly, even in the “action hero” sections where the audience witnessed his protean sense of style and arresting ability to turn an entire movement on one leading tone. The last note of that belated second Waldstein movement rang out so noticeably, and was sustained for such a long time, that a listener could easily understand the entire construction of the piece in an instant. You really have to know your stuff to punctuate so decisively.
Also on the program was the Sonata in C minor, Op. 111, the one with the striking opening reminiscent of Greek tragedy (Richard Strauss, whose piano pieces (Op. 3) is a reworking of Beethoven’s fate motif from the Fifth Symphony, must have taken notice when first contemplating the opening of “Elektra”). This was a dramatic study in contrast;
Mr. O’Conor ratcheted up the volume without seeming to labor or struggle. Continuing the Greek imagery, this performance was oracular.
Not that there weren’t problems. Young people have their cellular telephones and the older crowd has its hearing aids – parenthetically, Mr. O’Conor and I felt like callow youths in this audience – one of which provided a metallic obbligato to the proceedings. I finally had to move to the back of the hall to avoid its interference. Also, Mr. O’Conor may have lost a step with regard to accuracy, but overall his technique was solid.
There was also Schubert on the menu, specifically 12 early waltzes and Four Impromptus, D. 899. The dances had that special Schubertian poignancy, the music of the wallflower rather than the participant, a spirit so brilliantly captured by Mahler in several of his middle movements. The Impromptus were well-crafted; from the stateliness of the C minor to the rippling water imagery of the G flat major, Mr. O’Conor exhibited poetic mastery. I will always be grateful to him for introducing so many of us to the piano music of his countryman John Field, and this set in its sheer beauty recalled that forgotten tone poet.
This recital was part of the Piano Forte series at the museum wherein the recitalists are given a choice of using more than one piano an evening. Mr. O’Conor and his audience were more than content to stick with one tried and true Steinway.