Review of my recital at the Iffley Music Festival last week by Giles Woodforde:

‘Aged four: Lada is seen kicking a girl behind her at the barre in ballet class. Reason: too busy watching the pianist accompanying the class. Aged six: first piano is bought. Lada and piano become friends for life.” That’s just a snippet from the delightfully idiosyncratic programme biography supplied by Czech pianist Lada Valesová, who appeared at this year’s Iffley Music Festival. Playing at times forcefully, at times lyrically, melody seemed to positively bubble out of her as she made her way through a recital devoted to Czech music. As composer followed composer, you could not but marvel at the amount of creative talent produced by this small country.

You may know Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances backwards, but how about his Dumka and Furiant, op 12? The elegiac sections of the Dumka produced the evening’s first examples of that wistful, melancholic mood which infuses much Czech music, while you certainly wouldn’t have wanted to try dancing the Furiant after drinking too much Czech beer. More dance music followed, in Smetana’s Scherzo-Polka, op 5, and then the angry waves in his On the Sea Shore, positively shook the rafters of Iffley Church Hall. Dvorák’s pupil Josef Suk wound up the first half, with his suite Spring bringing the sound of appropriately riffling leaves in The Breeze, and premonitions of a darker future in the final movement, Longing.

After the interval, Valesová produced some memorable surprises. Janácek’s In the Mists was followed by a newly discovered Martinu miniature: his take on Spring, full of fresh air and skipping lambs. Finally, a real rarity: a descriptive suite by Pavel Haas, composed in 1935. Beginning with a Preludium (“Bach gone mad,” suggested Valesová, in one of her many humorous and informative introductions), and ending with a Postludium (“New York in the rush hour”), it was fascinating to hear how Haas took the Czech idiom forward from his tutor, Janácek, in music that particularly suited Valesová’s bright tone.

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/leisure/5013141.Lada_Valesova__Iffley_Festival/

” The interpretation was among the most subtle I have heard.”

Lada Valesova, Darlington Arts Centre, 9.1.2010.

CZECH pianist Lada Valesova offered music of her homeland and traced the connection between Smetana, Dvorak and other composers in her recital for Darlington Piano Society.

She began with a thoughtful performance of Dvorak’s Dumka and Furiant, op24, Dvorak having played viola under Smetana’s direction in the orchestra of the Prague National Theatre. Then came the latter’s charming Concert Etude (On the Sea Shore), a delightfully skittish Scherzo-Polka.

The connections continued with Spring, by Dvorak’s sonin- law and student, Josef Suk, in which various emotions, notably the final Longing, were particularly well expressed.

Another connection with Dvorak was Janacek who, while not officially his student, used to send him his early compositions. Among them was the highly-evocative In the Mists, given a performance of great emotional strength, expressing longing, sadness and regret, anger even, for things lost through the passage of time. The interpretation was among the most subtle I have heard.

Film in Miniature (1923) by Bohuslav Martinu, an occasional student of Suk, threw us into the 1920s with dance idioms catching the essence of the age and his recently rediscovered and equally light and sprightly Spring (1921).

Valesova’s final piece was by Janacek’s former student, Pavel Haas, whose Suite op 13 dated from the same decade and spoke of a vast musical talent, terminated all too soon in the concentration camps of Terezin and Auschwitz.

Opening with a preludium best described as “Bach with attitude”, and ending with a high-speed toccata-like Postludium, she maintained total control of pace and content, being almost impressionist in the second movement, dancing 1920s’ style in the third and offering an element of the ecumenical in the pastorale.

The evening held the attention at all times with its unusually well considered theme, rewarded with a charming improvisation on Czech country folk themes as encore.

Dave Robson

At a busy pre-Christmass time on 18th of December at 10.30 am Czech Radio has featured music by Janacek from my CD in the programme My favourite Pianists moderated by professor Jiri Hlavac.

I was deeply humbled to find myself in the company of Garrick Ohlsson and Ivan Moravec.

http://www2.rozhlas.cz/program/pdaread/2009-12-16?st=3

Still to come: Thursday 28th of January at 9 am Radio NZ Concert will play piano cycle Spring by Josef Suk from the CD. Here is the link:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/schedules/20100128

Wishing all music-lovers, supporters, friends and visitors to this web site all the very best in 2010! 

Lada.

Founded in 1974, the Dvorák Society, is one of the most active music societies in Britain. Though it is firmly based in Great Britain, it has members in many countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Sweden and the United States. www.dvorak-society.org

You can now purchase my album on iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/lada-valesova/id313496430

Today we remember a sad date: on 17th of October 65 years ago composer Pavel Haas has died in Auschwitz. When playing his music one can’t but admire his talent, his wit, his invention as well as sheer joy of living and positive energy, which pour out of his compositions. Favourite pupil of Janacek, Haas has taken his inspirations from his teacher’s interest in Moravian folk music, but also from jazz and new contemporary impulses of his times, such as music of Igor Stravinsky.

Learning and recording his Piano Suite and little witty piece Allegro Moderato has been a revelation to me. They are pianisticallychallenging in their own way, but ultimately rewarding and offering endless revelations each time I perform them. His daughter Olga, whom I met this summer in Brno, native town of Haas, said that it was uncanny how complex Haas’s piano compositions are, considering that he was far from a virtuoso pianist himself. I have also performed his song cycle Seven Songs on Folk Poetry with my friend, mezzo Lucie Spickova. While the voice part stays close to the original folk song, piano goes into veritable acrobatics of poly-rhytmical puzzles and games. A joy to play and to study.

I would like to finish this small contribution in memory of Pavel Haas by quoting Ludvik Kundera, musicologist:

” Everyone knew Haas as always smiling, witty, slightly ironic companion, but at the same time his frail figure and pale face added to his humorous words hint of sadness. As if he had a foreboding of the tragedy of his destiny and of the bitter end of his life.”

 On the 1st of october BBC In Tune programme with Sean Rafferty has played all miniatures by Leos Janacek from my CD Intimate Studies. As some of them have been recorded for the first time, this would have been their world radio premiere.

Here is a new review for Intimate Studies from a Magazine Pizzicatto. Translation will follow soon. 

To enlarge please click on the review, it will open in a separate window.

Fanfare: The Magazine for serious Record Collectors, welcomes the release of  Intimate Studies CD. Full review is available to the magazine subscribers.

…Her playing is notable for its technical refinement. Right from the start, the opening movement of In the Mist sports both a very gradual crescendo in both hands that is managed along a smooth arc, and several evenly descending runs, tossed off at a relatively slow tempo (difficult to maintain) with a panache one is used to hearing from pianists of the French School. The Chopinesque rubato in the work’s third movement flows naturally, with a pleasing sense of phrasing and great attention to color. The fourth movement has massive, cleanly articulated chords. So it goes throughout this disc: the balance of the hands in the Pastorale movement from the Suite by Haas, and the cantabile feeling that’s never lost in the motoric grotesquerie of the Postludium movement; the underplayed rhetoric that begins Suk’s Spring and the Lisztian theme that follows it, given such a warmly lyrical treatment; the deceptive ease with which the “Breeze” movement is tossed off—its barely sketched rhythm in the right hand, the left strumming an occasional chord. Immaculate playing and good musicianship are the hallmarks of this release….music receives a sympathetic understanding from the pianist, who clearly feels it down to her bones. She is especially effective in the gentler material, where her unflappable technique is joined by an intimate warmth and an ability to say things of worth that can’t be rushed. These days that is in itself a cherishable gift. With solid liner notes about the music by Vanda Prochazka and briefer remarks about the composers by Valešová herself, this is a welcome release. Let’s hope some label snaps her up to perform more solo works from her native land, and soon. Barry Brenesal