LLYR WILLIAMS

Piano

Critical acclaim

Beethoven Cycle, Wigmore Hall & RWCMD ‘I am tempted to say that the concert might be reviewed in a single word – Magnificent! But, on reflection, that single word (though thoroughly justified) might not necessarily imply those qualities of profound musical intelligence, warm humanity and formidable technique with which all that we heard was imbued.’

Glyn Pursglove, Seen and Heard International, 20th October 2015 ‘This Beethoven adventure has reached the don’t-miss stage.’

Colin Anderson, Classical Source, 30th May 2015, ‘Williams has that precious ability to shed new light on the most familiar music, and a nonchalant technical mastery and singing tone that transform the simplest of melodies into something exceptional’

Rian Evans, The Guardian, 29th May 2015 ‘Llŷr Williams gives notice just by walking on stage that we’re in for an evening of deeply considered, serious music-making. This remarkably intense Welsh pianist is a one-man riposte to the culture of show and ‘instant impact’ we now live in’

Ivan Hewett, Daily Telegraph , 31st May 2015 ‘Llyr opened the door to the private and personal Beethoven, giving us all a glimpse at the genius’ innermost hopes and fears, replete with juxtaposing lament and impetuosity. Men of contradictions, both the gargantuan and unassuming sides of Beethoven and Llyr come across in their personalities and music.’

Lucy Jeffery, Seen and Heard International, 2nd June 2015

Other Acclaim ‘Williams reminded us that the outward straightforwardness of the Op31 No3 sonata is so much more than that in the hands of an enquiring musical brain’

Ken Walton, The Scotsman, 28 September 2015 (Glasgow Beethoven Cycle with Elias Quartet) ‘I had been struck by Williams' relaxed demeanour when he directed the SCO in Beethoven's First Piano Concerto in November 2014. That was no one-off; no matter the technical or expressive demands, Williams seems to deliver with calm assurance.’

Alan Coady, Bachtrack, 16 January 2015 (Beethoven Concerto cycle with SCO)

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‘…Williams’ own transcriptions of three episodes from Parsifal: 21 minutes encapsulating Williams’ complete understanding of Wagner’s music as well as his technical virtuosity’

International Piano, March-April 2015 (Wagner CD) ‘It was universally acknowledged (among the cognoscenti in the hall) that one unexpected high point of the whole competition was Llŷr’s transcendently dramatic performance of Schubert’s ‘Erlkonig’, which left the soloist…somewhat outclassed’

Simon Rees, BBC Music Magazine, June 2015 (BBC Cardiff Singer of the World)

LLYR WILLIAMS Seen and Heard International • March 4, 2016

Llŷr Williams Brings a Sense Of Poetry to Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto BY SIMON THOMPSON C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven: Llŷr Williams (piano), Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Alexander Janiczek (violin/director), Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 03.03.2016 (SRT) C.P.E. Bach: Symphony in G Mozart: Violin Concerto in D, K211; Rondo in C, K373 Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 When Llŷr Williams comes to Edinburgh to play Beethoven, people pay attention. During the interval, I got talking to a lady in the audience who came to Scotland from New York specifically to hear him play this piece! I doubt she’ll have thought the journey wasted. Williams has a relationship with a keyboard that you see in few others. He stoops to commune with it, as though he is listening to it and getting a response, and his playing has a special kind of expressive drive to it as a result. Above all, he brings a sense of poetry to this, Beethoven’s most consistently lyrical concerto. The runs seem to ripple under his fingers, with a constant sense of flow that underpinned even the cadenza. However, he combined this with quicksilver lightness in the heavier passages, giving them a tremendous sense of life, and even the big restatement of the main theme at the start of the recapitulation became a triumphant climax that then dissolved into a question mark. It’s beautiful and constantly evolving, as though Williams is redrawing it before our ears. Importantly, he also has a continual sense of give-and-take with the orchestra, like a conversation, and they responded with rich, buoyant string sound in the first movement that then became clipped and precise in the second movement, before a bullish and assertive final run of the Rondo. They were on equally sparkling form for C.P.E. Bach’s typically adventurous Symphony in G, which bounded along with customary energy in the outer movements, and featured a remarkable section in the first movement where the different sections of the orchestra seemed to be chatting to one another. Having both Mozart’s Second Violin Concerto (1775) and the C major Rondo (1781) side-by-side proved surprisingly revealing. The concerto is the more famous work, and Alexander Janiczek, directing from the violin, played it with lots of charm. I liked the way the orchestral strings played with very little vibrato while Janiczek used plenty, thus giving a slightly veiled quality to the orchestral sound and solving the problems of orchestra/soloist balance at a stroke. The Rondo is the greater work, though. Even though it’s significantly shorter and dates from only six years later, you really notice how much Mozart’s style had moved on in the intervening time. It has wit, wisdom and wry humour where the concerto was more uncomplicatedly sunny, and Janiczek seemed to love milking every ounce of playfulness and beauty out of it.

LLYR WILLIAMS Wales Online • October 9, 2015

Review: A glimpse of the divine for the awe-inspiring musicianship of Llyr Williams BY PETER COLLINS Llyr Williams' performance at the Dora Stoutzker Hall ended with loud, prolonged and thoroughly deserved applause **** Perhaps it was my imagination, but I fancy I heard a faint collective sigh of awed appreciation from the audience in this lovely hall as we glimpsed something of the divine during the opening concert of the second year of Llyr Williams' Beethoven piano sonatas cycle. Such metaphysical moments are rare indeed in any concert hall. This one came as Williams, whose playing reaches new heights with each of these enthralling concerts, addressed the Sonata in B flat, Opus 22. After offering a dazzling account of the first movement (marked Allegro con brio) Williams paused in contemplation before beginning the Adagio con molto expressione second movement. What followed was playing of ethereal sweetness which matched anything Williams has achieved in previous concerts, which in themselves have been special occasions. Described as a "long-breathed florid aria with a dramatic central section," Williams expressed the moments of invention and fleeting, tender beauty with playing of maturity, musical intelligence and vision. Brilliant in its spacious construction, the Opus 22 certainly pleased Beethoven who declared it as being "in apple pie order." This apple pie was particularly delicious in Williams' hands and was an appetising opening to a concert which was to end with the magnificent Sonata in C, Opus 53, known as the Waldsteim, the Adagio molto section of which also lifts one beyond the confines of this world. But before that we had the two-movement Sonata in F, Opus 54. The great pianist Sir Andras Schiff, whose sublime playing of Bach's Goldberg Variations at last summer's Proms is still fresh n the memory, described this work as "not easy to listen to and not easy to play." Williams made it seem reasonably easy to play, but even he couldn't make it particularly easy on the ear. It is a clever work, but not one that nourishes the soul. After a considered interpretation of the Andante favori, Williams turned his attention to the mighty Waldstein.

Llyr Williams Wales Online • October 9, 2015 page 2 of 2 It was a bold and intense rendering of a complex and demanding work which commanded the audience's complete attention throughout its 27 wonderful minutes. The progression from thunderous, restlessness energy, through a period of calm repose to the ecstatic optimism of the final pages was portrayed by Williams with consummate skill and awe-inspiring musicianship. There was no sighing at the end, just loud, prolonged and thoroughly deserved applause.

LLYR WILLIAMS The Scotsman • September 28, 2015

Music review: Llyr Williams & Elias Quartet, City Halls, Glasgow BY KEN WALTON Rating: ***** AS PART of a weekend of events focusing on themed aspects of Beethoven, seen through the eyes of pianist Llyr Williams and the Elias Quartet, Friday’s shared concert turned to the young composer: works dating from between 1798 and 1802. If it reinforced anything, it was the fact that Beethoven was treading new ground from very outset. Look at the visionary distinctiveness of the Op 18 string quartets, two of which - No5 in A and No1 in F - were performed with liberated excitement by the wonderful Elias Quartet. How often do we hear these played with retrospective reverence to Mozart and Haydn, a kind of mental safety net? But not the Elias, whose intense, free-thinking approach set free the wildest excesses of Beethoven’s inventiveness: the arrogant, bawdy swagger that interrupts the cool of the Andante cantabile in the A major quartet; extremes of high comedy and deep introspection in the F major quartet. From recent years of working through all Beethoven’s quartets, the Elias have unearthed magical secrets. Likewise, Llyr Williams’ thoughts on two of the piano sonatas were unique and insightful. Here was something to refresh the much-played “Pathétique - its opening Grave, achingly spacious and teasing, like a gravitational anchor to the fizzing energy of the Allegro con brio; its slow movement melody throbbing with deep set humanity. Then Williams reminded us that the outward straightforwardness of the Op31 No3 sonata is so much more than that in the hands of an enquiring musical brain.

LLYR WILLIAMS The Herald Scotland • September 28, 2015

Music Review: Llyr Williams at City Hall, Glasgow BY MICHAEL TUMELTY ***** PIANIST Llyr Williams had a corker of a programme for his final contribution to Glasgow’s three-year Beethoven fest on Sunday. First, in a programme to feature Variations and Fugues, he would play the Eroica Variations. Now what, you might ask, are they? The Eroica Symphony finale is familiar enough; but the Eroica Variations? I do know them, but only from CD recordings. I’ve never heard them in concert. And neither, it transpired, has Svend Brown, Glasgow concert halls director. They’re simply not played. It’s a set of 15 Variations written on the theme and associated iconic bass line of the Eroica finale. They are essentially melodic variations: Beethoven doesn’t play about with the harmony or the rhythm; I counted three wee turns into a minor key, but they’re transient. It’s not one of his more intellectual sets. It’s just damn good fun. And Llyr Williams had a ball with the piece, which is packed with character and pianistic hi- jinks: he found a stray oompah in there, as well as a cheeky left-hand run that could have been an escapee from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, circa 1802! Fabulous. And the fun continued with the good-natured, benign opus 14 no 2 Sonata with its characterful wee march, and a finale that brims with humour and ends, I swear, with a cheeky wink from the Man himself. The glorious opus 101 Sonata in A, which begins in the middle of a sentence (nice one, Ludwig) and ends in a boisterous Beethoven sign-off with the most perfect little Fugue in the centre, was a very good end to Williams’ stint.

LLYR WILLIAMS The Herald Scotland • September 27, 2015

The Young Beethoven, City Hall, GlasgowCity Hall, Glasgow BY MICHAEL TUMELTY **** I FOUND the structure of Glasgow’s Beethoven series at the weekend, dividing the music between Young, Mature and Late periods in the composer’s life, a refreshing approach to presentation of the music, with one qualification, which I’ll come to in a moment. Equally refreshing, however, was the evident maturation of the artists involved. I realised on Friday night that they have been growing into this too. I must have been reviewing pianist Llyr Williams for around a decade now. His performances of the Pathetique and opus 31 no 3 Sonatas were rich in depth and texture, way beyond his early days, when he recorded everything he played, then crucified himself in his search for the steel-y perfection with depth he has now attained, though I have no doubt he would disagree that he’s there yet. And the Elias String Quartet, to judge from their playing of the two opus 18 Quartets, nos 1 and 5, which they delivered so effectively on Friday, has also matured. It seems to me that they have Beethoven’s endless surprises and abrupt turns more at their command and in their control. They are not taken off-guard or caught unawares by Beethoven’s frankly-volatile imagination. These were thoroughly-engaging performances from Williams and the Elias. I’ll just touch on one issue, which is nothing to do with the players, and needs some space to tackle head-on. Presenters and commentators give far too much space, time and emphasis, in discussing “early” or “young” Beethoven, to the influences of Haydn and/or Mozart, unwittingly, perhaps, at the expense of awareness of Beethoven’s own staggeringly originality. This has to be addressed.

LLYR WILLIAMS Seen and Heard International • October 20, 2015

Magnificent Performances of Beethoven Sonatas from Llyr Williams BY GLYN PURSGLOVE This was the first concert in Year 2 of Llyr Williams’s complete cycle of the Beethoven Piano sonatas (a cycle being given in Cardiff and London – at the Wigmore Hall). I am tempted to say that the concert might be reviewed in a single word – Magnificent! But, on reflection, that single word (though thoroughly justified) might not necessarily imply those qualities of profound musical intelligence, warm humanity and formidable technique with which all that we heard was imbued. All the music in this recital belongs to a period of just four years – from 1800, when Opus 22 was written to 1804 (in which year all the other three works in the programme seem to have been completed). The Sonata in B flat (Opus 22) is a Janus-faced work, looking both forwards and backwards, stylistically speaking. As played by Llyr Williams one realized how ‘maturely’ Beethovenian the opening movement (allegro con brio) was, even if, like the third movement (menuetto), it also recalled Mozart and Haydn. Williams seemed to ‘allow’, as it were, the thematic materials of the first movement to grow and burgeon organically, to bubble up in various directions like a mountain spring. It felt as if (though such language is doubtless hyperbolic) Beethoven’s music was playing though him, rather than being played by him. The second movement (adagio con molto expression) is more fully ‘romantic’ than its predecessor and was played with expressive delicacy by Williams and with a profound lyricism that was never remotely in danger of becoming sentimental. The decidedly Haydnesque opening of the minuet is succeeded by some troubled ‘explosions’ in the trio as well as some unexpected colours, illustrations (perhaps one should say enactments) of the way that Beethoven’s use of the piano was changing, even before he acquired his Erard piano in 1803). In the closing Rondo Williams brought out fully both the serenity of the opening and the more dramatic surprises later in the movement, and in giving equal weight to both anticipated an important dimension of the next work in his programme. I have long felt that the two movement Sonata in F, Opus 54 is a fine work too often overlooked or neglected. This performance of it by Llyr Williams must surely have alerted more than a few of his listeners to something of the same recognition. The sonata’s two movements, (marked, respectively ‘In tempo d’un Menuetto’ and ‘Allegretto’) were the occasion for some outstanding playing by Williams. In the first movement the music’s character is defined by the presence of two fiercely contrasted elements, a smoothly graceful opening theme (Beethoven’s debt to Haydn still very much evident) and a far more dramatic theme in eighth-note triplets. Williams brought out the contrast very vividly. These, indeed, are contrarieties in a thoroughly Blakean sense, whether one thinks of the engraved title-page of William Blake’s collection of lyrics ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’, or, more aptly still, of a famous passage in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (a work which Blake wrote some ten years before Beethoven composed these sonatas): “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence.”

Llyr Williams Seen and Heard International • October 20, 2015 page 2 of 3 For Blake, these contraries are not alternatives between which one should choose. The task, rather, is to hold onto both, to value both and to recognize how they are mutually dependent, in a sense complementary. This, it seems to me, is precisely what Beethoven does in this remarkable first movement. He doesn’t resolve the relationship between his contrasting materials by, as it were, allowing one to triumph, musically speaking, over the other. Rather, after alternating the contrasting materials several times, he reveals their complementarity (surely unsuspected by most listeners) at the ravishingly beautiful and meaningful close of the movement, in which the two ‘themes’ (though they are more than merely that) are played simultaneously. As Peter Reynolds put it in his excellent programme notes for the concert: “in the closing bars the two ideas are united: the minuet in the right hand and the rough triplets in the left”. It is one of the great musical moments of reconciliation. The sonata’s second movement is perhaps less profound, but this perpetuum mobile mixes its energetic humour with a certain darkness. Eric Blom wrote of the work as full of “Socratic humor”, adding that “the humor is not bitter: Socratic irony approaches it nearly. But its purport is not philosophic”. I find these observations wholly apt for the second movement, less so for the first. Opus 22 (and to a lesser degree Opus 54) are, then, Janus-faced sonatas, looking both backwards and forwards. Opus 53, the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata is of a different order, a work more purely forward looking, a work in which the composer has so thoroughly assimilated the lessons of the past, so thoroughly ‘Beethovenised’ those elements in the work of his predecessors which interest him, that to talk of ‘influences’ on this sonata is more or less pointless and irrelevant. One is obliged to talk, rather (though not here and now!) of the influence this work exerted on later music (by Beethoven and others), what it made possible. Here is a work which is both fully Beethovenian and fully ‘Romantic’ (for all that one can also see it as one which fully exploits the possibilities of the classical sonatas in ways not previously discovered). In its romanticism it is passionate and visionary, characterised by what Hugo Leichtentritt (writing in the 1930s) called its “self-confidently vigorous, triumphant attitude, the bold grandeur of its design, and its well-balanced mastery”. The music is more elemental than personal, articulating far more than any idea of romanticism as merely a kind of subjective self-expression. So, for example, the ecstasy in which the final movement closes is not, to quote Leichtentritt a second time, “the sentiment of an isolated individual. It is the music of universality”. The joy is not that of personal triumph (though it may contain such a sense), so much as of a larger sublimity, a particular apprehension of order, a kind of ‘music of the spheres’. In a work of such harmonic and thematic inventiveness, of almost relentless energy, contained by a more or less all-embracing sense of order, the difficulties facing the performer are not merely (are they ever really so?) ones to be expressed purely in terms of overcoming technical demands, but also of rising, as it were, to the heights of Beethoven’s passionate vision. Llyr Williams’ performance was incandescent in its passion and also its profound sense of that Beethovenian vision of order which is at the heart of the whole work; and, as those who have heard Williams before will not be surprised to hear, it was technically perfect. But, vitally, at all points the virtuosity was free of any self-regard and without of any sense of display, being entirely at the service of the music. As is well-known, the first version of this sonata included, as its second movement an andante some 8 or 9 minutes long. Beethoven is said to have been persuaded by friends that the presence of this movement would make the sonata as a whole unacceptably lengthy. If this story is true, one finds it surprising that Beethoven would have accepted such advice for such a reason. Perhaps he chose to omit it in part because, beautiful as it is, the movement was stylistically, and, one might say ‘temperamentally’ at odds with those either side of it, being more ‘personal in mood and thrust – not without good reason did Romain Rolland describe it as “this andante [into which Beethoven put] many of his more intimate emotions at this period of his life”. There is no doubt, however, as to the movement’s very real beauty, nor any surprise in that Beethoven continued to play it as a free-standing piece and later published it as ‘Andante favori’. It was right and good that Williams should play the andante as a kind of prelude to the Waldstein in revised version, especially when it was played so well, even if the relatively unfocused and diffuse nature of the writing which was revealed, made one realise how wise its omission was.

Llyr Williams Seen and Heard International • October 20, 2015 page 3 of 3 If one tries the experiment (easy enough on a CD player) of reinserting this music between the outer movements of the sonata, it sounds, although attractive, decidedly lightweight. What Beethoven replaced it with was an extraordinary ‘introduzione (adagio molto)’ to the final Rondo , a piece less than 30 bars long which yet, is very far from being lightweight. Brief as it is, it is profoundly serious and meditative, a piece which seems to call up (the relationship between this ‘prelude’ and what followed it felt, in this performance, like a kind of creation myth in music) the far more spacious and sublime sound world of the last movement. (Not every student of the sonata has, however, been persuaded of the ‘happiness’ of Beethoven’s substitution here. Even a sensitive Beethoven scholar like Harold Truscott, while describing this ‘introduzione’ as “one of the profoundest passages Beethoven ever wrote”, felt that “it leaps ahead by many years to the world of [Beethoven’s] third period; its fit companions are works such as the Opp. 101 and 109 sonatas … To this extent the ‘Waldstein’ sonata remained unbalanced, with one problem Beethoven never solved”). I have heard performances of the sonata – both recorded and in the concert hall – which might seem to justify Truscott’s comments. But Llyr Williams’s reading of the work persuaded one that Beethoven had solved the problem and that the sonata as a whole is excitingly coherent and ‘balanced’. After these captivating and absolutely persuasive readings, the response of a packed hall was rightly rapturous and lengthy. Though he must surely have been tired, the pianist responded with two encores – both by Scriabin! – the brief ‘Désir’ (the first of the two morceaux making up the composers, Opus 57 and the Étude in D-sharp minor, Op. 8 No. 12. Both were finely played, the first providing some tranquil beauty in miniature after the power and scale of the Waldstein, the second, taken pretty fast, being a closing display both of Williams’s virtuosity and his sense of the poetic. In short – it was magnificent!

LLYR WILLIAMS Classical Music Magazine • June 22, 2015

BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2015 BY SIMON REES The 2015 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World was held, as usual, in the brutalist splendours of St David’s Hall, Cardiff, an auditorium as sympathetic to vocal music as it is to its usual orchestral fare. This year 20 singers competed for a number of titles &#8210 the Song Prize (ably won by South Korean bass Jongmin Park), the Audience Prize (carried off by Mongolian baritone Amartushvin Enkhbat) and the Main Prize itself &#8210 of which more later. The week began with the first two song rounds, held in the beautifully resonant Dora Stoutzker Hall, a newish and welcome addition to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, with a grand foyer overlooking the Bute Park arboretum. With only 450 seats, the hall was not large enough to hold all the potential audience, so some had to make do with a relay at Cardiff University’s music department. The two official accompanists, Llŷr Williams and Simon Lepper, were joined by several other pianists who had come with individual singers. It was universally acknowledged (among the cognoscenti in the hall) that one unexpected high point of the whole competition was Llŷr’s transcendently dramatic performance of Schubert’s ‘Erlkonig’, which left the soloist, German bass Sebastian Pilgrim, somewhat outclassed. Other fine moments in the preliminary song rounds were Nadine Koutcher (soprano, Belarus) performing Liszt’s ‘Oh! Quand je dors’, a piece requiring exceptional virtuosity, and Jongmin Park singing ‘Danny Boy’, a daring choice brought off by his legato tone, marvellously wide dynamic range, and attention to the beauty of the words. The main competition consisted of four preliminary rounds, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Thomas Søndergård alternating with the orchestra of Welsh National Opera conducted by Martyn Brabbins. These rounds had been ‘seeded’ by the competition’s artistic director David Jackson so that each round (unlike previous years) would produce a finalist, with a fifth singer to be chosen as a ‘wild card’. Previously it had been possible for one round to produce three finalists or more, so there was some discussion in the hall about how this would pan out during the week. The worthy winner of the first round was Ukrainian tenor Oleksiy Palchykov (who didn’t perform in the song rounds) whose renditions of ‘Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön’ and ‘Il mio tesoro’ broke the usual pattern of white-knuckle rides during high, exposed Mozart arias, and whose loving, sweet-toned performance of Lensky’s aria ‘Kuda, kuda’ from Eugene Onegin had several people, including hardened, jaded press officers, in tears. Palchykov had a good stage presence as an innocent country lad (his biography said he had collected 61 football scarves, which added to this impression) and worked the audience well, driving off prodigious opposition from South Korea (who made it back to the final on the wild card) and Sebastian Pilgrim’s massive, thundering bass. The second night belonged wholeheartedly to American soprano Lauren Michelle, a diva in the making with superb stage presence (she made her own dresses in the haute couture mode) and an enthusiastic family group who nearly knocked me flying with their standing ovation. She gave us ‘Ain’t it a pretty night’ from Carlyle Floyd’s Susannah, and a thoughtful performance of the Embroidery Aria from Peter Grimes, but her main bid for fame was the scena, aria and cabaletta from Act 1 of La traviata, where I didn’t feel she brought much personality of Violetta, but executed all the runs and trills with scientific skill.

Llyr Williams Classical Music Magazine • June 22, 2015 page 2 of 2 Round 3 went to Enkhbat from Mongolia, whose beauty of tone made up for his absolute lack of facial expression. His aria from Prince Igor showed off his excellent Russian, and his style in Giordano and Verdi was admirably Italianate, with acceptable pronunciation. The final round was a walkover by Nadine Koutcher from Belarus, whose comic performance of ‘Les oiseaux dans la charmille’ from The Tales of Hoffmann was the highlight of the rounds, including a wind-up from Martyn Brabbins every time her clockwork mechanism ran down. The final of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World is a grand gala occasion, with many of the world’s opera professionals in attendance, and the atmosphere is electric, as a live broadcast must be. The fact of the broadcasts meant that the hall was somewhat cluttered with cables, commentators and the clanking jib camera, but master of ceremonies Tim Rhys-Evans did a good job of reconciling the live audience with the needs of the viewers at home. In the end, most of us would have been happy if any of the finalists had gone through. Enkhbat’s glorious ‘Eri tu’ from Un ballo in maschera rivalled that of Hvorostovsky 25 years ago. Michelle’s ‘Il est doux, il est bon’ from Hérodiade was expressively phrased, while Electra’s aria from Idomeneo was less so. Palchykov returned (rather tired) from Paris where he had been singing Ferrando in Così fan tutte to give a rousing performance of ‘Dein ist mein ganzes Herz’ which should keep him in business in the German and Austrian houses. Park sang (to my mind, most beautifully and dramatically of all) from Verdi’s Requiem, The Barber of Seville and La Gioconda. But the winner – acclaimed with a standing ovation – was Nadine Koutcher from Belarus, whose ‘Bell Song’ from Lakmé was mesmerisingly sung across three octaves, with perfect intonation and musicianship. Altogether a great week, a splendid final, and a demonstration yet again that the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World really is one of the finest series of concerts around, never mind that it’s supposed to be a competition.

LLYR WILLIAMS The Guardian • May 29, 2015

Llŷr Williams review – Beethoven from a pianist of probing intellect BY RIAN EVANS 4 / 5 stars Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff The pianist has the rare ability to shed new light on familiar music, and discovered new relationships between the sonatas of Op 31 and Op 101 Llŷr Williams is a natural Beethovenian. It’s three years since he won a South Bank Sky award for his sonata cycle at the Edinburgh festival, but the present series, running concurrently at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and at the Wigmore Hall, suggests that an already astonishing interpretation continues to evolve and deepen. Williams has that precious ability to shed new light on the most familiar music, and a nonchalant technical mastery and singing tone that transform the simplest of melodies into something exceptional. His adoption of a partly chronological sequence – here the three sonatas of Op 31 were balanced by the late sonata in A major, Op 101 – offers different perspectives and connections, notably in the matter of tonal relationships. In particular, the bright sunshine of the F major march, Op 101, seemed to tug the ear back to its relative, D minor, Op 31 No 2 – an emotional landscape clouded in mist. Yet it is Williams’s probing and restless intellect, with its focus on Beethoven’s compositional process, that holds the listener in thrall: clarity goes hand in hand with tenderness; there is spontaneity, even quirkiness, too. Equally absorbing is the affinity for tonal colouring, and Williams’s recent explorations of Wagner have apparently made him even more aware of Beethoven’s harmonic language, its richness and its expressive power. The chromatic progressions both in the opening movement of Op 101 and in the slow introduction to its finale had a breathtaking quality, balanced by the tensile strength of the fugue, which gathers momentum but is always impeccably controlled.

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Llyr Williams Set Beethoven Cycle in Motion

with Astonishing Musicianship

October 12, 2014

United Kingdom Beethoven: Llyr Williams (piano), Cardiff, RWCMD, 9.10.2014 (LJ).

Beethoven: Piano Sonata in F minor, Op.2, No.1

Piano Sonata in A, Op.2, No.2

Piano Sonata in C, Op.2, No.3

Bringing the beginning of his ‘Beethoven Sonata Series’ to Cardiff’s RWCMD, Llyr Williams

gave an astonishing recital. Through his technical precision and heartfelt performances the

audience were left mesmerised by both his talent and ability to subtly convey the fraught

emotion in the kernel of each piece. A perfectionist and truly professional performer, Williams

certainly deserved the rapturous applause and standing ovation he received in the Dora Stoutzker

Hall.

Dedicated to Haydn, with whom Beethoven studied in 1792, the Op.2 sonatas opened Williams’

concert. Beethoven’s compositions allude to Haydn’s Classical style, but veering away from the

older maestro, have a quintessentially Beethoven feel. Following on from Muzio Clement’s

compositions for keyboard though displaying greater boldness and tenderness, these works mark

the arrival of perhaps the most famous composer of piano sonatas. Williams’ performance of the

Piano Sonata in F minor Op.2 No.1 rested somewhere between Bach (with the Menuetto,

Allegro sounding almost like a partita) and Ravel. Through lightness of touch with his left hand

and balanced use of pedals Williams avoided sounding typically Romantic, contemporising these

pieces for a modern day audience. Williams brought out such softness and tenderness in the

Adagio movement and throughout this concert stamped the Beethoven sonatas with a peculiarly

‘Williams’ feel.

Contrasting with the strongly characterised and brooding Sonata in F minor, Op.2 No.1, the

Sonata in C, Op.2 No.2 is a light and joyous piece, seemingly devoid of the angst and intensity of

the other pieces performed in this concert. Williams’ interpretations were cautiously and

intelligently thought out and delivered with unwavering directness of emotion. Through not

overplaying the chords and adding more slurs around the staccato runs, Williams unburdened the

first movement, removing its starkness to carve a more nuanced and lyrical shape. Indeed, there

were more closed eyes when he played the tender Adagio than during a performance of ‘Una

Furtiva Lagrima’.

After the interval Williams returned to the spacious and elemental luminosity of Beethoven’s

Piano Sonata in A, Op.2 No.2. Bravely exposing the Largo appassionato with uncluttered

simplicity, Williams’ minimalism and exactitude helped to imbue this piece with impressionistic

poeticism. In particular, featuring a pizzicato-like walking bass contrasted by lyrical chords,

Williams managed to imitate the style of a string quartet this second movement. Written in D

major, the subdominant of A major, this section requires a great deal of contrapuntal phrasing,

which Williams conveyed with considerable composure.

Posthumously called the Appassionata Sonata, the magnificent Sonata in F minor, Op. 57 is one

of Beethoven’s most technically challenging and tempestuous pieces. Composed in 1803, and

displaying all of the audacious experimental notions of the ground-breaking composer, this

Appassionata Sonata was written at a time when Beethoven was trying to come to terms with his

steadily deteriorating hearing. Much like the Waldstein Sonata and Eroica Symphony, it is worth

noting that after composing such innovative and arresting a piece Beethoven did not write

another piano sonata for five years. According to Czerny, who described this majestic piece as

‘ocean waves on a stormy night and a distant cry for help’, Beethoven considered it to be his

greatest sonata before the Hammerklavier, composed much later. Dedicated to Count Franz

Brunswick, this attribution is much more telling when one considers the fact that Beethoven had

fallen in love with Countess Therese von Brunswick and Josephine von Deym, Count Franz’s

sisters.

Beginning with subdued rumblings and disquiet, the piece erupts into an animated outburst of

astonishing extremity and intimidating intensity (perhaps alluding to Beethoven’s unrequited

love for the two sisters). Leaving a trail of hazy disquiet and unresolved conflict until

augmenting into a tempestuous overflow of spontaneous emotion; Williams successfully tapped

into the whole gamut of human emotion when performing this sonata. The Jascha Heifetz of the

piano, Williams was subtle yet evocative using tonal and dynamic variation economically so as

not to overwhelm the music.

Soviet pianist Heinrich Neuhaus’ description of the imagery that is conjured from a piano recital

is most befitting for Williams’ performance of Beethoven’s sublime Appassionata Sonata:

Everyone is aware of the fact that visual and auditive perspective are identical; the only

difference being that they are created and perceived by two physically different organs, the eye

and the ear. How often the playing of a great master makes us think of a picture with a deep

background and varying planes; the figures in the foreground almost leap out of the frame

whereas in the background the mountains and clouds are lost in a blue haze.

Certainly a great master in his ability to conjure thoughts and spark the imagination of his

audience, Williams painted bucolic scenes of wandering fields and engulfing sea storms.

Bringing the audience to their feet in rapturous applause, the next instalment of his Sonata Series

on February 21st will certainly be worth attending.

Lucy Jeffery

LLYR WILLIAMS Classical Source • October 3, 2014

Review: Llyr Williams at Wigmore Hall BY COLIN ANDERSON Llŷr Williams at Wigmore Hall – Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle (1) – Opus 2 and Appassionata If you are a pianist it can’t be a bad thing to be facially compared with Clifford Curzon at a similar age, and Llŷr Williams (born in 1976) does just this. Embarking here, as a three-year project shared between Wigmore Hall and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Williams is immersing himself in Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas. And become immersed in the music he does, expression and sound entwined, one feeding the other in each direction. Such an even-handed approach serves the music well, and clearly Williams listens intently to what his fingers and feet are producing, visibly reacting to harmony in one way and to timbre in another. Possibly, given his concentration, he was the only person in the Hall that did not hear the squeaking that was so pronounced in the recital’s first half (and remained, if less so, in the second), which was difficult to locate, and may have been either the very stool on which Williams was seated or related to the actions of his piano’s pedals, but it seemed more furniture-related than mechanical. The noise was a regrettable distraction during the slow movement of the First of the Opus 2 Sonatas, a shame because Williams brought to it a particular eloquence, as he did joy and capriciousness elsewhere. However, at other points in this work, there was a somewhat earnest and detached approach that had one craving for more colour and flexibility, although there was no lack of dynamism and appropriate force when required. In the impressive C major Sonata, Williams cannily playing the large-scale No.3 next so as to give each half of his concert a ‘big’ piece, the pianist was thoroughly at home in this totally engaging work. May I be anecdotal and tell of the time when this Sonata was unknown to me. When faced with concurrently brand-new LPs (that dates this story!) of it from Brendel and Gilels, I bought them both and had a good weekend getting to know the music from two keyboard Olympians. Williams gave a wholly marvellous reading of this work, delightfully springy and modulated, dramatic and as outgoing as required, finding depths of utterance, not least in the sombre Adagio, and in the finale pointing the way to Mendelssohn and how Beethoven would influence him. The A major Sonata opened the second half. Maybe Williams is not one for Beethoven’s line in humour (a quality about which Brendel has lectured), but he has a questing spirit that is descriptive, flamboyant even, while also being alive to the private side of the music, such as the march-like tread of the slow movement over which a solemn song is projected. Here Williams was magnetic, while elsewhere he was both rich and amiable, faster passages attracting delicious swoops as fingers hit keys. With the ‘Appassionata’, at the outset greater brooding, potency and quieter dynamics would have been welcome. Maybe Williams was trying to disown the erroneous nickname (not of the composer’s doing), but initial staidness gave way to an epic sense of investment on Williams’s part, boundary-breaking on behalf the music and winding down to a sense of desolation – the final chord long-held and chilling – that I have not encountered before at this close. In the variants of the succeeding Andante con moto Williams found real gravitas, the music

Llyr Williams Classical Source • October 3, 2014 page 2 of 2 laden with meaning, and went on to give the finale a thrilling outing, tempestuous, and also structurally pristine with the repeat of the development section (and surely mandatory, so unusual is Beethoven’s request). Here fire and formality were indivisible, and with the acumen of a gold-medal-winning athlete, Williams’s acceleration into the coruscating coda was electrifying, as fast as anything, totally truthful, the breathtaking speed (and amazing clarity) retained to devastating effect right up to the emphatic final chords. Encores divide opinion, sometimes wanted, sometimes not, sometimes justified, often not! Following the extraordinary end to the ‘Appassionata’, as white-hot as can be imagined, Williams could certainly justify an extra item, but after a long evening of four full-time Sonatas, there was more cause to say thanks and good night. Nevertheless, Williams played Liszt’s ‘Les cloches de Genève’ from the Swiss leg of Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), and he did so with much sensitivity, the bells in question magically cutting through this contemplative nocturne. London has enjoyed notable traversals of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas – Barenboim, Lill and Pollini come to mind – and there is every good reason to think that Llŷr Williams is about to join such august company. He returns to Wigmore Hall on February 25.

LLYR WILLIAMS The Herald Scotland • September 29, 2014

REVIEW: LLYR WILLIAMS/ELIAS QUARTET BY MICHAEL TUMELTY WILL the day come when we stop parcelling Beethoven's music into three chronologically convenient periods? Probably not; it's just too useful to bracket the music into "early", "middle" and "late" periods; and if somebody questions the practice, it's easy to stitch in stylistic developments to validate the labelling. Yet it only takes one perceptive, genuinely original performer to set the package unravelling. And, in Glasgow's intensive weekend survey of Beethoven's music, with performances shared between the Elias String Quartet and pianist Llyr Williams, that dismantling nearly came about, thanks to the unfailing questioning by the Welshman of templates, assumptions and preconceptions. That man Williams doesn't have a second-hand thought in his head. This was a survey of "middle-period" Beethoven. Someone should have told Williams. Each of the three sonatas he played - the opus 26 in A flat and the two opus 27 Sonatas, including the Moonlight - was off the leash in sheer freedom of expression. Indeed, I sat gobsmacked during his performance of the A flat Sonata, thinking this performance was a study in texturing and sonority, with a dash of serenity lifting the music light years away from any "period". Few pianists can provoke thought in the way Llyr Williams does. The Elias Quartet provoked a bit of thought themselves with their performance of the great F Major Rasumovsky Quartet: should the wonderfully long cello theme that opens the piece really be played that fast? I'm unconvinced. It loses breadth, nobility, and not a little of its glamour if it seems urgent and over-paced. The value of their post-concert coda account of the opus 95 Quartet, however, in an punchy, concise performance, was incalculable.

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LLYR WILLIAMS The Herald Scotland • June 14, 2014

Franz reunited at East Neuk Festival's Schubertiad BY KATE MOLLESON East Neuk Festival is turning 10 this year, and to celebrate it is holding a pretty specialist kind of a party: a Schubertiad. Basically this translates to an afternoon and evening of chamber music by the 19th-century Viennese composer Franz Schubert. There are trios, string quartets, songs and solo piano pieces, with various musicians - the Belcea Quartet, the Gould Piano Trio, soprano Malin Christensson, pianists Christian Zacharias and Llyr Williams - all mixing and matching to make up the various configurations. East Neuk's artistic director Svend Brown describes the event as a "quiet innovation" for the festival. "Sometimes it's good to just nail your colours to the mast," he says, meaning that for a festival whose reputation is built around the calibre of its chamber music, the intimacy of its venues and the loyalty of its musicians and audiences, there is no better celebration than a Schubertiad, epitome of all these qualities. The origins of the Schubertiad go back to Schubert's own lifetime, when informal soirees provided a platform for the composer to perform his latest music. These events weren't strictly concerts - more unofficial, unadvertised gatherings of friends and neighbours numbering anywhere between a handful and a hundred. As well as serious music there was dancing and games of charades. Schubert and his friends drank good coffee and good wine and smoked long pipes of fresh tobacco. They read Schiller and Goethe and discussed philosophy late into the night. Think something along the lines of a traditional ceilidh, with impromptu turns of poetry and stories and songs cropping up between the dances. Socially, the original Schubertiads were a mixed bunch. Young revolutionaries sat cheek-by-jowl with city merchants and princesses, all of them there for the love of Schubert's music. There was also a strong undercurrent of political unrest. The image of Austria in the early decades of the 19th century might look like a chocolate-box idyll, but it operated as a repressive near-police state in which artists - Schubert included - were subjected to regular censorship. As the nights at the Schubertiads drew on and the ladies retired to leave the men smoking and drinking, conversation would rally around political opposition, earning the gatherings a reputation for radicalism. All the while, Schubert would perch at the piano, slightly removed from yet absolutely integral to proceedings. In his biography of the composer, the Viennese musicologist George R Marek describes something of the dynamic at these events: "every artist is a planet, minor or major, around which several moons circle. He, the artist, holds these moons in orbit by the force of his personality; his genius sheds a glow on those who would like to be artists but are not, or on those who are curious to explore the world of art - headier than their own world - or on those who merely derive vicarious excitement from knowing 'a celebrity'." Marek was writing decades ago but could easily be describing today's celebrity culture. But the Schubertiads were more than hero-worship; Schubert needed them just as much as his friends did. Through the night he would play and play: new piano music and chamber music and songs, some of which he would sing himself. He would also accompany dancing and games; he was not above providing simple pleasures for the party. He died of syphilis at the age of 31 before achieving the large-scale success that would have surely come in later life. The Schubertiads were his testing ground, his stage.

Llyr Williams Herald Scotland • June 14, 2014 page 2 of 3 Nowadays the political fervent and poetry has been lost, and what remains of the Schubertiad tradition is generally boiled down to a series of all-Schubert concerts with an intimate, informal atmosphere. Sometimes concert halls will ditch the usual rowed seating and arrange the audience around cabaret-style tables - fail-proof signifier of bohemianism. Often a Schubertiad is simply an excuse to indulge in several programmes' worth of some of the most tender and gratifying music ever written. So why a Schubertiad at East Neuk? Partly it is simply that last point: Svend Brown has no qualms in claiming a director's prerogative to indulge his own tastes on the occasion of a big anniversary. "I love and am fascinated by Schubert probably more than any other composer," he says. "He is one of the few composers that I want to listen to at length." The fascination is "a little nerdy", he warns. "It's astonishing that at a time in Vienna when Beethoven and Rossini overshadowed all others, when so many composers either retreated from the field or slavishly emulated them, here was this very young man with very little public profile who revered and was influenced by Beethoven yet was utterly in possession of his own voice melodically, harmonically, structurally, poetically." To understand what Brown means, just listen to the slow movement of Schubert's Death And The Maiden alongside the slow movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony: "Schubert's pervasive influence in the 19th century is astounding for someone who died so young, having published only a couple of hours' music." Poignantly, Brown describes Schubert's entire life as a kind of upbeat, without lasting long enough to enjoy its rightful resolution. There's something else, too, that is fundamentally satisfying in Schubert's music. Brown calls it "a great urge to please the listener" - those extraordinary turns of harmony and melody that draw us in, let us engage and luxuriate. Perhaps the original Schubertiad set-up had something to do with this quality in the music; the fact Schubert knew his new works would be first heard by an audience that was up-close-and-personal - an audience that wanted to feel a part of the expression, whose reactions would be visible all around him. Over the past decade, East Neuk has built up a loyal rostrum of visiting musicians, none more so than the German pianist Christian Zacharias. "I still can't really believe he accepted that invitation to the first East Neuk Festival," says Brown. "If you think of how we started: a small, wet-behind-the-ears festival in a part of Scotland that is obscure even to a surprising number of Scots, far less to international artists. By signing up for that very first festival and then returning every other year, Christian has put us on the map and contributed significantly to our identity." Zacharias has played Schubert on almost all of those visits; the composer has long been the backbone of his career. "With Schubert," he says, "it's like sitting with a friend." But that friendship wasn't an immediate thing, Zacharias tells me. He hardly played a note of the composer's music until his mid-20s. "I had an old-school Russian teacher who had me learning Chopin and Liszt and Rachmaninov - 'real' piano repertoire. It was a generational thing; it took people like Schnabel and Brendel to wake us up." Now in his early 60s, it was back around the age of 26 that Zacharias had his Schubert epiphany. At a concert in London he heard the great Romanian pianist Radu Lupu playing the Schubert's late G-major sonata, D 894, and the experience completely altered his approach to playing the piano. "Something clicked," he remembers. "The sound was so strong and unique and human - I wanted to be a part of it. It opened my ears. It was like hearing Monteverdi for the first time played by a dedicated early-music group." For the Welsh pianist Llyr Williams, another East Neuk regular, it's the intimacy of East Neuk's concert settings - those small, beautifully simple churches in Fife's coastal villages - that makes this Schubertiad so appealing. "You lose something of Schubert's music if you put it in too big a space," he says. "Schubert's songs, for example, don't cope well

Llyr Williams Herald Scotland • June 14, 2014 page 3 of 3 with noise. They're so fragile and delicate, so private, so intimate. They are best heard at home, with friends and family sitting around feeling relaxed. East Neuk comes pretty close to that." And how's this for familial atmosphere: Zacharias was the first concert pianist whom Williams ever met as a boy. At around the age of 10, at a concert in St Asaph on the North Wales coast, young Williams held out a book of Mozart sonatas for the esteemed German pianist to sign at the end of a recital. Despite sharing the bill of many an East Neuk Festival, the two pianists haven't met in the intervening 25 years. "Perhaps," Williams muses, "I might bring that book of sonatas to Fife this year, to show Christian. After all, we'll be sharing a whole day together." East Neuk Festival's 10th edition runs June 27-July 6; the Schubertiad is at Crail Church on July 5. For the full programme, go to www.eastneukfestival.com. Kate Molleson talks to Llyr Williams at length in tomorrow's Sunday Herald.

LLYR WILLIAMS M-Live • April 29, 2014

Welsh pianist Llyr Williams earns standing ovation from Gilmore crowd in Kalamazoo (review) BY YVONNE ZIPP KALAMAZOO, MI -- Beethoven's "Pathetique" Sonata is one of the most famous in classical music -- one of those works, like "Appalachian Spring" or "Flight of the Valkyries," that even people who aren't classical music fans know. (If you've ever heard "Somewhere Out There" from "An American Tail," you've heard a stylized version of the melody in its second movement.) Bringing a fresh interpretation to something so well-known, without alienating people who love it, is a real challenge. Welsh pianist Llyr Williams managed both, banishing all memory of singing mice and bringing the audience of 117 to its feet by the end of his concert Tuesday, as part of The Gilmore Festival in Kalamazoo. Williams, who is often compared in reviews to the late Glenn Gould, clearly has a special affinity with the work of Beethoven. He performed a Beethoven sonata cycle around Great Britain, including two weeks during August 2011 at the Greyfriars Kirk Festival in Edinburgh, when he played all 32 sonatas in a series of concerts. He received a prestigious South Bank Show award for that achievement. With sunlight streaming in the Palladian windows of Stetson Chapel and Kalamazoo College students walking to class outside, it would have been easy to daydream. Williams didn't let the audience drift off on clouds of music, holding their attention with showmanship, humor (exaggeratedly wiping his brow during the Pathetique), unexpected pauses, terrific runs of speed, and even, very occasionally, pounding the keys. After lulling his listeners with the Andante during the Sonata No. 10 in G Major, Op. 14, No. 2, for example, he ended with an emphatic bang, before launching into the playful final Scherzo. Tuesday's final selection was the most complex: No. 20 in E Major, Op. 109 – one of the five sonatas Beethoven wrote after he had suffered such a profound hearing loss he could no longer continue his career as a pianist. Williams let the final measure linger, before receiving a standing ovation from the crowd. Tuesday was the first of three concerts of Beethoven Sonatas Williams is performing as part of The Gilmore Festival. The second will be Saturday, May 3, at 2 p.m. and the third next Tuesday at 2 p.m., both also at Stetson Chapel. Tickets for all three are $20, but the final Tuesday concert is free to anyone with a Kalamazoo College I.D. and one guest, so ticketholders should plan to get there earlier.