Jeneba Kanneh-Mason on Fantasie

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason's debut solo album, Fantasie, is out now on Sony Classical, and it offers a diverse programme formed around connections across the soundworlds of different composers. It is bookended by the second sonatas of Chopin and Scriabin, exploring music by Claude Debussy, Florence Price, William Grant Still and Margaret Bonds alongside, and makes for a fascinating and colourful journey. Matthew Ash spoke with Jeneba ahead of the album being released, to find out more about her passage to recording these works and her hopes for the future.

The programme for Fantasie is very diverse. What do you think holds everything together? 

Well, it's very interesting that all the pieces come from such different backgrounds and the composers are very different. I think the title 'Fantasie' is very fitting because I think that each piece really helps to broaden the imagination. And in every piece, you can visualise lots of different characters and scenery, as well as really connecting to the music.

The Chopin sonata is a monumental way to start a solo recording career and an album. Tell me about the journey that you've been on with this piece. 

I grew up playing Chopin from a very young age, and Patsy Toh was an amazing Chopin teacher. I feel like the foundation I've had with Chopin's music is very strong. So now that I'm playing this second sonata, which is a sonata I've wanted to play for a very long time, I feel I have something that I want to say with it. And of course, it was a challenge to learn it, but now that I've been playing it for a while now, it feels very natural. 

Rubinstein famously described the last movement, following the funeral march, as "wind howling around the gravestones". Do you sense that in the piece? 

I agree with that, it's very haunting and ghostly. It feels so unusual and turbulent, and you don't know where it's going to turn; in fact the whole sonata has these huge emotional shifts. And maybe that's a lot like me, so I feel very at home with the sudden changes of Chopin's music.

I can't think of another work quite like it...it's unique in the repertoire, isn't it? 

Yes, was it Schumann who said that it feels like four great pieces stuck together but they don't flow nicely with each other? But maybe now that we've heard it so many times, it feels very much like four connected movements. 

Talking about having heard it so many times, are there any recordings that have really grabbed you? 

Which is my favourite? I would say I really like Mitsuko Uchida's recording, actually. I've heard Yuja Wang's recording a few times as well, which I really like. Oh my gosh, there are so many...but everyone does it so differently, so I don't listen for ideas - I think it's just really interesting to hear that everyone has their own interpretation.

With that in mind, have you used a particular edition of the work to study from? 

Yes, I used the Ekier edition, which just feels right. There’s lots of different suggestions for markings as well, which is very useful.

Where do you find the line between the improvisatory feeling and respecting the text that the composer laid down? 

I'm very strict with myself about the markings, but then within that I feel like I change things like tempo and rubato quite a lot, depending on how I feel the whole piece is going - what will make something a really special moment. With the Chopin nocturnes I feel like I can be very free with where I want to take and pull the time, because Chopin himself was such a great improviser. 

What attracted you to Scriabin and these pieces in particular? 

He is a composer that I came to a lot later. I felt like I was kind of in the world of Chopin, but at the same time somewhere entirely different. And I there's something else going on that I couldn't really pin my own experiences onto as well...something quite heavenly, if that's the right word. Lots of the writing is very intimate and delicate, which is my favourite type of piano writing.

Margaret Bonds's Troubled Water is a piece I'd never heard. Having listened to it on your album, I notice there's also a new recording by the harpist Ashley Jackson. Do you feel a cultural affinity to that music? 

Yeah, I think because I grew up with that kind of music, I definitely feel that. I find her writing really refined, and I think she's really taken the time to think about the rhythmic pulse throughout. Harmonically, it's quite complex.

Are you going to tour this programme? 

I won't tour the whole programme, but there are pieces that I will tour. Right now, I'm playing the Chopin Sonata in lots of concerts. That will be in my programmes for a while.

Is there a work you particularly have a passion to record at some point? 

The Rachmaninoff Second Concerto, that's the biggest dream. And chamber music is something I want to do in the future, to play with as many different instrumentalists as possible.

Finally, how does it feel to be following in the footsteps of your older siblings?

It feels so nice to be following in Isata and Sheku's footsteps because they've been so supportive. They came to some of the recording sessions as well and gave their own advice. I just feel very comfortable now because of what they did.