Martin James Bartlett on Bach, Mozart and Britten

Recorded in Salzburg last year, former BBC Young Musician of the Year Martin James Bartlett's fourth album on Warner Classics sees him joining forces with Howard Griffiths and the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg for early concertos by JS Bach and Mozart plus Britten's brief, brilliant Young Apollo (premiered in 1939 with the composer as soloist but mysteriously withdrawn from the repertoire shortly afterwards). 

Martin spoke to me last month about the connections between the three composers, his fascination with Britten as a pianist, following in the footsteps of Mozart during the recording sessions, and the game-changing advice which he received from Sir András Schiff on a previous trip to Salzburg...

Britten’s Young Apollo wasn’t commercially recorded until the early 1980s, and still doesn’t get out all that often…what attracted you to the piece? 

This whole project grew out of me exploring Britten, not just as a composer but as a pianist and conductor too; in the process I listened to all the available piano recordings, just to get a sense of how he played as a soloist and collaborative pianist. I assumed he must have played Young Apollo a lot himself, then I discovered that he withdrew the piece after just two performances. Going through the various sources, I came across several theories as to why…One is that he simply wasn’t that happy with the work, perhaps because it is monotone in terms of colour: it’s bright and bubbly, and doesn’t stray much from the home key of A major. Personally, I see that as part of its charm: it’s a seven-minute burst of sunshine!

But I’m more inclined to think that it’s all tied up with the fact that it’s dedicated to his early love interest, Wulff Scherchen…Britten got together with Peter Pears shortly after Young Apollo was premiered, and I wonder if he took the piece out of circulation for the sake of his new relationship. Wulff emigrated to Australia and was happily married to a woman for seventy years; he contributed to John Bridcut’s book Britten’s Children in 2006, and in 2015 the Australian composer Lyle Chan wrote a song cycle based on his correspondence with Britten. It’s all a bit mysterious, but immensely fascinating.

Part of the reason I espouse that second theory is that I just can’t imagine that the piece wouldn’t have been successful, regardless of whether Britten loved it himself: it’s one of those audience-pleasers like Vladimir Horowitz’s transcription of Stars and Stripes Forever or Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C sharp minor, which became so popular that they both grew entirely bored of playing them! I’ve been lucky to perform Young Apollo quite a bit in concert and it always goes down well; lots of people haven’t heard it before but afterwards they come up and say ‘Wow, that’s a riot!’. It’s a great deal of fun to hear and to play.

Judging from the technical brilliance of the solo part, Britten clearly knew no fear as a pianist…

His playing was quite limitless - you can't imagine there being anything he couldn’t do. I always giggle at the footage of him playing the Mozart sonata for two pianos at Aldeburgh with Sviatoslav Richter, who was arguably one of the greatest pianists of all time: Prokofiev wrote sonatas for him, and he absolutely changed the landscape of classical pianism in the twentieth century. Richter makes a couple of slips while Britten is just pitch-perfect, and at one point he smiles wryly at Richter as if to say: ‘This is your job, but I seem to be doing it better at the moment!’

What are your personal favourites from Britten’s discography as a performer?

Is it cheating if I say ‘everything he recorded with Peter Pears’? Take something like 'Down By The Salley Gardens', a song I love: you hear other people play Britten’s setting and those trademark harmonic shifts don’t quite land, but it all just makes total sense under his own hands.

And of course I love him as a conductor – his Mozart concertos with Richter as soloist are absolute treasures. There are a couple where Richter plays Britten’s cadenzas, and I adore those because we get to see Britten in so many guises: as a collaborative musician, as a very distinctive Mozartian, and as a composer responding to someone else’s raw material.

I came across them when I was doing Mozart's Piano Concerto in E flat K482 with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields a few years ago, playing the cadenza by my great friend Rudolf Buchbinder, which is also fabulous. I started looking through all the other cadenzas for that concerto and stumbled across Britten’s in the process – I didn’t know it was by him when I put the recording on, but the cadenza starts in a way that’s instantly recognisable. It takes flight in the most imaginative way, then brings you back to Mozart without feeling incoherent. It’s fabulous.

All three works on the album were written fairly early in their composers’ careers - do they share a certain youthful energy?

Definitely. There’s so much common ground - especially between Young Apollo and the precocious brilliance of the Jeunehomme, where you just have a very short orchestral introduction before the soloist says ‘Right, I’m here now!’. Nobody would have expected that in 1777, and it must’ve raised a few eyebrows. I think it was probably one of Mozart’s little musical jokes, and when it happens a second time it feels like he’s making sure that the gag has landed!

It’s tempting to draw a parallel between the titles too, but ‘Jeunehomme’ [‘Young Man’] is a red herring: it’s a corruption of the name ‘Jenamy’, which almost certainly came about because Mozart had such appalling French! It was dedicated to the young pianist and dancer Victoire Jenamy, who I think was a potential love interest, and the last movement in particular reflects that.

When you met a young lady in those days you had to get on her father’s good side, and Jenamy’s father Jean-Georges Noverre was a very big deal: he was a famous choreographer who transformed the landscape of dance, so much so that World Dance Day is still celebrated on his birthday. I can’t help wondering if that sweet minuet section which interrupts the hair-raising excitement of the final Rondo is Mozart’s attempt to butter Noverre up!

We know Britten deeply respected Bach and Mozart, and he programmed them a lot at Aldeburgh simply because he loved to play their pieces. I can’t think of many albums that have Bach, Mozart and Britten alongside each other, and I really wanted to bring them together. I was especially keen to show the influence which Bach had on Britten, because they share a certain transcendent quality.

You hear it in the bonkers brilliance of The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, which puts me in mind of the way Bach would transpose the same music onto a whole variety of instruments and make it all work. It’s all so fluid: you can sing the Cello Suites or arrange the Goldberg Variations for accordion ensemble, and it’s still brilliant. I think Britten’s music transcends boundaries in a similar way. 

How was the experience of recording in Salzburg?

Howard Griffiths approached me about recording the Jeunehomme after we performed the piece together at the Tonhalle. The recording was very generously supported by the Orpheum Foundation, who suggested we do it with the Mozartorchester in Salzburg. It seemed like the natural choice, and being there in Salzburg was incredible – the place was covered in snow, which reminded me of the opening scene of Amadeus, and half of the city hasn’t changed since Mozart was living there…so much so that you can imagine he might pop his head round the corner at any point!

I loved walking the streets he walked and eating the food that he ate: the lovely brasserie next to my hotel served Tafelspitz, which are a sort of boiled dumpling that’s been around since the eighteenth century. They aren’t exactly haute cuisine - and to be honest they tasted like they’d been boiling since Mozart was alive! - but it was quite the experience. 

Had you performed in the city before?

The first time I went to Salzburg for work was when András Schiff rang me up to ask if I’d like to take part in a masterclass he was giving on the Jeunehomme, which was a bit of a no-brainer! There were three of us involved; we were told to prepare the whole concerto, then we’d be allocated a movement each when we got there…I was thrilled to be given the first one, which is the most extensive!

It was an incredible experience working with Schiff, and he gave me some advice that I’ve carried with me ever since. I come across as very confident in social situations, but we all have our insecurities about playing - and when you’re on stage with Sir András Schiff, they certainly make themselves known! 

Just before he went on stage to address the audience, he tapped me on the shoulder and said: ‘You’ve got this - just play it more masterfully!’ I straightened my back, relaxed my shoulders and went out there determined to be the boss and have fun in the process. That simple act of kindness really stuck with me, and it was so powerful to have someone of that status giving me permission to chill out a bit: whenever I’m nervous before a concert I remind myself how lucky I am to be there. We’re all on this earth for a very short time, so you’ve got to enjoy it!

How did you choose an instrument which would work well for all three pieces?

Mixed programmes like this require some planning, because it’s hard to find pianos that can do everything: Wigmore Hall’s new Steinway is a rare exception! They have a Steinway in the venue we used, but I was told that it would be impossible to get in there and try it first. I love Steinways and all my previous albums have been recorded on them, but I thought it would be quite a risk to go in cold. The Britten will work on any piano that has real guts, but the Bach and the Mozart demand a sparkling clarity that’s only possible on a very even instrument – as soon as you have one note that slightly sticks out every bit of passagework becomes a headache.

As I was in Austria, I rang up Bösendorfer and asked if they could help me out. They very kindly invited me to their factory, where I tried some beautiful instruments – all of them were gorgeous, but it wasn’t a difficult choice because I fell in love with this one the moment I played the opening phrase of the Jeunehomme. I just knew it was The One, and I adore the clarity it brings to Bach. Bösendorfer have supported me well beyond loaning the instrument - I’m also doing a launch for the album at their shop in Vienna, which is practically inside the Musikverein!

Do you have any other live performances of the programme in the works?

I’m currently in Bucharest doing a lovely programme of the three Bs - Bach, Beethoven and Britten, directing the Romanian Radio Orchestra from the piano. Young Apollo is a bit like spinning plates, but I think the audience enjoy the theatre of it all: it’s quite the physical spectacle when one hand’s playing a glissando and the other comes up to bring in the orchestra! It’s still fundamentally a chamber piece to me, and that’s the binding element on this album. It says ‘Concertos’ quite grandly on the cover, but for me it’s all chamber music: the orchestra has such a key role and we’re all bouncing off each other.