Clare Hammond is recognised for the virtuosity and authority of her performances.

Clare has been acclaimed as a ‘pianist of extraordinary gifts’ (Gramophone) and ‘immense power’ (The Times). In 2016, she won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award and her career since then has been outstanding. Under ordinary circumstances we’d have to consider her well out of our league, financially-speaking...but there's an advantage to building strong relationships with local musicians.
 
As an added incentive to book, Clare will have performed two thirds of what promises to be an excitingly diverse programme at the Wigmore Hall just a fortnight before. Sometimes musicians use us a guinea-pig before a top-flight recital. In this instance… well, say no more, right? 

Hélène de Montgeroult – Études Nos. 62, 67, 104, 110, 111
Cécile Chaminade – 'Impromptu' Étude de concert, Op. 35 No. 5
Cécile Chaminade - Étude romantique, Op. 132
Gabriel Fauré – Nocturnes Nos. 12 and 8
Ludvig van Beethoven – Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 'Moonlight'
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Sonata in D major, K. 311
Clara Schumann – 3 Romances, Op. 21
Jeffrey Mumford – of ringing and layered space 'Jenny'
Frédéric Chopin – Études Op. 25 Nos. 1, 2, 4, 11 and 12

Eight composers, one instrument, a single afternoon: this concert promises to be more than just a top-flight recital by one of the UK’s leading pianists; it’s also an aural odyssey through the ages, from the earliest piece on the programme, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sonata in D major, K. 311, dated 1777, through to Jeffrey Mumford’s of ringing and layered space 'Jenny' (2010). 
 
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” said Isaac Newton. As with scientists, so with composers: advances in technology (improvements in piano construction allowed feats of Romanticist key-bashing passion wholly unimaginable by their Classicist forebears) and changes in society’s attitudes towards music (its ongoing secularisation and professionalization for example) have all played their part in this astonishing stylistic journey from Mozart to Mumford, alongside that ever-evolving question ‘What is Music?’, to which successive generations of composers have given new and often unexpected answers.
 
Queuing up in chronological order after Mozart (1756 – 1791) are, first off, Hélène de Montgeroult (1764 – 1836) and Ludvig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827). De Montgeroult deserves a biographical essay all of her own – sample detail: she managed to avoid France’s Revolutionary guillotine by improvising a set of variations on the Marseillaise that moved the judges to tears – and her early Romantic style, decades ahead of her time, has been described as “the missing link between Mozart and Chopin”; we’ll be hearing a selection of her Études. Beethoven, himself, needs little introduction and it’s his iconic Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 'Moonlight' that will feature in our programme.
 
Frédéric Chopin (1810 – 1849) and Clara Schumann (1819 – 1896) come next in the timeline. Of Chopin, it has been written his “extraordinary harmonic invention and an altogether revolutionary approach to timbre, nuance and keyboard deployment…changed the course of piano-writing and piano-playing for ever”. We’ll be hearing works from his second set of Études, Op. 25, composed c.1835, which have been called “a perfect fusion of the athletic and the aesthetic”. The bravura technique they require would have been well within Schumann’s capabilities: she was one of the most internationally renowned piano virtuosos of her era but her distinct composing voice was often ignored until an awakening of interest in her work in the 1970s. Her 3 Romances, Op. 21 date from 1853, the year before she stopped composing altogether at the early age of 36 – to Clare Hammond they are, quite simply, “breathtakingly beautiful”.
 
Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924) and Cécile Chaminade (1857 – 1944) take us into the 20th century. Fauré is viewed as being one of France’s most influential composers and a vital link between the end of Romanticism and the beginnings of the modern era. We’ll be hearing two of his Nocturnes, No. 8 (from 1902) and No. 12 (from 1915), the latter’s deliberate dissonances an indicator of one Modernism’s main preoccupations. Chaminade, on the other hand, would say of herself “I am essentially of the Romantic school”, a fact ably demonstrated by her 'Impromptu' Étude de concert, Op. 35 No. 5 (of 1886). That her work won her the Légion d’Honneur – a female first – is evidence of just how well-received her compositions were in her lifetime, even if they have been largely overlooked since her death.
 
And a final word on Jeffrey Mumford (born in Washington, D.C. in 1955): his music has been performed extensively by major orchestras, soloists and ensembles both in the United States and abroad and he has received numerous fellowships, grants, awards and commissions. Of his work, it has been said that he writes “complex and richly imaginative music in which an almost romantic sensibility seems to radiate through a thoroughly contemporary surface” (Washington Post). Other critics have praised his “near Medieval purity of line”. His welcome inclusion in our timeline brings this fascinating musical odyssey up to the present day.

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