Michael Finnissy at 70-and-a-half; H&N, Saturday, 15/10/16, 10:00pm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In conversation with Robert Worby, Michael Finnissy (whose 70th birthday occurred seven months ago) discusses his career and introduces performances of two of his works (one performed by the ensemble Ixion, which Finnissy co-founded in the 1980s) as well as his own performances of piano works by some of his contemporaries.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z43sv

Janne was a Proms commission:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1lSdo6oPio

The third Piano Concerto isn't available on youtube, but the second and fourth are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlLDb4q7_dA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFpxMu9dbSc

... and Finnissy's work as a pianist is also youtubed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6UzPZJw8E0

[Richard Barrett]

Excellent. The Third Piano Concerto is an amazing thing, as is much of Finnissy's output. (I'm really not convinced by Janne though.)

[ahinton]

In conversation with Robert Worby, Michael Finnissy (whose 70th birthday occurred seven months ago) discusses his career and introduces performances of two of his works (one performed by the ensemble Ixion, which Finnissy co-founded in the 1980s) as well as his own performances of piano works by some of his contemporaries.

There's a fair amount of MF's work out thee on YouTube, including a few examples of his own playing. I note that pianists Jonathan Powell and Ian Pace, each of whom has quite a track record in performing MF's work, are also giving numerous performances of it during his 70th birthday year.

His Piano Concerto No. 4 (for solo piano) must surely be one the most searingly challenging of his works to play (apart from the obvious fact that History... is on an immense scale); I've heard it live played by Jonathan Powell and it's a pity that a performance by him isn't up there on YouTube as well as Ian Pace's. There are,in its welter of coruscating flights of bravura virtuosity that seems at times almost to out-Finnissy Finnissy, some monodic passsages, albeit still of great velocity, that never fail to remind me of the extended monodic passage from the first movement of another much ealier concerto for solo piano - the one by Alkan that constitutes numbers 8-10 of his Douze Études dans les tons mineurs, Op. 39, a work that predate MF's by some century and a quarter...

[Daniel]

The Third Piano Concerto is an amazing thing

Yes it is. I also like the second with its beautiful black centre.