Priceless Rarities

aus: PIANO - International Piano May/Juni 2003

Martin Anderson visits the 'Rarities of Piano Music' Festival in Husum

Peter Froundjian has every reason to be a happy man. He was the founder, sixteen years ago, of the festival Raritäten der Klaviermusik (‘Pianomusic Rarities’) in the obscure North German seaside resort of Husum, and has annually watched his creation grow from strength to strength. It has now become a Mecca for an international audience of pianophiles: the blend of first-rate players and obscure repertoire is rivalled nowhere else.

Husum scores high on charm, too. The Festival takes place in late August, when the summer heat dumps an easy-going indolence on the place and tourists shuffle lazily round the open-air market before an evening loll down to the excellent fish restaurants on the harbour. The concerts are given in the Schloss vor Husum, built around 1580, in the castle’s first-floor salon, with the audience in a semi-circle around the piano. Through the windows – propped open to keep the temperature bearable – comes the quacking of ducks on the moat outside and the screech of passing swifts; on one occasion last year, as Frédéric Meinders played an evocation of bells in a sonatina by Leon Orthel, the bells themselves joined in. Anywhere else, such noises-off would be an unwelcome intrusion, here they enhance Husum’s unique appeal.

Froundjian, Berlin-born of Armenian parents, explains how the Festival was born of a mixture of his curiosity and his frustration with concert conservatism: ‘After you have got to know all the masterpieces from the great masters, you come to explore byways and other composers. So through many years as a pianist I had got to know all these rarely played, forgotten works. When I went to concerts and heard all the same pieces, I thought it would be the death of music; you might like these pieces very much, but you have to hear something else. And it does no justice to the composers who wrote those rarely-played works – they didn’t compose them for the shelf.’ But wasn’t a festival of unknown music going from famine to feast? ‘I realised that one concert wouldn’t work, since not enough people will come. It had to be a package, so that both experts and amateurs would come.’

Husum seems an unlikely place to put a piano festival – what accounts for his choice of venue? ‘I saw a job here at the Music School and applied, and when I came here for the first time and saw the castle, it went click! I took the job in 1985, and in 1987 we started the festival. It was well attended from the outset. We sent out announcements and our prospectus to journalists around Germany. And it was a success, so we continued.’ What gave the festival the international character it now enjoys – word of mouth? ‘That and the CDs, which we began to produce in 1989. They took the name into all the magazines, and it took off from there.’

The Festival has engendered a remarkable loyalty among its visiting musicians: names like Hamish Milne, Boris Bloch, Igor Zhukov, Kolja Lessing crop up again and again. The most regular visitor is Marc-André Hamelin: Froundjian explains: ‘He came in 1988 at the last minute to replace someone who had to cancel in July; he was recommended by another pianist, Daniel Berman. He played fantastically, and so I engaged him again in 1989, an he has been back every second year. He proposes things that fit wonderfully with my ideas.’ Hamelin’s catholic appetite is legendary; do other pianists take to out-of-the-way repertoire as readily? ‘They come with their own ideas, but we discuss them and I make some proposals of my own. I work in the background!’ Does Froundjian play himself during the Festival? ‘I did in the early years.’ And now? ‘Oh, sometimes.’

He now has a lengthy queue of pianists waiting for a chance to come to Husum; how does he choose his musicians? ‘I invite pianists who have played here earlier, I follow my own ideas, and I get proposals. It depends on the programmes I get, too. I force myself to engage some new names, four new and four from other years – otherwise it would be the same club.’

Peter Froundjian, founder of the Husum 'Raritäten der Klaviermusik' Festival

Aside from consultation with the players, how is the repertoire chosen – does he have a list of pieces he wants to hear? ‘No, you have to choose very carefully. Not all rarities are good pieces, and sometimes there are composers who wrote two or three fantastically good works but the rest of their output is not so good. Then there are pianists who fight for a particular composer. I have to follow my own feeling.’ What about contemporary music? ‘In small bits, when it fits well in the programme. There are other festivals which look out for contemporary music, so there’s no point in competing with them.’ And early music? ‘We have Frescobaldi and CPE Bach and so on. I’m not limited to a particular period, but most of the interesting things for the piano are from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’

What about the CDs – do they record the entire Festival and then select the best items for more permanent preservation? ‘Yes. I choose the items and then ask the pianists, if they agree, we go ahead on that basis. And any CD is only the tip of the iceberg for any one year.’

Running the Festival must have had a impact on Froundjian’s own career as a performing musician. He shrugs. ‘If you wont to do something carefully and well, it takes time. There’s all the correspondence, finding the scores, and so on. I’m also responsible for the selection for the CDs, and for the programme texts, which I don’t write but which I correct. I have recorded two CDs. The first was of Friedmann, with Etcetera [KTC 1117]: I’m an admirer of his – there’s some really good piano music in his oeuvre. And the other was of Langgaard, on Danacord [DACOCD 430], where I feel I have a direct relationship to the work: there’s now a Langgaard edition, but at the time I recorded the music, I played from the manuscripts.’

How is the Festival financed? ‘We began with a very small budget. Perhaps we should have asked for more, because after that the economic situation declined, and government won’t give you more than you first asked for. So in 1994 or ’95 we founded a private support society. We have some sponsors from around here in Schleswig-Holstein, but not much. We do get support from the cultural department of Nordfriesland, which is based hier in the castle.’

On the evidence of the concerts I went to last summer, Husum is a regular sell-out: the ring of chairs around the Steinway extended into the next room, where the pianists could no longer be seen – but those seats filled up, too. So are tickets difficult to get hold of? ‘When the prospectus comes out, we first inform our subscribers, and if they renew their subscription, they come first. Then two weeks later we make a general announcement.’ How many subscribers are there? ‘Now we have nearly a hundred.’ And how many people can be seated in the castle? ‘160. I try not to turn people away, but at the weekends especially it sells out completely.’

It seems there are not many mountains left for Froundjian to climb: capacity audiences, a successful CD series – the physical constraints in Husum mean he has gone as far as he can go. But what about streaming the concerts over the Internet? His eyes widen: ‘I hadn’t thought of that’. And he could also use the Web to make available the material from earlier festivals that hasn’t made it on to the CDs, so it could be heard in America and Australia... ‘And Japan. We have a regular Japanese visitor who tells me that in Japan they’re very curious about the Festival.’ What about exporting the idea to other venues? ‘Yes, perhaps with a joint venture, but I haven’t started examining that. We could keep it exclusive, but you’re right, music is meant to be heard.’