Piers Lane Reshapes Bach, Mozart and Chopin Into a Journey Beyond C Minor at Lucas Parklands

The Bach opened the recital alone, a work of tight counterpoint and forward drive that Piers has long paired with the Chopin Preludes for its historical and structural links to that later cycle. Ruby then joined him at a second piano for the Mozart, taking the orchestral part in Hummel’s arrangement while Piers played the solo line. After interval, Piers returned alone for Chopin’s Preludes, a cycle that moves through all 24 major and minor keys available on the piano in a single sitting.

The Three Works

Bach’s Toccata opens with a brisk, improvisatory flourish before settling into an extended fugue built on a simple, triadic subject, the kind of writing that lets a single melodic idea unfold and multiply across the keyboard. A slower, recitative-like passage follows, more song than argument, before the piece closes with a short adagio that acts almost as a hushed afterword rather than a grand finish. Bach composed it in his twenties, and the work still carries the free, exploratory spirit of the north German toccata tradition he inherited from Buxtehude, mixing tightly controlled counterpoint with passages that sound closer to improvisation.

Mozart’s concerto (Hummell two piano reduction), by contrast (Ruby Luck on 2nd Piano), is one of only two he wrote in a minor key and by far the more turbulent of the pair. The first movement opens with a long, brooding orchestral introduction before the piano enters, and the mood rarely lifts for the rest of the movement. The slow second movement offers a plainer, more consoling theme, but it is the finale that has drawn the most comment from musicians and scholars over the years. Rather than closing with the lighter, dance-like rondo Mozart typically favoured, he wrote a set of variations on a stark, march-like theme, and unlike his other minor-key concerto, this one refuses to turn to the major at the end. The final variation shifts into a swinging compound metre, and the concerto closes not in relief but in the same C minor it began with. It is this uncompromising quality across the whole work that led early admirers, including Beethoven, who reportedly declared after hearing it that he doubted he could ever write anything comparable, to regard it as one of Mozart’s most advanced concertos.

Chopin’s Preludes move through all 24 major and minor keys in a single sweep, some lasting under a minute and others stretching well past two, so the set plays like a sequence of sharply drawn moods rather than a single continuous statement. The final prelude, in D minor, is the most extended and turbulent of the set, building through repeated, driving figures in the left hand before ending with three unaccompanied, fortissimo low D notes struck alone, a stark and unresolved close to the entire cycle.

A Programme Rooted in Chopin’s Own Influences

Speaking to Range Community News ahead of the concert, Piers said the pairing of the three composers reflected a personal connection rather than an abstract theme. “Chopin’s favourite composers were Bach and Mozart,” he said, adding that all three works represent “masterpieces from three different periods of music, the Baroque, the Classical and the Romantic, and are linked by Chopin’s love for and connection to his predecessors.”

Piers said the Bach carries particular weight for the Chopin that follows it in his own thinking about the two works, noting that the Preludes were themselves inspired by Bach’s own set of 24 preludes and fugues. He had originally planned the concert with the Chopin directly after the Bach for that reason, before deciding on the day to move the Mozart into that position and close the recital with Chopin instead.

On the question of key, Piers was direct about what C minor offers a programme without needing an audience to consciously register it. “C minor is a key that suggests depth of emotion, drama, sometimes tragedy,” he said, noting it was also one of Beethoven’s favoured keys. “But the audience doesn’t need to think about any of that. They will hopefully feel satisfied and moved, without necessarily knowing why.”

With the Bach and the Mozart both anchored in C minor, the first half of the reshaped programme carried a shared tonal gravity, while the Chopin’s sweep through all 24 keys after interval gave the recital a different kind of close, widening outward rather than returning to where it began.

Why Hummel’s Version

The decision to perform Mozart’s concerto in Hummel’s two-piano arrangement rather than the standard orchestral version traces back decades, to a request from the late Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras. “He asked me to play two concertos in the Hummel versions some decades ago, in Edinburgh and London, because he believed they represented more what Mozart would have done when performing them himself, adding decorations to lots of the lines and changing the notated parts as he performed,” Piers said. He noted that Hummel had lived in Mozart’s household as a boy and would have heard him play his own works in public, a detail borne out by historical accounts of Hummel’s two years lodging with the Mozart family in Vienna from around 1786.

Piers performed the same concerto in its original orchestral form with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra a couple of years ago, and is due to play the Hummel version again in New York in August. The Montville performance gave local audiences a chance to hear the same well known work presented in a markedly different form.

A Familiar Stage

Piers has performed at Lucas Parklands on numerous occasions and pointed to the setting itself as part of the drawcard. “The intimacy, the piano and the lovely attentive and appreciative audience” were among his reasons for returning, he said, alongside the venue’s proximity to his home town of Brisbane and his friendship with founders Ian and Lee Lucas, “who are such warm and welcoming and special hosts.” Piers added that his cousin, Margaret Taylor, lives nearby and regularly attends his performances there, describing the venue as “a musical home away from home.”

Asked what he hoped audience members would take from the afternoon, Piers said he wanted them to feel “they’ve shared an experience of some of the greatest music ever composed, hopefully taken away from daily cares and uplifted by the occasion.”

The Pianists

Piers Lane AO has performed in more than 40 countries and holds a discography of more than 50 recordings, largely for the Hyperion label. Raised in Brisbane after being born in London, he studied at the Queensland Conservatorium under Nancy Weir and was named Best Australian Pianist at the inaugural Sydney International Piano Competition in 1977. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2012 and has served as artistic director of both the Australian Festival of Chamber Music and the Sydney International Piano Competition.

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