Roger Woodward

Roger Woodward (born 20 December 1942) is an Australian classical pianist, composer, conductor and teacher.

Life and career

Early life

The youngest of four children, Roger Woodward was born in Sydney where he received first piano lessons from Winifred Pope. His mother and second sister were amateur violinists and his father and elder sister sang in the local Chatswood Church of Christ choir. On his first day at Chatswood Public School, he sat next to Peter Kraus, a boy who had survived the Auschwitz train four years before. The six-year olds became lifelong friends and, as he came to know Peter, his brother Paul, and the Kraus family, their story impacted his emerging vision and personal development. He attended the Conservatorium High School and matriculated from North Sydney Boys' Technical High School with a Commonwealth scholarship.

Woodward's early studies of Bach organ works with Peter Verco led to his immersion in Bach's cantatas and passion music and training in church music with Kenneth R. Long, music master at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney. He performed for the papal organist Fernando Germani and Sir Eugene Goossens, chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, after which he entered the Sydney Conservatorium in the piano class of Alexander Sverjensky (pupil of Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Siloti) and the composition class of Raymond Hanson.

In 1963, Woodward graduated with distinction from the Sydney Conservatorium and the Sydney Teachers' College. In the same year, he founded and developed plans for the housing and funding of a competitive, international and quadrennial rostrum originally named the Sydney Piano Competition, together with the support of a wide circle of Sydney musicians and enthusiasts, which was achieved during 1972 to 76.

From 1963 to 1965, Woodward continued his organ studies with Faunce Allman while carrying out full-time duties as a choir director and secondary school teacher. During this period he mastered works by Australian composers and Tōru Takemitsu, John Cage Olivier Messiaen and his pupils: Alexander Goehr, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Boulez and Jean Barraqué. In 1964, he won the Commonwealth Finals of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Instrumental and Vocal Competition, the prize for which was to perform throughout Australia with the six ABC State Radio orchestras and in multiple radio and television broadcasts.From 1965–69, he pursued postgraduate studies at the National Chopin Academy of Music, Warsaw, with Zbigniew Drzewiecki. There he befriended the Cuban pedagogue Jorge Luis Herrero Dante and soon after, began working with Cuban composers Sergio Barroso, Juan Blanco, Leo Brouwer, and Carlos Fariñas.

During visits to London (1966–68), Woodward prepared Chopin manuscripts owned by British musicologist Arthur Hedley, before including them in recitals at the Wigmore Hall and South Bank. Contrary to some reports, Woodward did not enter the International Chopin Piano Competition. However, he regularly performed Chopin's music in Poland: at the Twenty-Third International Chopin Festival, Duszniki-Zdrój (1968), at Żelazowa Wola (Chopin's birthplace), at the Kraków Spring Festival (1968) and at the Ostrowski Palace on several occasions. He also performed the complete works of Chopin (by heart) at the Sydney Festival 1983-1985 in support of the Solidarność Movement to raise public awareness of the importance of Poland's struggle for human rights.

In 1967, Woodward played for Lina Prokofieva in Warsaw and was soon invited to perform with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra throughout Poland. Two years later, he toured extensively with the Wiener Trio performed in Cuba as guest of ''Casa de las Américas'' and at the Paris ''Jeunesses Musicales'' where the UNESCO Rostrum's two principal jury members, Yehudi Menuhin and Jack Lang, noticed Woodward's performances of his own compositions alongside works of J. S. Bach, Chopin, Scriabin and Prokofiev. Soon after he made his debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London and on Menuhin's recommendation, his first four recordings for EMI.

In 1971, Woodward performed his first recital at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall with premieres of works by Richard Meale, Ross Edwards, Leo Brouwer, Takemitsu and Barraqué, after which he was invited by Robert Slotover, CEO, Allied Artists Management, to co-found a series of new music concerts known as the ''London Music Digest'' at the Roundhouse.

''Digest'' performances with Barraqué were followed by a close working relationship with the composer on his '' Sonate pour piano'' at the EMI Abbey Road Studios, then in Paris and at the Royan Festival. Woodward also worked with John Cage at the Roundhouse for the British premiere of ''HPSCHD'' for ICES (International Carnival of Experimental Sound) and the BBC Proms. Further collaborations were undertaken with Stockhausen at the Festival Hall, London, and with Takemitsu at the Roundhouse, London's Decca Studios, and the Music Today Festival, Tokyo.A partnership also began with Pierre Boulez and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Roundhouse, the Cheltenham Festival, and with Bernard Rands for the premiere of ''Mésallianz'' for piano and orchestra. His collaboration with Iannis Xenakis 1974–96 extended from France to the UK, Austria, Italy, and the United States, during which Xenakis dedicated three works to him, as did Rolf Gehlhaar, Takemitsu, Anne Boyd, and Morton Feldman. Performing their works established his reputation as the leading exponent of new music of his time.

Steeped in church music and traditional repertoire, Woodward trained throughout his early life to perform established works side by side with more recent music as part of a belief that music was the essential expression of an experimental process. His concerts reflected this belief even though such programming was widely considered unorthodox for the time. He placed new works by Anne Boyd and Richard Meale alongside those of Scriabin, late Beethoven and J.S. Bach at the Edinburgh Festival. In Los Angeles, for the first half of three Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts, he performed Liszt's ''Totentanz'' and Xenakis alongside J.S. Bach solo harpsichord concertos with the Tokyo String Quartet. In recital, he often programmed traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century repertoire with new, little known, or neglected works such as those he championed by experimental fin de siècle Russian, Ukrainian and early Soviet composers Alexander Scriabin, Alexander Mosolov, Nikolai Roslavets, Ivan Vyshnegradsky, Nikolai Obukhov, Aleksei Stanchinsky. His performances of the complete works of Scriabin attracted exceptional critical reviews.

Middle years

In 1973, Woodward worked with Stockhausen and on ''Mantra'' for two ring-modulated pianos at Imperial College London (Lecture 7 in 3 parts), with Anne Boyd in Sussex, UK, on ''Angklung'', and with Takemitsu on the premiere of ''For Away, Corona ("London version")'', and the recording of his complete piano music to that point in London's Decca studios. That September, he participated in the inaugural celebrations of the Sydney Opera House as soloist for an extended tour with the six principal Australian Broadcasting Commission orchestras and premiered a series of ABC commissions, including a septet, ''As It Leaves the Bell'', by Anne Boyd for piano, two harps and percussion.

January 1974 saw Woodward invited by Witold Rowicki on an extensive tour of the US with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, during which he made his debut at Carnegie Hall. That year, Woodward founded Music Rostrum Australia at the Sydney Opera House where he collaborated with Australian composer Richard Meale and guests Luciano Berio, Cathy Berberian, David Gulpilil and Yuji Takahashi. He began performing with the Cleveland Orchestra directed by Lorin Maazel, and became a regular guest in Los Angeles with the Philharmonic directed by Zubin Mehta, with whom he subsequently performed (1972–89) in New York, Tel Aviv, and Paris. He appeared regularly at BBC Promenade Concerts, at Teatro La Fenice for La Biennale di Venezia (with Péter Eötvös and the Norddeutscher Rundfunkorchester), Warszawska Jesień, Festival Internacional Cervantino, Wien Modern with Claudio Abbado, at the New York Piano Festival, Festival de la Roque d'Anthéron and at the , Touraine, at the invitation of its artistic director, Sviatoslav Richter.In 1992, Woodward directed an all-Xenakis program at Scala di Milano. He also performed at outdoor venues including the Hollywood Bowl (Stravinsky); Odéon of Herodes Atticus, Athens On four occasions he performed with Cecil Taylor in the Gulbenkian Park, Lisbon (1986–92) and on several occasions at The Domain with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (Beethoven and Tchaikovsky). In traditions pioneered by Dame Nellie Melba and Percy Grainger, he performed extensively throughout Central and Regional Australia, often in outdoor venues.

In 1975, he premiered Morton Feldman's ''Piano and Orchestra'' with the Saarbrücken Rundfunkorchester at the (Metz Festival) (in the composer's presence) directed by Hans Zender. It was the year when Woodward first encountered Anne Boyd's a cappella masterpiece: '' As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams'', which made a profound impact upon him. Then in June and July, as Dmitri Shostakovich lay dying in a Moscow Cancer Clinic, he made the first complete recording in the West of his 24 ''Preludes and Fugues'', Op. 87, in tribute to the great Russian composer.

In 1977, he premiered Feldman's solo work ''Piano'' (which was dedicated to Woodward)"Morton Feldman: The Johannesburg Masterclasses, July 1983- Session 5: Works by Feldman (Piano)"https://www.cnvill.net/mfmasterclasses05.pdf in Baden- Baden, commissioned Elisabeth Lutyens for a work for solo piano and two chamber orchestras, (''Nox'', Op.118), and, following the Valldemosa Festival, began a collaboration with Alberto Ginastera which continued until 1979. 1978 saw his first performance of the complete cycle of Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas at the Adelaide Festival, repeated at Kenwood House, London, the following year and in 1980 for the Sydney Festival. In the same year he premiered the Xenakis solo piano work '' Mists'' in Edinburgh (in the composer's presence). A further performance of the Beethoven cycle followed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. At London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, he gave the world premiere of Morton Feldman's '' Triadic Memories'' in the presence of the composer—a ninety-minute masterpiece which heralded the composer's late period.

In 1982, Woodward performed the five Beethoven Piano Concertos on three occasions: with Elyakum Shapirra and the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra, and twice with Georg Tintner, first with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and then with the Queensland Theatre Orchestra. During this time he was active for the Polish Solidarność Trades Union Movement, leading to his being banned from performing throughout Eastern Europe. As the ban took hold elsewhere. it was accompanied by misleading statements, rumours and damaging criticism from the Soviet Block. Throughout this period the artist remained loyal to the Solidarność Trades Union Movement, leading to his being banned not only in Eastern Europe but, unexpectedly, by some leading Western concert managements, festival directors, and symphony orchestra administrators. Despite this, he was the recipient of a second work (of three dedicated to him) by Xenakis—his third and final composition for piano and orchestra—'' Keqrops'', which was premiered in November 1986 at the Lincoln Center, NY, with New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Mehta, The following year, he repeated '' Keqrops'' for the BBC Proms (again in the composer's presence). That year, he also performed Barraqué at , Amsterdam, premiered Áskell Másson's Piano Concerto in Reykjavik (again in the composer's presence), and, in 1989 Rolf Gehlhaar' ''Diagonal Flying'' in Geneva together with the composer. That same year Woodward founded the Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music which continued until 2001.

Despite the downfall of Communism, the former Soviet disinformation campaign continued, with repeated attempts to remove Solidarność activists' credibility and careers through an ongoing embargo. Nevertheless, Woodward worked with the New York, Los Angeles, Beijing and Israel Philharmonic orchestras, five London orchestras, the Hallé Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, London Mozart Players, London Brass, RTE Radio, the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, the Scottish National Orchestra, the Estonian National Orchestra, the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Berlin Radio Orchestra, L'orchestre National de Paris, L'orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Mahlerjugendorchester, EEC Youth Orchestra, the Australian Youth Orchestra, and the Budapest and Prague Chamber Orchestras. He also collaborated with the following artists: Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Yoel Levi, Edo de Waart, Sir Charles Mackerras, Enrique Bátiz Campbell, Kurt Masur, Nello Santi, Paavo Berglund, Moshe Atzmon, Marin Alsop, Henry Kripps, Tibor Paul, Albert Rosen, Werner Andreas Albert, Matthias Bamert, Henry Lewis, Isaiah Jackson, Dean Dixon, Georg Tintner, Hans-Hubert Schönzeler, Tan Lihua, Sir William Southgate, Simon Romanos, Gyula Németh, David Atherton, Erich Leinsdorf, Eliahu Inbal, James Judd, Walter Susskind, Herbert Blomstedt, Georges Tzipine, Robert Busan, Lukas Foss, Péter Eötvös, Zakarias Grafilo, Sir John Pritchard, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Andrew Davis, Willem van Otterloo, Hiroyuki Iwaki, Lamberto Gardelli, Colman Pearce, and Sir Alexander Gibson. Although the embargo was extensive, Woodward and other Australian artists were invited by Symphony Australia to perform a limited number of orchestral concerts, after the personal intervention of Prime Minister Paul Keating.

Throughout this period, he performed with the Arditti, Tokyo, New Zealand, Australian and Sydney string quartets, the Australia Ensemble, the Edinburgh String Quartet, JACK Quartet and the Alexander String Quartet, with whom he recorded Beethoven, Chopin, Shostakovich, and Robert Greenberg. He also collaborated with harpsichordist George Malcolm and jazz pianist Cecil Taylor in Lisbon, Paris, for the Patras Festival, and for extensive tours of the UK Contemporary Music Network from 1987–94. He worked with musicologists Charles Rosen, Paul Griffiths, H. C. Robbins-Landon, Richard Toop, Paul M. Ellison, Nouritza Matossian