Early Music with Joan Benson

(This text is also on Joan's University of Oregon webpage)

Joan Benson is one of the foremost clavichordists of modern times. Projecting intense emotions through soft, subtle dynamics, she has been called "the terroriste of the pianissimo" by a Frankfurt critic.


Benson's worldwide concert career takes her from Lebanon to Hong Kong, from Haydn's Viennese home to the Smithsonian. Each performance is inspired by its setting. In Bali, gamelan music enlivens her sense of rhythm. In New Zealand, hiking high mountains encourages her melodic expansiveness.


Through her highly praised concerts and recordings, Benson has awakened interest in music from 15th century tablatures to 18th century free fantasies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Applying her sensitive touch to the early and modern piano, she plays repertoire from Mozart through Fanny Mendelssohn to John Cage.


Joan Benson is internationally known for the beauty of her clavichord and fortepiano playing as well as her delicate approach to the modern piano. Her artistry is enhanced by her remarkable life.



As a child, Joan Benson lived in the New Orleans of early jazz. The first progressive school in the Deep South stimulated her talent for the arts. She heard Sergei Rachmaninoff and Ignace Paderwski play and studied with the composer-pianist Percy Grainger.


At 24, Benson received the Kate Neal Kinley International Award for "outstanding powers of artistic communication." In Europe, she became a protégé of Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer, along with Alfred Brendel. Praised for her magical soft sounds in Lucerne's Summer Festival, she turned to the clavichord as a medium.


After years of clavichord study with Fritz Neumeyer in Germany and Santiago Kastner in Portugal, Benson returned to the United States to join the faculty of Stanford University. Her first recording in 1962 was selected by Saturday Review as one of the finest of the year.


Joan Benson's worldwide tours bring fresh insights to audiences.She likes to allow time before a performance to absorb and adapt to the atmosphere in which she is playing. Consequently, there is an aliveness in her concerts and master classes that makes them never the same but always complete and fulfilling.


The excitement of travel and the beauty of exodic places always inspire her. While an exchange artist in the Middle East, she hiked on her own throughout Lebanon and parts of Syria and Turkey, in areas dangerous for a Westerner. She danced the dapki with young Syrian villagers, visited harems in Damascus, worked with English archaeologists in the pink tombs of Petra, and wandered among forgotten ruins with an Armenian architect. She listened to a nomad playing the rebaba by moonlight in a remote Jordanian valley. In Beirut, she lived in a convent, and at the Mount of Olives, she almost became a Russian Orthodox novice. All these experiences are reflected in her music, enlarging her outlook of the world and her understanding of rhythm, ornamentation, melody and tone.


After hiking in New Zealand's highest mountains, Benson's Auchland concert was cited as one of the most exciting of the year. At the Chinese University in Hong Kong, she introduced a yang-chin player on her concert and spontaneously compared this soft instrument with the clavichord. In Indonesia, while a lone guest in the Javanese palace of Keraton, she responded to the finest of gamelan music. Her performance on national television reflected the rhythmic intensity of Bali; in the country, Indonesians circled around her, praising her for this program.


Benson has also traveled inwardly as a Buddhist student. She began with Japan's Suzuki Roshi at Tassajara, and later with Thich Nhat Hanh in Plum Village, France. Tibet's Venerable Bogar Rinpoche and Thrangu Rinpoche led her to silent retreats in the monasteries of Salt Spring Island and Nova Scotia.



CAREER
Solo Performances
Joan Benson has concertized on the best museum instruments of France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, England, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden. In New York, she has performed at the Frick Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has played and recorded on the clavichords in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Other museum settings include the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, the Smithsonian Institution and Folger Library of Washington, D.C. the Walker Art Gallery and Schubert Club of Minneapolis/St. Paul, and San Francisco's DeYoung Museum and Museum of Modern Art.


Centers of learning have been the setting for Joan Benson's concerts and master classes in more than a hundred locations. These range from the universities of Oxford and Tübingen to the Chinese University in Hong Kong and the American University in Beirut. Other events have been at libraries such as the Paris' Bibliotheque Nationale, conservatories of music like those of Geneva, Munich and Vienna, and at schools in countries such as Nepal and Indonesia.


Benson has appeared in most major universities in the United States, including Brandeis, Princeton, Yale, John Hopkins, MIT, Columbia, Chicago and California, in Berkeley, Santa Barbara and San Diego. College appearances have ranged from Mannes in New York to Pomona in California.


Festival Appearances
Joan Benson has given solo recitals for the International William Kapell Piano Competition and Festival in Maryland, the Pepsico International Festival in New York, the Arts Festival in Findhorn, Scotland, Josef Haydn's 250th Birthday Celebration in Vienna, the International Clavichord Symposium in Magnano, Italy, the Carmel Bach and Cabrillo Festivals in California, and the Aston Magna Summer Festival in Massachusetts, where she was also an artist-faculty member.


Broadcasts
National Public Radio has presented Joan Benson in numerous programs across the country. In addition, she has been featured on CBC's Mostly Music, Luncheon at Kennedy Center, and on television on East and West Coasts and in Asia.


Teaching
Joan Benson's teaching career began at Stanford University, where her energy and intuitive brilliance inspired many students. According to former pupil,, concert artist Carole Terry, " She imparts a knowledge of grace and line that truly helps the student understand the style and nuance of a piece. As a teacher of fortepiano and clavichord, she is unparalleled."


Benson's lively lectures and master classes stimulate interest in the palette of soft sounds possible on clavichords and pianos. She has taught at many colleges, universities and conservatories in America, Europe, and the Middle and Far East.. In addition, Benson has served on the faculties of the University of Oregon and the Aston Magna Academy in Massachusetts.


Recordings
Music by C. P. E. Bach and Kuhnau, clavichord, FOCUS, University of Indiana Press, 1988. Reissued as a CD, 1995.


Haydn and Pasquini on Boston Museum of Fine Arts clavichords, TITANIC RECORDS,1982.


C.P .E.Bach on the Clavichord and Fortepiano, ORION, 1972


Joan Benson-Clavichord, REPERTOIRE RECORDS, 1962; reissued by EDUCO AND BRIDGE RECORDS, 1972. Selected as one of the year's best recordings by Saturday Review.



Publications
About Joan Benson


Grove's Dictionary of American Music and Musicians, "Joan Benson"


Clavier Magazine, article by Melinda Bargreen


Boston Clavichord Society Magazine, interview by Richard Troeger


Continuo Magazine, interview by Penny Mathiesen



By Joan Benson
"Qigong for Pianists", Piano and Keyboard Magazine, September, 1998.


"Clavichord Technique in the Mid-20th Century", De Clavicordio, Proceedings of the International Clavichord Symposium, Magnano, Italy, 1993, Regione Piemonte, Torino, 1994.


Three Poems, Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, Spring/ Summer 1991.


"Bach and the Clavier," Clavier Magazine, February, 1990.


"Recollections of Edwin Fischer," Journal of the American Liszt Society, January/June 1987.


"Haydn and the Clavichord," International Joseph Haydn Congress, Vienna, 1982, G. Henle Verlag, Munich, Germany, 1986.


"Cecile Mendelssohn's Marriage with Felix," book in process of being published.



REVIEWS
"CLAVICHORD VIRTUOSO Joan Benson gave a lasting impression to a large audience.... Not only did she delight them by the immaculateness of her brilliant passage work amazing dynamic shadings, and nuances of touch. Her performance was likewise marked by lively articulation, sustained musical intensity, a delicate and compelling sense of rhythm and by her overall conception of the music."

Nuremberg, Germany, Nachrlchten


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"A demonstration of unusual expressive possibilities that one rarely has the opportunity to hear."
Princeton, New Jersey


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This music was played with great artistry, sensitivity and devotion by Ms. Benson. This recital was an oasis of inspiration."
A.G.O. Magazine


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"The American clavichord specialist Joan Benson played with vivid musicianship.... Her performance was lifted to a level of perfection by her clear phrasing, lively rhythm, and all the power of musical accentuation possible on this delicate instrument. Afterwards it seemed very strange to return to everyday life with its usual dimensions of sounds.... Listening to the lovely and noble music is worth the adjustment."
Copenhagen, Denmark, Politiken


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"Here, for once, was playing on antique instruments and in antique idiom that matched and even surpassed the finest today's concert stage has to offer."
Yale, New Haven Register


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"Joan Benson played with unparalleled sensitivity, immaculately clear and rich in delicate nuance. Exquisite is the pianissimo and exceedingly beautiful is the music she moulds from the keys."
Lucerne, Switzerland, Vaterland


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"Joan Benson played with genuine empathy and technical brilliance. She traced and brought out all the nuances of the expressive and elegant music by J.S. Bach's sons. Her playing, with its art of phrasing, fascinated the listeners."
Erlangen, Germany, Volksblatt


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"JOAN BENSON STARS. For those attending this year's Bach Festival concert by clavichordist Joan Benson, the memory of this unique concert will long remain If you have never heard the intimate tone of the clavichord, you have missed something, especially when the performance is as masterful as that by Joan Benson. Joan Benson's performance ranks with the finest of the Baroque keyboard specialists I have heard. One is immediately assured that performances such as these reflect the Baroque tradition at its best."
Carmel Bach Festival, Peninsula Herald, Monterey


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"ELECTRlFYlNG EXPERIENCE - Joan Benson is a musician of acute sensitivity. To hear her play is a musical experience of a high order Joan Benson brings the "singing tone" of the textbooks to life with extraordinary intensity and control. She penetrates to the center of meaning, knows what every measure, every note is for. She cannot play an arpeggio without giving it all manner of finer shades of feeling.... She never loses sight of the relation of the detail to the whole purpose.... By her intensely felt rhythm she charges her phrases with electricity. It was in the Mozart era that Benjamin Franklin was bringing it down from the sky. Joan Benson brings her electricity down from an upper region of inspiration. Her audience responds with intense concentration."


Stanford Summer Mozart Festival, Palo Alto Times


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"UNUSUAL, UNFORGETTABLE CONCERT - The most delightful surprise of the evening was hearing Mozart and Haydn played on a piano built during Haydn's lifetime... Mozart, with his particularly close and personal relationship to the piano, benefits perhaps more than any other composer by being heard on an instrument of his time... Her feeling for nuance, delicacy and drama seems to come from a deep understanding of the instruments she plays, as well as of the composers whose music she performs."
Berkeley Gazette


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"Benson brings to the clavichord a free, improvisational style full of a passion that never quite exceeds the narrow, but infinitely subtle, limits."
Kansas City Star


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"Joan Benson is one of the few experts on the clavichord of modern times. The American artist displayed all of her capabilities in works by Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach... She completely fulfills C.P.E.Bach 's famous book, "The True Art of Keyboard Playing." She declaimed so clearly and shaped the tones in such a diversified way that each 'Affekt" (mood) found its perfect expression. Joan Benson's art of rubato and her way of improvisation gave a masterful interpretation to the violently emotional Fantasie in C minor, a peak in clavichord literature."
Tiibingen, Gennany, Siidwest-Presse, Schwabisches Tagblatt.



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"The most unusual of the week's debut recitals was that of Joan Benson last Sunday afternoon at the Frick Collection. It was unusual partly because the Frick rarely solicits news coverage of its concerts, given their popularity and the small room in which they transpire, but mostly because Miss Benson is such a distinctive artist." --John Rockwell
New York Times, 1985


THE CLAVICHORD

This soft-voiced keyboard instrument, already popular in the 15th century, looks like an oblong box. Thin strings extend from the left over the soundboard bridge to tuning pins on the right. Keys are on one long side. By depressing down a key, the far end of the key lever see-saws upward until a tooth-like metal tangent protruding from it presses a set of strings. This produces both tone and pitch. When tangent pressure is released, felt cloth woven among the strings on the left automatically dampens the sound. Minute changes in finger pressure can offer a vibrato, or subtle variations in dynamics and articulation, making the clavichord an extremely sensitive and expressive keyboard instrument.




THE EARLY AND MODERN PIANO

Eighteenth century wooden- framed fortepianos of Germany and Austria, with their light, flexible tones, suggest a technique based on the clavichord. Haydn, Mozart, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach played and composed for both instruments. In England, however, the colorful early pianoforte was linked to the more brilliant harpsichord. Gradually piano structure added metal parts, more notes, warmer, sustained tones, and wider contrasts in dynamics and color. Liszt, with his virtuosic piano playing, could imply a full orchestra.The best metal-framed pianos built as late as the early twentieth century are more responsive in tone and action than those built today.



CONCERTS NOW

Joan Benson returns to the concert stage after a decade centered on Buddhist meditation.


Years ago, Suzuki Roshi of Japan taught Benson to express moods without becoming them. Later, at Plum Village, France, she walked alone with Thich Nhat Hanh among forest daffodils. It was Tibet's Venerable Bogar Rinpoche and Thrangu Rinpoche, however, that led her to months of silence in the monasteries of Salt Spring Island and Nova Scotia. Now she seeks to enliven our troubled world with a reawakening to tender beauty --in life, in nature, in sound.


Joan Benson has always looked to living composers as a primary source of inspiration. Besides Percy Grainger, she studied with Messiaen in Paris and wrote computer music at the University of Utrecht. By the 1980's American and European composers were dedicating music to Benson. She particularly likes to play David Loeb's clavichord works that reflect the haiku of Japan. In the West Coast Women Conductor/ Symposium of 1984, Benson performed some of her own music. In the 1990's, she improvised with vibrachordist Karl Berger of Woodstock fame for the Findhorn Festival in Scotland.


Joan Benson started off the 21st century in a solo recital for the North West Festival, "Waging Peace in the New Millennium." Lou Harrison admired her performance of his early keyboard sonata, and her playing of a John Cage "Landscape" gave the modem piano a range of nuance rarely heard today.


In 2002, composer Chris Chafe wrote for her the first work for clavichord and electronic music. In May, the two premiered "Tangent" in the new Cross Current Series at San Jose's Museum of Art. The result was so exciting that Chafe and Benson are now collaborating in concerts together.


Joan Benson approaches today's short time spans with imagination. For example, she intersperses poetry and prose with the music she is playing. Interest in the word stems from her experience as a child actor for New Orleans' Little Theatre. Later she won prizes for acting and playwriting. More recently, her poetry was published in Nimrod International Magazine. In fact, Kansas City Baroque Festival called her playing "the purest kind of poetry."


Currently Benson likes to alternate sound bites of 14th and 15th century music with literature of that time. She intersperses Fanny Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words with poignant letters to her brother, Felix. She gathers folksongs of Scandinavia, Scotland and America for her programs.


Every moment for Joan Benson is a new beginning, a new challenge, into creating events that touch her public. Thus she welcomes programming suggestions, incorporating them in recitals with elegant warmth and ease.


Contact Joan Benson
Visit Joan's University of Oregon website:

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