Concerts at Hatchlands Park: Ingrid Jacoby

Ingrid Jacoby - Grand Piano by Jakob Becker, c.1886-7, St. Petersburg

The recording of this concert was sponsored by Blavatnik Family Foundation
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THE PROGRAMME
Johann Sebastian Bach - Partita in C minor, BWV 826
Gustav Fauré - Impromptu No 1 in E flat major, Op 25
Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition

THE PERFORMER
Ingrid Jacoby is internationally acclaimed both as a recording and performing artist. Ms Jacoby has won numerous awards, including the Artists Presentation Award, the Steinway Hall Artists Prize, the Baldwin National Piano Competition, the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, and the gold prize at the Concert Artists Guild Award, in a field of over 1,300 entrants. This resulted in a highly successful debut recital at Carnegie Hall.

Since moving to England, Ms Jacoby, who is now a triple United States, United Kingdom and German citizen, has performed at many London venues and with many orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the London Mozart Players. She has worked with such eminent conductors as Sir Charles MacKerras, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Leonard Slatkin, Sir Neville Marriner, Jane Glover, Vasily Petrenko, Dimitri Sitkovetsky, Constantine Orbelian, Walter Susskind, Jacek Kaspcyk, and Lord (Yehudi) Menuhin. Enthusiastic notices have followed concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Barbican, Fairfield Hall, and St John’s Smith Square. Ms Jacoby has performed at Mansion House for the Lord Mayor, as well as in the presence of HRH The Prince and Princess of Wales at Apsley House.

After working with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Ms Jacoby is the only pianist since Alfred Brendel to be invited by Sir Neville to record all 27 Mozart piano concerti with him. Sir Neville honoured Ms Jacoby by personally writing his public letter of support. The first three CDs of this significant project were broadcast internationally and received the highest accolades. This series came to an end with the death of Sir Neville in 2016.

In recent years, Ms Jacoby completed a 6-city concert tour of China; played with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra at the United States embassy in Moscow; gave a recital for the Bavarian Radio in Munich; and played Chopin’s second piano concerto with the Royal Liverpool Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko. She performed with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under Nicholas Collins, with the Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Eiji Oue, with the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, with both the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra; and with the chamber orchestra of La Scala, Milan (the Cameristi della Scala) under Wilson Hermanto.

THE INSTRUMENT
Grand piano by Jakob Becker, St Petersburg, c.1886-7. Belonged to Sir Percy Hull
https://www.cobbecollection.co.uk/col...
At the end of 1870s the name of Jakob Becker was very well known in the musical circles of Russia and Europe. By then, his instruments have already gathered an impressive array of celebrity endorsements and royal patronage: Tchaikovsky, Anton and Nikolai Rubensteins, Hans von Bülow, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka, to name a few, were all supplied pianos by Becker.

German-born Jakob Davydovich Becker (Якоб Давыдович Беккер) moved to St Petersburg in 1841, setting up the factory in the same year and already in 1849 the Petersburg publisher and pianist M. I. Bernard wrote: ‘Becker’s instruments are especially remarkable now. Due to his talent, diligence and conscientiousness they have earned their fame. The durability and beauty of his grand pianos rival those of Erard instruments and, undoubtedly, surpass them by force, fullness and charm of sound’.

It is identical to (though a few years younger) the piano presented by Becker to Tchaikovsky, which can be seen today in the composer’s house at Klin. Becker pianos are rare in England, and the Cobbe Collection piano was perhaps brought here by an emigrating Russian family. It then belonged to Sir Percy Hull, organist of Hereford Cathedral, close friend of Elgar, and the dedicatee of more than one of Elgar’s works.

THE COLLECTION
The Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands possesses the world’s largest group of keyboards owned by or associated with the masters of music in the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods, including instruments that belonged to or were played by Purcell, J C Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Bizet, Chopin, Liszt, Mahler and Elgar.