Interview, Ivan Ilić on Joseph Jongen

I've been meaning to explore the music of Joseph Jongen in more depth ever since falling under the spell of his ravishing 'Calmes aux quais déserts' (for voice and piano quintet) when it appeared on Karen Cargill's Fleur de mon âme in late 2021; my sincere thanks, then, to Serbian-American pianist Ivan Ilić for providing the reminder I needed this month with a captivating recording of two sets of Préludes by the Belgian composer on Chandos, which reveal Jongen's wide-ranging musical imagination in all its glory.

Having hugely enjoyed his insights into the music of Anton Reicha back in 2020, it was a pleasure to catch up with Ivan last week to find out more about how Jongen's compositions for organ feed into his approach to writing for the piano, his relationships with the music of Debussy and Ravel, and why so much of his work has floated under the radar for decades...

What set you on the path of exploring Jongen’s music?

The story started when I was researching the very first CDs released by Chandos; I knew the origin-story of the company and I was aware that there were piano recordings from the 80s, but I was just curious to know what they were doing right at the beginning. I came across this English pianist called Eric Parkin who recorded some early twentieth-century English music, and that sent me down a rabbit-hole of Cyril Scott and Bax and EJ Moeran, then somehow Jongen appeared on my radar. I managed to find a recording of one piece that just blew me away, and I thought if he was capable of writing that then there must be more - it was so strange to me that no-one was playing it.

Obviously unknown music is a whole industry these days, but when you dig a little deeper you realise that some ‘unknown’ music is recorded more than other ‘unknown’ music! With Jongen, the Op. 69 Préludes seems to be the set which has attracted interest from historians and musicologists, but the rest was all completely forgotten. I discovered that a lot of the music was just in manuscript at the Brussels Conservatory Library, so I called them up - but as this was during the pandemic their librarian was only working one day a week…it took me months to even get my hands on the music!

I found a lot of really gorgeous pieces, so it just became a matter of which ones to select for the recording. A lot of the existing recordings of Jongen’s music were made very early on and aren’t in production any more, so what interest there was had just fizzled out…Scheduling the recording-sessions was tricky, because we kept having to reschedule due to restrictions changing - but that meant I had a little bit more time for the pieces to mature, just kind of enjoying them and applying different phrasing rather than working to a deadline.

Jongen’s known primarily today for his organ music - do you think his experience with the organ translates into his approach to writing for the piano?

Definitely: he does something really interesting with the piano which I think not many composers succeed in doing. It’s something that maybe only pianists can fully appreciate, but he really hears each register as kind of a separate instrument. Of course a lot of piano manufacturers often want to brag about how even their instruments are from top to bottom - that is wonderful and allows lots of flexibility, but actually the ones with character are the ones where each register sounds completely different so that you’re kind of orchestrating as you play.

What’s great about the organ is that the registers are all strong but they can be so differentiated, and at the same time you can hear them all simultaneously. One of Jongen’s greatest strengths as a composer for the piano is that he can layer on textures – he’ll have three or more things happening at the same time but you can always hear each one individually, which forces you to think about the piano almost as if it was an organ and each register had its own stops. And that’s not actually what we’re trained to do! When I was a student I had various teachers who’d ask ‘What instrument is that?!’, but the idea isn’t really explored: it’s just kind of a gimmick that’s thrown out there. At times you feel all sorts of connections with the organ in Jongen’s piano music and at other times not at all - but that’s the thing with him, he’s kind of eclectic!

That eclecticism was something which struck me particularly in the 24 Préludes from 1940…

Yes, some of the music is a little old-fashioned, almost neo-Classical in a way. He’s obviously someone who’s absorbed a tonne of music, and what I like about him is that he doesn’t feel like everything has to be in his signature style - he’s very happy to borrow! When I’ve played some of these pieces to people without explaining what it was, they’ve said ‘That has to be Rachmaninov!’ (or ‘Scarlatti’ or ‘Ravel’)! And I quite like that. It might seem a backhanded compliment because it implies he’s switching clothes everyday, but having these 24 Preludes which are fluently passing from one style to the next within minutes strikes me as something that’s actually quite modern: it’s almost like a streaming playlist, but 100 years ago that just wasn’t how music was put together.

He had a huge appetite for contrast, and for being able to try a bit of everything. I was recently in São Paulo for a festival, and there’s a huge Japanese community there where they have these all-you-can-eat buffets with grilled meat sitting next to sashimi. It put me in mind of Jongen’s music in a way: the juxtapositions can be quite bizarre, but they can also be really wonderful! He also reminds me of a saxophonist and composer called John Zorn, who switches between all kinds of very identifiable styles of popular music without any breaks - within the space of four bars he’ll go from blues to heavy metal, and there’s only really him and his band that can make it work!

Debussy’s 24 Préludes were published a decade before Jongen’s 13 Préludes Op. 69 - is it likely he was acquainted with them?

Yes, absolutely. During the First World War Jongen was a refugee in England, where he had a piano quartet with three other Belgian musicians; they gave the English premiere of the Debussy Violin Sonata, so he was definitely aware of the music and wrote about it in his memoirs. As with many composers from the Impressionistic school, you tend to wonder whether his music is closer to Debussy to or Ravel, and there are whispers of Fauré sometimes too: there are passages where the melody can meander, and the harmonic inflections become more important than the melody itself. Sadly there aren’t any photos of him with his arms around Debussy and Ravel (!), but he was definitely in contact with many of those composers.

The Op. 69 set strikes me as the music which is most meaty and perfect, and his attempt to really compose to the same quality as Debussy and Ravel. Ravel only wrote about two hours of piano music: it’s all been recorded a hundred times and is played on every radio-station and at every concert-hall all around the world on a daily basis. Occasionally you hear a version which makes you hear something anew, but this is well-trodden territory; Jongen composed in a style which is similarly sophisticated, and the counterpoint is similarly perfect, but you never hear it! For me at least, this project feels more meaningful than adding to the already massive Ravel discography.

Aside from his time in England during the War, how much did he perform outside Belgium?

Jongen was absolutely a pillar of the Belgian music scene. After the War he returned home, took up a teaching position at the Conservatory and kind of became Mr Brussels: he conducted, he played the organ every day, he taught counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatory, he had three kids…the guy was basically superhuman! And he composed mainly during his vacations: he had a beautiful country home at Sart-lez-Spa, which is where he died in 1953.

As a student he won the Belgian Prix de Rome (which is essentially the same thing as the better-known French one, just awarded by a Belgian institution), so he spent time in Rome and Paris for a few months after that - but eventually he came home, because he was basically the musical star of his country. And that mentality continued throughout his life, really. Certainly he worked super-hard, but being based in Belgium meant that he had things he wouldn’t necessarily have had in Paris: organ appointments, commissions, support from various major institutions and the Belgian radio etc…But he wasn’t off touring Europe trying to get his music out there, and maybe that’s part of the reason people aren’t aware of him today.

I gather there’s a piano concerto, too - is that something you might consider recording?

Actually, there are three! The major one is the Piano Concerto Op. 127 from 1943, and there’s also a second one Op. 84 and a further piano concerto from his youth. I got hold of the scores about a year ago and it’s definitely on the list of things to do, but it’s a question of finding an orchestra who can get it together in this virtuoso Impressionistic style pretty quickly! And I can think of plenty of solo piano music to record in the meantime…

I’m really interested to see how he orchestrates…

He orchestrates very well, partly because the heyday of his career coincides with the foundation of what became the Belgian National Orchestra in the early 1930s – he had commissions from them which he conducted himself, so he had easy access to a high-quality orchestra. There’s a bunch of recordings of his orchestral music, but they all date from the 1940s and 50s so the sound is really thin and the players use that tight vibrato which is quite unfashionable now. That gives a whiff of old-fashionedness to the music itself, but if it was recorded with current technology and a more modern aesthetic I think it would shine very differently….

You mentioned how much time and energy he devoted to teaching - did any of his students go onto be well-known composers?

What’s tricky about the Brussels Conservatory throughout the twentieth century is that when people were super-talented they tended to leave – it’s kind of a brain-drain! I don’t have a list of famous alumni of his: he’s not like Reicha, whose pupils included Berlioz and Liszt and Gounod, but if anybody was in business in Brussels from about 1920 to 1940 they’d most likely have studied counterpoint or something with him.

What sort of reading-list would you suggest for anyone interested in finding out more about his life and works?

There’s a little biography by the English organist John Scott Whiteley, then there’s what Jongen calls his ‘Cahier’ [Réflexions 1950] - a journal which mostly dates from the last couple of years of his life. He wasn’t composing as much due to ill health, but he was listening to a lot of the newer music of the time and it clearly confused him: he didn’t understand why people were going down that path. Beyond that, booklet-notes from existing recordings are helpful, as are some encyclopedias, and that’s about it – some random engineer did an excellent, very detailed article on his blog, but this is just a random guy who really loves music. That’s where the situation is!

Do you have any live recitals of this music planned?

I’m thinking about doing some concerts towards the end of the year, as his 150th anniversary falls in December - I didn’t plan it that way, but a Belgian friend saw me posting about the recording on social media and assumed it was to mark his birthday, so it would be good to do something around that…