Jane Austen's Piano - EP

To mark the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen, pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason presents this fascinating album of music, most of which the English author would almost certainly have been familiar with. “I always found myself not only immersed in Jane Austen’s world, but also imagining a soundtrack to each novel,” Kanneh-Mason tells Apple Music Classical. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, music would have been an important part of family entertainment, so advanced piano skills were commonplace. “I knew that Austen was a pianist and that the family played music together at home, much like my own,” she continues, “so it felt very natural to explore this idea further.” Kanneh-Mason begins with a piano sonata by Joseph Haydn, beautifully paced and articulated. Haydn was popular with amateur pianists at the time and, compellingly, there is a copy of the Sonata in Austen’s own hand that exists in the family music collection. Handel’s music features, too, with extracts from a pair of the Baroque composer’s keyboard suites. Handel, says Kanneh-Mason, was regularly played at Hampshire Music Meeting, a local music festival. “Jane Austen’s piano teacher, Dr George Chard, helped organise the festival and curate the programme,” she adds; “and the Austen family’s own music collection includes some arrangements of Handel’s vocal works.” Jane Austen’s Piano also includes music specifically mentioned in the author’s novels. The Robin Adair (Theme and Variations), by George Kiallmark, make an appearance in Emma, while Kiallmark himself was a regular performer at Hampshire Music Meeting. Another English musician, Johann Baptist Cramer, is the only composer that Austen mentions by name, his music referred to, again in Emma, as “something quite new”. Cramer’s brief Etude No. 3 in A Minor, certainly within the grasp of most amateur players, displays elements of Schubert and Beethoven, and its air of early Romanticism may well have sounded enticingly modern to the young Austen’s ears. A short extract from Dario Marianelli’s soundtrack to the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen) acknowledges the spell that Austen’s writing has cast over the world of cinema, and is its own celebration of the Oscar-nominated film’s 20th anniversary.