Category: Reviews – Recordings

Now on CD! – Claire Cowan’s incandescent score for the RNZB’s recent “Hansel and Gretel”, played by the NZSO with Hamish McKeich

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CLAIRE COWAN – Hansel and Gretel; a Ballet in Two Acts

Hamish McKeich (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Recording produced by John Neill and Claire Cowan
Assistant Producer: Brent Stewart
Pro-Tools Editor: William Philipson
Illustration and Design: Fuller Studio

Verses: Amy Mansfield
Reader: Jonny Brugh

Recorded 2020 at Stella Maris Chapel, Seatoun, Wellington

After reading various reviews of the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s production of Auckland composer Claire Cowan’s Hansel and Gretel, toured by the company during 2019, I’m left feeling like one of the “gentlemen of England now abed” from Shakespeare’s Henry V play, those whom the monarch prophesised would “think themselves accurs’d” for not being at Agincourt to share in the splendour of the occasion’s success. And now, having listened to the enticingly-presented double CD set of the ballet’s music which the NZSO with conductor Hamish McKeich subsequently recorded, I feel doubly aggrieved at having missed out on seeing what “sounds like” a cornucopian feast of excitement, energy, colour and drama, if the music alone is anything to go by.

Of course, judging by the critical adulation given last year’s aforementioned stage production, this could well be a work that has now begun its journey towards becoming the balletic equivalent of German composer Engelbert Humperdinck’s well-known operatic setting of the Grimm Brothers’ classic fairy-tale, and thus a staple of any self-respecting ballet company’s repertoire. So, there may be hope for me yet!

Cowan’s experience of writing for dancers previous to this production had been in the contemporary field, so writing a ballet score, with the story and music “leading the way” and dictating what the dancers do was a new experience for her. Having met RNZB choreographer Loughlan Prior, who conveyed to her his long-held desire to make a ballet from the classic Brothers Grimm Hansel and Gretel story, Cowan agreed to undertake the project with him,  firstly trying out different “slants” on the original story and characterisations to give the scenario a fresh and more contemporary feeling. Working with Prior highlighted the specific requirements for dance music , such as the care needed when choosing time signatures and tempi, even if Cowan found that her choreographer preferred her music’s symmetrical rhythms to the angularities of 5/4 or 7/4 – but she confesses she simply didn’t want to be confined to 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 the whole time!

A dancer herself as a child, she had gone back to listen to some of the ballet classics –  Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky – to “check out” what those composers did, watching a  actual production of “The Nutcracker” and finding herself surprised at how much more music there was besides those well-known “iconic” moments in the score, some of which seemed to her like “filler” – Cowan promised  she would set herself the goal in her own work of giving those continuity moments as “magical” a quality as anything else in the score through constant reiteration of variants of the main themes, so that the music’s special distinction was always present.

Though she’s actually not the first woman to compose a ballet for the New Zealand Ballet Company, as has been claimed in some quarters – Dorothea Franchi’s work Do-Wacka-Do, written in 1956, firstly as a jazz combo, and later as a suite rescored for full orchestra, was (coincidentally, like Cowan’s) a revisiting of 1920s musical styles (Franchi called her work “good old American Jazz”) frequently performed by the Company, and (again, like Hansel and Gretel) one toured throughout the country in 1961 with piano (the composer’s?) accompaniment – Cowan’s “Hansel and Gretel” is, however, definitely the first full-length ballet by a woman to be performed by the RNZB, Franchi’s work having usually been part of a “double bill”, or performed with other smaller separate items.

The 2019 tour of Cowan’s and Prior’s work, having been such a success, it seemed wholly appropriate for the venture to be preserved in one form or another – the composer certainly felt that the work could be “shared” with many more people who didn’t have the opportunity to attend one of the live performances via a recording. Conductor Hamish McKeich encouraged  Cowan to approach the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with a proposal that reflected both the success of the live performances and the obvious prestige of association with the same for the orchestra, the result being that fifty of the players’ services were donated by the Orchestra to the undertaking, with Hamish McKeich the obvious choice as conductor. The chosen venue was the Stella Maris Chapel at Seatoun in Wellington with John Neill, of Park Road Post producing the recording. Cowan embarked on a crowd-sourced Boosted campaign to make up the remainder of funds needed for the project, and with all the arrangements and the planning in place, its completion seemed certain.

This of course being 2020, nothing was thus assured, with a community outbreak of Covid-19 in Auckland in August bringing plans to a standstill. Undeterred, though at considerably greater expense, Cowan continued the process piecemeal with a series of two-and-fro operations between Auckland and Wellington , the work having to be recorded in sections with different instrumental groups, and painstakingly dovetailed together at the end. It’s a tribute to the determination, expertise and patience of everybody concerned that the end result seems to my ears as magnificent as if there were no disruptions!

From the Overture’s beginning the music is a kaleidoscopic delight of sensation and impulse, the piece illustrating a burgeoning of things to come in the story from what seem like wistful, everyday situations.  It’s beyond the scope of this review to describe the whole ballet, but the opening scene gives the listener more than enough enticement to pursue the wonders that the story in its entirety delivers. The Street with its ceaseless comings-and-goings movement illustrates the world of the children’s family, the piquant detailing of busy-ness and cheerful purpose set against the frequent singing lines which depict care and longing, as well as something of the family’s circumstances in a world of harsh economic realities.

A Mary Poppins-like frisson of premonition introduces The witch’s ice-cream bicycle, the composer cleverly blending wonderment and unease at her antics, then normalising her presence by having her disappear into the falling dusk along with everybody else. Cowan illustrates her mastery of transition here, morphing the crepuscular ambiences into a kind of night-life scenario as both colours and impulses begin to repeople the scene, taking us from this into the children’s family home (no cruel and heartless stepmother, here, but simply loving and caring parents), where Dinner is being served, the parents obviously doing their best to remain cheerful, passages for solo violin and strings expressing the family’s bonds of love and care , while various other passages (wind and brass) suggest the paucity of fare.

The ear is constantly tickled by Cowan’s invention, each impulse pf movement and phrase of melody a suggestive experience for the listener. Particularly touching is the Pas de Deux for the Mother and Father, blending characterful concerted movement with complete freedom, the imagination both shaped but unconstrained by limitations of time and space – it was here I strongly felt Cowan’s experience as a film composer coming through, in her evocation of a “state of things”, one into which we as listeners were readily invited to observe and “feel”.

The rest follows the outlines of the Grimm Brothers’ classic story, though with some particularly “tasty” ingredients added, suggested by sequence-titles like The Witch’s Baking Charleston , Cowan‘s 1920s settings having liberally spiced the music with Broadway and jazz influences. In general, the music for the second part is brighter, brassier and more extrovert, as befits the blandishments of the gingerbread house scenario in which the children find themselves. Across this, recurring themes knit the episodes into a compelling whole, with associated groundswells of emotion bubbling up in places like the reprise of the Pas de Deux for the Mother and Father while looking for their children, a self-confessed favourite moment in the work for the composer!

The CDs contain a “bonus” at the end of the ballet’s action, a retelling of the story in verse, written by Amy Mansfield, here, racily delivered by Jonny Brugh, of 800 Words and What We do in the Shadows fame, to the accompaniment of musical excerpts from Cowan’s soundtrack. Mansfield’s words, saucily mixing finely-tuned imagery with drollery and outrageous doggerel, catch the spirit of Cowan’s music with gusto and relish, a delectable introduction/reminiscence of the complete work, if perhaps not, like gingerbread houses themselves, to be indulged in too freely or frequently!

No, the music itself, its creation and realisation, is the true joy of this delectable offering; and, as with the works of those luminaries previously mentioned, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, on the strength of this recording able to stand alone and bear witness to composer Claire Cowan’s stellar achievement. Whether those words of Shakespeare’s quoted at this review’s beginning resonate with you or not, you are urged to investigate this beautifully-appointed recording of “Hansel and Gretel” without delay!

(I am advised by Claire Cowan herself that the set is available only on bandcamp at this stage. For more information click on the following link –www.clairesmusic.bandcamp.com for both physical CDs and digital copies. The physical copy comes with a digital download too.)

 

 

Compelling Beethoven recordings from Eugene Albulescu

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major Op. 15
Piano Concerto No, 5 in E-flat Major Op.73 “Emperor”

Eugene Albulescu (piano/conductor)
Orchestra of Friends

(Recorded January 12th 2020,
Baker Hall, Zoeliner Arts Centre, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA)

AMP Recordings

AMPREC 022

It’s a measure of the remarkable staying power of Beethoven’s music that new performances and recordings of works that many of us know so well through having heard them countless times over the years simply keep coming (and show no signs of abating two hundred and fifty years after the composer’s birth).  Having recently heard a good deal of the New Zealand String Quartet’s acclaimed traversal of the great man’s works in that genre, I can directly testify as to the music’s almost uncanny capacity for renewal – “forever contemporary” as Igor Stravinsky once said of one of these pieces, the “Grosse Fugue” op. 133, a description that, although specifically intended, suggests also something of the capacity of most of Beethoven’s music to speak directly to us, free from time, place or convention.

So, when I heard of Eugene Albulescu’s recording of two of the piano concertos (both of which, incidentally, the pianist directs from the keyboard), I was immediately interested. I’d experienced at first hand his playing in concert during those years he’d spent in New Zealand (his family had emigrated from Roumania in 1984), and had previously reviewed at least two of his earlier recordings, including an astonishing Liszt recital, released on the Ode/Manu label, one which won the young pianist the Grand Prix du Disque Liszt in 1994. He’d by then left these shores, going to Indiana University to study with Edward Auer, and graduating in 1994; and he’s since performed in various places around the world, as a solo pianist, chamber musician and conductor, establishing himself firmly in the United States with successful concert appearances and radio broadcasts. He’s currently a Professor of Piano on the music faculty at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA.

Albulescu’s orchestra in this recording is described as the “Orchestra of Friends”, which suggests a “pick-up” group, though in fact it’s an ensemble associated with the University made up largely of players who had recently worked together with the pianist/conductor on another performance project, so that they were more than usually “in accord” with one another for the Beethoven sessions. In a fascinating essay presented in the booklet accompanying the disc, Albulescu outlines his “history” of contact with the concertos, involving his taking three different roles in performing them at various times – as soloist, as conductor, and as a soloist/conductor – which for him has shaped and formulated many insights and attitudes towards the music and its performance over the years. I was delighted to learn of his association with another advocatee of the practice of “conducting from the keyboard”, one of my all-time pianistic heroes, Paul Badura-Skoda, whom I never heard play “in the flesh”, alas, but who was the pianist who “introduced” me to Beethoven via his recordings of a number of the piano sonatas during the 1960s..

Albulescu stresses at one point in the essay (in all its parts it’s an absorbing “read”) that his attitude towards performing these works as a soloist/conductor wasn’t designed to eschew  or even undermine the role of a conductor in performances of these works, but merely to explore the processes of music-making and its effect on the work when soloist and conductor are one and the same. Implementing this practice certainly seems to me to make a radical shift in terms of weighting the music’s basic message, not so much in the two earlier Beethoven works, but very much so in the more romantic and dramatic theatres of exchange presented by the later concerti. Even so, I find myself taking some issue with Albulescu’s subsequent characterisation of a separate conductor’s presence in performance of these works as an “interference”, further compounded by what he terms the “non-playing” contribution of the latter (which then raises an age-old point of discussion regarding a conductor’s “influence” upon sounds made by his or her musicians!). I agree regarding the likelihood of a performance’s “unity of vision” being easier to realise under the control of a single interpreter, but would also argue that the alternative – a creative partnership between a soloist and conductor – can bring just as fascinating outcomes and rewards to concerto performances.

But this is supposed to be a review rather than any kind of dissertation on MY part – so I’ll forego any further comment along these lines and concentrate henceforth on the music-making on the disc!  For the most part I found these totally engaging performances, presented in fresh, crisp and immediate sound whose touch of dryness makes for a degree of clarity that allows us to enjoy all the more these players’ distinctive orchestral textures – the timpani rolls are especially “present”, as opposed to the indistinct rumble we often hear in recordings. Albulescu’s own playing is characterful from the outset, his phrasings having a spring and urgency that suggests pulsating life rather than something on any kind of safe, “middle-of-the-road” course. One senses a truly symbiotic partnership between players, such as the horns’ exchanges with the soloist just before the first movement’s recapitulation, full of poised, deliciously- sprung expectation – or the way the ensemble builds the excitement in the leadup to the first movement cadenza.  Incidentally what a cadenza this was! – no less than the third Beethoven had written for the concerto, and written much later than the other two (I thought it was possibly the pianist’s own, until I read the booklet notes more carefully!). It certainly encapsulates a somewhat transcendent mood compare with the remainder of the movement, though the performance had, in a retrospective sense, already prepared the way for something special to happen at this point.

Perhaps the slow movement’s ambience took a while to counter the sound’s dryness but the playing still resonates amply throughout – and the resulting instrumental clarity allows the listener full awareness of the detailings and dovetailings that give the music so much inner life. It’s not exactly “innigkeit”, here, but something fresher, a living flow, an eagerness to communicate which I found myself constantly aware of and relishing to the full. Came the finale, however, and I confess I was initially taken aback at the brusqueness of the piano’s introduction, Albulescu’s energies driving the figurations past the point of carefree fun towards and into a “Rage over a Lost Penny”-like urgency. While perhaps compelling in itself, it imparts for me an “edge” to the light-hearted theme which I’m still not entirely used to at this stage, preferring far more of a sense of fun and delicious interplay between piano and orchestra. Albulescu’s players are, however, with him all the way, grandly introducing the solo cadenza, then at the very end, bidding the piano a fond farewell, then abandoning the instrument altogether in their final tutti, given here with loads of panache.

So to the “Emperor” – and here was grandeur aplenty right from the start, the orchestral chording rich and sonorous, the replying piano flourishes combining flair, excitement, energy, control and quixotic impulse. The allegro sets off with no-nonsense singularity which burgeons into detailed purpose as the music broadens its scope, though still keeping the forward thrust to the fore even as the different instrumental groups strut their bounteous stuff. With the piano’s entry, Albulescu establishes his credentials as a worthwhile keyboard partner in the journey ahead, working hand-in-glove with the ensemble, bringing out the “character” of each episode, and maintaining that inexorable sense of forward movement that marks any “great” Beethoven interpretation.

And it’s a momentous journey, filled with the drama of both collaboration and confrontation during moments when imposing brass and timpani join forces to “slug it out” with the soloist, hammering single notes back-and-forth at one another in a trial of endurance, before the combatants regroup their forces and come out together with a reprise of the concerto‘s opening! This and other exchanges seem to me tailor-made for a test of different wills exemplified by piano and orchestra with soloist and conductor respectively, the ensuing confrontations causing sparks to fly, points of view to be contrasted, bargains to be struck and dovetailings to come together, a process that advances the music’s drama and resolutions in a properly full-blooded way. But Albulescu and his players also keep such potentialities open throughout, holding nothing back on either the piano’s or orchestra’s side and setting impulse against impulse in a convincingly dramatic manner, the piano by turns strong, spiky and combatative to the end, and the orchestra equally sonorous and responsive in reply!

After the energies, storms and rapprochements of the first movement, the Adagio un poco moto exudes a welcome calmness and serenity at its opening, Abulescu and his players giving the floating lines plenty of play over a strong, spacious undertow that keeps things constantly interactive, connected the whole time to terra firma with those beautiful wind and brass realisations suggesting a kind of replenishment of the spirit by nature. Having experienced the relative severity of the treatment given the C Major Concerto’s finale by these musicians, I was wondering whether a similarly “edgy” spirit would be unleashed by the players here, and couldn’t help a feeling of sharp-edged expectation hanging about the opening, the strains of the finale’s theme “plucked from the ether” so magically by the piano……

At the beginning Albulescu’s vigorously-propelled, somewhat angular projection of the theme on the piano suggested various kinds of feelings regarding his intent and mood – was it natural exuberance, excitabililty or sheer devilment of purpose which fuelled such  impulsiveness? As with the C Major Concerto’s finale, the pianist’s fingers imparted an “edge” to any sense of Olympian or Godlike ebullience or jocularity, here rather more appropriately suggesting perhaps serious intent in itself, or else intended as a “foil” to some of the movement’s contrasting episodes. We heard gentler tones sound the ringing of the key-changes throughout the central sequences, for instance, delivered by the pianist with grace and charm, before bigger-boned phrasing introduced the vigorous minor-key section which then tremulously and radiantly blossoms into a shared paean of exuberant praise of existence itself as the opening piano theme returns. Finally, the beginning of the movement’s coda is here so beautifully crepuscular in its realisation, pianist/conductor and timpanist capturing a sense of spacious resonance that one imagines as gently undulating throughout a cosmos stirred and shaken by a unique creative exuberance – one which bursts out over the final bars of the work in a vigorous exchange of life-affirmations!

Despite the quibbles, there’s no doubt in my mind that with this disc Eugene Albulescu has triumphantly demonstrated, together with his intrepid band of excellent players, that these oft-played and recorded works can still surprise, startle and arrest the attention, with performances that both challenge and affirm, as well as surprise and delight. Having said all of this, I’m aware that the business of actually procuring the recording might well be an “easier said than done” process for anybody! Though the disc doesn’t appear to have found its way to Marbecks in Auckland, yet (or hadn’t the last time I checked), it does feature on Amazon –https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Concertos-Emperor-Eugene-Albulescu/dp/B08GMTSND4, – and there are these things called “downloads” which remain a mystery to me, as I’m firmly of the persuasion that still prefers a physical object such as a CD to the ephemeral idea of a download from the ether. This site seems to offer some help in this regard, though I’m not sure about purchasing any kind of product – but it does seem as though you can get to listen to the performances!  The “link” I found to a site that promises a review AND the complete recording doesn’t seem active, but I found it on Google by typing “piano magazine Eugene Albulescu” – the rest is over to the intrepid and the fearless!  Whatever it costs in effort or riches, the rewards are well worthwhile ……

Gareth Farr’s “Chemin des Dames” Concerto and Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto together a powerful “concerted” statement on disc

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ELGAR – ‘Cello Concerto in E minor Op. 85
FARR – ‘Cello Concerto “Chemin des Dames”

Sébastien Hurtaud (‘cello)
Benjamin Northey (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Rubicon RCD 1047

I tried, I REALLY DID try to NOT look at my previous review for “Middle C” of the concert featuring the Gareth Farr ‘Cello concerto played by the same ‘cellist, Sébastien Hurtaud (also with the NZSO, though with a different conductor, Hamish McKeich) before writing this present review of the piece’s CD recording – of course, it was a different performance which needed to be “responded to” on its own merits; but I also wanted to check out my reactions to the same piece heard on a different occasion, for nothing more than my own interest’s sakes. There are, after all, so many variables of a subjective nature at work experienced by any listener hearing the same piece of music twice, to the point where it can be a totally different experience the second time round. (Incidentally, the earlier “Middle C” review can be found at https://middle-c.org/2017/05/aotearoa-plus-from-the-nzso-set-alight-by-gareth-farr-premiere/).

One of the main factors which coloured each experience differently for me was the other music which Farr’s concerto was played alongside, perhaps rather less significantly on a recording, where the listener can, if she/he wishes, choose to hear any work as a “stand alone” experience. In the 2017 concert at which the concerto was presented, we also heard music by Pierre Boulez and John Adams, neither of which pieces seemed to me to have much to do with Gareth Farr’s work – which, of course, was neither here nor there, except that the concert’s advertised title was “Aotearoa-plus!”, and I remember expending a good deal of reviewer’s energy at the time complaining about having only ONE work by a New Zealand composer in the programme!

First on this new Rubicon CD was a performance by the same artists of another ‘cello concerto, one which had a good deal of commonality of circumstance with Farr’s work – this was Elgar’s E Minor Concerto Op. 85, written in 1919, in the First World War’s aftermath, and regarded by many commentators as a lament on the part of the composer for the horrors of the conflict and the destruction of a way of life. Farr’s concerto for the same instrument, written almost a hundred years later (1917), was also written with the First World War in mind, though more specifically dedicated to the memory of three of his great-uncles, who lost their lives in the conflict, and are buried in France and in Belgium. The work’s title “Chemin des Dames” (Pathway of Women) was the name of one of these places of conflict, but was employed here by the composer to underline the impact of loss the war had on women such as the composer’s great grandmother, who had lost her brothers.

I thus began my listening with the Elgar Concerto, a work indelibly associated for a whole generation of music-lovers, myself among them, with British ‘cellist Jacqueline du Pre, whose legendary 1965 recording made with Sir John Barbirolli continues to haunt the interpretative echelons of this work for all of its subsequent performers. To his credit Sébastien Hurtaud makes the work as much his own as could be humanly possible, a rich, and deeply mellow solo statement at the opening setting the tone of the performance as one both gorgeously-voiced and sensitively nuanced. He’s partnered by the NZSO conducted by Benjamin Northey, the playing alert, fresh and direct at all times, if, to my ears recorded a tad backwardly in relation to the soloist, which I thought reduced the poignancy of solo instrumental dialogues in places, while still giving plenty of weight to the “big moments”.

The ‘cello is captured beautifully, Hurtaud’s plauying bringing out the “striving” quality of the first theme introduced by the strings and rising confidently to meet the full orchestral tutti – strong, stern stuff, indeed! The subsequent exchanges between soloist and orchestra beautifully point the difference here between the minor- and major-key ambiences, the life and energy of the latter projected so whole-heartedly – and while the orchestra’s individual instrumental lines seem to me too reticently-placed compared with the soloist, the tuttis ring out clearly and satisfyingly, with the brass a real presence.

Hurtaud makes us pay attention to the softest of pizzicati during the transition to the scherzo, the orchestra responsive, and the exchanges volatile, so that when the scherzo finally kicks in, the surge of energy is electric. Again the full-blooded orchestral shouts are most exciting, but I wanted to hear more of the pointillistic detail of the dialogues – still the accelerando at the movement’s end here has a wonderful ‘edge-of-the-seat” spontaneity!

How beautifully these musicians breathed the slow movement’s opening – lines filled with nuance, and hearts pulsing as one! The power of the music’s self-reflection and its emotion seemed at times  too candid to speak even of its own volition, the performance thus becoming a simple act of faith and will on the part of the players. Was the pause before the finale blustered in a shade too long? – when entering, the orchestra was right on the button with its crescendo, and afterwards supported the soloist’s musings with a rich carpet of sostenuto tones. Hurtaud’s sudden, thrusting, irruption-like  phrases became a veritable call to action, and we were away, with splendidly virile tutti passages in response to the soloist’s energies. The exchanges took us through plenty of incident, the cellist’s discourse vying with wind figurations and flecks of passing orchestral colour – some of which I wanted to hear more of, though the rumbustious passages had real bite – and the drollery of the orchestral ‘cellos joining up with the soloist was a sequence of truly collaborative delight!

But then, to be plunged into the work’s next section after these relative pleasantries – into what one suddenly felt to be the “dark centre” of the work! – was a shock! Elgar was profoundly affected by the war’s tragedy, and the disastrous effects on both man and beast (the suffering reportedly endured by the horses in combat zones he found particularly upsetting!) – and as Sebastien Hurtaud tells us in his notes, the composer may have, while working on the concerto, heard of the death in battle of one Kenneth Munro, the son of his long-ago ex-fiancée, Helen Weaver (who, incidentally, emigrated to New Zealand after breaking off the engagement). Here, the music seems to openly weep, all inhibition forgotten, ‘cellist, conductor and players caught up in giving voice to an outpouring of despair, its darkness leavened only by a brief quotation from the slow movement and a surge of grim defiance via a flourish at the end.

Gareth Farr expresses surprise, writing a note in the CD booklet about his concerto, that the work has so much in common with the Elgar – he never expected it to be bracketed thus, so his own work was originally conceived with no conscious thought about the older composer’s concerto for the same instrument. The cyclic quality of both works struck him forcibly when producing this recording together with Sebastien Hurtaud, whose comments about both works also highlight the ritualistic “beginning and ending” aspect of both pieces. Both also point to the shared focus of each concerto upon the tragic “Great War” years, Hurtaud describing each piece as a kind of “Requiem”, in the cellist’s words, “universal in scope and rooted in personal dramas” – a powerful and succinct way of characterising their shared qualities.

To the Farr Concerto, then, one which sounded as much awakened into being as played, with orchestral strings gently activating ambiences coloured by harp and keyboard figurations – the cello’s lament-like bird-call sparked responses from winds and brass at first before fetching up a sudden vehement crescendo of orchestral sound, brutal but brief. In the recitative that followed, the cello was echoed by winds and brass, bugle calls and a stirring of ghosts, with lots of dialogues between the soloist’s meditations and full-scale and single-instrument orchestral responses. Hurtaud’s rapt playing touchingly evoked a wanderer picking a way through a sometimes desolate, sometimes disturbingly animated landscape, as if looking for something – seeking a voice or impulse that could bring enlightment or recognition, Farr’s writing creating ambiences “stirred and shaken” with intent whose lamentings, interacting with clarinet, oboe and harp, as well as the strings, eventually provoked conflagration.

As sorrow confronted anger, the music turned on itself, the lines and textures catching the solo ‘cello up in merciless conflict – a fusillade of orchestral sounds followed, whose purpose seemed to unleash the forces of negation, which sought to fragment and undermine substance, battling with the cello’s voicing of the exotically-tinged theme, and taking it over, holding it to what seemed like ridicule. It all became a kind of bacchanale of brutality, a bombardment of grotesquely-wrought shrapnel whose repeated waves ran their course before exhaustedly subsiding.

The ’cello was left “to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire”, which Hurtaud and his instrument did in an extraordinary display of energy interwoven with inwardness, a reaffirmation of life culminating with the return of the work’s opening – strings, celeste and harp,  then percussion, winds and brass, the sounds stealing in to proclaim, amid the desolation, a laid-waste peace.

What seemed to me at the outset a pairing of entirely different compositions has, on rehearings of the disc, brought the “worlds” of the two works more closely together, above and besides the obvious commonality of association with the 1914-18 Great War –  at one and the same time a vital and thought-provoking listening experience.

 

Splendiferous sounds captured on CD from Christchurch Town Hall’s rejuvenated Rieger organ courtesy of Martin Setchell

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RESOUNDING AFTERSHOCKS

Martin Setchell at the Rieger Organ of Christchurch Town Hall

Mons Leidvin Takle – Celebration
JS Bach – Prelude in G Major BWV 541
Alexander Guilmant – Grand Choeur in D (alla Handel)
Reynaldo Hahn “A Chloris” (arr. Setchell)
Noël Goemanne – El dia de Fiesta
Enrico Bossi – Scherzo in G Minor Op. 49 No. 2
Bonaventura Somma – Toccata in A
Louis Vierne – Romance from Symphony IV
Reger – Variations and Fugue on “God Save the Queen”
Denis Bédard – Cats at Play
Marcel LAnquetuit – Toccata in D
Madeleine Dring – Caribbean Dance (arr. Setchell)
Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély – Andante in F
*Charles-Marie Widor – Toccata in F

Pipeline Press PP2

*Original Recording from Ode Manu 1539, Sept.1997

This recording, “Resounding Aftershocks”  broke an eight-year silence for the Christchurch Town Hall Rieger organ which followed the catastrophic 2011 earthquakes, and, as befitted the occasion, celebrated the instrument’s return to full prowess in heady fashion! Organist Martin Setchell’s long-established brilliance and elan as a performer is here demonstrated to the utmost thanks to the skills and expertise of the disc’s sound engineer Mike Clayton, capturing the occasion most resplendently. Purely as a sound-spectacle it’s a thrilling experience; and the mix of well-known (Widor’s ubiquitous “Toccata”), sure-fire crowd-pleasers (Guilmant’s Handelian “Grand Choeur”), ear-tickling discoveries and gentler/more humourful moments (Reynaldo Hahn’s “A Chloris” and Denis Bédard’s “Cats at Play”) and out-and-out celebratory free-for-alls (Mons Leidvin Takle’s “Celebration” – a riot of sounds, suitably “cheesy” in places and all the more enjoyable and festive for that), suggests a time for uninhibited listening-pleasure in a variety of shapes and forms, if ever there was one!

Continuing the “resounding” ambiences are JS Bach’s Prelude In G Major BBWV 541 closely followed by the Guilmant “Grand Choeur in D”, suitably subtitled “a la Handel”! Contrasts come with Setchell’s arrangement of Reyaldo Hahn’s son “A Chloris”, before we are thrown back into sterner stuff with Noël Goermanne’s energetic, if somewhat dour, “El Dia de Fiesta” (impressive in its own way, but I think I would have rather been somewhere with a bit more cheerful an aspect!)

Thank goodness for Enrico Bossi’s mischievous Scherzo in G minor immediately afterwards, with its charming antiphonal-like echo effects, and piquant mood-changes wrought by some gorgeously-varied registrations. Bonaventura Somma’s ebullient Toccata in A undoubtedly echoes the sound-world of THE more famous Widor, but fascinates as an engaging variant, all the same, as does Marcel Languetuit’s Toccata in D Major, the textures also remarkably similar to Widor’s, even if the trajectories are differently calibrated! Incidentally, I’m sure the dedicatee to this piece, Albert Dupré, was actually the father of organist MARCEL Dupré, and not “Maurice”, as commented on in the booklet notes!

Louis Vierne’s Romance from his Fourth Organ Symphony straightaway haunted the ear like no other track heard thus far, with an excerpt that seemed to capture the essence of the instrument’s soul more deeply and ambiently than anything else on the CD – a deep well of feeling in the midst of so many sparkling, sunlit fountains and cascading waterfalls. Vierne wrote the work in 1914, in the shadow cast by the oncoming European hostilities, the piece’s darker, more agitated middle section reflecting these tensions and uncertainties in contrast to the serenities of the outer sequences of the music.

Max Reger’s “Variations and Fugue on God Save the Queen” (somewhat oddly written after the death of Queen Victoria in 1901) was included by Setchell to pay due respect to Christchurch’sEnglish heritage, and to honour Queen Elizabeth II, now the British throne’s longest serving monarch. However ill-timed one might think the piece’s original provenance, there’s no doubt it all makes a rather gorgeous and resplendent noise, especially as the music works up to an undeniably sonorous climax! I had never heard of English composer Madeleine Dring, but her “Caribbean Dance” from 1959, as arranged by Setchell, has a lazily attractive rhythm, crunching some unexpectedly bluesy-plus harmonies at one point, before leading  to a suitably insouciant conclusion.

I loved the tremulous Voix humaine’s other-worldly sound in Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély’s Andante in F, a demonstration, incidentally, of one of two new stops “gained” by the refurbished instrument, the other being the Clarinette sound in the transcription of the Hahn song. The piece’s spacious serenity provides the utmost contrast to the opening tones of the long-awaited, tried-and-true favourite, Charles-Marie Widor’s arresting Toccata, from the Fifth of the composer’s organ symphonies, Setchell’s recording , here “lifted” without any signs of wear-and-tear from the organist’s 1997 MANU recording “Let the Pealing Organ Blow” as an appropriate “link” with the instrument’s history, one underlining the “return to life” of one of Christchurch’s most important cultural assets, and further reinforcing the inestimable qualitative value to the city of one of its most illustrious performers.

“Morgen” – pianist Rae de Lisle makes a welcome return to performing, with ‘cellist Andrew Joyce – and with help from Julia Joyce

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MORGEN
Songs for ‘Cello and Piano
Andrew Joyce (‘cello)
Rae de Lisle (piano)

items marked * with Julia Joyce (viola)

BRAHMS : Liebestreu Op3, No.1 / Minnelied Op.71, No.5 / “Immer leise wird mein Schlummer Op.105 No.2
“Wie melodien zieht es mir leise durch den Sinn” Op.105, No.1 / Sapphische Ode Op.94 No.4
Feldeinsamkeit Op.86 No.2 / Wiegenlied Op.49 No.4
DVORAK: Als die alte Mutter Op.55 No.4 / Lass mich allein Op.82 No.1
REYNALDO HAHN – L’heure exquise / A Chloris    FAURE – Apres un reve Op.7 No.1
SCHUMANN – Widmung Op.25, No.1 / Du bist wie eine Blume Op.25 No.4 / Mondnacht Op.39 No.5
BRAHMS – Zwei Gesange Op.91 – *Gestillte Sehnsucht / *Geistliches Wiegenlied
ERICH KORNGOLD – Marietta’s Lied – “Gluck, das mir verblieb”
SCHUBERT – Du Bist die Ruh Op.59 No.3 / Nacht und Traume Op.43 No.2
ALFREDO CATALANI – Ebben? Ne andro lontana / RICHARD STRAUSS – *Morgen  Op.27 No.4

Atoll Records  ACD 280

This recording has gone to the top of my “play for friends” list!  The beauty and expressiveness of it all instantly captivates whomever I demonstrate the disc to, and never fails to re-ignite my own initial struck-dumb response  – beginning as a “double distillation” of beauty, with Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello and Rae de Lisle’s piano exquisitely duetting their way through vistas of the utmost enchantment, it transforms into a trio when a fellow-traveller, violist Julia Joyce briefly joins the pair for an equally rhapsodic mid-journey sojourn, and then reunites with them right at the end. The recording is, of course, a “family affair”, cellist’ Andrew Joyce being the son-in-law of pianist Rae de Lisle, and violist Julia Joyce her daughter, and the ‘cellist’s partner – whether as a duo or a trio, their combination, on the strength of this recording, produces for this listener an unforgettable amalgam of artistry and feeling.

For pianist Rae de Lisle, this album has meant something of a “return to life” as a performer, having over the past quarter-century been in retirement through injury from her previous career as a successful concert pianist – though never having heard her play “live” I well recall a series of television programmes from around the 1970s featuring her as the soloist in a number of presentations of Beethoven piano concertos, recorded in those halcyon days when people in charge of New Zealand television regarded the arts as a necessary component of what went to air to the public. De Lisle, of course, subsequently became one of the crucial figures involved with fellow-pianist Michael Houstoun’s rehabilitation as a performer after the latter suffered similar injuries, helping him “remodel” his piano technique to a point where he was able to return to public playing. She herself describes in a personal note something of her own process of dealing with injury and her painstaking “retraining” to the point where she could actually make music again, and of her immense joy in being able to collaborate with the talented musicians in her own family!

What was indubitably given to her many piano students over the years of her indisposition poignantly “mirrors” the loss experienced by us in having the quality of pianism such as can be heard on this new CD cruelly denied us over the years. In the course of listening to these treasurable tracks, one readily appreciates – in fact, right from the disc’s beginning (featuring a group of Brahms’ songs given an eloquent introduction with Liebestreu Op.3 No. 1,) – how the “line” of lyrical expression is so unerringly shaped by both instruments, with the piano preparing the ground for the ‘cello in so many subtle ways, in the course of a handful of phrases suggesting and then leading, shaping the way forward and then echoing the fulfilment by the ‘cello of the music’s expressive quality. This piece epitomises the creative interplay at work in so many varied ways throughout the rest of the disc, as does the succeeding Minnelied Op,71 No. 5, demonstrating such exquisite sensibility from both players as to bring tears to the eyes of those susceptible to such things!

Both of the Dvořák settings are “lump-in-the-throat” affairs as realised here, de Lisle bringing out the music’s astringent quality of reminiscence in the piano’s opening to Als die alte Mutter Op 55 No.4, which so sharpens the sensibilities for the hushed quality of what follows, with Joyce’s ‘cello tone fusing the voice of the “mother” with that of the narrator, as the vocal line catches an individual accent or phrase which rivets the attention. And the gentle melancholy of Lasst mich allein Op.82 No.1 speaks volumes in the subtlety with which the minor key-shift deepens the emotion.

There’s insufficient space in which to comment on all of the tracks – but their characterisations by these two artists readily transport the listener into what Robert Schumann called “wondrous regions”, with Schumann’s own music ready to illustrate these magical excursions – the central, beautifully half-lit sequence at the centre of Widmung Op.25 No. 1, for example, followed by a beautifully rapt Du bist wie eine Blume Op.25 No.24, and the more extended, equally hypnotic Mondnacht Op.39 No.5. And, of course, there’s a brief but telling augmented strand contributing its own resonance to the proceedings, in the form of Julia Joyce’s viola, adding its wholly distinctive voice to those of the ‘cello-and-piano duo, in a pair of songs composed by Brahms for the violinist Joseph Joachim, the Zwei Gesange Op.91. The reprise of the first song is a particularly melting sequence, the viola and ‘cello duetting in counterpoint with rapturous accord, while the brighter-eyed setting of the carol “Joseph Lieber, Joseph mein” imparts a warmly ritualistic aspect to the musical collaboration, by turns full-throated and gently reassuring.

I ought to mention Andrew Joyce’s astonishingly candid realisation of Korngold’s Marietta’s Lied, from the opera Die tote Stadt during which his instrument sings the vocal lines with almost unbearable emotion, “inhabiting” the intensity of characterisation that the music suggests so readily. The disc ends, somewhat less fraughtfully, with another stellar display of string-playing, Julia Joyce’s viola substituting for the usual violin in Richard Strauss’s Morgen Op.27 No.4, the combination triumphantly expressing the essential flavour of the composer’s regard for the voice and his love for his wife, Pauline, in a new day’s blessed context.

Beautifully-balanced, warm and clear recorded sound completes a most attractive issue from “Atoll”.

Third volume of Richard Farrell piano recordings a fascinating collection of till-now unreleased treasures

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Richard Farrell recordings for Atoll
Volume 3

CD 1: Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No 1; Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 4 with the National Orchestra of the NZBS, conducted by Andersen Tyrer (1948)
CD 2: Schumann: Piano Quartet in E flat.  Richard Farrell Piano Quartet (Radio Suisse, Zurich, 1956)
Liszt: Transcriptions/reminiscences and original pieces
Bach: Prelude and Fugue in F  minor
De Falla: Ritual Fire Dance
CD 3: William Alwyn: Fantasy Waltzes (BBC 1957)

Monday 16 December 2019

The third volume of recordings of piano performances by Richard Farrell (1926 – 1958) has appeared, nine years after the first volume. Apart from a couple of small pieces, none have been commercially released though Peter Mechen (who was the assistant producer and undertook research) reminds me that the Tchaikovsky concerto was played by the then Concert Programme in the 1980s and the Liszt recital was broadcast as part of a programme marking the 25th anniversary of Farrell’s death in 1983 as well as sporadically since.

The highlights here are the two piano concertos from the one-year-old National Orchestra in 1948, conducted by Andersen Tyrer (who certain local critics were pleased to routinely excoriate); Schumann’s Piano Quartet and Fantasy Waltzes by William Alwyn.

This final instalment, which consists of three CDs, has been slow emerging since it contains mainly music that has not appeared on commercial recordings (as was the case of the earlier volumes), and its unearthing has been a painstaking and sometimes complex process. The sources have been mainly radio networks: the New Zealand Broadcasting Service (as it was then), the BBC and Swiss Radio. In the light of the all-too-common practice by broadcasters of deleting music thought at the time to be unimportant, it is surprising and significant that these recordings have at last been publicly released.

It’s amazing they even survived!

The first two volumes
The first two-CD volume contained a number of Grieg’s piano works including the Piano Concerto and his Ballade in G minor, selections from the Popular Norwegian Melodies and Lyric Pieces; Brahms’s four Ballades, Op 10, and  several other pieces including the Waltzes of Op 39.

Volume 2 contained Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli and six of his Preludes; a number of pieces by Chopin including the first Scherzo; Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Handel and some of the Op 119 piano pieces, Liszt’s ‘reminiscences’, ‘paraphrases’ etc on popular pieces by other composers, including the quartet from Rigoletto and Schumann’s Widmung (which reappear now in Volume 3) and other smaller works: Schumann’s Arabesque and pieces by Mendelssohn, Debussy and De Falla.

Tchaikovsky No 1 and Beethoven No 4
The first disc in Volume 3 contains the two piano concertos, recorded in the Auckland Town Hall by the NZBS in 1948, just a year after the National Orchestra’s first performance. There is nothing disgraceful about the performance or the recording: it showed a 22-year-old Farrell somewhat inclined to overdramatise the music (if that could conceivably be a fault with this concerto!), occasionally disregarding the orchestra, but compared with the not uncommon tendency for soloists to be a little at odds, tempo-wise and in dynamics, with an orchestra, the flaws are very inconsequential. What is much more interesting is to have (for New Zealanders at any rate) this evidence of the very youthful orchestra and a comparably young, though already internationally acclaimed pianist. Tchaikovsky offers the pianist a commanding start and Farrell responds with unbridled ardour. His playing is typically impetuous, allowing little space between phrases, but these are well contrasted with the thoughtfulness and sensitivity in quiet passages. The frequent bravura passages are, nevertheless, not just breath-taking but conspicuously in tune with the music, for example in the episode leading to the peroration at the end of the first movement.

The deficiencies of the recording are perhaps more evident in the meditative second movement where one might have difficulty distinguishing the various woodwinds. I don’t know the size of the string sections in the early orchestra, but the third movement certainly reveals a thinness.

A more successful blending of soloist and orchestra exists in the Beethoven concerto where Farrell clearly responds to the more ‘classical’ character of the earlier work; in fact, I was impressed by the clarity and well-judged high spirits of the Finale, which I found myself thoroughly enjoying.

Schumann Piano Quartet
The recording of the Schumann Piano Quartet by the short-lived Richard Farrell Piano Quartet is very interesting. This recording for Swiss Radio is the only known, surviving recording by the group. The story of the discovery of its existence, the result of the concurrence of people and memories, is nearly as remarkable as the performance itself, which is the only example of Farrell as a consummate chamber musician.

The group was put together by a former member of the Adolph Busch Quartet, cellist Paul Grümmer, in Switzerland in 1956. Remarkably, two of the quartet’s members, violist Eduard Melkus and cellist Ottomar Borwitsky were aged about 90 when this issue was being prepared. They contributed memories of Farrell printed in the CD booklet: interesting, revelatory and amusing.

One might listen to this recording of Schumann’s piano quartet and, given the rarity of permanent piano quartet ensembles, hear the sounds characteristic of string quartets of the era, such as the Budapest or Borodin, the Fine Arts or Amadeus quartets (not to mention the Busch Quartet itself, one of the most famous of all). The sound is partly attributable no doubt to contemporary recording characteristics and quality, and not to be denigrated. So the recording is a treasure; microphones are quite close and the feeling of immediacy, intimacy is enhanced, which would make anything less than perfect articulation and intonation very conspicuous. The opening is warmly meditative, in sharp contrast to the sudden arrival of the Allegro of the first movement revealing admirable ensemble in which no instrument is dominant at any stage; that is no doubt a tribute in part to the engineer almost as much as to the players.

The rest of the second CD is taken by a selection of fairly popular piano pieces: several Liszt transcriptions/reminiscences, the 6th Hungarian Rhapsody and the Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa from the Years of Pilgrimage II – Italy.  Excellent performances, at times almost too perfect.

Alwyn: Fantasy Waltzes
The third disc is devoted to a real rarity: a set of eleven pieces, Fantasy Waltzes, dedicated to Farrell by British composer William Alwyn. They too were discovered somewhat by chance, traced through the William Alwyn Foundation and the William Alwyn Archive in the Cambridge University Library and recorded by the BBC in 1957. I’d never come across this suite of pieces and a first hearing didn’t make much impression: music of the era – the 1950s – that was not dictated by the strictures of the avant-garde, of serialism; but which did at first seem a bit lightweight, feathery, lacking melodic character: somewhat akin to Brahms’s Liebeslieder Walzer. But on second and later hearings its charming, unpretentious nature has taken root, as the various styles of waltzes are explored, melodies became more appealing and occasional cross-references start to emerge, all creating a more complex and interesting set of pieces.

Exploration of references on the Internet have led me to explore Alwyn’s other music – five symphonies and other orchestral music, four operas, much chamber and piano music as well as around seventy film scores (the NZSO under James Robertson played his second symphony in 1956 in Wellington and Auckland).

You will find an account of the Fantasy Waltzes, inter alia, on a website about a Chandos CD by pianist Julian Milford, in a series devoted to Alwyn; it mentions an earlier recording by John Ogdon, but not, naturally enough, the original dedicatee and first performer, Farrell.

Here is a quote from a review on the website: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/july00/alwyn.htm

“The Fantasy-Waltzes date from 1956-7, inspired by a visit to Grieg’s lakeside home. Almost certainly Alwyn’s best known piano music, this is a dazzling showcase, a work of constant invention which runs the gamut of moods and styles, yet is always unmistakably Alwyn. The pieces do stand alone, even though some end in disconcertingly flippant ways, but become more than the sum of the parts when heard as part of the complete structure. This is a kaleidoscope, a sustained and thoroughly enjoyable work with all the drama, colour and atmosphere one expects from Alwyn. Underneath it all is a smile, the warmth of a romantic who also knew how to have fun, both facets woven together in the spectacular twists and turns of the closing Presto.”

I feel very much the same way about them. The most comprehensive account of the pieces is on the website: http://landofllostcontent.blogspot.com/2019/07/william-alwyn-1905-85-fantasy-waltzes.html

That article lists five recorded performances of the Fantasy Waltzes that were released, which did not of course include Farrell’s which remained in the archive. But it seems to be the only website to mention Farrell and it notes that he had played several of the waltzes in New Zealand before this recording was made (2 June 1957).

All of which confirm one’s impression of their being a rather significant part of the composer’s output that is nowadays rather neglected.

So Volume 3, a very miscellaneous collection of previously unpublished recordings of Farrell’s playing, not only deserves to be better known, but in their different ways reveal performances that are very interesting in themselves: A glimpse of the early NZSO, a fine performance of Schumann’s lovely piano quartet, a group of popular piano pieces that were better known in the 1950s than they are today, as a result of promoters’ avoidance of piano recitals, and the discovery of a group of charming and imaginative pieces by the neglected William Alwyn.

At least one of these diverse aspects should be enough to attract a wide range of music lovers.

This third volume of Farrell CDs can be purchased from Marbecks in Auckland: see their website.

Orchestra Wellington – gone vinyl to splendid effect with live Beethoven

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Symphonies Nos.1 & 3
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Symphony No. 1 in C Major Op. 21
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Op. 55 “Eroica”

(recorded “live” at the Michael Fowler Centre:
Symphony No. 1 on 13th May 2017 – Engineer, Graham Kennedy
Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” on 2nd December 2017 – Engineers, Darryl Stack, Steve Burridge

Orchestra Wellington OWTOWN 001/1-2 (LP issue)
(also available on CD – Concordance Records)

I was there at the 2018 concert when conductor Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington launched their ground-breaking classical recording release of two Beethoven Symphonies, recorded “live” at separate Michael Fowler Centre concerts the previous year – and what was more, caught on two splendidly appointed vinyl discs which were displayed most tellingly to a visibly gobsmacked and positively enthusiastic audience. Being an originally-pressed vinyl aficionado, I failed to take much notice of what Marc Taddei might have said about the CD issue of this release, though I registered that such a thing did and does exist, obviously giving the pleasure to be had from these splendid performances even wider currency.

For, to borrow from the words of the old song, I only had eyes for the startlingly, vividly-presented  2-LP vinyl set, one disc snow-white, and the other fire-engine red, both discs being enthusiastically brandished by the conductor (oh! – those poor, precious record surfaces – careful!!) their colours replicated with the words “Orchestra Wellington LIVE” on the outer gatefold sleeve housing the LPs. The publicity I’ve seen since makes much of the recent phenomenon of a “vinyl comeback” amongst the music-buying public, with artists across the board declaring for a number of reasons their newly-found allegiance to the grand old, tried-and-true medium; so a venture like this puts the Orchestra into the forefront world-wide of matters pertaining to the presentation of music in a lasting format.

I was thrilled to get hold of a copy of the LP set, though its arrival coincided with “troubles” developed by my equipment, so that I had to take the recordings for their first hearing to a friend’s abode and listen to them on his (admittedly, far superior to mine in quality) system.  We played the opening movement of the “Eroica”, and, thanks to the skills of recording engineers Darryl Stack and Steve Burridge, found ourselves in what sounded like “the best seats in the hall”, the full flavour of what I remembered from the actual concert coming across as an even more beautifully-balanced sound-picture, and with plenty of “audience ambience” to add to the occasion’s impact.

I reviewed the concert at which the “Eroica” was played in Middle C soon afterwards – https://middle-c.org/2017/12/cataclysmic-conclusion-to-orchestra-wellingtons-diaghilev-season/ and hearing the performance again merely confirmed my opinion as to its quality – what struck me afresh when I finally got the chance to hear the whole of the symphony on my “restored” sound equipment was a characteristic that it shared with all of the “great” performances I had heard, whether monumental, like Klemperer’s or Barbirolli’s, or swift and incisive, like Toscanini’s or Karajan’s, a sense of an unbroken, vibrant musical line sounding and resounding throughout the whole work. This was brought about less by speed than by a sense of unremitting forward movement, enabled by incisive orchestral attack and clearly-focused phrasings – not a bar, not a phrase, not a musical sentence in this performance reflected anything but the inevitability of the whole, the viewpoint of an eagle’s eye. Even what seemed like the most discursive sequences, such as the famous Trio of the Scherzo, featuring the three playful horns, or a most charming variant of the finale’s opening “Prometheus” bass theme in triplets, here ear-catchingly played by solo strings, kept the argument moving forwards, whether teasingly or quirkily, always with the work’s end in the conception’s ear.

New to me was the performance of the First Symphony, which took up Side One of the first of two discs. Taddei and his players gave Beethoven’s somewhat off-beat opening to the work plenty of sounding-space before the strings nimbly set the allegro dancing, the rushing figurations turning to gossamer at the conductor’s tempo, in places the playing sounding as light and airy as thistledown! Having been brought up in this Symphony with the renowned “Kingsway Hall bloom” on the strings in Klemperer’s 1950s version (captured for all time in what was perhaps London’s most well-known recording venue), I thought the sound here beautifully balanced by engineer Graham Kennedy while honestly reflecting the hall’s clear but ungiving quality. If there was little “bloom” the players at least generated whole spadefuls of bubbling energy, each one thrusting upwards, eager to be released.

I enjoyed the ongoing concert ambience in between the symphony’s movements – leaving the microphones “on” was an inspired, enlivening idea, readily recapturing the “whole” occasion’s atmosphere, one which the performances had worked so hard to help bring about in the first place.
The second movement’s brisk, eagerly-phrased dance firmly placed the work in the “Haydn” era, Taddei and the players generating moments of dramatic insistence in the movement’s development section, both strings and timpani accentuating their dotted-rhythm figurations to thrilling effect!  I liked, also, how the Scherzo’s gait wasn’t rushed, but had space in which to “point” the rhythms, and allow the timpani’s contributions plenty of clarity, the Trio similarly relaxed and contrastingly lyrical in character – I have to confess I especially enjoyed the unexpected second-half repeat when it came, in the recap of the opening!

The finale sounded here very Leonore No.3-ish at the outset with trumpets and drums prominently sounding, Taddei then getting his strings to “tease” in a delightfully po-faced way before the allegro skipped its way into the sound-picture. Brimful with infectious energy as things got properly going, the playing gave detailings like the timpani figures opportunities for plenty of robust prominence, with the churning vortex mid-movement gaily teased back into the mainstream by the chirpy winds. It was left to a celebratory, festive-sounding coda to round off the work, bringing forth instant and enthusiastic acclaim from an appreciative audience at the end.

So, these are two remarkably compelling and attractively presented performances! Very great credit to all concerned for this venture, in my view admirable and successful on all counts! Orchestra Wellington’s Marketing Manager Marek Peszynski has already aired some further recording ideas and options – one waits with bated breath to see what will come of it all. The idea of combining popular repertoire with contemporary New Zealand pieces is a laudable one, but there are some New Zealand classics that could do with some help along the way – David Farquhar’s challenging, ambient, descriptive and resonant First Symphony for one! We will all have our wish-lists, but I’d like to think that we’ll also equally get behind and support whatever this remarkable orchestra and its inspirational music director, together with its enterprising and progressive administration, will come up with next!

 

 

Brahms’ String Quintets on Naxos – graceful, beautifully-lit readings by the NZSQ with Maria Lambros (viola)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand String Quartet, with Maria Lambros (viola), presents
BRAHMS – String Quintets – No.1 in F Major, Op.88 / No/2 in G Major, Op.111

Helene Pohl (leader) / Monique Lapins (violin) / Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
(with Maria Lambros – viola)

Naxos CD 8.573455

Playing and getting to know this disc recorded in Canada as long ago as 2016 has been, for me, a salutary experience on a couple of counts – firstly it’s been a recrimination of sorts, one that’s asked me in no uncertain tones of disapproval, why I hadn’t sought out and explored this venture by one of our most renowned and treasured musical ensembles before now! A different kind of reproof concerns the actual music, which I didn’t know nearly as well as I ought to have, other facets of the world being too much with me, to the detriment of my appreciation of the works on the present CD.

Continuing in this vein and juicily “flavouring” my present litany of self-deprecation with the admission that I’ve never really “got” Brahms’ chamber music that’s minus a piano would bring shock and horror into the argument as well as coals of condemnation down upon my head from dyed-in-the-wool Brahmsians, with whom I’ve skirmished before! So, it’s with surprise and delight that I’ve here started to listen to these works afresh, and seemingly begun to appreciate what their composer was doing, thanks to the luminously persuasive way of the players of the New Zealand String Quartet and their collaborator, Maria Lambros, with this music!

For whatever reason, the recording presents the Second (in G Major, Op.111) of the composer’s two String Quintets first up on the disc. Brahms originally thought this would be his last major chamber work, but then met clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld the following year (1891), and no less than four more chamber pieces came from his pen, inspired by the playing of a musician Brahms called “the nightingale of the orchestra”. Nevertheless, the Quintet displays a similar autumnal feeling in places to the clarinet works that followed, in between the invigorating bursts of energy – in fact the music’s vigorous opening immediately brought to my mind the Elgar of the Second Symphony, the trajectories having a similar “striding” aspect, and the exultations displaying more than a hint of the determined and ripely forthright about them, a “not to be thwarted” feel in the way the music unfolds. Somewhat Elgarian, too, is the way the music adroitly and seamlessly reveals its composer’s more lyrical inclinations as a kind of “inner core” – and the NZSQ players’ (including the second violist’s) beautifully-judged way with realising each of these contrasting moods and their symbiotic relationship is one of the things which gave me such pleasure throughout this opening movement’s journey.

With the following Adagio, we are enveloped in a gentle melancholy, whose potential for sorrow is softened by the music’s blood-pulsing flow and, in places, exquisite gentleness – there are outbursts of more heart-on-sleeve emotion in places, but always the music ultimately “takes care” of the listener’s concerns, the occasional shivers of loneliness placed in a wider context of stoic resignation, leaving us moved but not bereft. How gently and richly the playing takes us along this path, the viola leading the way, slightly “rushing” the slide upwards in the music’s second phrase (but giving it more “room” in its final appearance towards the movement’s end), and otherwise enabling us to fully enjoy the music’s songful outpourings. And the sequences when the night’s stars are gently revealed to us are exquisitely voiced by the ensemble, making the brief moments of agitation all the more telling.

The third movement’s Un poco Allegretto takes us closer to the world of the later Clarinet/ Viola Sonatas, an ardently proclaimed, though expansively phrased expression of controlled feeling, beautifully channelled along a ¾ rhythmic pathway, the textures voiced exquisitely in their ebb and flow of intensity, both in the minor-key opening and the contrasting major-key “trio” sequence, the lines in the latter having a Dvorakian “outdoor” quality in places. The finale depicts Brahms at his most engaging, with, again, the players’ penchant for keeping the lines airy and luminous giving the music so much variety and nuance, and to my ears entirely un-yoking the composer from any debilitating “keeper of the sacred flame” mantle wrought by his reactionary supporters – instead, this is playing which allows Brahms to be Brahms!

The ensemble also does well with the full-on opening of the earlier Quintet (F major, Op.88), keeping those lines sharply-focused and pliant (the influence of “period-practice” in the playing, perhaps?), the textures all the better-sounding for the players’ subtleties. Again, the music sounds freshly-minted, in places glowing with new-found delight (am I confusing my response with that of the players, here?), and skipping lightly over the bedrock of the pedal-points, both the solo viola and first violin giving the “Viennese Waltz” suggestion plenty of “juice” and relishing the ambivalence of the cross-rhythmed accompaniments. I liked the especially plaintive touch of the first violin’s high-flying phrase at the movement’s end, creating a brief “timeless” space before the throwaway ending.

Though this work has, on paper, only three movements, the complexities of the middle movement’s structure give a sense of a slow movement and a scherzo combined, the composer turning to a couple of baroque-like keyboard pieces from his earlier years, a sarabande, and a gavotte, as his source-material. Marked Grave ed appassionato at the outset, the music has a sighing aspect which the players here seem to “breathe” easily and naturally, allowing each change of texture, colour and dynamic to unfold and run together like a narrative. The charm of the contrasting Allegretto vivace is nicely caught, its almost insouciant character the perfect foil for the return of the movement’s opening, the “heartfelt” quality intensified – but the composer then, Beethoven-like, confounds our expectations with a presto variant of the Allegretto, followed by an even more richly-laden revisiting of the movement’s opening music. Once more, these players give the music the gravitas it needs with a beguiling lightness of touch and a rapt concentration over the last few bars which has one catching and holding one’s breath.

Two chords begin a finale of engaging fugal fun, the instruments playing games of chase, the rapid figurations momentarily exhausting themselves and alternating with chromatically-shifting triplets, everything freely modulating and exploratory. At a later point I thought I detected a brief moment of over-eagerness in one of the lines of the fugal figures’ incessant gyrations – but it somehow adds to the visceral excitement, culminating in the music suddenly shifting to a fleet-footed 9/8 rhythm, and converting the chase into a spirited dance. And I could also have imagined relishing a touch more rhetorical emphasis from the ensemble at the coda’s end, a stronger sense of homecoming – but in return for this I might have had to forego those treasurable moments during which this performance’s “incredible lightness of being” seemingly for the first time truly opened my ears to this glorious music.

 

Rachmaninov from Rustem Hayroudinoff, via Halida Dinova……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RACHMANINOV – The Piano Sonatas

Piano Sonata No.1 in D Minor Op.28
Lullaby (Tchaikovsky) Op.16 No.1) arr. Rachmaninov
Piano Sonata No.2 in B-flat Minor Op.36

Rustem Hayroudinoff (piano)

ONYX 4181 (available from Presto Classical)

What on earth, you are asking, am I doing reviewing a CD by a pianist whose name would be largely unknown to New Zealand audiences? The answer is that Rustem Hayroudinoff is the brother of the remarkable Tatarstan pianist Halida Dinova who has relatively recently toured New Zealand on two occasions, giving, at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre during her visit here in 2012, one of the most remarkable recitals I’ve ever witnessed – go to https://middle-c.org/2012/05/halida-dinova-russian-soul-from-tatarstan/ for more details. At the time, I thought Dinova’s playing seemed to epitomise a style long associated with Russian-trained pianists, one which invariably resulted in music-making that powerfully conjured up a compelling amalgam of pictorial, emotional and structural associations out of whatever repertoire these pianists performed.

On the strength of the brilliant music-making to be found on this new Onyx CD from Rustem Hayroudinoff, that tradition certainly runs in the family – it’s a further example of a musician’s alchemic “ownership” of the notes and their recreation in performance. Coincidentally enough, I had already encountered Hayroudinoff, in a previous issue of Rachmaninov’s music on the Chandos label, featuring the composer’s complete Preludes (CHAN 10107),  long before I knew of the connection with Dinova.

This time Hayroudinoff turns his attention to the Piano Sonatas, adding a well-judged interlude in the form of Rachmaninov’s transcription of Tchaikovsky’s Lullaby Op.16 No.1, placed between the two larger works. Hayroudinoff comments in a thoughtful note printed in the CD booklet, that this was Rachmaninov’s last composition, dating from 1941, aptly completing a circle of creativity which had begun as a 13 year-old with another Tchaikovsky transcription, that of the latter’s Manfred Symphony for piano duet.

Still, whatever the Tchaikovsky Lullaby transcription’s merits, nobody will be buying this disc with this piece first and foremost in mind – though the Sonatas (especially the Second) have had their “champions” (one thinks of John Ogdon’s ground-breaking 1968 LP of both works, for example, and Vladimir Horowitz’s espousal of the Second over the years), it’s only in comparatively recent times that these pieces have become widely accepted as masterpieces. The First was rarely performed, and the original version of the Second wasn’t played for many years, so that a proper “performance tradition” is only now being established for each of the Sonatas by a newer generation of super-virtuosi.

Rather like the case with Bruckner and several of his own symphonies, the Second Sonata’s original 1913 version was called to question by Rachmmaninov himself, who drastically revised it in 1931, cutting the original by six or seven minutes. For a long time afterwards interpreters either followed the composer’s revised score, or played a version that combined elements of the two editions, such as Horowitz made (with the composer’s blessing), and Hayroudinoff himself does here. The original 1913 version is finding increased favour with more interpreters, and recordings, among them Leslie Howard of the “complete Franz Liszt” fame, who states unequivocally in a note accompanying his own recording of the original, “…..no musician should ever give a passing thought to a “pick-and-mix” version of the two texts”. As with the aforementioned Bruckner Symphonies, it may well happen in time that the various combined-edition versions will come to be regarded as curiosities next to either the original or composer-made revised version – all part of the work’s overall genesis and process of acceptance!

Hayroudinoff’s present recording certainly contributes to that process in the case of both of the sonatas, even if he takes little heed of Leslie Howard’s comments regarding the Second Sonata, by offering his own “amalgam” of the two versions, obviously from deep-rooted conviction……

“I strongly believe that in his quest for conciseness, Rachmaninov excised so much in the revised edition of the Sonata that the structure of the work suffered. Where I felt that some of the logic of the continuity of ideas was compromised, I discreetly reinstated them from the original edition. I hope that the listener will not judge me as an insolent desecrator. I did this out of love for this extraordinary work, and with the humble intention to restore its coherence……” (Rustem Hayroudinoff)

Even if Rachmaninov aficionados reading this review agree with Leslie Howard’s negative opinion regarding the “hybridisation” of the Sonata, they should, in my opinion, still try and hear Hayroudinoff’s extraordinary playing of it, irrespective of the pianist’s own cross-references to the Sonata’s original edition. With the chromatic descent that opens the work, Hayroudinoff emphatically plunges the listener into a world of unique sensibility at once expansive and volatile, each note imbued with purpose and “attitude” which gives both expansiveness and weight to those opening declamations and the tremendous “rolling” crescendi whose peaks then fall away so resonantly and ambiently before the second subject’s heart-easing lyricism (to my ears a precursor of the Fourth Piano Concerto’s similarly bitter-sweet melodic outpourings).

Hayroudinoff’s innate sense of the music’s organic flow allowed both the music’s tenderness and pent-up energies to interact, bringing out the “growing” of the downwardly chromatic motif with ever-increasing insistence to the point where the sounds transcendentally became as sonorous church bells (one of a number of recurring influences of Rachmaninov’s compositional life), linking the Sonata to another work from that same time, his choral symphony “The Bells”.

Seemingly from out of the air Hayroudinoff floated the notes which set the second movement on its course, patiently building the music’s richly-laden decorative aspect towards, firstly, a full-throated melodic peroration, and then another bell-like evocation, this time darker and disturbingly remorseless. After delivering panic-stricken flourishes of shriller voices in response, the pianist brought a beautifully consoling order to the uneasy resonance of echoes and consoling voices, a “calm before the storm” aspect which heightened the effect of the third movement’s onslaught!

An almost militaristic aspect dominated the opening, Hayroudinoff’s incredible strength and dexterity driving the music forward excitingly, though with playing always alive to quixotic changes of mood, with their attendant variations of touch and sonority. Again, I thought the pianist’s rendering of the music’s different facets extraordinary – here bound together with an alchemic sense of ongoing purpose, a living quality which quickened this listener’s senses as well as the emotions and the intellect. Still, overwhelming as the result was, the playing’s illuminating quality left part of me wishing that Hayroudinoff had “gone for broke” and given us the original 1913 version of the music.

Thankfully no such lasting equivocations affect the music of the First Piano Sonata, composed in 1907 when Rachmaninov was in Dresden, simultaneously writing his Second Symphony and his opera “Monna Vanna”. The sonata has the same epic proportions as the symphony, and Rachmaninov characteristically expressed dissatisfaction with both works on their completion, and even after publication of the symphony suggesting numerous cuts for performers to apply. Of course, in the wake of the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, it was perhaps understandable that the composer would, even after the new symphony’s initial success, “lose his nerve” in the face of eventual critical disparagement, the upshot being that his suggested cuts were “sanctioned” and invariably followed in subsequent performances up until the late 1960s/early70s when the work at last began to be played “complete” once again!

A different fate awaited its “companion piece”, the D Minor Piano Sonata, which, while maintaining its content since its publication in 1908, had already been cut extensively by a worried composer after a “trial performance”. Describing the work in a letter to a friend as “wild and endlessly long”, Rachmaninov remarked ruefully that “no-one will ever play this work” due to its “dubious musical merit”. Mostly non-committal regarding any “programme” or other source of inspiration for his compositions, the composer let it slip in the same letter that the work’s “idea” was made up of “three contrasting characters from a work of world literature”. He refrained, however, from telling the sonata’s first public interpreter, Konstantin Igumnov, until AFTER the latter had performed the work a few times, that the “work of world literature” was Goethe’s “Faust”, and each of the three movements related to a particular character in the story, as was the case with Liszt’s “Faust” Symphony.

Hayroudinoff tells us that he believes an awareness of Rachmaninov’s original programme is a key to understanding the complexities of this work – Rachmaninov said as much in another statement from the letter quoted above – “…..I am beginning to think that, if I were to reveal the programme, the Sonata would become much more comprehensible…..”. The pianist quotes from Faust’s monologue at the beginning of the play, one which expresses the character’s inner conflict, and explains his actions throughout the drama’s course – Faust speaks of his “two souls”, one loving the world, the other longing for higher things “beyond the dust”. Thus, in his playing, Hayroudinoff stressed certain themes that for him illustrated this conflict, making the music’s trajectories throughout the “Faust” movement interact and confront one another in the most visceral and dramatic ways, though always preserving the grand sweep of the whole, demonstrating something of that ability which Sviatoslav Richter’s teacher Heinrich Neuhaus described his pupil as having – that ability to soar above the whole work, even one of gigantic proportions, with an eagle’s flight, and take it all in at a single glance with incredible speed.

In the second “Gretchen” movement, there’s straightaway a sense of a young girl’s innocence and purity, in tandem with a quickening of impulsive longing as the line is “counterpointed” by a would-be lover’s voice, real or imagined, the long-breathed themes encircled and sensitised by the sinuous patterning of the accompaniments, and intensified in feeling by ecstatically elongated trills. Hayroudinoff here showed himself equally at home with evocations of tenderness and sensitivity as with brilliance and strength, as the lovers’ union reached a kind of fulfilment, before the music unhurriedly returned both the characters and their intentions to the imaginations’ shadows.

Characterising in his accompanying notes the sonata’s final movement as “the realm of Mephistopheles”, Hayroudinoff then made the word flesh with playing of staggering bravado, giving the “Spirit of Negation” all the swagger and energy that accompanied his quest for possession of Faust’s soul. Suggestions, echoes and variants of the Latin hymn “Dies Irae” abounded as the forces of good and evil, and light and darkness did battle, Rachmaninov’s astounding vision here put across with unsurpassed conviction and irresistible command by the pianist.

This issue, in my view, takes its place among the great Rachmaninov recordings of recent times, a number of which feature the same two-sonata coupling (from Xiayn Wang, Leslie Howard, Nikolai Lugansky and Alexis Weissenberg, by way of example, along with a recent reissue of John Ogdon’s famous 1968 RCA recording). With the advocacy of such illustrious names as these, along with that of Rustem Hayroudinoff’s, the shade of the composer may well rest contentedly at last regarding this vindication of two of his greatest compositions.

 

Pianist Tony Chen Lin’s debut CD for Rattle a must-hear….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Rattle Records presents:
DIGRESSIONS – Tony Chen Lin (piano)

BARTOK – Piano Sonata BB 88 (Sz.80)
JS BACH – French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816
TONY CHEN LIN – Digressions (Meditation on R.S.)
SCHUMANN – Humoreske Op.20

Rattle RAT DO80 2018

My first encounter with Tony Chen Lin was in 2008 at Kerikeri’s International Piano Competition, in which he was awarded what I’ve always regarded as a “too close to call” second place to his friend Jun Bouterey-Ishido. Since then I’ve heard each of them some years afterwards give separate recitals in Wellington; and while appreciating the unique excellence of each, I’m still unable to pronounce either of them the other’s superior. Most recently I heard Lin perform at St.Andrew’s, which was less than a couple of years ago, in September of 2016  (the review can be read at the following link – https://middle-c.org/2016/09/tony-chen-lin-piano-evocations-visions-and-premonitions-in-st-andrews/ ), and two of the items he presented on that occasion are now included on this, his first CD, appearing on the Rattle Records label.

The CD’s overall title “Digressions” is borrowed from one of these two pieces, in fact Lin’s own composition. As its subtitle Meditation on R.S. suggests, the piece is a kind of reflection on Robert Schumann’s Humoreske, the work that concludes this recording’s programme. The opening tones of Lin’s piece seemed conjured out of the air, with occasional “impulses of delight” enlivening the self-communing character of the whole, the lines becoming more and more declamatory and detailed to a point where the music seems to turn in on itself and exclaim “Now, what was that work I was going to play? – ah, yes!….” – and from the resonances, the opening notes of the Schumann sound, in haunting accord with the pianist’s musings.

Before this, however, the disc’s contents take us well-and-truly to “other realms” (as Schumann was fond of saying), in the form of music firstly by Bartok and then JS Bach, the latter’s French Suite No. 5 in D Major being the “other” work previously performed at the 2016 St.Andrew’s recital.  One might think that the Bach piece, with its supremely ordered sensibilities, would make an excellent “starter” to any concert – however, we’re instead galvanised in a completely different way at the outset by one of  Bartok’s pieces. In Lin’s hands, the composer’s 1926 Sonata makes an arresting beginning, with its hammered repeated notes and three-note ascending motif, the whole peppered with irregular phrases and brusque punctuations. Amongst these, Lin still manages to find moments of light and shade, as well as in places giving the rhythms a disconcertingly irregular (almost “dotted”) pulse, creating a somewhat precarious, even “slightly tipsy”, effect, and adding to the droll humour. A sudden headlong sprint and a whiplash glissando, and the movement brusquely takes its leave.

Like some Dr.Coppelius-like clock, tolling bell sounds usher in the second movement, the piano’s repeated chords augmented by an insistently anguished single right-hand note, Lin’s clean, steady playing allowing the grim austerity of the scenario its full effect. Though this “tolling bell” rhythm persists throughout, Bartok creates whole worlds of culminative angst and desolation over the widest possible range of colour and dynamics – a particularly magical moment in Lin’s performance sounds at 4’01”, with the constant stepwise rhythm suddenly hushed, almost sinister, as the right hand’s spaced-out pinpricks of light flicker disconsolately through the gloom.

The “rondo with variations” third movement features a pentatonic melody given all kinds of different rustic-like treatment, with songs and dances, fiddles and flutes, in the midst of great merriment and energetic spirits. Lin evokes all of these strands of colour and timbre with seemingly indefatigable energy, by turns invigorating and startling our sensibilities with his playing’s strength, flexibility and incisiveness. Throughout he’s served by a recording which reproduces every contour, scintillation and whisper, making for listeners as much a properly visceral as a musical experience.

After this, the music of JS Bach evokes a somewhat different world, though, as with Bartok’s work, Bach’s forms often incorporated dance styles and rhythms familiar to his contemporaries. The French Suites, for example, contain examples of well-known forms such as Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue, along with other dances such as the Gavotte, the Minuet and the Bouree, both courtly and rustic in origin. To my ears, Tony Lin’s treatment of these pieces open them all up to sunlight and fresh air – the opening Allemande moves directly and assuredly along a trajectory whose modulations go with the terrain, registering both impulse and reflection along the journey, though without impeding the flow, Lin animating the repeats in what sound like entirely natural and spontaneous ways, compelling my attention with every bar. How joyously the Courante leaps forward from all constraints, its canon-like voicings in places between the hands bubbling with energy and humour – and , in response, how dignified and visionary seems the stately Sarabande, the pianist’s way with repeats illustrating Lin’s ability to create time and space within the realms of a steadily-moving pulse.

I loved how the music seemed to then pick up its skirts/coat-tails for the Gavotte, and trip insouciantly through its paces, the pianist’s lightness of touch never descending to any kind of  “pecking” or jabbing at the music. The engagingly garrulous Bouree acted as the perfect foil for the succeeding Loure, with its sedate, but teasingly-patterned 6/4 rhythms, so very flexibly voiced. And in conclusion, the Gigue danced its way through the soundscape, Lin making something wide-eyed and wondrous of the inversions of the theme in the dance’s second half – a performance which so warm-heartedly brought out the music’s life-enhancing character for one’s listening pleasure.

Once the brief though entraptured musings of Lin’s own “Digressions” had prepared the way, I was more than ready for Schumann’s Humoreske. The composer meant the title not as “humour” in the accepted sense of the word, but as a kind of portrayal of the contradictory and volatile nature of the human condition. Lin’s playing gives the opening a beautifully thought-borne quality, something seemingly to exist both “in the air” and within the realms of the listener’s imagination, at once elusive and all-encompassing in its poetic effect – the composer’s “rhapsodising” about his Clara, and his expressions of love for her here given poignant utterance, obviously somewhere between the “laughing and crying” confessed to by Schumann in a letter to his beloved. At the beginning, the way the melody seems to be “revealed” as if already mid-course is beautifully brought about by the pianist, as is the spontaneous leap-forward of the quicker material, the left hand’s accompanying figurations allowed some tripping, angular quality, imparting a character of their own in tandem with the right-hand’s melody, the effect boyish and engaging! After the extended dotted-rhythm section quixotically dances through fanciful modulations, Lin masterfully eases the music back through its journeyings, returning to the first of the quicker episodes, and then, magically, dissolving such energies into the opening, as if the song we heard at the outset had been meanwhile singing to itself while awaiting our return.

Further fancy awaits the listener in the inspirational, often volatile second movement, during which succeeding moods appearing to “cancel each other out” with breathtaking rapidity. Lin’s traversal of the music is remarkable for its chameleon-like aspect, its ability to “go with” whatever impulse the composer’s fancy follows, while constantly keeping in mind something of what Schumann called an Innere Stimme or “inner voice” (a quality he also referred to concerning his Op. 17 C-Major Fantasie). So while Lin rings all the composer’s seemingly random changes of momentum and mood, he keeps us close to the music’s spirit with an all-pervading concentration on some unspoken and indefinable, but palpable “centre” around which all the “humours” revolve.

By comparison, the third piece, Einfach und zart (Simple and delicate) seems straightforward enough, interpretatively, a poetic opening, with a contrasting Intermezzo – rapid semiquaver figurations, including right-hand octaves at one point so as to set the pianist’s pulses racing! Here, the notes tumbled over one another jovially, Lin’s playing giving the octave passages a kind of fierce joy in their unbridled energies, before returning to the simple lyricism of the beginning. The Innig
(Heartfelt) section is here delivered by the pianist with a born poet’s sensibility, and the energetic Sehr lebhaft which followed then works up a proper head of steam as to convince us of the music’s inevitable “shower of brilliance” summation in Lin’s hands, only to suddenly (and characteristically) transform into a portentous march!

All the listener can do is gape in astonishment and “go” with the strains of the music as it struts into yet another realm of expressive possibility, muttering to itself as it fades into the following Zum Beschluss, one of the composer’s beautiful “epilogue-like” valedictions, an extended amalgam of song and recitative, here, as with so much else along this journey of Lin’s, most eloquently expressed. It remains for a series of swirling chromatically step-wise descents to rudely awaken one’s imaginings from this final reverie for a “return to life”, leaving this listener with “What a journey, and what a guide!” kinds of reactions! – Tony Lin’s ever-spontaneous and boldly adventurous playing seems to me to have most assuredly penetrated the spirit of the composer’s most fanciful, yet deeply-felt outpourings. In all, it’s a disc well worth seeking out and hearing.