Tag Archives: Albeniz

Kevin Kanisius Suherman (piano)

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 Music by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Granados, Albeniz, de Falla

 

 

TPT: 64’ 10”

 

 

MOVE MCD431

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

If you’ve not yet heard of Kevin Suherman, then, if you are a follower of music for the piano, you may well come across the name in the near future. Because if this recording is anything to go by, this is a youthful pianist on a direct route to the stars.

 

Is there a more hackneyed work for the piano than Liszt’s La Campanella? Yet, here,  unhurried,  wondrously clear and with beautifully considered rubato, is a performance of extraordinary merit. In this young musician’s hands, this so-frequently encountered piece sounds fresh and newly minted – and that is no mean achievement. It’s a model of pianistic insight.

 

Much the same could be said of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu in a reading informed by a passionate intensity that sounds intuitively right. In the same composer’s Ballade in G minor, there are interpretative felicities that one would normally associate with a pianist at the height of maturity. In so young a musician, it is astonishing. Revelations of its romantic essence, beautiful tonal colourings and near-perfectly calibrated climaxes augur well for a concert career of distinction.

 

In the Polonaise in A flat – the Heroic –  the right hand is powerfully declamatory. But the villainously difficult semiquaver octaves in the left hand are less persuasive; there is a sense of strain. And in Liszt’s arrangement of Schumann’s lied Widmung, there is some stodginess in the opening measures; its euphoric essence is lacking.

 

In Beethoven’s Sonata opus 2 no 3, this young pianist sounds in his element. The virtuosity he brings to the opening allegro con brio is astonishing and gratifying. Nimble fingers make light of passages that would defeat lesser pianists. And the villainously difficult thirds in the right hand are tossed off, diamond bright, with the nonchalance of mastery. There is about much of the playing here a peremptory brilliance that is as impressive as it is satisfying to listen to. A pleasingly expressive slow movement, a sparkling scherzo and a finale taken at a spanking pace with intermittent flashes of grandeur reveal a young man well on the way to pianistic glory.

 

Albeniz’s Seguidillas sounds over-rapid although clear and accurate. But in Granados’ The Maiden and Nightingale, the presentation unbottles the music’s idiosyncratic and ecstatic genie to admirable effect.

The Great Spanish Pianists

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The Great Spanish Pianists

The Original Piano Roll Recordings

Music by Albeniz, de Falla, Granados, Segovia – and Ravel

performed by de Falla, Granados, Segovia – and Rudolf Ganz

Dal Segno DSPRCD037

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

In earlier days when the piano roll was briefly king, there were any number of what looked like perfectly ordinary pianos in the front parlours of innumerable homes across the world. But ordinary they were not. They were constructed in a way that allowed them to be used for the playing of piano rolls. Once the latter had been inserted into its proper place in the innards of the instrument, the notes of the keyboard would fall and rise eerily as if under the control of some ghostly, perhaps long-dead, pianist. It was not long in vogue, though, and quite soon the 78rpm shellac record disc would depose  the piano for ever.

 

Periodically, the musical riches of the piano rolls are made available on compact disc.

 

This collection is devoted almost entirely to piano music of Spain played by eminent Spanish musicians. But one track – of Albeniz’s ubiquitous Tango in D (not to be confused with the far less well known Tango in A) – is played by that greatest of all Brazilian pianists, Guiomar Novaes. This is pure magic, ineffably fine; it should be required listening for anyone – teacher or pianist – essaying this miniature which is regularly massacred by earnest schoolchildren at this or that eisteddfod.

 

There’s also a novelty: Ravel’s Bolero in a piano version offered by the long-dead Austrian musician Rudolf Ganz, now almost forgotten. Some pianists may recall the cadenza he wrote for Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D. The piano version of Bolero’s mesmeric snare drum part in Bolero can be tricky to bring off well. It is less than perfectly managed here. But it detracts only minimally from listening pleasure.

 

More interesting by far are the few tracks by Paquita Segovia, student of Granados who was once married to the great classical guitarist Andres Segovia. Listen to her splendidly characterful playing, with tone colourings that charm the ear. For modern tastes,Segovia’s approach to rhythm is at times curiously wayward. But she brings huge flair to her playing, as in Albeniz’ Aragonesa from opus 47; it pulses with life with consistent buoyancy in terms of both mood and momentum.

 

Granados has the lion’s share of the compilation. It’s a curious and tragic irony that this composer, who had a horror of travelling on water, was to die by drowning. Unlike his fellow Catalonian, Isaac Albeniz (who had an insatiable wanderlust), Granados far preferred to remain in his native Spain. And it was only a profound desire to be present at the world premiere of his opera Goyescas in New York that overrode his travel phobia.This was in 1916.

 

In the English Channel (on the way home), the steamship Sussex was hit by a German torpedo. Mrs Granados jumped into the water and her husband dived in to help her. Both perished. The dreadful irony is that the ship didn’t sink but eventually limped into port. How uncannily true the fortune teller turned out to be.

 

Only a few days before sailing from New York, Granados visited the Duo-Art studios where he made a number of piano rolls of, among some of his other works, his Danzas Espanolas Nos 2, 5, 7 and 10. They make fascinating listening. Dance No 5 in E minor (Andaluza), far and away the best known of the set, is played with fluctuating tempi and notes added in relation to the printed score. Entire bars are deleted from No 10 and, like Andaluza, is presented with a rhythmical freedom which sounds extraordinarily inapposite to early 21st century ears.  In fact, if any pianist were brave or rash enough to emulate Granados’ playing style along these lines nowadays, they be clobbered by the critics and booed by the audience. Incidentally, the piece described as Dance No 1 is most definitely not the first dance – or any other – of the set of twelve pieces comprising Danzas Espanolas.

 

And track 10, Spanish Waltzes, opens with a vignette that is most certainly not in triple time. Here, the playing cries out for digital discipline; it teeters occasionally on  the brink of hysteria.

 

Listen to Manuel de Falla playing his own In Cuban Style; his musicianship is stunning, the playing alive in the very best sense, as is his Aragonesa which comes across in an enchantingly improvisatory way.

 

This is fascinating fare that should appeal to anyone interested in the history of recorded sound.