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Reflections in the Water ELOQUENCE – AROMATHERAPY series

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Handel, Debussy, Johann Strauss II, Ravel, Vivaldi, Smetana, Chopin, Schubert, Tchaikowsky, Delius
various instrumentalists and orchestras

DECCA 466 705-2
TPT 1:14: 33

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

If you’ve come home stressed after a day in the salt mines, this compilation might well work wonders. Put your feet up, place slices of cold cucumber over your eyes, take the phone off the hook and lose yourself in some of the most soothing music ever written. Each of the fourteen tracks has some association with water in various states. Feel the tension in your neck muscles lessen as you listen to Jorge Bolet in Liszt’s arrangement for piano of Schubert’s lied Auf dem Wasser zu singen. Unhurried, glowing-toned, haunting, it’s beyond conventional criticism. So, too, is Pascal Roge. He is magical in Debussy’s Reflections in the Water with its rippling, filigree-delicate arabesques. And in the most famous of all works inspired by microscopic molecules consisting each of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen – Handel’s Water Music – Sir Neville Marriner and his Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields lavish care on three extracts from the suite. The Hornpipe is particularly pleasing; it bristles with pomp. Also included are The Blue Danube, an excerpt from Swan Lake, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude and Delius’ Aquarelle No 2. Drawn from recordings made between 1968 and 1981, sound quality is uniformly fine – in this sense, the recordings have worn well – apart from some slight distortion in string tone in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s account of Smetana’s Ma Vlast.


Country Classics ELOQUENCE – AROMATHERAPY series

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Vaughan Williams, Canteloube, Beethoven, Schubert, Chabrier, MacDowell, Grieg, Massenet, Debussy, Johann Strauss II

TPT: 01:17:02

reviewed by Sophie Saxe-Lehrman 

An abiding impression of this compilation is the imaginative choice of works and a willingness to leaven chestnuts with relative rarities. A number of tracks may well be new to some, typically Shepherds’ Song and Shepherds’ Chorus from Schubert’s Rosamunde and Grieg’s Cowkeeper’s Tune to which Willi Boskovsky and the National Philharmonic Orchestra respond as if to the manner born in a recording dating from 1974. Zither virtuoso Anton Karas (for millions of cinema fans inextricably associated with the classic movie The Third Man) teams up with the Vienna Phiharmonic, again under Boskovsky, who, better than most and second to few, make musical magic in a 1962 recording of Strauss’ Tales from the Vienna Woods. And winning efforts by clarinets and cellos make Richard Bonynge’s direction of the National Philharmonic in Sous les tilleuls from Massenet’s Scenes alsaciennes a delight. I liked, too, Kiwi pianist Joseph Cooper’s lovingly fashioned account of MacDowell’s To a Water Lily. Expansive treatment and glowing tone make this a highlight. Kiri te Kanawa, too, enchants in Bailero from Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne (Jeffrey Tate conducts the English Chamber Orchestra).


 

 

Glenn (David Young) Effie Crump Theatre

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reviewed by Neville Cohn

Few doors open on a single hinge so it is certainly an oversimplification to suggest, as many do, that the sole reason for Canadian pianist Glenn Gould’s decision to stop performing in public was his increasing conviction that many of those who attended his recitals were there primarily to look at him rather than to listen to him. There’s a fair case for suggesting a similar motive on the part of many who attend recitals given by pianist David Helfgott (whose life was portrayed in the movie Shine).

The great virtue of David Young’s play Glenn is that it doesn’t focus exclusively on this hangup but comprehensively canvases the full range of Gould’s neuroses and oddities (his hypochondria, his horror of being touched by anyone are two of many ) of which his withdrawal from the concert platform was only one.

But was turning his back on the recital hall such a silly move? Was this merely childish or eccentric petulance? Or was it a carefully thought out career move to enable him to function more effectively as a pianist.

The evidence for this is compelling: one has only to listen to his probing, superbly insightful recordings of Bach (as well as Schoenberg).

Young’s Glenn calls for Gould to be played not by one actor but by four, a risky experiment that, in this case, comes off convincingly. Certainly, it brings home how multifaceted a personality Gould was.

James Sollis as Gould the puritan, Andrew Hale in Gould’s incarnation as a perfectionist, Roderick Cairns characterising Gould as theperformer and Glenn Hall as Gould the youthful prodigy give a virtuoso, high-energy display of verbal co-ordination. As well, the four are required to give a host of cameo performances – and here, too, versatile to a man, they come up trumps.

As ever, Raymond Omodei’s directorial touch is everywhere apparent, most significantly in the pacing and pausing of dialogue. There are torrents of lines here ­ and in less than skilled directorial hands, the entire presentation could collapse under the weight of thousands of often rapidly articulated words.

It seemed a miscalculation, though, to have recordings of Gould playing Bach in the background as the play unfolded. True, decibel levels were low but, as always, Gould’s interpretative genius and infallible finges were so irresistible an aural attraction that, at times, they made one feel that the actors’ lines were an irritating intrusion, surely not the intention of the author.

Perhaps the production might have been better served by taking out the piano backing altogether and playing it at as an overture cum introduction to the play as well as during the interval when it could be savoured in its own right without getting in the way of the action.


The Golden Age of the Piano

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The Golden Age of the Piano

Reviewed by Neville Cohn

DVD Philips 075 092-9


TPT: 1:55:00

2003


At the height of the London Blitz during World War II, with Nazi bombs raining down on people and property, Dame Myra Hess, the personification of serenity, would turn up week after week to play the complete series of Mozart piano concertos at the National Gallery afternoon concerts. These performances – and hundreds of solo recitals in London and elsewhere in Britain were a powerful morale boost – and it was this, more than anything else, that resulted in this great pianist being made a Dame of the British Empire, an honour richly deserved. But if, outwardly, Dame Myra was the quintessence of serenity as she made her inspired way through the complete piano concertos of Mozart, she was very much less tranquil when a microphone was in the vicinity – and even less so when film cameras were trained on her. So, sadly, there is very little film footage of the great pianist in action. Here, we see her in an extract from the first movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. And even if this is not Hess at her best, it is an affectionate souvenir of one of the most loved musicians of her day.
She was born in 1890.

Thirteen years later, during the year that is indelibly associated with the Wright brothers’ first aircraft flight, were born three giants of the keyboard: Vladimir Horowitz in Russia, Rudolf Serkin in Austria and Claudio Arrau in Chile.

Each was to go on to a stellar career – and there’s a fair amount of good film footage available. On this DVD, we see and hear Arrau in a flawless account of Liszt’s Gnomenreigen, Horowitz in the much aired – and magnificently addressed – Etude in D sharp minor by Scriabin. Serkin is superb in Schubert (an excerpt from the Sonata in B flat, D 960) and a maddeningly brief snip from Beethoven’s Les Adieux Sonata.

On this fascinating DVD, the main work on offer is Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4 with Arrau a magisterial soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti.

There is surprisingly little film footage of many of the great pianists of the 20th century and this DVD contains a fair amount that has been widely available for many years: Paderewski, in his dotage and past his best, playing Chopin’s Heroic Polonaise, Josef Hofmann in Rachmaninov’s hackneyed Prelude in C sharp minor from opus 3 – and Alexander Brailowsky in a waltz by Chopin.

Australia-born Percy Grainger, a physical fitness nut as well as a pianist in the grand manner, plays Maguire’s Kick with huge gusto. And that most eccentric, and diminutive, of pianists Vladimir de Pachmann (the oldest by far of all the pianists here represented; he was born as far back as 1848), gives us a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of a pianola.

Rubinstein is at his most magnificent here, earning laurels for near-incredible digital agility and staying power in Mendelssohn’s Bee’s Wedding. Note Rubinstein’s forearms, as toughly muscled as any rugby forward, a very real asset when generating massive climaxes as he does in some rivetting Schumann in footage shot in the recording studio.

Although she had already built a reputation as a fine pianist while still a young woman, it was Wanda Landowska’s performances on the harpsichord that made her an iconic musician of the 20th century. Watch the perfection of her technique in a traditional folk dance. Glenn Gould was another one-of-a-kind. Tragically dead of a stroke at 50, his interpretations of the music of Bach are incomparable, notwithstanding his irritating penchant for singing along. Here, he gives a euphoria-inducing account of an extract from the
Partita in E.

There’s also footage of the great Leopold Godowsky, sadly not of him playing but from a home movie shot by his son who was the inventor of colour film. As well, there are extracts from Debussy’s Children’s Corner with Alfred Cortot doing the honours but photography is poor and sound quality indifferent.

David Dubal provides an eminently listenable linking commentary on the genesis and development of the piano and there are interesting titbits about this composer or that.

© November 2003

MENAGE Belgian Beer Cafe, Perth

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MENAGE

2.10 and Tetrafide

Belgian Beer Cafe, Perth
11 March 2003

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

It would have been a stressful time for the organisers of this concert. The Belgian Beer Café, tucked away in Perth’s CBD, is not an entirely waterproof venue. True, there was partial protection from the elements in the form of a number of shade sails positioned over the performing area. But it had rained heavily earlier in the day and there were portents that this might happen again, making two very expensive grand pianos, with their lids removed, sitting ducks (no pun intended). In the event, there were only mild spatterings and the concert went ahead, although the very high humidity would have made precise tuning of the instruments a nightmare for the piano technician. In the event, those gentle falls were later in the evening to cause very real problems.

In the second half of the program, devoted to Steve Reich’s Sextet, some rain water made it around the shade sails and on to gadgetry linked to an electronic keyboard played by Cathie Travers. As the water made contact with the equipment, splutters were heard, sparks were seen – a crackling overture to disaster? – but in the best traditions of the show going on, Travers swiftly disconnected the affected machinery, abandoned her electronic keyboard, took her place at one of the adjacent conventional pianos and, with barely a hiccough, played on, a manouvre taking mere seconds and saving the day. This instant adjustment to a different instrument mid-performance was a factor that brought an extra frisson to the listening experience.

Earlier, Travers and Emily Green-Armytage, as piano duo 2.10, essayed the villainously treacherous paramell V by Stephen Montague with the sort of cool efficiency, near-infallible fingers and rock-solid beat that leave one in no doubt that these musicians are on a fast track to the stars. The two were no less impressive in Evan Kennea’s engaging Quaver Trails, leaving one with the abiding impression that 2.10 has something significant to say in musical terms. It ought to be heard far more frequently than is the case now, not least for their imaginative, forward-looking program choices.

It was a good night for Tetrafide, too, an ensemble that impresses more w ith each hearing. Whether in conventionally notated scores or in
demonstrations of tribal drumming, this youthful ensemble seemed positively to relish getting to virtuosic grips with whatever it happened to be performing.