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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.





Concentration Camp Music..

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Works by Viktor Ullmann, Robert Lannoy, Marius Flothuis and Jozef Kropinski

 

 

Francesco Lotoro (piano) and friends

 

 

KZMUSIK CD8  232525

 

 

TPT: 63’27”

 

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

             

 Marius Flothuis                                                                Viktor Ullmann

Although the greater part by far of this compact disc series is devoted to music written by composers who perished while incarcerated in nazi concentration camps, a number of musicians survived the camps and went on to productive musical lives.

 

One of these is Marius Flothuis who, initially a music critic, was also assistant artistic director of Amsterdam’s famous Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1942 when he was deported to Amersfoort before being transported to the notorious Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Flothuis died in 2001 in Amsterdam.

 

He wrote a number of works while in the camps, such as his piano duets opus 21 and a sonata for solo violin. But it is his Sonata da camera for flute and piano that provides some of the most beguiling listening with flautist Pasquale Rinaldi and Lotoro (piano) in excellent fettle throughout. I particularly liked the beautifully expressive stream of mellow flute tone in the opening cadenza – and the plaintive quality of the second movement is finely evoked by both players. The brilliance of the concluding rondo is a fine foil for the melancholy Lamento which precedes it.

 

Another survivor was Robert Lannoy who died as recently as 1979 in Lille. Conscripted into the French army, he became a POW in Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine and Stalag  XVIIB in Austria. He made numerous escape attempts but they were all foiled. After the war, he produced a large body of work in his native France. Lannoy’s Berceuse comes across in rather too heavy-footed a way for a lullaby, an impression reinforced by a surfeit of tremolo from the piano.

 

Berlin-born Josef Kropinski survived Buchenwald and lived on until 1970. He was a prolific composer. Pianist Francesco Lotoro, who works tirelessly to place on disc as much music as possible which was written in confinement, has painstakingly reconstructed fragments of 14 short piano pieces which include three each of mazurkas and tangos. The pieces are most musically played but melodically, harmonically and style-wise they are unremarkable, formulaic and predictable and have little intrinsic worth.  But, as with all music in this series, these keyboard miniatures cry out for recognition as music that came into being in uniquely terrible and terrifying circumstances.

 

Kropinski, incidentally, was astonishingly prolific; his output includes more than 300 songs as well as string quartets and much else for piano solo.

 

Lotoro brings a great deal of energy to a piano version of the overture to Ullmann’s opera Don Quixote Dances the Fandango. The orchestral score is lost, so we have to be content with a piano reduction that survived the camps.  There is a great deal of rather noisy tremolo in this intensely dramatic piece. There’s also a tantalisingly brief fragment from a projected two-act opera about Joan of Arc – and a dozen lieder which make up Der Mensch und sein Tag. Angelo de Leonardis and Lotoro take us into a world of deep emotion here but for those who are not German-speaking, a translation of the text into English would have been most helpful. Certainly, it would have made the listening experience that much more meaningful.

Original Transcriptions for Piano

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Cameron Roberts (piano)

TTP: 63’00”

MOVE MCD404

 

Goldberg Variations (Bach)

Cameron Roberts (piano)

TTP: 68’00”

MOVE MCD 309

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

MCD404 is one of the most satisfying recordings I’ve heard in some time. It brims with good things.

 

All the transcriptions on this CD are by Cameron Roberts himself. Certainly, he shapes to the demands of whatever he plays like fine wine to a goblet. His taste is impeccable, his physical command of the piano is remarkable. Refinement of style  informs every moment of this recording.

 

Vivaldi’s Summer from The Four Seasons is a high point of this collection with Roberts working wonders with this much loved work. Magically silvery tone in the high treble informs the second movement which is transcribed and played with such artistry as to assume an identity that is quite unique and able to stand proudly in its own right. At its most extrovert, the playing has a Lisztian grandeur.

 

Roberts’ version of Rachmaninov’s song How Beautiful it is Here! is given marvellously lyrical treatment, each note clothed in gorgeous cantabile tone. The same composer’s The Morn of Life, Sleep is a model of introspection.

 

Is there a more hackneyed work in the American canon than Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? Here, though, Roberts demonstrates a mastery of style and an heroic physical command of the instrument which, at climaxes, generates massive waves of noble sound. Bravo!

 

The Largo ma no tanto from Bach’s Concerto for two violins is another gem which leaves little doubt that Roberts is a born Bach interpreter; this offering cannot be faulted.

 

Tchaikowsky’s 1812 overture runs for more than a quarter hour – and every moment of it makes for thrilling listening.

 

This compilation is a stunningly fine example of the transcriber’s art.

 

ROBERTS  is in Olympian form in Bach’s Goldberg Variations which comes across as a chaplet of near-faultlessly fashioned pianistic gems. Variation 8, for instance, has a delightfully spiky, buoyant quality, Variation 10 is memorable for its emphatic rhythms – and there’s a wondrous clarity and control in Variation 11. Variation 12 is in the best sense danceable – and the bold, abruptly peremptory quality of Variation 16 could hardly have been bettered. A dainty, graceful account of Variation 17 makes for sheerly beautiful listening – and the intricate delicacy of Roberts playing in the20th variation calls finest Brussels lace to mind.

 

There’s no lack of virtuosity when called for: Variation 23 is given refreshingly forthright treatment – and Variation 23 is informed by fantastic agility and precision.  Variation 30, though, calls for a more paean-like quality.

 

A bonus takes the form of three transcriptions of Bach originals: Aus liebe from the St Matthew Passion comes across as an essay in achingly poignant terms – and the darkly bodeful despair that is the essence of Es ist Vollbracht from the St John Passion is as much an instance of the transcribers art at its highest as it is a profoundly probing interpretation.

The Essential Piano

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40 Popular Classics

Various pianists

ABC 476 3383 (2-CD pack)

TPT: 77’18”/ 76’16”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

This would be ideal as a gift for young people who might just have begun piano lessons and wanting to sample the repertoire. The vast majority of these are keyboard evergreens, pieces that will be instantly recognised by anyone even remotely interested in piano music: Beethoven’s Fur Elise, Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude, Sinding’s Rustle of Spring, Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Schumann’s Traumerei.

It was the invention of the radio and its universal presence in millions of homes that put paid to the until-then very widespread practice during social visits of bringing piano sheet music to play after tea time. The writer recalls how, as a child, he would accompany his parents on visits to elderly relatives where, invariably after afternoon tea, one or other of those present would play piano favourites such as Debussy’s Girl with the Flaxen Hair, the adagio from Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata and, for players with a more robust technique than usual, pieces such as Grieg’s Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, Chopin’s ‘Military’ Polonaise, the timeless Liebestraum in A flat by Liszt and Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring in Myra Hess’ famous but maddeningly elusive arrangement. All these much loved pieces are included in this compilation.

As well, there is the Prelude in C sharp minor from Rachmaninov’s opus 3, the universal popularity of which drove the composer to despair as audiences simply would not let the great man go after piano recitals unless he offered as encore a piece he came to loathe. (It earned him a fortune which may have soothed his exasperation).

ABC Classics has drawn on the recordings of some of Australia’s most prominent pianists for this collection, among them Roger Woodward, Donna Coleman, Stephanie McCallum and Gerard Willems. For many listeners, one or more of these pieces will trigger feelings of nostalgia.

A thoroughly rcommended compilation.

Transcendent Love – The Passions of Wagner and Strauss

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Lis Gasteen, soprano

West Australian Symphony Orchestra

Simone Young, conductor

ABC Classics 476 6811

TPT: 73’41”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Let it be said at once that soprano Lisa Gasteen is ideally suited to this repertoire. She has those qualities of heart and mind essential to essay works of this kind – and she has, crucially, the ability to effortlessly ride the crest of the accompanying orchestral wave no matter how substantial that might be. I especially admired the skill and expressiveness with which she sang Traume, the first of Wagner’s famous Wesendonck Lieder, with a gently pulsing accompaniment a fine counterpoint to the vocal line. At cycle’s end, incidentally, Traume is repeated, this time with the vocal line played with commendable sensitivity by violinist John Harding who, at the time, was concertmaster of the WASO. Gasteen is equally convincing in three of Richard Strauss’ lieder: Zueignung, Heimliche Aufforderung and Allerseelen. Stylewise, they are beyond criticism.

For this listener, however, the chief joy of this recording – and this is said with all due acknowledgement of Gasteen’s formidable artistry – is the quality of string playing of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. In this sense, the most rewarding offering of the compilation is a splendidly presented Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.

Here, the strings are in particularly memorable fettle, producing a uniformity of tonal sheen that lifts the performance to a special category of excellence. Here, as throughout, Simone Young presides over events with wondrous skill as she coaxes her forces to ever more meaningful effect, not least in finely sustained phrase lines. This is yet another demonstration of Young’s quite extraordinary ability to take her forces to levels which, in the ordinary course of events, the players themselves might have considered unattainable.

This was such persuasive playing that,  if the  shade of Wagner himself had hovered over the  proceedings, it might well have nodded its approval of both Young and the WASO. There is also a thoroughly worthwhile performance of Strauss’ Metamorphosen.