Daniel Kossov (violin)

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Timothy Young (piano)

Government House Ballroom

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Beethoven’s Sonata in A, opus 47 is one of the most powerfully dramatic works in the repertoire for violin and piano. Better known as the Kreutzer Sonata, it was dedicated to violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer who is nowadays most remembered for his villainously taxing violin studies and who never got round to playing Beethoven’s masterpiece.

Its seething emotions have triggered creativity in others: Janacek’s String Quartet No 1 is subtitled The Kreutzer Sonata – and famed Russian writer Leo Tolstoy gave the name to his famous short story about murderous jealousy.

koss

The Beethoven work was far and away the most satisfying offering in a recital by Daniel Kossov (making a welcome return visit to the city) and Timothy Young whose artistry at the keyboard makes him constantly in demand as a piano partner.

The Kreutzer Sonata doesn’t often appear on recital programs. Its unforgiving difficulties call for a cool head, an iron nerve and the stamina of an Olympic athlete. On all counts, Kossov and Young came up trumps, not least in relation to tonal balance which had not been as equitable as one would have hoped in the first half of the program in which at times, piano tone was too dominant in relation to the violin line. But in the Beethoven sonata, the duo could not be faulted on these grounds.

The imperiousness and virility that are the essence of much of the first movement came across strongly notwithstanding the occasional flaw. But then, who climbs Mount Everest without stubbing a toe on the way?

Musicianship of high order informed every measure of the slow movement. The light-hearted buoyancy of variation one was gauged to a nicety and the near-ethereal, finely spun trills that are the prevailing feature of the concluding variation could hardly have been bettered.

In the finale, the duo brought unflagging, spring-heeled fleetness to some of the most treacherous measures the master ever wrote. This was, in the best sense, a wild ride in which the smallest miscalculation could have brought the performance to grief but from which both Kossov and Young emerged with honour intact to a storm of deserved applause.

A fascinating compilation included that rarity: Hindemith’s eminently approachable Sonata in E flat from opus 11. In less than expert hands, the first movement can wither embarrassingly on the vine. Not so here, in a reading that allowed extroversion on the part of the piano and the violin’s lyrical, emotionally probing line to register strongly on the consciousness. I particularly liked the piano’s simulation of a tolling bell in the second movement and the eeriness of mood summoned up by the violin.

Dvorak’s engagingly melodious and folksy Sonatina in G was disappointing with violin tone often far too discrete and piano tone overbearing suggesting that at the opening of the recital neither musician had taken the full measure of the venue’s acoustics.

But a bracket of rarities by Aaron Copland was pure delight. Here, there was fine internal tonal balance in two arrangements for violin and piano of extracts from the score of cowboy ballet Billy the Kid: the Waltz with its quaintly wistful charms and Celebration, memorable for its whining double stopping and jazzy measures from the piano, both pieces preceded by a quite exquisitely dreamlike Nocturne.

Collectors of music trivia might be interested to know that both Copland and Billy were born in New York’s Brooklyn.

As encore, we heard Dvorak’s evergreen Humoresque.

Copyright 2006 Neville Cohn


Graeme Gilling/Jana Kovar/Mark Coughlan (pianos)

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Conservatorium Auditorium

reviewed by Neville Cohn

It would have been surprising if any of the audience gathered to hear Bruch’s Concerto for two pianos had ever heard the work before – or even heard of its existence. Although it is available on an EMI LP, very few seem to be aware of its existence.

Graeme Gilling gave a fascinating little prefatory talk in which he explained that Bruch’s concerto had been written on commission for a piano duo – sisters Ottilie and Rose Sutro in the USA. But due to irreconcilable disputes about the concerto between composer and the duo, the work had never been performed by the commissioners.

After the death of the duo, their assets were auctioned. Among these was a box containing miscellaneous scores with the original manuscript of the concerto among them which, incidentally, revealed literally hundreds of amendments to Bruch’s original.

This lunchtime performance would almost certainly have been the first public airing of the work in Australia albeit in a version for three pianos, the third for a keyboard reduction of the orchestral score and played by Mark Coughlan.

The sheer novelty of this offering ensured the closest attention. On the basis of a first hearing, though, one is left with the impression that the concerto’s chequered history is vastly more engrossing than the piece itself.

It is a frankly tedious, vast repository of musical cliches, a work brimming with fanfares, scales and arpeggios, much of it written in a way that makes it difficult to master in physical terms and – based on a first hearing – devoid of memorable melody. In fairness, it may well sound more meaningful when heard with orchestral accompaniment – although the cosmic dullness that this version for three pianos engenders does not augur well.

Earlier, Kovar and Gilling played Percy Grainger’s Blithe Bells.

Copyright Neville Cohn 2006


RUSSIAN BALLET SUITES

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RUSSIAN BALLET SUITES 

 

Tchaikowsky:

The Sleeping Beauty;

The Nutcracker

Stravinsky:

Three Movements from

Petrushka

 


Alexei Volodin (piano)

TPT: 01:04:44

ABC Classics 476 160-1

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

 

Until recently, transcriptions for solo piano of ballet scores tended to be looked down upon by the cognoscenti, certainly by most pianists who describe themselves as ‘serious’. True, Stravinsky’s reworking for piano of three excerpts from his Petrushka score was an exception to this musical snobbery. But, insofar as the great ballet scores of, say, Tchaikowsky are concerned, why, it would have been unthinkable to play piano versions of them in the concert hall -or so ran the conventional wisdom.

 volodin

But with the advent of Michael Pletnev, a pianist in the grandest of grand virtuoso traditions – and his stunning reworkings of these much loved orchestral scores for keyboard – piano transcriptions of ballet music have come up in the world.

 

No longer the sole preserve of numberless suburban dance studios, where it’s often thumped out on out-of-tune pianos played by elderly ladies wearing hats, this treasury of melody is now welcomed at that holiest of holy institutions, the solo piano recital. Deprecating sniffs have given way to cries of admiration.

Pletnev showed the way and now others, also endowed with blistering technical finesse, have come to the party.

One of the most impressive of these converts to the newly respectable world of ballet score transcriptions is young Russian pianist Alexei Volodin. He seems positively to relish coming to grips with the music; his involvement with the score is powerfully emotional and it sweeps all before it.

The recordings abound in memorable moments: astonishing, quicksilver fluency in the Singing Canary (from Sleeping Beauty), splendidly buoyant, athletic treatment of the finale. And how cleverly Volodin simulates the celeste-like pingings of The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

And in the Russian Dance from Petrushka, Volodin pulls out all the stops in an episode which famed Greek pianist Gina Bachauer once conceded was “terribly hard to play”.

The underlying hysteria of Petrushka’s Room comes through in Volodin’s marvellously detailed treatment of the notes. And the swarming detail of Shrovetide Fair comes across in a tour de force, its floodtide of notes marshalled in a way that powerfully suggests a bustling crowd.

Copyright 2005 Neville Cohn

 

 

Wessel van Wyk (piano) Piano Favourites Volume 3

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wesselWessel van Wyk (piano)
Piano Favourites Volume 3

Reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

 

JNSD126 TPT: 65:57

 

It takes a very courageous pianist to embark on a recording project featuring some of the repertoire’s most loved and frequently heard works. Consider Liszt’s La Campanella. There are literally dozens of recordings of it available, many by some of the greatest pianists. How, I wondered, would van Wyk’s recording stand up to close aural scrutiny?

I’m happy to report that it comes across with sincerity and seriousness of purpose, its filigree traceries unfailingly clearly defined.

Scarlatti’s ubiquitous Sonata in C, K159 sounds newly minted with its bright-toned fanfares (although piano tone in the high treble register verges on the tinny) and Albeniz’s very tricky Asturias (also know as Leyenda) is beautifully essayed, its floodtide of semiquavers expertly and musically marshalled. It is a highpoint of this collection.

Van Wyk’s nimble fingers are no less accurate in Mendelssohn’s Bee’s Wedding in an agreeably buoyant, rhythmically controlled presentation.

Some of the offerings border on the prosaic such as an arrangement of Kreisler’s Schon Rosmarin which is curiously lacking in Viennese lilt; the same might be said of Kreisler’s Liebesleid in the Rachmaninov arrangement.

But two Chopin offerings more than make up for this. The poignancy of the Nocturne in C sharp minor, opus posthumous, is well evoked – and an account of the Heroic Polonaise is informed by an altogether appropriate hauteur.

There’s a pleasing bucolic touch to Grieg’s Norwegian Dance from opus 35; it engages the attention in a most satisfying way although recorded sound is rather too bass-heavy.

Other items in this charm-laden compilation include Liszt’s Un Sospiro, an admirably tranquil reading of Myra Hess’ famous arrangement of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, Mendelssohn’s On Wings of Song and Albeniz’s famous Tango in D in arrangements respectively by Liszt and Godowsky.

This CD is obtainable for $AU27 (including postage and packaging) from JNS Music, P.O.Box 11387, Brooklyn 0011, South Africa or visit info@jns.co.za

Copyright Neville Cohn 2006


Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky)

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Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky)
Scott Davie (piano)

 

Piano Sonata No 1; Fragments;

Oriental Sketch; Piano Piece in D

minor; Piano Piece in A flat

(Rachmaninov)

ABC Classics 476 3166

TPT:74’52”davie1

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

 

Scott Davie provides one of the most satisfying recordings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition currently available on compact disc. His musicality runs like a silken thread through the performance.

Recorded sound is exceptionally fine – it is in the best sense “real” – allowing the listener to savour Davies’ interpretative probings to the full. There’s not a dull moment in a performance brimming with insights that make even the meanest succession of notes eminently listenable.

The Promenade episodes that dot the score are a case in point. In lesser hands, they can so easily sound routine, even humdrum. Not so here. In turn strident and gentle, they are like fine musical sorbets that provide the aural equivalent of clearing the palate between courses at a sumptuous feast.

If ever there was a work in which the first rate is inspired by the third rate, it is this. Had Mussorgsky not written this work – triggered by drawings and paintings of his friend Victor Hartmann – it is almost certain these quite ordinary efforts would long since have disappeared into history’s rubbish bin. But Mussorgsky’s wonderfully imaginative work – written in homage to his friend who ahd die aged a mere 39 years – ensures that his friend’s lacklustre drawings will be thought of as long as this keyboard masterpiece remains in the standard repertoire.

Consider Davies’ account of Bydlo. How masterfully he suggests – in the most unequivocal of terms – the ponderous, lumbering nature of a ox-drawn wooden cart. The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks is another gem, its insouciance coming across with featherlight buoyancy. By contrast, Catacombs, with its overlay of a tolling, treble-register bell, has about it an all-encompassing mood of desolation, of sadness beyond sadness.

In the first movement of the Rachmaninov Sonata, Davies marshals its tsunami of notes with remarkable success, giving to this epic utterance a sense of structure that would elude most others game enough to play it. Certainly, the wildness that lies at the heart of much of the first movement is impressively conveyed. Davies, too, manages to make the meretricious note spinning that is the finale sounds far better than it really is.

In a bracket of miniatures, Davies does wonders with Fragments coming across as a hushed essay in wistfulness. And one could hardly imagine a more sympathetic interpreter of the Piano Piece in D minor, its mournful essence judged to a nicety.

Copyright 2006 Neville Cohn