ZELENSKI / ZARZYCKI
Piano Concertos
JONATHAN PLOWRIGHT,
Piano
BBC Scottish Symphony /
Lukasz Borowicz
Hyperion 67958 / ****1/2
How
many Polish composers who came between Chopin and Szymanowski can you name? If
you remembered Moszkowski, Scharwenka, Paderewski or Godowsky, that is not bad
at all. Now meet Wladyslaw Zelenski (1837-1921) and Aleksander Zarzycki
(1834-1895), whose names are hardly breathed outside their homeland. Both with professors
and directors of the Warsaw Music Institute, leading lights of Polish musical
society, with the former being the slightly better known.
To
Zelenski’s credit, his Piano Concerto
in E flat major (1903) does not imitate Chopin but is anachronistic for its
time, the Romantic and martial strains in the outer moments coming from an
earlier age. The second movement is a moving and dramatic theme and variations
filled with tension and bluster.
Zarzycki’s
Piano Concerto in A flat major
(1859-60), a shorter work in two movements, combines Lisztian flair with the
delicious humour to be found in Saint-Saëns. Capping it is a Grand Polonaise in E flat major composed
during the same period, which is every bit as good and memorable as Chopin’s
own orchestrated Grand Polonaise
Brillante (Op.22). British pianist Jonathan Plowright, a specialist in
Polish music, gives highly spirited performances that can only win new friends for
his cause.
RACHMANINOV Isle Of The
Dead
The Rock / Symphonic
Dances
BIS 1751 / ****1/2
This CD brings together the major orchestral
works of Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) outside of his three symphonies and
choral symphony The Bells, spanning
his youth, maturity and his final years. Composed in 1893, The Rock was his first major tone poem, based on a Chekhov short
story The Meeting. Though resembling
his mentor Tchaikovsky’s style, his flair for pathos and the dramatic is
already evident. More mature is Isle Of
The Dead (1909), inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s painting of the same title,
coming from the same period as his Second
Symphony and Third Piano Concerto.
Its lugubrious opening builds up to a heady climax with some of Rachmaninov’s
most ecstatic and chilling music.
Symphonic
Dances
(1942) was Rachmaninov’s last work, sometimes regarded to be his unnumbered
symphony. Its three movements are a nostalgic glance of his forsaken homeland.
Music of melancholy, a haunting Tolstoyan waltz, and the pomp of the Orthodox
Church (including quotes of the medieval chant Dies Irae and his choral Vespers)
make this in certain ways, his most Russian piece. Norway
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