CD Review (The Straits Times, June 2019)

TEDD JOSELSON

Complete RCA Album Collection

RCA Red Seal 19075903272 (6 CDs) / ****1/2

Sony Classical has been systematically releasing boxed sets of pianists who recorded on the RCA Victor and Columbia Masterworks labels, from legends Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz to their younger colleagues like Van Cliburn and John Browning. The collection has now mined the archives of Belgian-American pianist Tedd Joselson, who had a relative short but distinguished performing career from the 1970s until he retired to Singapore in the late 1990s.

His recording debut in 1974, at 21 and RCA’s then youngest exclusive pianist, was nothing short of miraculous. Performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, with no less than The Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, is comparable to what the likes of Lang Lang and Yuju Wang did in their youths. The performances reveal neither hints of reticence nor nerves, as if coming from a well-seasoned veteran. 

Joselson was marketed as a Romantic pianist, evidenced by the energetic but finely-honed readings of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, Chopin’s “Funeral March” Sonata and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. However, pride of place goes to the selection of five sonatas by Russian 20^th century giant Sergei Prokofiev (Nos.2, 6, 7, 8 and 9), where he finds a rare poetic sensibility amid often abrasive and percussive pages. 

The latest recording, of the Sixth Sonata (dating from 1979),  has never been previously released. The music never succumbs to raw or pummelling brute force, but glows in a radiant new light. All the original cover designs and sleeve-notes have been retained in this unusual find with a Singaporean connection.