CD Review (The Straits Times, September 2019)

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC
AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2018
Danacord 839 / *****

There is a distinct focus on French music in last year’s selections from the world-renowned festival held in North Germany, highlights works from the far-reaching peripheries of the piano repertoire. Like the gusty North Sea air that envelopes the festival town of Husum, freshness distinguishes  performances of pieces by Gabriel Dupont, Louis Vierne, Reynaldo Hahn, Alkan and Debussy. 

Faintly familiar strains come in the opening track from Debussy’s early and little-known Ballade, played by young German pianist Fabian Müller. Despite being supposedly Slavic in influence, this piece however inhabits the aesthete of the French belle epoque.

The real discovery are two pieces from Dupont’s cycle La maison dans les dunes (The House on the Dunes). Entitled On the Dunes One Clear Morning and Swells, these are impressionist and hauntingly beautiful from the German Severin von Eckardstein’s fingers. Despite his French-sounding name, Jean Louis Nicodé was actually Prussian. Two of his miniatures, Repentence and Remembrance from A Life Of Love bear the influences of Schumann, lovingly realised by British pianist Simon Callaghan.

Also to be heard are shorter pieces by Pancho Vladigerov, Valery Arzumanov, Leonid Desyatnikov, Robert Fuchs, Anton Arensky, Gabriel Grovlez and transcriptions of Rachmaninov and Piazzolla. The pianists represented are as diverse as Muza Rubackyte (Lithuania), Etsuko Hirose (Japan), Lukas Geniusas (Russia), Ingrid Marsoner (Austria), Sina Kloke (Germany) and Antonio Pompa-Baldi (Italy). How’s that for sheer variety? As they say, vivé la difference!