CD Reviews (The Straits Times, October 2014)

WALKING IN THE AIR

The Music of Howard Blake

VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY, Piano

Decca 478 6300 / ****1/2

For all the prolific output of British composer Howard Blake (born 1938), over 650 works to date, he will forever be remembered for Walking In The Air, that mega-hit song in the children’s animated Christmas film The Snowman. Its simplicity and beauty permeates most of this album of Blake’s piano music which spans from 1955 to 2013, performed no less by his close friend Vladimir Ashkenazy. The piano version of Walking, which falls easily within the hands of young pianists, is now part of Lifecycle. This suite of 24 short pieces or preludes also includes Eight Character Pieces (1975), Music Box from the movie The Changeling (1979) and the early Russian-flavoured Romanza (1963), written for the Ashkenazys after their defection to the West. 

Blake’s Sonata (1971) and Dances (1976) for two pianos (with Ashkenazy’s eldest son Vovka on second piano) deserve to be better known, the latter being a set of variations on a simple theme in a panoply of dance styles, including waltz, ragtime, boogie-woogie and cha-cha. The major single-movement work in this set is Speech After Long Silence (2011), written as a set-piece for the Hong Kong International Piano Competition. This is an alternatingly brooding and ecstatic essay in the manner of Rachmaninov, which perfectly suits the temperament of Russian virtuoso. An enjoyable listen, from start to end.

RCA LIVING STEREO

60 CD COLLECTION Volume 2

Sony Music 88843003502 / ***1/2

Make no mistake about it, Volume 1 of RCA Red Seal’s Living Stereo retrospective collector’s edition is far superior to this, its sequel. Its contents replicate the original LPs such that each disc presents very poor playing time on its own. Thus the music on 60 discs could have easily been fit onto 50, with room for more. For example, Arthur Rubinstein’s recordings of the five Beethoven piano concertos with the Symphony of the Air conducted by Josef Krips are spread over 5 discs, while the classic 1958 Rossini Barber of Seville with Robert Merrill and Roberta Peters from the Metropolitan Opera takes place in 4.

This extravagance is however mitigated by the quality of performances by America’s top artists and orchestras led by the 20^th century’s great names, including Fritz Reiner, Pierre Monteux, Erich Leinsdorf, Charles Munch and Arthur Fiedler amongst others. One should not miss the disc of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Arthur Rubinstein coupled with a string of his favourite encores. Any recording involving the Hungarian Fritz Reiner, dictator of the Chicago Symphony, be it a hard-driven Beethoven Ninth Symphony, breathtaking Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky, or even Hovhaness’s Mysterious Mountain, would be worth listening to. The object of this exercise is nostalgia, and whatever the caveats may be, these are easily forgiven. Do however make Volume 1 (88697720602) your first priority.    

HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION 2011 / Day One Part 1

3^RD HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION

Finals Day 1, Friday 28 October 2011

Oh, how I love Hong Kong! But I would not want to stay here. Take the traffic, for instance. It took me an hour and a half to get from the Airport to the hotel, and another hour from the hotel in East Tsim Sha Tsui to the City Hall Concert Hall on Hong Kong island itself. If not for the Chopin Society of Hong Kong’s President Dr Andrew Freris, whose elaborate pre-concert preambles kept an audience captive, we would have missed the music itself.

For this year’s finals, the Mozart piano concerto has been dropped. Word has it that the jury had been disappointing with performances in previous editions of the competition and felt it a chore to differentiate between six middling to mediocre readings. So it has been replaced by a newly commissioned work written for this concours, British composer Howard Blake’s Speech After Long Silence (below).

HOWARD BLAKE'S Newly commissoned Work

The World Premiere of Blake’s Speech was given by the first finalist, Russia’s Elmar Gasanov. Unlike most new works, whose fate is to be played on multiple occasions ad nauseam at a competition and then shelved for eternity thereafter, this one promises to be heard rather often. Blake’s partiality for tonality and emotional connection (unsurprising for the composer of the children’s favourite The Snowman) makes this a most accessible work. At about 8 minutes, its Romantic gestures replete with lush harmonies and crashing chords resemble an updated and extended version of one of Rachmaninov’s Etudes-tableaux. The key of E flat minor is also telling. Gasanov performed it with a score, but no matter, the performance brought out its colours, and for a Russian who might already be familiar with this idiom, the bell-like sonorities came out trenchantly.

The partnering orchestra for the competition was the Hong Kong Philharmonic, in its very first collaboration. Previous editions had seen the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, HK City Chamber Orchestra and London Chamber Orchestra, sometimes augmented with free-lancers, conducted by Christopher Warren-Green do the honours with mixed results. And it was a peculiar sight to see Chairman of the Jury Vladimir Ashkenazy step away from the judges’ table and walk directly to the stage, ascend the podium and conduct. He certainly is a busy man!

ELMAR GASANOV (Russia)

Gasanov’s chosen concerto was Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, a work he should know like the back of his hand. He certainly has the fingers for it – the bold opening chords accompanying its majestic first subject, and the ensuing cadenza of ascending arpeggios set the tone. However there was something rough and ready to the performance, as if soloist and orchestra were not fully engaged with each other. Was it opening night nerves or lack of rehearsal time? An uncharacteristic lapse just before the second subject, at one of the easier passages, underlined the apparent rawness of this outing.

Undeterred, Gasanov generated a nervous tension that makes this masterpiece the exciting work it is. He is generally reliable for most part, alert to its dynamic shifts, barnstorming alternating with and being sensitive when the situation calls for it. His octaves are good if not thunderous (here the Horowitzian element could have come to the fore) and filigreed passages well managed, as was the big cadenza at the end of the first movement. Orchestral contributions for the Andantino semplice slow movement were lovely, particularly the opening flute solo. Gasanov did not disappoint in the lightness of touch for its mercurial pages. The finale mirrored the opening movement with its element of roughness but the Cossack dance was well driven, something one might expect from a pianist born in the Crimea. There were some missed notes in the fray which although may detract if this were a note-to-note audit, but the overall effect was still exciting, with the build-up to the final rush of octaves a quite thrilling one.

My verdict: Far from being the perfect performance of Tchaikovsky, but nevertheless exciting. Will I want to hear this repeated at Esplanade next Friday? In two words, not particularly.