CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2015)

IDIL BIRET

LP ORIGINALS EDITION

Idil Biret Archive 8.501402 (14 CDs) 

****1/2

The Turkish pianist Idil Biret (born 1941) was a child prodigy student of Nadia Boulanger, Alfred Cortot and Wilhelm Kempff, those combined tutelage nurtured an artist of catholic tastes, phenomenal versatility and uncommon technique. This box-set brings together all her LP recordings (on five different labels) dating from 1959 to 1986, including works by Chopin, Brahms and Schumann to the Second Viennese School and the avant-gardeists.

Among the latter is Turkish-American composer Ilhan Mimaroglu's Session, an aleatoric work with pre-recorded taped sounds dedicated to Biret, of which this 1976 recording is the definitive performance and entity. The composer had expressly forbidden any further performances or recordings (even by Biret herself) ever again. Her command of other 20^th century works by Berg, Webern, Boulez, Scriabin, Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Miaskovsky has also much to recommend.

Of the mainstream repertoire, Rachmaninov's Corelli Variations and Moments Musicaux, Brahms' Handel and Paganini Variations, and Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit reveal a virtuosity that has been underrated. The best sound is to be found in Liszt's transcriptions of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Beethoven's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, where her command of orchestral sonorities on a single keyboard have to be heard to be believed.  

BRITTEN Piano Concerto

BARBER Piano Concerto

ELIZABETH JOY ROE, Piano

London Symphony / Emil Tabakov

Decca 478 8189 / ****1/2

This is a most logical coupling, the only piano concertos by the most revered 20^th century composers of England and America, who happened to be close contemporaries and good friends. There were many parallels with Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) and Samuel Barber (1910-1981), in terms of their shared love for vocal music, use of dissonance and lyricism in compositions, and alternative lifestyles. Britten's Piano Concerto (1938, revised 1945) was a slick and bold work of a young man, while Barber's Piano Concerto (1960-62) was borne of maturity and experience.

Both have loud and percussive pages but are tempered with passages of songlike wistfulness. While Britten's strong suit is wit and humour, Barber draws on the extremes of violence and nostalgia. The performances by Korean-American pianist Elizabeth Joy Roe, one half of the famous Anderson & Roe piano duo, are elegant, incisive and often insightful, even if the recorded sound possesses a softer edge than some of her rivals. Her pair of encores are well-chosen, contrasting Barber's Nocturne (Hommage to John Field) with Britten's Night Piece (Notturno). This is wonderful programming coupled with playing of trenchant brilliance.      

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2015)

BRAHMS Symphonies Nos.3 & 4

Transcribed by Idil Biret

IDIL BIRET, Piano

Idil Biret Archive 8.571303-04 (2 CDs) 

*****

It may seem a thankless task to transcribe symphonies for the piano, essentially reducing orchestral textures and sonorities to the constraints of the two hands and ten fingers of a single performer. This is essentially what the venerated Turkish pianist Idil Biret did with two of Johannes Brahms symphonies, working on a pre-existing score for piano four hands and performing them in concert. The recordings from two such events in Paris in 1995 and 1997 are revealing. The architecture of the music is retained, and while some colours are lost, how Biret voices the parts and brings out the music's grandeur with stunning panache are what make these documents relevant.    

Tempos are broader, and there are some missed notes in the heat of action, but these seem almost inconsequential. Imagine what Franz Liszt did for Beethoven's symphonies or Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique in private performances during his heyday. Biret has even recorded these, and Brahms' Third and Fourth Symphonies receive the same grandstanding treatment, which sound better with repeated listening. Biret also includes performances of Brahms’ Paganini Variations, and selections of Hungarian Dances and Capriccios, all virtuoso fare. Pianophiles need not hesitate.  

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No.14

Soloists with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

Vasily Petrenko, Conductor

Naxos 8.573132 / *****

The Fourteenth Symphony (1969) of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) is more of a song cycle in 11 movements, scored for two solo voices, strings and percussion, rather than a conventional symphony. The work is a setting of poems (in Russian translations) by Federico Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Rainer Maria Rilke, all of whom died prematurely. Composed in relatively ill health, the overriding theme is mortality and the anticipation of death. Every movement with the exception of the 8th (The Zaparozhe Cossacks Reply To The Sultan Of Constantinople, a rebuke against authoritarianism), is death-obsessed in some way or another.  

Its highly dramatic content is arguably far better experienced in a concert hall, especially movements like Malaguena (literally a dance of death), the mock-comical On Watch (foreshadowing death on the battlefield) and even the very brief Conclusion with a duet proclaiming “Death is great / We are his...,” which ends abruptly and without any fanfare. The soloists, Alexander Vinogradov (a true bass in the great Russian tradition) and Israeli soprano Gal James, give vividly chilling performances. There is no coupling to the final instalment of Vasily Petrenko's all-round excellent Shostakovich symphony cycle with his Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, but what could possibly follow this excellent and gripping recording of Shostakovich's darkest and most bitter symphony?  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, May 2015)

HINDEMITH Complete Piano Concertos

IDIL BIRET, Piano

Yale Symphony / Toshiyuki Shimada

Naxos 8.373201-02 (2CDs) / ****1/2

Of the five works for piano and orchestra by German composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), presented as a set here for the first time, only one was designated a piano concerto. His Concerto for Piano & Orchestra (1945) is rarely heard but interesting as it contains a set of variations on the medieval song Tre Fontane as its final movement. The best known is however The Four Temperaments (1940), another work in the variations form, originally conceived as a ballet. 

Typical of the composer was to append apparently mundane titles to these works. Such was Piano Music With Orchestra (1923) for piano left hand, which had been rejected by the left handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein and rediscovered as recently as 2001. Chamber Music No.2 (1924) is another such work, which harks back to the baroque concerto grosso in form and scoring. The revelation is Concert Music for Piano, Brass and Two Harps (1930) which is very transparent in textures despite the unusual forces employed.

Hindemith's idiom is dissonant but tonal, with astringent themes which sound better with repeated acquaintance. His Bachian mastery of counterpoint is indisputable which make these works an unusually good listening. The historical significance of this album recorded in 2013 is timely and relevant as it was Hindemith who revolutionised music education in Turkey which produced Idil Biret as its finest musical prodigy. He then went on to teach composition in Yale as one of its most distinguished professors. The performances by Biret and the Yale Symphony are incisive and committed, befitting the 50^th anniversary of Hindemith's passing.

SCHUMANN Paganini Caprices 
& Humoreske

MARIYA KIM, Piano

Naxos 8.572374 / ****1/2

Robert Schumann, the arch anti-virtuoso, must have taken a shine to Paganini's 24 Caprices for solo violin. Why else would he have contributed piano accompaniments for the notorious finger-twisters or transcribed twelve of these for solo piano? His two sets of six studies each (Op.3 and 10) are direct transcriptions of Paganini Caprices as finger exercises, but are far more faithful to the originals than Liszt's Six Paganini Etudes. There is much familiar music here. From Op.3, No.1 is the Arpeggio Caprice, while No.2 is La Chasse (The Chase) and No.4, is the one known as “The Devil's Laugh”.

There is much on the violin which the piano cannot replicate, but Schumann makes up in other ways by way of adding harmonies that further rather than detract from the original conceptions. The Op.10 set are longer elaborations, especially on the slower caprices, and the sound palette soon moves away from Paganini to become more Schumann. Ukrainian pianist Mariya Kim, laureate of multiple competitions, has the full measure of the spirit and fingers for these technically demanding pieces.

Her generous coupling is Humoreske (Op.20), presented in a single 34-minute-long track. No separate tracks are provided for its seemingly disparate sections, which cohere very well in a beautifully idiomatic performance that in certain respects even surpasses that of Kim's famous compatriot, the great Vladimir Horowitz.