FOLLOWING THE RIVER: MUSIC ALONG THE DANUBE / FLORIAN MITREA, Piano / Review

FOLLOWING THE RIVER:

MUSIC ALONG THE DANUBE

FLORIAN MITREA, Piano

Acousence Classics 13317 / TT:61’43”  

 

How many Romanian composers does one know whose names are not Georges Enesco, Dinu Lipatti or Grigoras Dinicu? This fascinating album by prize-winning young Romanian pianist Florian Mitrea, graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music, follows him on a trip to his homeland via the arterial waterway known as the Danube.

 

Traversing through Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest (sort of), his recital also includes music from Austria and Hungary. There are fine performances of Schubert’s Hungarian Melody (D.817), Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.5 (the slow and stately one also called Héroïde-élégiaque) and Bartok’s Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (Nos.148-153 of Mikroskosmos), which will be familiar to most piano fanciers and students.

 

Thus the main interest here lies in the music of Sigismund Toduta, Paul Constantinescu and Radu Paladi. Who? Exactly. In the helpful programme notes penned by Mitrea himself, the Rome-schooled Toduta (1908-1991) is described as one who had a “preference for writing music on Christian subjects, while complying with the communist regime”. His  Passacaglia: 12 Variations on a Romanian Christmas Carol may be considered neoclassical and requires a virtuoso’s technique to pull off, as does the slow-fast sequence of Chorale and Toccata, closing the album on a brilliant high. The Suite of Romanian Songs and Dances is a more extended and complex cousin to Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances, the reward of dedicated ethno-musicological research and studies.

 

Constantinescu (1909-1963) studied with Franz Schmidt in Vienna. His Cantec or Variations on a Romanian Folksong plays on nostalgia while employing exotic harmonies, while Joc Dobrogean (Dobrogean Dance) or Toccata, which delights in rapidly repeating notes and chords, was composed as the set piece for the 1958 Enescu International Piano Competition. It possesses the same playfully unfettered spirit as Dinicu’s Hora Staccato. Paladi (1927-2013) was a piano student of Florica Musicescu (Lipatti and Radu Lupu’s teacher), and his Rondo a Capriccio is light-hearted and scherzo-like, is also based on folk music.

 

This is much to enjoy and discover in this recital, which confirms Florian Mitrea as a sympathetic virtuoso and consummate musician of the highest order.  

 

You can listen to this album on Spotify:

Spotify – Following the River: Music Along the Danube