RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2019 / CD Review

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM

2019 Festival Highlights

Danacord 849 / TT: 75’02”

 

For the first time in its incredible 33-year run, the prestigious Rarities of Piano Music Festival at Schloss vor Husum in Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany had to be cancelled this year, all thanks to the global Covid-19 pandemic. However, the annual highlights disc from the 2019 festival, just hot off the press and faithfully issued by the Danish label Danacord, is a consolation worth having.

 

The 2019 festival was special in several ways. First, it featured the most number of pianists – fifteen in total - within its nine-day duration. Secondly, it programmed the most number of young pianists, including five scholarship students and two Young Explorers. No less than five pianists were Asian, with Clarisse Teo being the first ever Singaporean to perform in the festival’s illustrious history.

 

Thirteen pianists were represented in the 2019 highlights, with 18 tracks in total. Dip into any part of the disc, and one will be severely challenged to identify the works or composers.  OK, the only concession is the final track: J.S.Bach’s Ich ruf’ zu dir played by German pianist Markus Becker. However, its not the familiar Busoni transcription, but rather Max Reger’s much less known version. Such is the nature of rarities.

 

Most of the tracks are short, occupied by itsy bitsy pieces (gems and baubles alike) or movements from longer pieces, but there was time for two generous 10-minute selections. Sigismond Thalberg’s Fantasy on Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia was bel canto meets early Romantic notespinning. This could have been a vulgar romp (remember the Thalberg vs Liszt pianistic duel of 1837) but not so from the prodigious British Alkan maven Mark Viner, who amply brought out its barnstorming glories with stunning aplomb. Gustave Samazeuilh’s Nocturne comes from the opposite end of the Romantic spectrum, its dusky and impressionist hues (one thinks of Debussy and Szymanowski) evocatively voiced by Swedish Husum veteran Roland Pöntinen.  

 

And there are lots of dances, songs, romances and transcriptions. A Grand Valse de concert by Bizet (from Kotaro Fukuma), Mazurkas by Chopin student Julian Fontana (Cyprien Katsaris) and Benjamin Godard (Kenji Miura), two Essays on Forgotten Rhythms by Anton Arensky (Marco Rapetti), a charming Ice-Skating Rink Waltz by Balys Dvarionas (Onute Grazinyte), a serene bagatelle and syncopated prelude by Richard Danielpour (Xiayin Wang) just illustrate the sheer eclecticism of the selections.  

 

On a more sober side, Christian Nagel’s reading of Liszt’s Ave Maria (Chanson d’Arcadelt, not the Schubert song) from the festival’s first ever Late Night Recital was a refreshing balm of bell sounds after an exhausting evening of piano fireworks. By contrast, the finale of Anatoly Alexandrov’s Sonata No.4 proved to be the grittiest of all the selections, flying fearlessly from the hands of Singaporean Clarisse Teo (above).

 

If the arcane peripheries and less-trodden byways of the piano repertoire is your cup of tea, look no further. Try something very different!

CD Review (The Straits Times, September 2018)

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2017

Danacord 799 / *****

The annual festival of piano rarities at the northern German seaside town of Husum grows from strength to strength in its 31^st year. An aural snapshot of last year’s festival is vividly captured in this 79-minute-long album. The works of 24 composers and transcribers are heard and it is tantalising to imagine what has not been included here. 

There are complete performances of two works: Carl Czerny’s Variations On A Theme By Carl Rode “La Ricordanza”, with its florid elaborations fluently rendered by Italian pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi, and Russian Dmitri Blagoy’s three-movement Fairy Tale Sonata, lovingly related by Vincenzo Maltempo, another Italian. Both play up to 12 minutes each, and are the longest tracks.

From celebrated French-Canadian virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin comes his completion of an unpublished Chopin-Godowsky Etude (Nouvelle Etude No.1), never previously recorded, and his own Toccata On L’Homme Armé, his thorny set-piece written for the 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. 

There are short tracks, excerpts from works by Gabriel Dupont, Leonid Desyatnikov, Fikret Amirov, Abram Chasins and Paul Hindemith, not exactly household names. This year’s highlights also have a popular slant with transcriptions of songs by Poulenc (Les Chemins D’Amour), Grainger (Londonderry Air), Donizetti (Casta Diva from Norma) and John Green (Body And Soul). 

The other pianists include Daniel Berman, Nadezhda Vlaeva, Lukas Geniusas, Emile Naoumoff, Satu Paavola and Misha Dacic, all of whom are compelling artists. The enjoyment quotient is very high, and the recorded sound close to excellent.   

CD Review (The Straits Times, October 2017)

AMERICAN NOCTURNES

CECILE LICAD, Piano

Danacord 783 & 784 (2 CDs) / *****

This is a second anthology of American piano music by Philippines-born naturalised American pianist Cecile Licad for the Danish label Danacord. Following her earlier disc of American first piano sonatas, American Nocturnes dwells on the eternally fascinating subject of music of the night, which comes in surprisingly different guises. 

The work that unites the mostly short pieces is George Crumb's Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik (A Little Midnight Music) for prepared piano, inspired by Thelonious Monk's jazz classic 'Round Midnight. Seven of its movements begin and end the collection besides being interspersed between works by 15 other composers.

These run the gamut of Chopin-influenced Nocturnes by 19^th century composers like Louis Gottschalk, George Chadwick and Arthur Foote, the Romantic idioms of Amy Beach (Dreaming and A Hermit Thrush At Eve and Morn) and impressionisms of Charles Griffes (Notturno and Night Winds). 

A more distinct American voice emerges in the 20^th century, with Joseph Lamb's Ragtime Nightingale and Ferde Grofe's Deep Nocturne with its Gershwin-like harmonies. This sojourn through time culminates with Samuel Barber's Nocturne, Aaron Copland's Night Thoughts and Leo Ornstein's Nocturne No.2 which are dissonant but still tonal. 

There is a cameo in Canadian pianist-composer Marc-André Hamelin's Little Nocturne, but since he now lives in Boston, is practically American. Pianist Licad's perceptive and imaginative playing yields two hours of totally absorbing listening.    

CD Review (The Straits Times, September 2017)

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2016

Danacord 789 / *****

Last year, the piano connoisseurs' festival in the North German seaside town of Husum founded by German pianist Peter Froundjian marked its 30^th edition with 12 concerts featuring 14 pianists and a string quartet. This disc of highlights is the embodiment and distillation of its philosophy of showcasing rare Romantic repertoire, piano transcriptions and unusual encores. 

While Earl Wild's transcriptions of Rachmaninov songs, Stephen Hough's witty take on My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music, and Brahms' Hungarian Dance No.11 should no longer be considered rarities, they receive lovely performances by Martin Jones, Simon Callaghan, and the duo of Cyprien Katsaris and Helene Mercier respectively.

However, there is a lot to discover in works by Alexandrov, Casadesus, Chaminade, Coke, Kirchner, Moniuszko and Reubke, just to relive some forgotten names. The longest track at nearly 7 minutes is reserved for Liszt's Hymne de la nuit, a gem of rare introspection discarded from his cycle Harmonies poetiques et religeuses. Here, young Russian pianist Zlata Chochieva exposes the lie that Liszt was a vulgarian. 

Max Reger's Larghetto from Dreams at the Fireplace is a tribute to Chopin's Berceuse, shaped with much beauty by Joseph Moog. Herbert Rutkowski playing compatriot Paderewski's Nocturne is another cherished moment, while the Grau/Schumacher duo make light work of Busoni's arrangement of Mozart's The Magic Flute Overture. Here is delightful listening from a unique festival that goes from strength to strength.    

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, September 2016)

RARITIES OF PIANO MUSIC

AT SCHLOSS VOR HUSUM 2015

Danacord 779 / *****

The world’s musical capital of piano esoteria is surely the north German town of Husum, where an annual summer festival is held to celebrate the forgotten alleys and byways of the piano repertoire. The 2015 festival again unearthed a rich vein of gems in the form of concert pieces and encores.

It takes something to omit the likes of Chopin, Schumann or Rachmaninov to present instead music by Alkan, Hummel, Harold Craxton and Mompou, performed with refinement and dedication by the likes of Yuri Favorin, Florian Uhlig, Jonathan Plowright and Jonathan Powell. What about the the music of Issay Dobrowen's Poem (Powell again) or the delights of Carlos Guastavino's La Nina Del Rio Dulce from the loving fingers of Martin Jones? One is unlikely to hear these performed better anywhere else.

Improvisations and jazzed up numbers have a prominent place, not least in Cyprien Katsaris's 18-minute mash-up through Romantic operas, concertos, symphonies and ballets in the manner of Liszt, which was his pre-recital preamble. See if you can name all the tunes. 

Whoever remembers Alexander Zfasman, a Soviet-era bon vivant (an oxymoron if any) whose Fantasy On Themes By Matvei Blanter matches the syncopated best of Zez Confrey or Billy Mayerl? Played with infectious verve by American Alex Hassan, this sums up the heady spirit of one of the world's most special piano festivals bar none.

WATER

HELENE GRIMAUD, Piano

NITIN SAWHNEY, Producer/ Composer

Deutsche Grammophon 479 3426 / **1/2

Even for fans of French pianist Helene Grimaud, this release may come as somewhat of a disappointment. First the music: there are eight short movements of composers musing on the watery realm. The usual suspects are there, with Liszt's Les jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este and Ravel's Jeux d'eau depicting fountains, Debussy's La Cathedrale Engloutie (The Engulfed Cathedral) and Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II. 

Lesser-known pieces like Faure's Barcarolle No.5, Berio's Wasserklavier, Albeniz's Almeria and a movement from Janacek's In The Mists are also given a hearing. She plays these well but the recorded sound is tinny and over-reverberant, as if to lend the music an added mystique.

Each of the pieces are separated by an interlude, entitled Water – Transition (and there are 7 of them) by British composer-producer Nitin Sawhney. These are little more than bitty morsels of recorded electronic or ambient sounds which do little to enhance the understanding or appreciation of the actual music. 

To conclude, there is an 11-minute so-called bonus track Water Reflections, which reprises a few bars from earlier music and Grimaud plainly reading out their titles and spouting a few choice words. All in all, there are just over 50 minutes of real music in this concept album; the rest is pretentious dross.