A PIANO JOURNEY: FROM BOHEMIA TO BROADWAY / KAREL KOSAREK Piano Recital / Review

 

A PIANO JOURNEY:

FROM BOHEMIA TO BROADWAY

KAREL KOSAREK Piano Recital

Victoria Concert Hall

Friday (4 July 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 7 July 2025 with the title "Delightful programme of Bohemian and jazz selections".

The Singapore International Piano Festival has come and gone, but the piano music continues. This weekend, Victoria Concert Hall hosted another two fine pianists. The first was veteran Czech pianist Karel Košárek, replacing his young and prodigious compatriot, the indisposed Jan Schulmeister.

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)

Performing on a Czech-made Petrof Monsoon grand piano, Košárek’s delightful programme of dance and song began in his homeland of Bohemia before crossing the Atlantic to the United States of America. Coaxing a rich yet mellow sound, without being over-bright in upper registers, Bedrich Smetana’s Skocna (Hop Dance) from the second book of Czech Dances was a virtuoso study of light touch and vibrant rhythm.

Photo: Guan Ziwen

This was in the same popular vein as the well-known dances from his opera The Bartered Bride. Just as nationalistic was the Fantasia on Czech Folk Songs, which displayed a Lisztian level of technical prowess. This was well-articulated, with emphasis on crisply detached notes and no smudging of textures by over-pedalling.

By way of contrast, two of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnets (Nos. 104 & 123) from the Italian Book of his Years of Pilgrimage were oases of lyricism, dressed up with the filigree of florid cadenzas. Still from Bohemia, the well-travelled and highly cosmopolitan Bohuslav Martinu’s Three Czech Dances of 1926 – the Obkrocak (Stepping Dance), Dupak (Stomp Dance) and Polka - were eclectic, with spicy dissonances, quirkily kinetic rhythms and jazz influences that reflected 20th century trends but without forsaking their folk roots.

All this set the stage for Košárek’s second half, which opened with six Preludes by George Gershwin. Did the American song-writer and jazz legend not compose just three of these? The inclusion of three posthumously published pieces was a revelation and provided pure aural pleasure. It was hard to dislike the playful insouciance of Novelette in Fourths, contrasted with the Chopinesque vibe of Rubato and the bluesy languor of Sleepless Night. The original three Preludes were performed idiomatically and with clear rhythmic insight.

More virtuoso-oriented were the musings of Austrian pianist Friedrich Gulda, who worshipped Bach and Beethoven but regularly moonlighted as a jazz pianist, sometimes playing in the nude. His Exercise No.9 from Play Piano Play was pure fun, then launching into the syncopated Bachian tribute that is his wild and anarchic Prelude and Fugue, later popularised by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Photo: Guan Ziwen

The main work of the half was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Although he performed the published solo version which had some cuts, Košárek tore through its pages with a fearless abandon, raising a huge cheer from the clearly enthused audience.

His well-received encores included Lou Busch’s riotous boogie-woogie arrangement of Aram Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance and a welcome return to Bohemia with the simple unadorned beauty of Smetana’s Poetic Polka No.2 in G minor (from Op.8).

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2013)

GULDA / GOULD Piano Works

SASHA GRYNYUK, Piano

Piano Classics 0043 / ****1/2

Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) and Glenn Gould (1932-1982) were two of the last century’s most distinctive, unique and eccentric pianists. They were, simply put, one of a kind. The Viennese Gulda was a classicist with a penchant for jazz and improvisation. The Canadian Gould abhorred jazz but openly embraced the Second Viennese School atonalists. Both however shared a common passion for the music of J.S.Bach. This most inventive recital by young Ukrainian pianist Sasha Grynyuk unites these two greats as rather unlikely pianist-composers.

The 10 pieces of Gulda’s Play Piano Play are a distillation of jazz and Bachian counterpoint, entertaining in the same way that the more frequently performed Nikolai Kapustin. The opening number Moderato is itself a slinky fugue. Another popular piece is No.6 is a breathless toccata with the Schumannesque title Presto Possibile. Gould’s Piano Sonata and seven Short Pieces, early works dating from 1948 to 1952, bear the astringent influences of Hindemith and Schoenberg. Ironically, some of his dissonances are regularly experimented by jazz pianists today.

The disc closes with Grynyuk’s transcription of Gould’s So You Want To Write A Fugue?, originally for voices and string quartet, a hilarious take on complex fugal composition. It somehow loses its original zest without the quirky words, but this should not deter anyone from exploring these curious and amusing byways of 20^th century pianism. 

WALTZ 101

Decca 4785067 (6 CDs) / ****1/2

Compilations are only worthwhile when the musical contents are logically programmed rather than left to random and haphazard chance. In this respect Waltz 101 succeeds because the dances in three-quarter time (there are more than just 101 of them) are thematically arranged such that one begins to listen intelligently. The first two discs are devoted to the music of Johann Strauss Junior and his younger brother Josef. 

All the usual suspects – Blue Danube, Emperor, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Wine, Woman & Song – performed with the stylish flair expected from the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Willi Boskovsky. Disc 3 provides many “So that’s what it’s called” moments with popular melodies by Lehar, Waldteufel and one-hit wonders Juventino Rosas (Over The Waves) and Ivan Ivanovici (Danube Waves). One also learns that the sickly sweet waltz from the movie Eyes Wide Shut comes from Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite No.2. 

Waltzes from the great Tchaikovsky, Delibes and Adam ballets occupy disc 4. Special pleasure may be afforded from the piano in the last two discs. Every waltz of Chopin and Brahms has been included, performed by Nikita Magaloff and Julius Katchen. The rarities are the Godowsky harmonised versions of six Chopin waltzes played with incomparable insouciance by Jorge Bolet. Even Schubert’s humble set of 12 Waltzes, derived from the rustic Ländler country dances, get special attention from no less than Vladimir Ashkenazy. This lovely anthology concludes with French fare, Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, Fauré, Satie and Poulenc from the excellent Pascal Rogé. Need one receive an Invitation To The Dance to enjoy this?