CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2014)

MOZART Piano Concertos Nos.20 & 25

MARTHA ARGERICH, Piano

Ensemble Mozart / Claudio Abbado

Deutsche Grammophon 479 1033 / *****

This recording of a live concert in March 2013 at the Lucerne Festival marks the end of a legendary partnership that has endured almost half a century. Argentina-born pianist Martha Argerich and the late Italian conductor Claudio Abbado (who died in January) were as much a glamour item last year as they were in their first recording of Ravel and Prokofiev concertos in 1967. In the evergreen music of Mozart, their shared passion finds a spirit of playfulness and adventure that is undimmed by the years (she was 72 and he 79 at the time).

There is no fiery rhetoric or hot-headedness in the apparent pomp of Piano Concerto No.25 in C major (K.503), while cool heads prevailed in the storms and stresses of Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor (K.466). What one finds unequivocally is an unspoken serenity that transcends time and the ages, most evident in the lingering slow movements. The finales spark to life, but there is no rushing to strike awe or impress. Their partnership is just a celebration in the effervescence of living itself. Such is the eternal essence of joyous and glorious music making. 

JOHN OGDON

Complete RCA Album Collection

RCA Red Seal 88843039072 (6 CDs) / *****

This box-set commemorates the 25^th death anniversary of the formidable British pianist John Ogdon (1937-1989), who was best known for his mastery of Romantic repertoire and fearsomely virtuosic works often shunned by others. Six long-playing records for the RCA Victor label dating from 1967 to 1972 have been re-released for CD with the original artwork retained. Pride of place is Alkan’s 50-minute long Concerto for Solo Piano, from the twelve etudes in the minor keys. This stupendous reading remains one of the defining pioneer recordings of music by the French Romantic recluse. True to his penchant for monumentality, Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata and Rachmaninov’s two piano sonatas, replete with massive chords and big gestures, are accorded their due.

The true rarities are piano concertos by 20^th century American composers Peter Mennin and Richard Yardumian (Passacaglia, Recitative & Fugue) partnered by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Igor Buketoff. Dissonance and neo-Bachian polyphony contrast these extremely well-crafted but unjustly neglected works. Two recital programmes of rarely-heard pieces by Danish composer Carl Nielsen and popular warhorses by Franz Liszt (the legendary 1972 recording from Tokyo) demonstrate the breadth and catholic tastes of an artist, cruelly afflicted by manic-depressive disease, who left us all too soon.     

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, August 2013)

JOHN OGDON Legendary British Virtuoso

EMI Classics 704637 2 (17 CDs) / *****

If there were a British pianist qualified to be called a super-virtuoso, that would be the late John Ogdon (1937-1989). This is a largest single edition of his recordings, drawn from the EMI Classics back catalogue dating from 1960 to 1976. He blazed a meteoric trail following a joint win with Vladimir Ashkenazy at the 1962 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, but was plagued by manic depression from the early-1970s. He made a short comeback in the mid-1980s but died from pneumonia (some say suicide-related), aged just 52. He savoured big repertoire works with an “omnivorous appetite” and “a primeval hunger for notes”, championing Busoni’s monumental Piano Concerto and Ronald Stevenson’s Passacaglia on DSCH (all 86 minutes of it), both included here in blistering performances.

Ogdon was himself a composer, and one gets to hear his Piano Concerto No.1, Piano Sonata and Theme & Variations, modernistic but tonal works, alongside modern composers like Bartok, Tippett, Messiaen, Dutilleux, his contemporaries Sherlaw Johnson, Goehr and Headington just to name a few. This set also features more popular repertoire, including concertos and solo music by Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Schumann, Grieg, Chopin and Liszt, on which he also left an indelible mark. The final disc comprises delightful encore pieces. Which serious pianist today has time for Cecile Chaminade’s Automne, Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land (influenced by the Orient) or Sinding’s Rustle of Spring? Maybe Stephen Hough, but Ogdon was a one-off and his kind may never be seen again.

DVORAK Symphony No.9

Czech Suite / My Home

Malaysian Philharmonic / CLAUS PETER FLOR

BIS 1856 / *****

This might just be the last recording on the BIS label by the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra as we know it. Embroiled in a controversy that saw the non-renewal of nine key and long-serving musicians last year, a worldwide boycott of the orchestra may have also adversely affected its future recording prospects. Nevertheless these 2009 recordings of popular and lesser-known Dvorak reveal exceptionally fine playing all around. The over-recorded New World Symphony does not suffer from over-familiarity in the slightest, and it sounds fresh and revitalised, served by excellent sound. The Largo is wonderfully atmospheric and the Slavonic dances of the final two movements simply bristle with excitement.

The fillers are well chosen. If the symphony pointed to native and Afro-American sources, Dvorak’s overture My Home (not his own title but one proffered by his publisher) and Czech Suite find their inspirations from his Bohemian homeland. The overture uses two popular local songs while the suite includes in its five movements rustic dances like the polka and furiant. Listen also for the drone-like bagpipe effects in its opening Pastorale. Not his greatest music, but when played as beautifully here, it is well worth the listen. It is hoped that no one gets to say that “The MPO was once a great orchestra”.        

KENNETH HAMILTON ON THE CULT OF ALKAN (Part 1)

Come this Sunday evening, Singapore will bear witness to the first ever performance here of Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano, long regarded as one of piano literature's most fiendish works. The performer will be the indefatigable champion of pianistic lost causes KENNETH HAMILTON, who will also perform Chopin's Funeral March Sonata and the Wagner-Liszt Tannhäuser Overture for some balance and semblance of sanity. The concert takes place at Esplanade Recital Studio at 7.30 pm.

Below is my introduction to Hamilton's programme, as printed in the programme booklet, and following that is the short interview I conducted with Hamilton on The Cult of Alkan.

The original LP of
John Ogdon playing Alkan.
This music on CD may only be found
in the Great Pianists of the 20th Century
series issued by Philips.
Good luck trying to hunt it down.  

ALKAN and THE ART OF PIANO ALCHEMY

The inveterate pianophile’s first exposure to Alkan is akin to a JFK moment; you remember exactly the day it took place. For me, it was an afternoon after school in 1983, having made the short distance from Raffles Junior College’s Paterson Road campus to the record department of Tangs Superstore on Orchard Road. Those were the days when a department store actually had a music section that stocked classical records. Rummaging through the cut-out bin, I chanced upon an LP on the RCA label entitled John Ogdon plays Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano. On the black cover was a side-profile of a bearded man with erupting keyboards, spouting flames and sulphurous fumes. It looked more like a rock album, and at $8 just too good to pass up.

Once the stylus hit the first track, the sound of loud chords (in the exotic key of G sharp minor) struck at an alarming pace and volume assailed the ears. Not since the opening chords of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier or Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy has any piano music begun with such outright fury and vehemence. Here the piano takes on dual roles of soloist and orchestra, and with no respite to the pianist whatsoever. 

And this was just its first movement, humbly titled Étude No.8 from Alkan’s 12 Études in the minor keys Op.39, which lasts a good half-hour. The entire concerto would clock in at a staggering 50 minutes. This was supposed to be the Romantic era equivalent of Bach’s Italian Concerto, but old Johann Sebastian had nothing on Alkan in terms of scope and scale. Neither does Schumann’s Concerto sans orchestre Op.14, which seems like a pygmy by comparison.

So who was this Alkan? Charles-Valentin Morhange (1813-1888), a French composer of Jewish ancestry, who had taken his father’s name as his own. Alkan was a contemporary of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt, and a piano virtuoso second to none, except to the great Liszt himself. He was also an utter eccentric and recluse, one who found great difficulty assimilating into polite society and the Establishment of musical academics and intellectuals. 

His fiendishly difficult scores were often regarded as too long and complex, too much effort for too little gain, and just too weird. Little wonder his music was little known until the second half of the 20^th century, championed by the likes of Ogdon, Raymond Lewenthal, Ronald Smith, and later by Marc-André Hamelin, Alan Weiss, Bernard Ringeissen, Laurent Martin and this evening’s pianist Kenneth Hamilton.

The tradition of performing Alkan in Singapore has been limited to just three events. In 2004, Leslie Howard replaced the late Ronald Smith at the Singapore International Piano Festival and performed Alkan’s Symphony for Solo Piano (Op.39 Nos.4-7, a Singapore premiere) in a concert dedicated to the memory of Smith. In 2007, Kenneth Hamilton gave the long-awaited premiere of Le festin d’Esope (Aesop’s Feast, Op.39 No.12), the fantastical set of variations that closes the Op.39 Études. 

In 2012, Alkan’s transcription of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 was the highlight of Hamilton’s 2-part recital 200 Years of the Piano. In each of these unforgettable performances, the pianists transformed the multitudes of notes on the page into something special, the pianistic equivalent of alchemy, turning the base metals of early Romantic excesses into aural gold. 

In the pages that follow, you will find an interview with Hamilton on The Cult of Alkan, which I hope will whet your interest on this curious and totally original pianist-composer. More importantly, hold on to the edge of your seat for Hamilton’s Singapore premiere of Alkan’s Concerto for Solo Piano. Don’t say you weren’t warned.       

     

Chang Tou Liang

KENNETH HAMILTON talks about his fascination about Alkan, one of classical music’s most eccentric and most misunderstood composers, and his extraordinary piano music.

This year, the world commemorates the bicentenaries of the birth of three great Romantic composers, Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and Charles-Valentin Morhange, aka Alkan (1813-1888). Somehow I have little doubt which of these three you feel closest to.

Well, as it happens, it’s Wagner! If I could sing, then I would certainly try to make a career with Wagner’s operas: phenomenal, astonishingly powerful music. Verdi, apart from La Traviata, has never really done much for me, although I can see why I ought to admire his music.  But if you ever heard me sing, you will realise why I have to play the piano — and when it comes to the piano, Alkan’s music fascinates me. He was an artistic extremist, and there is no doubt about that, and an uneven genius (the same is also true of every great 19^th century keyboard composer apart from Chopin), but at his best, Alkan could match Chopin and Liszt note for note. The Concerto and Symphony for piano, for example, are utterly overwhelming conceptions.  

How did you first come to discover the music of Alkan?

With initial resistance! One of my former university professors, Hugh Macdonald, a great admirer of Alkan, introduced his music to me. He wrote the entry on the composer for the New Grove Dictionary of Music. When I was a student, he suggested I take a look at Alkan’s works, because I seemed to have the technique to tackle them. I did read through a few Alkan scores at that time, but did not really “get” the style. It all seemed to be sound and fury signifying nothing, or at least very little.

But a few years later, I tried again, and took up the Aesop’s Feast variations (Le Festin d’Esope). Alkan’s quirkiness now began to make more sense to me. I started to see the meaning behind the thickets of notes, and began to explore more of his music. I subsequently learned the ludicrously named Sonatina (actually about as far from a sonatina as you can get — like calling Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony a divertimento.) and gingerly made my way to the Concerto for solo piano — that marathon of 19^th century piano music.

Interestingly, he was one composer (just like Chopin and Medtner) for whom the piano was sine qua non. There was no piece he wrote which did not include the piano. 

That is more or less true. There is, however, the Monty Pythonesque Funeral March for a Dead Parrot, and a lost orchestral symphony, among one or two other “non keyboard” pieces. But basically you are right — Alkan’s imagination was almost always wedded to the piano, as was Chopin’s. This was typical of the “Parisian” pianist-composers of the era. Liszt, of course, attempted to break out of the strait jacket with his symphonic poems in the 1850s, but even he was accused of simply producing orchestrated “fantasias for piano”. That’s why he refused to publish solo piano arrangements of the symphonic poems under his own name, although he was perfectly happy to lend a helping hand to others who wished to do so.      

Continued in Part II:

pianomania: KENNETH HAMILTON ON THE CULT OF ALKAN (Part II)