CD Reviews (The Straits Times, June 2012)

THE LISZT PROJECT

PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon  477 9439 (2 CDs)  
*****

This anthology is a timely tribute to the visionary genius of Franz Liszt (1811-1886), the pianist-composer and arch-virtuoso often maligned for the flashy showboating, vulgar compositional conflations and womanising excesses of his youth. The mature Liszt was however an innovator. His greatest piano work, the Sonata in B minor, cast in a single movement and structured upon development and metamorphosis of themes, sets the precedent for future compositions. French virtuoso Pierre-Laurent Aimard astutely programmes Alban Berg’s Sonata Op.1, also in B minor but further stretches the limits of tonality, and Scriabin’s mysterious, tumultuous Ninth Sonata as logical extensions of this thought.

 

 

Liszt’s later works from the 1880s are terse and forbidding. La Lugubre Gondola, Nuages gris (Grey Clouds), and Unstern! Sinistre (Unlucky Star) sound as if they came from the 20^th century. The second disc displays Liszt’s influence on future generations. His Fountains Of Villa D’Este predicts Ravel’s splashy Jeux d’eau, while Saint Francis’ Sermon to the Birds lends inspiration to Messiaen’s Le traquet stapazin (from Catalogue Of Birds) and Marco Stroppa’s Tangata Manu (Bird Man). Aimard’s technique, amply demonstrated in the popular Vallee d’Obermann, and dedication to the cause give this superbly crafted programme a stamp of authority.     

         

KORNGOLD

String Sextet / Piano Quintet

Doric String Quartet

Chandos 10707 / ****1/2

The Viennese composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) is better remembered these days for his film scores to Hollywood blockbusters such as The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk. Earlier he was a child prodigy composer whose prowess was spoken in awe, comparable with the likes of the young Mozart and Mendelssohn. These chamber works are the products of a highly assured technique and complete mastery of classical forms. Here, the atonality of the Second Viennese School is shunned for old world opulence, much in the manner of Richard Strauss and Mahler.

 

 

The Piano Quintet of 1922 is filled with soaring melodies, the slow second movement being a wonderful set of variations on one of Korngold’s own Songs Of Farewell,   Mond, so gehst du wieder auf (Moon, Thou Riseth Again), one of his most memorable. Kathryn Stott is the powerful yet nimble pianist who partners the young and dynamic Doric Quartet from Britain. Two further string players join in the earlier String Sextet (1916), where Brahms is the obvious inspiration, although the chromaticisms of Schoenberg’s early Transfigured Night is hinted at. The concentrated nature of the music may not be easy on first acquaintance, but repeat listens will reap dividends, further rewarded by the highly committed playing. Warmly recommended. 

TAKE 5 + 1: Korngold & Schumann Piano Quintets / Review

TAKE 5 + 1 

Esplanade Recital Studio 

Sunday (6 December 2009)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 8 December 2009. 

The quest to perform all the piano quintets in the classical repertoire has taken the musicians of Take 5 to well-trodden environs as well as obscure nooks and crannies. No endeavour has been as adventurous as its Singapore premiere of Wolfgang Erich Korngold’s Piano Quintet of 1921. Korngold (below) was the brilliant Viennese composing children prodigy who later found fame and notoriety as a Hollywood film composer.

His half-hour long quintet did not sound like movie music; instead it was the other way round. Korngold‘s blend of bittersweet melodies, aromatic harmonies and heart-wrenching climaxes, like those of Rachmaninov, became the widely imitated stuff of celluloid fodder. His style is however closer to that of Richard Strauss and Fritz Kreisler, mildly flavoured with the decadence of Second Viennese School dissonance. 

Take 5 luxuriated in the sheer opulence of the music, wallowing in the receding embers of once-lush Romanticism. There were dark clouds for sure, but silver linings abounded, not least in the suffocating orgasmic climaxes of the central slow movement, a set of variations on the most popular of Korngold’s own Songs of Farewell (Lieder des Abschieds). 

Each string instrument had its own solos in the limelight, but they rallied around the overworked pianist Lim Yan, whose arpeggio cascades and crashing chords flew from one high to the next, before consummating in an intoxicating finish.

Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major (Op.44) is a well-established classic, but one never tires of its familiar strains, especially with a performance of the caliber of Take 5. From start to end, a palpable sense of purpose coursed through the ensemble (with the sixth player Tan Wee Hsin (left) substituting for Chan Yoong Han on viola), one that kept the reading taut and gripping. 

The fine art was not just in delivering the notes accurately but its togetherness and fine control, which allowed the music to alternate between resolute unisons and singing episodes, portraying sorrow and irony to joy and ecstasy. 

Take 5 has progressed with each outing, and should no longer be seen as a pianist with a string quartet, but five independent virtuosos united in one resonating voice.