CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2016)

LISZT Works for Two Pianos

Piano Duo Genova & Dimitrov

CPO 777 896-2 / ****1/2

The complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) have been recorded by Leslie Howard, however what is left are his works for piano 4 hands and two pianos. These are rightly considered obscure because of the paucity of concert performances. 

The excellent Bulgarian duo of Aglika Genova and Liuben Dimitrov serves up five tasty pieces, beginning with the Grand Concert Piece on Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, an oversized elaboration stringing together three miniatures. This is a musical case of making a mountain out of a molehill, but fun nonetheless.

Liszt's operatic conflations, the Reminiscences De Norma (after Bellini) and Reminiscences De Don Juan (after Mozart) are well-known in their piano solo versions. Heard on two pianos, the element of derring-do and risk is diminished on the performers’ parts but are nonetheless exciting. 

The best work is Concerto Pathetique, based on the Grosses Konzertsolo and employing the art of thematic transformation to be found in Liszt's symphonic poems and Sonata in B minor. Completing the album is the Hexameron, a fantastical set of variations on a Bellini theme with contributions from six different composers. This edition is shorter than the solo version, but still worth a listen for its share of high jinks.

CHOPIN Ballades

YUNDI, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 481 2443 / ****

Frederic Chopin's Four Ballades for piano are four of the Polish-born composer's most exquisite single movement essays, filled with passion, longing and fantasy. However these are more associated with literary rather than musical sources, with the musings of Adam Mickiwiecz, regarded as Poland's national poet, cited as major inspirations. 

The Ballades get what one expects from Li Yundi, who takes a more tempered approach than his rival Lang Lang, without the agogic distortions and deliberately ear-catching exaggerations experienced in concert.

His playing is polished, tasteful, and not without moments of aural beauty. Of the four, the Second Ballade Op.38, with its alternating calm and violence, gets the most satisfying performance. By mostly sticking to the middle of the road, he does not add much more to what regular listeners know about Chopin. 

It is the fillers which hold greater interest. The Berceuse Op.57 is a model of elegant poise, and Yundi fares best in the Four Mazurkas Op.17, where he is one with Chopin's rhythmic subtlety and aching nostalgia.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, October 2015)

OSWALD & NAPOLEAO 

Piano Concertos

ARTUR PIZARRO, Piano

BBC National Orchestra of Wales 

Martyn Brabbins

Hyperion 67984 / ****1/2

The Brazilian Henrique Oswald (1852-1931) and Portuguese Alfredo Napoleao (1852-1917) were close contemporaries who led parallel lives as piano virtuosos. Oswald travelled to Europe while Napoleao went to Brazil to seek their respective fortunes, and both returned to their homelands to spend their final years. 

Both Oswald's Piano Concerto and Napoleao's Second Piano Concerto were products of the 1880's, heavily influenced by Lisztian virtuosity, Continental grand theatre and healthy doses of over-the-top showmanship.

Oswald's G minor concerto recalls Schumann and Chopin in the first two movements, but is let down by an empty and frivolous finale that is up there with Saint-Saens and Gottschalk's fripperies. Napoleao's E flat minor concerto is more unusual by opening with a slow movement of operatic intensity, the bel canto variety which later gives way to a scintillating scherzo and a light-hearted finale. 

This is the slightly longer but better work, and the wait is well worth the time. Portuguese pianist Artur Pizarro lavishes his charm on these minor masterpieces, and it is interesting to note that his childhood piano teacher Evaristo de Campos Coelho had given the premiere of the Napoleao. Lovers of Romantic pianism for its whimsicality and excesses should not pass this by.

CHOPIN Préludes

YUNDI, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 481 1910 / ****

This year marks the 15^th anniversary of Chinese pianist Li Yundi winning First Prize at the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw. After making a handful of discs for Deutsche Grammophon, he left for EMI Classics, purportedly to record the complete piano works of Chopin. 

He never got beyond the Nocturnes and a recital programme, but a return to the German yellow label has rekindled his love for the Polish composer's music. This disc includes all of Chopin's Préludes, including the 24 pieces from Op.28, the stand-alone Prélude Op.45 and the under-a-minute-long posthumous number.

Yundi is back at his fluid best in an idiom he clearly identifies with, and it is an enjoyable listen from start to end. Lyricism rules in the popular slower Préludes in D flat major (No.15), A flat major (No.17) and C sharp minor (Op.45), and his technique holds up well in the most trying ones, namely the B flat minor (No.16) and D minor (No.24) pieces. His next project should be the 27 Études, if anything to trump his Chinese rival Lang Lang.

At just 39 minutes of playing time, this new release however represents very poor value for money. Excepting Yundi fanatics, other listeners are directed to excellent accounts by Martha Argerich and Maurizio Pollini (both also on Deutsche Grammophon), Nikolai Demidenko (Onyx Classics) and Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca), who offer far more substantial couplings.    

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, September 2014)

RZEWSKI 

The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

COREY HAMM, Piano

DMA Discs TK431 / ****1/2

It was the summer of 2008 when Singapore audiences witnessed not one but two performances of The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1975), the hour-long theme and variations masterpiece for piano by American composer Frederic Rzewski (born 1938). The second of these was given in a studio at the Conservatory by Canadian pianist Corey Hamm, a remarkable achievement as he had performed with virtually nine fingers, having injured his right little finger. This 20^th century equivalent of Bach’s Goldberg Variations or Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations takes no prisoners given its immense complexities and physical demands on the performer.

The subject is a Chilean workers’ revolutionary anthem, which gets treated to 36 variations in total (6 sets of 6, with every 6^th variation an amalgamation of the 5 preceding it).The set runs the full gamut of 20^th century styles and idioms including folk, jazz, minimalism and atonality, with the pianist also expected to vocalise and whistle at certain points. One of few pianists in the world to tour with this work, Hamm brings out its panoply of nuances with missionary zeal and vigour. Although the improvisatory section has been omitted, this 2012 recording compares well with those of the composer and its dedicatee Ursula Oppens. A must listen for anyone interested in 20^th century piano literature.    

BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.5

SCHUMANN Fantasy Op.17

YUNDI, Piano

Berlin Philharmonic / Daniel Harding

Deutsche Grammophon 481 0710 / ****

After that unmitigated disaster in the Tchaikosky First Piano Concerto with the Singapore Symphony in 2009 and several humdrum years with EMI Classics, Yundi (who has since dropped his surname Li) has returned to the fold of Deutsche Grammophon. This is his first concerto recording with the German “Yellow label” since the highly successful Prokofiev and Ravel coupling of 2008. Also partnered here by the Berlin Philharmonic, it sounds like the Chinese pianist has made a note-worthy comeback.

His performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto is conceived on a grand scale and the big-boned playing reveals neither frailties nor idiosyncrasies. The sense of occasion, captured in live performances in January and February this year, is gratefully lapped up and the playing radiates warmth and joy. Included as a generous coupling is Schumann’s Fantasy in C major (Op.17), originally conceived as an ode to Beethoven in the manner of his late Sonatas. While the playing is somewhat less exulted as in the concerto, this is still a solid and moving account that redeems Yundi as China’s “Comeback Kid”.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, November 2013)

MELOS ENSEMBLE

Music Among Friends

EMI Classics 9185142 (11CDs) / *****

Listeners of a certain age will remember with more than fondness recordings of the Melos Ensemble from the United Kingdom, which was active from 1950 to the early 1990s. The names of clarinettist Gervase de Peyer, violinist Emanuel Hurwitz, violist Cecil Aronowitz and flautist Richard Adeney will strike some bells in record collectors and followers of radio broadcasts. Here is a treasure trove of the group’s most memorable recordings of music from the classical era to 20^th century British composers.

This pair of ears will always cherish the memory of Schubert’s Trout Quintet and the underrated Adagio & Rondo Concertante with the ensemble’s America-born pianist Lamar Crowson, when it first appeared on LP. When more members congregate, the joy is simply multiplied in Beethoven’s jaunty Septet, and the marvellous Octets of Schubert and Mendelssohn. If only composers today could write melodies like these, performed with such relish and unfettered joy as this.

Pride of place goes to the role played by de Peyer, founding member and former Principal in the London Symphony, who stars in the Clarinet Quintets of Mozart, Weber and Brahms, and is the leading voice in more contemporary works by Janacek, Nielsen, Bartok, Prokofiev, Poulenc and Khachaturian. Here are over 13 hours of pleasurable music-making in very decent sound, retailing at super-budget price.    

THE ART OF YUNDI

Deutsche Grammophon 479 1302 / **

After several years of “exile” when he recorded some albums for EMI Classics, Chinese pianist Yundi (who has dropped his surname Li) has returned to the fold of Deutsche Grammophon. This is a sampler disc to remind listeners of his contribution to the German “Yellow label” after winning the 2000 Chopin International Piano Competition. His name and image still sells CDs, especially in China. Chopin gets his due, with six tracks including two Impromptus (the Fantaisie-Impromptu among them), two nocturnes (both from Op.9), an étude, and a movement from the Third Sonata.

Liszt features with the Rigoletto Paraphrase, La Campanella, Liebesträume No.3, and bleeding chunks from the First Piano Concerto (the first movement) and Sonata in B minor (the first three minutes before being unceremoniously faded off). This unsatisfactory piecemeal approach also sees dismembered movements from a badly chopped up Schumann Carnaval. What unthinking mind dictates such idiotic decisions?  Are Yundi fans taken to be fools?

There are also single movements from Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto and Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto, arguably his best recording for the label. It would have been much better to have reissued complete works on two discs but priced at one. His playing is exemplary throughout, but that was pre-2009. There is no write-up or even an interview, but Yundi diehards do not need one anyway.