Change of Keys—One Piano, Three
Keyboards: Music of Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy and Bartók.
Carol Leone, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.
Chopin: 24 Preludes, Op. 28; Kirk
O’Riordan: Twenty-Six Preludes for Piano. Holly Roadfeldt, piano. Ravello.
$19.99 (2 CDs).
Early Musings—New Music for
Violin. Davis Brooks, violin and electric violin. Navona. $14.99.
Pièces de
Concours—Virtuosic Romantic Works by French Composers 1896-1938. Jutta
Puchhammer-Sédillot, viola; Élise Desjardins, piano. Navona. $19.99 (2 CDs).
Students of music history
are well aware that the modern piano is nothing like the early fortepiano; many
also know that even when instruments began to be called simply “pianos,” they
bore little resemblance to what we think of as a piano today – and frequently
little resemblance to each other, so different were their cases, spans and
actions. Historically informed performances of piano music have become
reasonably common, and the use of original instruments – or carefully made
replicas – is on the rise. What is missing in all this attention to the cases,
strings and sounding boards, however, is any focus on the keyboards and keys.
Pianists routinely do stretching exercises to allow their hands to span the
greatest distance possible, and famous pianists of the past are known to have
had huge hands that enabled them not only to play the most difficult music of
their time but also to write new music that they themselves could perform but
that few others, if any, could manage. Thus, a pianist with ordinary-size hands
is hard-pressed to perform much of the music of the Romantic era and beyond.
Carole Leone is one such pianist – but she has found a way to do something
about it. More precisely, she has tapped into such a way: Canadian pianist
Christopher Donison and Pennsylvania engineer David Steinbuhler have created
special keyboards that have smaller octave spans than the now-standard one of
six-and-a-half inches. By using two different DS keyboards plus a standard
Steinway one for the same instrument, Leone is able to focus her performances
on a new MSR Classics CD on the music she is playing, not being distracted by
simply trying to manage the works’ technical requirements. This is such a marvelous
advance from a pianist’s viewpoint that it is a wonder it has not been done
before – although the technical requirements of building alternative keyboards
are certainly not straightforward. From a listener’s viewpoint, of course, the
means by which the music is performed is and ought to be transparent; what
matters is simply the quality of the performance. And that is uniformly high
here: Leone is a sensitive, careful and thoughtful interpreter of all six works
on the disc. Whether the smoothness and evenness of her articulation is partly
due to her use of different keyboards for different pieces is, for listeners, wholly
irrelevant. What matters is that she offers a set of works that showcase piano
sounds and techniques from the 18th century to the 20th,
and she plays all the pieces with understanding and fine articulation. She
starts with a Haydn sonata in C, HOB. XVI: 50, which has plenty of lightness
and precision, and then offers one of Beethoven’s final sonatas, No. 30, Op.
109, whose expressiveness is substantially beyond that of Haydn – this is a
work right on the cusp of Romanticism. Two short Romantic works follow:
Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 and Schumann’s “Widmung” as arranged by Liszt; and here
the warmer sound sought by Romantic composers is very much in evidence. Next is
a brief foray into Impressionism with Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse of 1904,
and finally – bringing the piano into the modern era, if not the postmodern one
– there is the 1926 sonata by Bartók,
which he actually wrote for a piano with 97 rather than 88 keys (an Imperial Bösendorfer). Interestingly, this
sonata has numerous essentially classical (that is, Haydn-era) traits,
remaining tonal despite its considerable dissonance, and it thus in a sense
brings this fascinating recital full circle. Each performance here is carefully
calculated and played in a stylistically apt way, presumably made easier for
Leone by her use of differing keyboards to make the varying demands of the
works easier to meet. She meets them all splendidly, in any case, and thus
offers a recording of considerable value both to everyday listeners and to her
fellow pianists.
There is also a “project”
feel to a new Ravello two-CD set featuring pianist Holly Roadfeldt. The concept
here is exceptionally intriguing: accepting the notion that Chopin’s 24 Preludes were designed to usher Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier into a new
age, what would escort the Chopin work itself into contemporary times? The
question would be merely an intellectual exercise if it did not involve an
actual set of preludes by a contemporary composer – but this release includes
one: a group of 26 by Kirk O’Riordan (born 1968). Roadfeldt plays all 50 pieces
with finesse. Her Chopin is light, warm, speedy, stretched-out, agitated and
songlike as appropriate, and although she allows each independent little piece
to encapsulate its own particular mood, she also provides a sense of
continuity-through-contrast when that is appropriate – for instance, between
No. 13 in F-sharp and No. 14 in E minor. If this release were simply a
recording of the Chopin, one among a great many, it would still get a top
rating for the effectiveness of Roadfeldt’s handling of the material. But the
inclusion of the O’Riordan material provides a bonus – even though, and this is
no insult to O’Riordan, the contemporary preludes are nowhere close to the
quality of Chopin’s. O’Riordan’s musical language is a mainstream modern one,
and without a focus on harmonic (tonal and key-based) structural tools, his
pieces lack any significant organizing principle. Also, unlike Chopin’s, they
do not demonstrate any particularly new pianistic techniques, any way of using
the instrument that differs from the contemporary norm. So they emerge as
essentially a sequence of self-contained contrasting encores: one is “floating,
with trepidation,” and the next is “hushed, with energy”; one is “hypnotic,
distant,” the next “energetic, exuberant”; and so on. This setup works well
enough, and Roadfeldt certainly takes it to heart in her performance, which
gives O’Riordan’s music every opportunity to excel. It never quite does, but
neither does it disappoint in any significant way. The whole thing is
workmanlike, well put together, clearly created by a knowledgeable composer
familiar both with piano writing and with standard expressive techniques in
today’s context. What O’Riordan’s material lacks is a certain sense of
emotional thrust, a feeling of inevitability and expressiveness driven by internal
factors. It comes across more as an exercise than as a work written from a
compelling sense of desire – intellectually satisfying but otherwise rather
dry. And perhaps in that very way it fulfills its purpose of showing how the
prelude concept today differs from that of Chopin, for better or for worse.
There is no attempt to
connect with the past to any significant degree on a new Navona CD called,
rather oddly, Early Musings. This is
simply an anthology disc of solo-violin works by a variety of contemporary
composers; like other such recordings, it is decidedly a mixed bag that will
appeal primarily to violinists, or to listeners whose primary interest is
simply in the instrument’s sound rather than any profundity of thought it might
convey. There is more technique than emotional communication offered by the 10
composers on this (+++) offering. None of the material here is likely to be
familiar. Those seeking the most modern-sounding work will gravitate to Davis
Brooks’ performance of Derek Holden’s Break
Off the Aubergine Crystal Skin, one of many contemporary works seeking to
sound profound through a title rather than through anything as old-fashioned as
musical content. This work is written for electric violin with added
electronics, and it has all the squeals and squeaks and percussionistic effects
so dear to composers for whom traditional instrumental sounds are passé. The
remaining pieces use a standard violin, although not always in expected ways.
The most extended and ambitious of them is Solitude,
a five-movement work by Tyler Jones that is supposed to portray different
aspects of a sleepless night (“Meandering and Restless Thought,” “Three
Chimeras,” “Sullen Introspection,” “Nostalgia,” and, finally, “Catharsis”). The
most playful piece is Caper Fair by
J.R. Speake. The remaining works explore various aspects of violin performance
and listener attention. They are Ride
by Balee Pongklad, Otherworldly Shimmer
by Tyler Entelisano, …Of the Mind and
…Of the Eyes by Corey Fant, Shroud, the Shadow by J.M. Smith, The Reflections of My Introverted Sneakers
by Thomas L. Wilson, Drama of the Dirt
by Kilian Afzalirad, and Unknown
Conversations by Jared Bradley Tubbs. The chance to hear some of what
today’s composers consider communicatively apt for the violin is actually a
welcome one, and listeners who are fond of contemporary music in general will
likely find at least a few of the works here intriguing. But there is little in
these pieces that has staying power, except perhaps for violinists seeking new
works for their recitals. Audience communication simply does not seem to be a
high priority here, except in the thoroughly modern way in which people mistake
“friending” on Facebook for actual friendship.
Emotional connection was a
much higher priority for Romantic composers and post-Romantic ones continuing
to operate in a Romantic idiom. Indeed, the excesses of emotional outpouring of
Romanticism were largely responsible for the rebellion against it of the Second
Viennese School and other groups. Many composers used Romantic style to create
pleasant enough but relatively insignificant pieces, a kind of salon music that
was the “easy listening” of its day. Some produced music of this type that also
had interesting virtuoso components – perhaps for a string instrument, perhaps
for piano, perhaps for both. It is works of this sort, many originally written
for the final examinations for viola students at the Conservatoire Supérieur de
Paris, that are rediscovered by Jutta Puchhammer-Sédillot and Élise Desjardins
on a new two-CD, two-and-a-half-hour Navona release. Nothing on this (+++)
recording is music of great significance, but the pieces give violist Jutta
Puchhammer-Sédillot and, to a lesser
extent, pianist Élise Desjardins ample opportunity to showcase soloistic
virtuosity and, in the process, give listeners a wide variety of mostly
pleasant auditory experiences – easier on the ear than the works played by
Davis Brooks, if ultimately not much more musically significant. The only
familiar composer among the 18 represented here is George Enescu (1881-1955),
whose Concertstück proffers the
pleasing virtuosity of a minor but very well-made display piece. The other
works are Appassionato by Henri Büsser (1872-1973); Ballade by Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941);
Concertino Romantique, Fantaisie de Concert and Allegro Appassionato by Paul Rougnon
(1846-1934); Concertino by Hans Sitt
(1850-1922); Morceau de Concert by Léon Honnoré (1868-1930); Concertino
by Léon Firket (1874-1934); Poème by Eugène Cools (1877-1936); Romance,
Scherzo et Finale by Gabriel Grovlez; Arioso
et Allegro de Concert by Stan Golestan (1875-1956); Thème Varié by Georges Hüe (1858-1948); Fantaisie de Concert by Hélène Fleury-Roy (1876-1957); Concertino by Heinrich Arends
(1855-1924); Chaconne by Henri
Marteau (1874-1934); Concertstück
by Réné Jullien (1878-1970); and Caprice
by Charles-Edouard LeFebvre (1843-1917). The inclusion of three pieces by
Rougnon does not mean his works are of higher quality than the others here,
only that Rougnon was particularly adept at creating music of this type. The
titles of the various pieces point to their less-than-grand intent, and that is
quite fine: not all music needs to be heaven-storming in order to please and
engage listeners. So although there is nothing of particular significance or
importance here and few of these pieces will repay repeated careful listening,
this is nevertheless a pleasing collection, the sort of music that can be heard
when in a light mood, or when one wishes to have pleasant sounds in the air
without needing to think too deeply about meaning or emotional intensity. Their
lack of profundity explains why these works – and their composers – are
obscure, but this music nevertheless has many charms that make the pieces,
which are played very well indeed, a highly enjoyable listening experience, if
scarcely a deeply moving one.
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