REVIEW:

François-Xavier Poizat, a 26-year-old French-Swiss pianist, could hardly have produced a more dazzling tribute to Ginastera, Argentina’s foremost composer. How he revels in the First Sonata’s Presto misterioso, a phantom chase taking its cue from Bartók, notably in its final breakup into ghostly fragments. He captures all the raucous brilliance of the Allegro rustico from the Suite de danzas criollas (dedicated to Rudolf Firkusny, clearly invited to forget his aristocratic pianism), and is finely sensitive to the mournful folksong of the Milonga as it floats across its swaying accompaniment. As an encore, Poizat adds Mompou’s Prelude No 5, a gentle and loving tribute to Ginastera’s Catalan origin. The pianist is well recorded and this is so much more than a collector’s piece.

– Gramophone

This new release is the second installment in Earl Wild’s complete piano transcriptions. The first volume was release to critical acclaim. It was regarded as, “extremely well played… possibly my favourite piano disc of 2014.” (Classical Net) For this volume, Wild’s transcriptions of Rachmaninoff compositions are featured, including “Dreams, Op. 38 No. 5,” “Midsummer Night, Op. 14 No. 5,” and “Floods of Spring, Op 14 No. 11.” Performing these outstanding transcriptions is Giovanni Doria Miglietta, who rises to the challenges that these extremely virtuosic pieces present.

Georgijs Osokins gained international attention through his participation at age 19 in the Chopin Competition 2015, where his performances received either superlatives or led to controversy. His playing is of a rare originality, based on a deep musical intuition, a strong sense of rhetoric and immaculate technique. "He has a very rare gift of a true Chopinist... This young musician is exceptionally talented." - Sergei Babayan

In a letter to a friend Chopin described Pleyel pianos as ‘the last word in perfection’. What he identified as their ‘slightly veiled sonority’ suited his style. One observer remembered the composer saying that if he was not feeling on top form, he preferred to play on an Erard, for its bright and ready-made tone. ‘But if I feel alert, ready to make my fingers work without fatigue, then I prefer a Pleyel… My fingers feel in more immediate contact with the hammers, which then translate precisely and faithfully the feeling I want to produce, the effect I want to obtain.’ The Chopin-era Pleyel was notable for its graded timbre, topped by the silvery, ethereal quality of its treble register. Chopin’s appreciation for the Pleyel sonority of pianos is written into the very fabric of his music. When he travelled to Majorca with George Sand in the winter of 1838, a Pleyel piano had to travel with them, and the composer continued to have a Pleyel grand delivered every summer, which remained until November. This was at some expense to the company, but then the relationship was mutually beneficial: while the composer was inspired by the Pleyel sound, the company did well from his patronage and his personal recommendations, and indeed Chopin and Camille Pleyel were firm friends for many years. For this mixed recital, Hubert Rutkowski plays a Pleyel instrument from 1847, during Camille’s stewardship of the firm. The most substantial works are the G minor Ballade and the B minor Scherzo, which makes so much of that glistening upper register. There is also the C sharp minor Fantaisie-Impromptu, the B flat minor Polonaise and a selection of mazurkas, nocturnes, etude and waltz. The pianist is a President of the Chopin Society in Hamburg, and has also played and recorded under the theme of Chopin’s pupils: he is among the most distinguished Chopin pianists of our day.

This release presents a musical portrait of Johannes Brahms in piano works from his early and later years. The Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor Op. 5 is a masterpiece. Here Brahms is at his most passionate, impulsive and grandiose, a young hero about to conquer the world. Skipping several decades we enter the world of late Brahms, here the passion is tinged with a sweet melancholy, reflective and resigned. Brahms called his later Klavierstücke “Wiegenlieder meiner Schmerz” (Lullabies of my sorrow). Young Russian pianist Philipp Kopachevsky’s musical intuition is the key to enter the musical world of Brahms, his quasi improvisatory playing makes the music come to life under his hands. His sound, from a thundering heroism to a murmuring chiaroscuro, touches the listener’s soul directly. Philipp Kopachevsky is one of the most remarkable pianists of the younger generation. Winner of several international competitions he is in much demand as a soloist, having played with conductors like Rostropovich, Gergiev, Spivakov, Pletnev and many others. This is Philipp Kopachevsky’s third album for Piano Classics. His first CD received rave reviews: “..a rare discovery…extraordinary talent…a great musician..” (Piano World) “..technical mastery and deeply searching musicality…a must…6 Stars..” (Piano News Germany) “…Kopachevsky’s hands communicate real musical thought, he adds a touch of intensity to every bar..personal and intriguing…” (Fanfare)

Classical Music

BACH Preludium in C, BWV 846/1 . Toccata in c, BWV 911 . Praeludium in E? , BWV 1010/1 . Prelude for Cembalo, BWV 998 . Praeludium in c, BWV 999 . Partita in c, BWV 997 . Sonata in a, BWV 1003 . Sarabande in g, BWV 995/4 • Luca Guglielmi (fp) • PIANO 62 (66:47)


As a keyboardist, Johann Sebastian Bach clearly deserves the renown that he attained even during his lifetime, for his compositions and facile playing style. Although much has been recorded on both organ and harpsichord, Bach’s relationship with the newer or more unusual instruments, the fortepiano and clavichord (which, of course, was not so new in the early 18th century), has been the subject of some scholarly work. To be sure, the harpsichord came in a rather substantial variety of forms, and certainly the terms often used during the time, “cembalo” or “Klavier,” were mostly generic rather than instrument-specific, but Bach himself had some interest in the newer keyboards. For example, he sold a Silbermann fortepiano in 1749, a couple of years after he had performed on one at the court in Potsdam. His complaint to the maker about the quality of the fortepiano has often been quoted, but there is no doubt that he knew it well. Moreover, one of his students, Johann Friedrich Agricola, noted that he used to play the clavichord on occasion, mainly for improvising smaller chamber works.


Today, one finds that the various interpretations of Bach’s keyboard works on both older and more contemporary 20th-century instruments can be found in abundance. Luca Guglielmi’s disc adds a slight twist to this crowd by playing a number of small works on three instruments that would have been known by the composer; an Italian fortepiano modeled after a Cristofori original from 1726, a German Silbermann copy from the 1749 model; and a German clavichord after a 1784 Hubert instrument. All of these are tuned so that A=415 Hz, a tuning that would not have been unfamiliar to the composer. Given that these are familiar and oft-recorded works, the main purpose of this disc is to delineate how Bach’s works might have sounded on the three instruments with which he may have been familiar. The eldest is the Cristofori, which is used for the Toccata in C Minor. It has a somewhat stringy and transparent sound. Guglielmi doesn’t stress the action too much, preferring an easy-going tempo, particularly in the fugue. I find that the middle registers of the instrument sometimes are a bit thick, but this does not interfere appreciably with the delineation of the lines. The Silbermann, on the other hand, is a brighter, more resonant instrument. In the opening Praeludium, for example, the broken chords have each tone sustained, almost as if there was a resonating set of sympathetic strings. This may be in part due to Guglielmi’s stately playing, which allows for the resonance to coalesce into subtly dissolving waves of sound. In the C-Minor Partita, the texture is a bit darker, and perhaps a bit more harpsichord-like. The Gigue, for example, has a nice triplet figuration in the middle register, which sometimes outshines the bass line. The two pieces played on the clavichord are far more tinny and have a sort of plucked instrument quality of sound, almost as if they are being played on a mandolin. In the Fugue of the A-Minor Sonata, for instance, the soft sound is like being played through cotton, with little or no resonance at all, and yet the instrumental sounds have a nice attack that allows each line to come through.


As for the performance, Guglielmi is stately and cautious with his tempos, deliberately allowing for the tone qualities of his instruments to come forward. His phrasing is quite well done and conforms to the often subtle shifts in thematic structure of the works. Given the eclectic nature of the music, this may not be a disc for everyone, but certainly those interested in Bach and the fortepiano/clavichord will find this disc more than just an archival curiosity. It is a fine study in the timbre of Bach’s time.


FANFARE: Bertil van Boer

The second album in Yuan Sheng's complete survey of Bach's keyboard works bring together two major masterpieces, the much loved Italian Concerto and the substantial French overture, one of the most monumental and deeply searching Suites by Bach, in the tragic key of B minor. As a complement Sheng presents the 4 Duets and the delightful Aria and 10 variations in Italian Style. Yuan Sheng is one of the foremost pianists of China, his international career brings him to all continents. Equally at home on period instruments and the modern piano he has a keen ear for style. His Chopin 3 CD set (PCL0049) for Piano Classics received excellent reviews, as did his Goldberg Variations (PCL0042): "Unfailing intuition for the right balance. Fascinating" (Piano News), "Every nuance filled with colour and expression" (The Classical Music Guide), "models of clarity, balance and proportions" (New York Times).

‘An eagle whose wings are grown,’ according to his father Alessandro, the young Scarlatti left his native Naples for Venice, ‘escorted only by his own ability.’ By his early 20s he had already held audiences in thrall with an ability at the harpsichord which was deemed almost supernatural. There is assuredly the most prodigal imagination at work, as well as an extraordinarily sophisticated keyboard technique, in the 555 surviving keyboard sonatas which fuse Italianate cantabile and counterpoint with vivid Hispanic imagery: folksong, castanets, military trumpets and strumming guitars. All these qualities can be enjoyed in Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy’s selection of 17 sonatas. Several of them are taken from the collection of Kk1-30 (in the catalogue produced by Ralph Kirkpatrick) which comes down to us as the earliest source of the sonatas in print, published shortly before he moved to Lisbon, thence to Madrid and around the royal courts of Spain, in the service of the princess who would become the Queen of Spain. Her patronage afforded Scarlatti the time and resources to evolve a highly personal style, full of eccentricity and flights of fancy. Hardly less than Bach, these sonatas have become for many pianists a proving ground for their own technique and imagination, rewarding an improvisatory response to their flamboyant effects. However, Schmitt-Leonardy also features several of the composer’s most poetic and reflective sonatas such as the ‘Aria’ Kk 29 and the melancholy soliloquy of Kk 208.

Described by International Piano as ‘one of the most gifted pianists of his generation’, Mark Viner is steadily gaining a reputation as one of Britain’s leading concert pianists; his unique blend of individual artistry combined with his bold exploration of the byways of the piano literature garnering international renown. Having set down dazzling accounts of the knuckle-breaking studies and solo Concerto, Mark Viner here shows his ability to distil the spirit of Alkan’s more intimate and spiritual works.

Alkan was a serious scholar of Jewish learning and ancient biblical texts, a preoccupation, not a pastime, that took precedence for him over music and the piano. The atmosphere and design of this Op.72 cycle (completed in 1867) harkens back to the grave passion instilled in the earlier 25 Préludes Op.31 (1847 - PCL10189). Several of the pieces venture beyond evocations of devotion to present psychologically probing dialogues of conflict and reconciliation. From the Revivalist sturdiness of the cycle’s opening number through the inward contemplation of No.2 to the austere fugue of No.3 and beyond, Alkan continues to spring surprises on the listener, including sudden harmonic clashes which abruptly break the tonal fabric and anticipate 20th-century trends of modernism. To the Op.72 cycle, Mark Viner adds a rarely heard Etude which Alkan originally composed for a pianistic encyclopedia compiled by his former professor. He concludes with the Etude Alla-Barbaro which was rediscovered as recently as 1996.

While we associate Tchaikovsky with music of virtuoso power and difficulty, sweeping up audiences with the fire of the Violin Concerto and First Piano Concerto, he also applied himself to music for the ever-growing market of amateur music-makers during his lifetime. Like many other great composers, he knew how to write for musicians of moderate ability without compromising or simplifying the individuality of his voice as a composer. Also like many great composers, regularly finding himself in grim financial prospects, he tapped into a reliable source of income by supplying publishers who had a seemingly limitless market for music composed with amateur musicians in mind, especially by the acknowledged masters of their day. Both of the cycles recorded here by Yuan Sheng were produced for this market, comprising short pieces, most of them quite simple on the page, but thoroughly imbued with quintessentially Tchaikovskian qualities.

As part of his Piano Classics discography, Yuan Sheng recorded The Seasons – Tchaikovsky’s best known solo piano cycle – in 2017. The album was widely welcomed for its serious approach to music which is too often treated trivially. Likewise, he invests these cycles with an authentic delicacy of touch and gravity of expression – in Tchaikovsky, tears are never very far away.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was born in Hamburg in November 1805, the eldest of four siblings (the second was Felix, followed by Rebecca and Paul). The Mendelssohn family, of Jewish lineage, and belonging in the upper bourgeois class, gave a brilliant cultural education to their four children. Fanny was not only an exceptional pianist, but also an exceptional composer; her style is very close to that of Felix, the best known of her siblings. Her output is rich and substantial and includes more than four hundred pieces, comprising Lieder, organ works, chamber music, cantatas, an oratorio and an orchestral overture. In spite of her prolific creative output, some of her works remain still unpublished. This album focuses on a part of her piano works written between 1838 and 1841, which are particularly interesting.

The piano cycle Das Jahr (The Year) (1841) is the main work of this collection, written during her Italian journey. It is made up of twelve pieces, each bearing the name of a month, plus an epilogue, each expressing the particular feelings and atmosphere of the month in question. There are many thematic cross references between the pieces, as well as numerous references to Bach, connected to the music typical for the Lutheran worship. Also included are the two Nocturnes and the Introduction and Capriccio in B minor, in which the influence of her brother Felix is particularly evident. Italian pianist Martina Frezzotti studied with Lazar Berman at the Piano Academy of Imola and later with Elisso Virsaladze at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where she obtained her Doctorate in Music with full marks in 2012, the first Italian in history of this prestigious university.

It was at a recital by Enrico Pace, hearing Schumann’s Novellettes, that the 16-year-old Costanza Principe determined she wished to dedicate her energies to the piano. She had been studying the instrument since the age of six and playing in public since the age of seven, but these still underrated pieces of Schumann set her on a path that has since taken her past degrees at conservatoires in Milan and London, and a Wigmore Hall recital debut in 2016.There is a certain inevitability to the presence of Schumann on her debut album –and not any Schumann, a standard run through of Carnaval, Papillons and Arabesques, but much less familiar pieces that test the expressive reflexes of the most dedicated Schumann interpreter. Neglected ever since Schumann composed it during his troublesome stay in Vienna (1838-1839), while away from but passionately attached to Clara, the collection of Scherzo, Gigue, Romanze und Fughette Op.32 was curiously never performed as a set during Schumann’s lifetime. Written in 1839, the Three Romances Op.28 also suffered a troubled birth, as a Christmas present to Clara –the two now engaged –but one which he did not value sufficiently to dedicate to her. Yet under the hands of an interpreter as sympathetic as Costanza Principe, these pieces surge and swell with the composer’s uniquely impassioned and vulnerable voice. She also includes pieces from the opposite ends of Schumann’s career: the tumultuous Allegro Op.8, a Beethovenian flexing of pianistic muscle from the 21-year-old composer; and the poignant collection of Gesänge der Frühe Op.133, composed five months before his attempted suicide and confinement within the asylum at Endenich.

Piano Classics presents the first volume in a major new series which promises to become the most comprehensive recorded survey of a central but now little-known figure in 19th-century Italian music. Born in Rome in 1841, Giovanni Sgambati cut an impressive but relatively familiar figure as a prodigious young virtuoso until, as a 21-year-old keyboard lion in the making, he was introduced to Franz Liszt. The encounter changed Sgambati’s life. Liszt, perhaps the single most influential figure in European musical life in the middle of the 19th century, took the young Sgambati under his wing, and his faith was richly repaid. Still in his 20s, Sgambati conducted the Italian premiere of the Dante Symphony and even the premiere of the first (lengthy) part of the Christus oratorio. There is an irony that the single piece through which his name has travelled worldwide is a piano Melodie, a sensuously achieved transcription of the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Guaranteed to hush a rapturous audience into silence, it became the much-loved encore piece for the late Nelson Freire, among others. Too little of Sgambati’s music for his own instrument is known beyond the Melodie. This neglect is being redressed in style by the Italian pianist Gaia Federica Caporiccio, born in Florence in 1988.

The first volume of a projected complete series of Sgambati’s piano works proceeds in mostly chronological fashion. Thus the curtain is drawn back with a flourish in the Gothic, Bachian arpeggios of the Prelude and Fugue Op.6.

When the Siberian-born ‘Arctic Circle Pianist’ Ekaterina Litvintseva heard “Blumenleben” (‘Life of Flowers’) for the first time, she immediately resolved to find out more about the life and music of Dora Pejačević (1885-1923). This resolution prompted her to investigate an extraordinary corpus of music, remarkable not least for its sheer diversity, which she has attempted to convey in this selection of Pejačević’s piano output. Among 57 extant works, 24 are scored for solo piano; there would surely have been many more in both categories had she not died of kidney failure on 5 March 1923, aged 37, having suffered complications in giving birth to her first child. This newly recorded recital marks Ekaterina Litvinseva’s debut on Piano Classics, and should attract the attention of pianophiles everywhere.

REVIEW:

The 30-something Ekaterina Litvintseva has been amassing a distinguished discography—and this, apparently her first recorded sojourn beyond canonical composers, is a fine addition, exhibiting the combination of sensitivity and self-assurance that have marked her playing up until now. Her tempos are flexible, but her rubato never threatens the music’s line (note, as but one example, the way she navigates the tempo shifts in the slightly off-kilter Caprice-Waltz No. 2); her balances are lucid; and her technique easily meets the needs of the music. Veljkovic, fine though she is, is relatively stolid in the bigger moments. Either way, though, unless you’re allergic to piano music of the period, you owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of Dora Pejačević if you haven’t done so already. Piano Classics, as usual, has clean sound and solid notes. 

-- Fanfare