Volume 25 Issue 1 - September 2019

Keyed In
Beethoven & Liszt Piano Concerti No.1
Jae-Hyuck Cho; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Adrien
Perruchon
Sony Classical S80403C (amazon.com)
!!
The most recent collaboration on
disc between pianist Jae-Hyuck Cho and
conductor Adrien Perruchon directing the
Royal Scottish National Orchestra offers
first piano concertos by both Liszt and
Beethoven. This recording exhibits poise,
candour and marked esteem for the wellworn
music at hand.
Cho approaches Beethoven’s youthful first
piano concerto with a Haydnesque profile,
achieving this with his own earnest brand of pianism, both tactile and
circumspect. The lighter side of Beethoven’s early period is revealed
here, as is the German composer’s debt to neoclassical attributes such
as a Mozartian savvy for crafting melodic lines. Cho’s faithful – at
times predictable – reading of the score contains just enough bravura
to affirm that we are experiencing a concerto.
With conductor Perruchon’s background as both percussionist and
bassoonist, one hears vividly planned out orchestral accompaniments,
laser-precise and metrically refined. This kind of rhythmic cultivation
is what Leon Fleisher so often refers to as performative “irresistibility,”
and Perruchon’s orchestra and Cho’s keyboard both seem to have it in
ample measure. Crisp and carefully wrought woodwind lines squint
through the textures in classical and Romantic scoring alike, with
Perruchon’s prizing of oboe and bassoon parts enhancing this effect.
With affectionate, palpable exchange between soloist and
conductor, (especially in the Liszt concerto), this disc is also aided by a
notably high standard of audio recording. Producer Michael Fine and
engineer Jin Choi are to be applauded for such a balanced and crystalline
achievement.
Adam Sherkin
Liszt – 12 Etudes d’exécution transcendante; 2 Etudes de concert
Sheng Cai
ATMA ACD2 2783 (atmaclassique.com)
! ! Sheng Cai is a Canadian pianist with
a growing international reputation. The
playing on this disc is remarkable. In Franz
Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Etudes (1852),
what stand out are clear voicing, fine
control of dynamics and a sense of expressive
freedom. For example, in Paysage
(No.3) pacing is flexible and there are several
grades of softness. Ricordanza (No.9) opens
with comparable expressiveness in movement
and dynamics but on an expanding scale, meeting this longer
work’s more dramatic and extreme demands. In other words, Cai is
fully up to the Etudes’ diverse challenges! We haven’t yet considered
that he successfully matches such technical demands as the fearsome
leaps in Mazeppa (No.4), the colouristic intricacies of Feux follets
(No.5), or the tremendous approaching storm tremolos in Chasseneige
(No.12). Throughout the disc, effective groupings of pedalled
notes and precise phrase cut-offs are among the ways this pianist has
avoided the banging and noisiness I have heard in some well-known
artists’ Liszt renderings.
Through the artist we meet the composer, and I have enjoyed
Liszt’s humour in the characterization of the Eroica (No. 7) and the
composer’s artistry with what seem like painters’ brush strokes in
Waldesrauschen (Forest Murmurs), one of the Two Concert Etudes
(1862-63) also included on this recording. Do not fear for lack of
variety among all of these etudes, no two are alike and Cai makes the
listening experience a distinct pleasure.
Roger Knox
Donna Voce (Fanny Mendelssohn; Amy Beach; Clara Schumann;
Cecile Chaminade; Lili Boulanger; Chia-Yu Hsu)
Anna Shelest
Sorel Classics n/a (sorelmusic.org)
!!
It is unfortunate that to record an entire
album featuring beautiful and stylistically
diverse music from a well-chosen program
of women composers is still, in 2019, an
inherently political statement, but here we
are. Unlike both piano playing and pedagogy
which have long been gendered activities
coded as “safe” or “acceptable” entrees
into the music business for women, historically
composition was seen as the realm of men. Upon occasion, as
featured on the recording, some who are related to better known male
figures (i.e. Fanny Mendelssohn’s brother Felix and Clara Schumann’s
husband Robert) were allowed to “dabble” in the form, but not
encouraged, nor taken particularly seriously.
Anna Shelest, a Ukraine-born pianist who graduated from Juilliard
and who currently lives in New York City, is a wonderfully expressive
and talented musician who unites these composers, some of
whom are separated by multiple centuries, with her deft touch and
clear lyricism on this Sorel Classics release. Partially, this is exploration
of lost histories, in the sense that some of this music has not been
given its rightful place in canon of Western art music due, undoubtedly,
to antiquated views on what constituted “acceptable” activities
for married women (in the case of American composer Amy Beach);
patriarchally established family responsibilities that curtailed artistic
practice and output (Clara Schumann) and outright sexism masquerading
as musical criticism (Cécile Chaminade, who was undermined
in a New York Post review of her 1908 Carnegie Hall recital that
stated, in part, “on the whole this concert confirmed the conviction
held by many that while women may someday vote, they will never
learn to compose anything worthwhile,” this recording is no mere
historical exercise.
Through Shelest’s clear musicality and performance
prowess, Donna Voce is an extremely musical and satisfying
contemporary classical release that will hopefully (and deservedly)
present this collection of music, as well as Shelest’s many talents, to a
wide audience of listeners around the world.
Andrew Scott
Artur Schnabel – Complete Works for Solo Piano
Jenny Lin
Steinway & Sons 30074 (steinway.com)
!!
Some wonders will never cease, as
evidenced by the latest Steinway & Sons disc
of Artur Schnabel’s Complete Works for Solo
Piano with pianist Jenny Lin. That’s right:
Artur Schnabel, composer.
Amongst the great 20th-century pianists,
Schnabel was the first to record the
entire cycle of Beethoven sonatas, a practice
now well-entrenched – and a yardstick
oft’ attained – by numerous keyboardists on
a regular basis. But the legacy of Schnabel’s pianism remains sacrosanct,
as does his pedagogical lineage. So then, how well-perceived
is his compositional output? Not well, it would seem. Consequently,
Steinway & Sons and intrepid pianist Jenny Lin “aim to correct this
imbalance of perception.”
thewholenote.com September 2019 | 61