Last year Naxos released the fifth and final volume in their
edition of the complete Piano Sonatas and Sonatinas of German
composer Ferdinand Ries (review).
That series was started and completed after their launch
in 2005 of the complete Piano Concertos, also in five volumes,
which finally comes to end with this disc. Ries's discography
on Naxos is something to be grateful for, indeed - matched at
the moment only by CPO's, where, most notably, Howard Griffiths
and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra have recorded Ries's eight
Symphonies on four discs, also available as a good-value boxed
set (review).
Youngish Austrian pianist Christopher Hinterhuber and Naxos
stalwart - not to mention period expert - Uwe Grodd have been
a team since volume I, and their collaborations in this final
effort are poised, detailed and appealingly atmospheric. Another
quality performance in the NZSO's discography underlines their
status as a very decent outfit.
In his informative notes, Allan Badley writes that "Ries's cycle
of fourteen works for piano and orchestra stands as one of the
finest musical achievements of the early decades of the nineteenth
century." For many this will be a contentious, if not faintly
daft, statement. Yet popularising musical historians sometimes
seem loath to acknowledge the existence of any music from this
period - Schubert, Weber and Paganini's aside - that is not
by Beethoven. They all but discount extremely valuable contributions
to art music from the likes of Hummel, Rejcha, Czerny, Dussek,
Eberl, Spohr, Kuhlau, Onslow, Field - to name but a few contemporaries
who influenced Beethoven and/or were widely admired in their
time.
Ries himself is still more often than not relegated to a historical
footnote as piano pupil, friend, 'agent', biographer and performer
of Beethoven. Though Badley may slightly overstate Ries's case,
he is by no means a minor talent, certainly as far as piano
composition is concerned. He wrote prolifically for his instrument
to great acclaim in his time, both by the public and his contemporaries.
Ries is an early Romantic in spirit and form, though he would
never disavow his Classical roots. In these three works he can
be heard to inhabit a realm somewhere between Mozart and Hummel.
The Concertos are dramatic, expressive and very elegantly done,
imbued with melodic creativity and splendid flourishes of orchestral
colour.
Throughout this series, Naxos's website has perpetuated the
unhelpful numbering system often attached to Ries's Concertos.
For example, the G minor is labelled "Piano Concerto no.9",
which does not in fact exist - Ries wrote only eight. So it
is with the E flat work: not his "Piano Concerto no.2", as the
site states, but his 'no.1'. The source of this error is explained
in the booklet notes: Ries's first published concerto, which
he called 'Concerto no.1', was for violin and orchestra.
He followed it with eight for piano and orchestra, numbering
them 'Concerto no.2' and so on, up to 'Concerto no.9' - that
is, Piano Concertos nos. 1 to 8.
Nor is that the end of the complications. In fact, Ries's "no.6"
was his First Piano Concerto proper, whereas "no.2" was most
likely his Third! The explanation here lies in the fact that
Ries published them all when it suited his purposes, rather
than according to date of composition. The following table clarifies
the true ordering:
Composition order |
Published order |
Traditional title |
1 (1806) |
5 (1824) |
Concerto no.6 |
2 (1809) |
3 (1823) |
Concerto no.4 |
3 (1811) |
1 (1812) |
Concerto no.2 |
4 (1812) |
2 (1816) |
Concerto no.3 |
5 (1814) |
4 (1823) |
Concerto no.5 |
6 (1823) |
6 (1824) |
Concerto no.7 |
7 (1826) |
7 (1828) |
Concerto no.8 |
8 (1832-33) |
8 (1835) |
Concerto no.9 |
Source: Ferdinand
Ries Society and New Grove.
Not to be outdone, this disc's stirring Introduction et Rondeau
Brillant has exactly the same title and length as one on
volume 4!
One drawback to volume 5 is audio quality, which is passable
rather than outstanding. The main problem is the lack of depth,
giving the recording something of a mono feel - fine for the
'mp3 generation' perhaps, but not for audiophiles. In their
25th anniversary year, Naxos should by now have got this right
- every recording, no matter what its provenance, should
match the quality of their best. Like volume 1, this disc was
recorded in New Zealand at the Michael Fowler Centre - clearly
the technical side of operations there needs to be looked at.
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at artmusicreviews.co.uk
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Christopher Hinterhuber (piano) 