Alkan’s Concerto for Solo Piano is one of the more
monstrous challenges in the literature. At just under fifty minutes
it requires virtuosity, stamina and surety of architectural design and
whilst not without its advocates – Marc-André Hamelin foremost
amongst the contemporary exponents (Music and Arts CD724) – its breathtaking
difficulties are as viscerally alive now as ever they were. So Latimer
enters dangerous and not uncrowded waters. In addition to Hamelin, Ogdon
on Philips 456 913-2, Gibbons on ASV CDDCS227 and Ronald Smith on APR
7031 (another APR Alkan) provide strong competition. Whatever else may
distinguish and differentiate each performance, one thing is abundantly
and regrettably clear – none has as bad sound as this latest disc. In
Latimer’s self-styled Apologia, part of his extensive notes –
a mixture of intemperance and bluster – he touches on the limitations
of sound quality but the promotion of this disc as the first live recording
of Alkan’s Concerto means that, given the competition, performance and
sound quality should be commensurately high. And regrettably they aren’t.
Recorded at the Royal Northern College of Music in
November 1999 the acoustic is constricted and the sound of the piano
is desperately unattractive with an airless clatter around it. Whatever
flexibilities and subtleties Latimer brings to Alkan are constantly
subverted by the woeful recording quality which makes this a very hard
going listen. He certainly brings enormous weight to the first movement,
torrential attacks and plenty of rubato but also some unrelated tempo
adjustments that tend to make the movement more diffuse and conjectural
than it should be. He is good in the moments of stasis in the middle
of the movement but, again, they don’t emerge as properly integrated
into the fabric of the score. There is a hectoring tone to much of the
playing which is exacerbated by the discursive and fluctuating nature
of Latimer’s playing. He has an undeniably big technique – slips are
inevitable but not important in the context – and there is certainly
nothing discreet or apologetic to his conclusion of the huge first movement.
It is blistering. Elsewhere, in the adagio there is some interior and
searching playing with much rhythmically emphatic pianism in the central
core of the movement – strong, forceful chording and some animated scampering
from 11’29 onwards – but it never quite seems to cohere. In the finale
Latimer certainly takes the alla barbaresca marking at full value but
he is more than somewhat unremitting and again the unflattering sound
vitiates a lot of the pleasure from the performance. The final piece
is Balakirev’s Islamey, a suitably finger busting discmate for the Alkan
and recorded five years earlier.
Jonathan Woolf
Recorded Royal Northern
College of Music November 1999 (Alkan) and Malvern December 1994 (Balakirev)