I don’t know whose
idea this CD was, but it was a brilliant
one. There is a large and splendid repertoire
of 20th century piano music
written with children or beginners in
mind, and we have here a collection
of some of the best. The fascinating
thing is how the personalities and styles
of these great composers are instantly
recognisable, despite the comparative
simplicity of the material.
Not that all of this
music is simple to play; some of the
Bartók pieces in particular are
very difficult, requiring considerable
technical and rhythmic control. Raymond
Clarke, an experienced recitalist who
now teaches at the University of Bristol,
has made a name for his performances
of Szymanowski, Havergal Brian and other
20th century composers, so
that it is no surprise to find him at
home with the idioms here. It goes without
saying that he is technically well in
command of this music, and his performances
are poised, imaginative and strongly
characterised.
Of the seven composers
represented, there are four Russians,
(Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich
and Khachaturian), one Hungarian (Bartók),
one American (Copland) and one Austrian
(Webern). The most impressive are the
twelve Prokofiev pieces from ‘Music
for Children’, which are extraordinarily
poetic within their tiny limits. Take
The Rain and the Rainbow, with
its gently clashing harmonies and wide
ranging melody, or the jumpy rhythms
of March of the Grasshoppers. Some
listeners will recognise the lovely
Evening and the perky March,
which appear orchestrally in the
suite Summer Day.
Stravinsky’s Les
Cinq Doigts (The Five Fingers) belongs
to the same period as The Soldier’s
Tale, and you can hear that clearly
in the twitchy rhythms and modal melodic
lines. Khachaturian’s attractive Pictures
from Childhood were composed at
various times between 1926 and 1947,
while Copland’s Piano Album contains
pieces from the later stages of his
career. These Copland items differ slightly
from the rest of the music here in that
they are not specifically intended as
teaching material, though they are still
straightforward in style and texture.
Webern’s Kinderstück
(Children’s Piece) is something
of a curiosity, in that, though it was
intended to be one of a whole set of
such works for young pianists, the composer
soon abandoned the idea, and the present
piece wasn’t publicly performed until
1966, over twenty years after the composer’s
death. Shostakovich’s Children’s
Notebook of 1945 are the simplest
and easiest to play of all the music
here, but still highly characteristic
of the composer. Clockwork Doll
is probably the finest of them, looking
forward as it does to the ‘magic toyshop’
music of the Fifteenth Symphony.
The best-known music
is found in the numbers from Bartók’s
Mikrokosmos, six volumes of incredibly
varied and resourceful graded pieces,
assembled between 1926 and 1939. The
amazing From the Diary of a Fly is
here (look out for Huguette Dreyfus’s
new recording on Harmonia Mundi of this
and other Mikrokosmos items on
the harpsichord!), as well as
the wild Ostinato, a violent
whirlwind of a Vivacissimo.
The CD is accompanied
by a learned and informative booklet
of notes by Raymond Clarke himself,
and the piano is the excellent Steinway
model D at Newcastle University. Clarke
has only scratched the surface here;
there are dozens more Bartók
pieces, as well as wonderful works in
the same vein by Kodály and Kabalevsky,
to name but two. More please!
Gwyn Parry-Jones
Raymond Clarke, piano 
