I hope this is the
start of a MacDowell series from Sandra
Carlock because she’s clearly a first
class interpreter of his music. She
avoids the temptation either to play
up the grandiose inflation or to sentimentalise
the quasi-impressionist withdrawal enshrined
in these very different works. And that’s
all to the good.
With a warm sounding
recording in St Philip’s in London we
have a most attractive recital that
takes in the bardic drama of the Arthurian
Sonata Eroica as well as the
more Francophile charms of the two pieces
from the Fireside Tales – not
to forget the academic sounding, but
in fact thoroughly charming, Suite in
E with its baroque sounding Praeludiums
and Fugues. Fear not, they’re cut from
a different cloth to the soon-to-burgeon
neo-classicism.
That cloth is distinctly
Lisztian, of course, and we hear it
immediately in that Praeludium. MacDowell
feints toward a Bachian Presto but his
musical heart leads him away and his
central movement, a long Andantino and
Allegretto is warmly enfolding and indeed
unfolding – generous lyricism. This
is a characterful and enjoyable piece,
not especially plangent but with a somewhat
Russian cast to the Rhapsodie - I kept
thinking of Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov
- and a triumphant conclusion to keep
the salon patrons happy. Of the Fireside
Tales the Fourth has its share of
impressionist fireflies, the fifth its
hints of Rachmaninov once more.
I suppose the Sonata
will be the best known work here, one
that has garnered a reasonable crop
of recordings over the years though
many of them on smaller labels. Despite
the big nobility of utterance she rightly
cultivates there’s no undue forcing
of tone in the opening movement; the
dashing fugal section is negotiated
with considerable control and when it’s
interrupted by a fervent battle-cry
there’s no incongruity at all. The elfish
Listzian sprightliness of the as-good-as
Scherzo is lightly done but the greatest
weight of expectation surrounds the
slow movement. Here Carlock terraces
dynamics with acuity, the romantic trajectory
is at all times keen and there’s plenty
of space in her playing for the music
to take its fullest, deepest measure.
No less in the monumental finale with
its heroism and death, where she proves
a dynamic interpreter. As an envoi we
are given the charmingly flowing morceaux
that is the Étude de Concert
– certainly a Lisztian show-off piece
but played here with grace and elegance.
A thoroughly recommendable
disc then in which everything sounds
just right – recording, playing, ethos.
Will the other sonatas follow?
Jonathan Woolf
Sandra Carlock (piano) 
