Produced in association
with Bavarian Radio this Sony disc is
a testament to the Peruvian pianist
Juan José Chuquisengo’s musical
inquisitiveness. A look at the head
note will show the bewildering transcendence
(to appropriate the word) of the programme.
It starts with two canonic Bach Chorales,
but not in the expected arrangements,
adds two pieces by John Foulds, introduces
us to the Allegretto of Beethoven’s
Seventh Symphony in the Liszt arrangement
– but even here there’s a double twist
– and throws in three successive Toccatas,
one Fantasia and a Chaconne. It’s certainly
not conventional programming and wouldn’t
be in the recital hall either but then
Chuquisengo seems not to be an ordinary
musician with ordinary musical horizons.
He spent a seven year period in private
study whilst retaining contact with
the conductor Celibidache in Munich,
a period that has clarified his thoughts
and ambitions and also repertoire. This
is one of the results, an across the
centuries, across the styles programme
of almost abstract lineage.
The two Bach Chorales
are in his own arrangements though neither
differs in too many details from better-known
ones. Admirers of the Jesu-Hess will
note a few textual changes but in essence
this is her arrangement in broad detail.
It’s attractively done but curiously
uninvolving. Wachet auf is rather
slow with a deliberately subservient
left hand whose incursive gestures are
here circumscribed. Lovely playing but
rather inert; indeed, one might say,
promoting loveliness as an end in itself.
I can see why he should have chosen
John Foulds’ April-England, the
Bachian elements of which, allied to
its burgeoning melodic warmth, would
have appealed. He certainly holds that
tied bass figure and gets a much bigger
recorded sound than that accorded Peter
Jacobs on Altarus. It’s excellent that
he should cast his net so wide as to
discover Foulds; if I have a criticism
it’s that he can make it sound a touch
too portentous with the result that
it emerges as rather less touching than
it does with Jacobs. Gandharva-Music,
hypnotic as ever, is taken at precisely
the same tempo as Jacobs’ recording
and is only let down by a somewhat over-clangourous
recording.
The Beethoven-Liszt
is spiced not only by virtue of his
playing it at all (this is the reserve
of such as Leslie Howard) but also because
there’s a passage here "for four
hands in multichannel technics"
which I take to be overdubbing. He certainly
sculpts an orchestral tone here, sometimes
tempting hard hitting and strident fortes.
Swimmy recording does sap Corigliano’s
Fantasia on an ostinato, which reveals
itself to have been based on the Beethoven
movement. Bass light though the recording
is, we can appreciate the dynamic extremes
and the sense of control engendered;
the glint, the scurry, the relapse into
elliptical contemplation before a resolutory
chord.
Virtuoso fireworks
are here as well in the form of successive
Toccatas. I suppose a pianist setting
out his stall with those by Schumann
and Prokofiev could fairly be said to
be courting admiration of some kind
– and in them he certainly impresses
- but it’s rather more invigorating
to hear his Handel and his Bach, both
of which challenges he deals with adeptly
and warmly.
Chuquisengo is clearly
a questing musician, as this disc amply
demonstrates. And in its exploration
of the chaconne, the toccata and the
incremental patterns of repetition and
release he has constructed a unique
programme that attests to his intellectual
and expressive powers.
Jonathan Woolf
Juan José Chuquisengo (piano) 
