Chetham’s Music School
in Manchester has long been a major
component of the city’s musical scene
and has sent some impressive performers
into the world, including the pianist
Murray Maclachlan, who now heads Chetham’s
keyboard department. The school is also
well-known for its choir. Since 2000
the school has sponsored an International
Summer School and Festival for pianists,
which has includes recitals by members
of its keyboard department and by the
Faculty of the Summer School. In 2004
and 2005 Martin Roscoe was a Faculty
member and recitalist.
Martin Roscoe is most
familiar to CD collectors for his many
performances on different labels of
the music of Dohnanyi, Pärt and
George Lloyd. He is also known for several
entries in Hyperion’s series of The
Romantic Piano Concerto. In this recital
he adheres pretty firmly to the Romantic
repertoire, performing standards by
Chopin and Schumann, and only entering
the twentieth century with the Ballade
of the contemporary British composer
Robert Keeley.
To start with the most
modern piece, Robert Keeley’s Ballade
made a very good impression. As mentioned
above, it was influenced in form by
the Chopin Ballades. Like them the basic
material is put through a variety of
contrasts and convolutions and one constantly
experiences finger-work and legato playing
that owe a lot to Chopin. But this is
also a modern piece cast in a fairly
conservative idiom with some impressionism
thrown in. Roscoe plays it with great
sympathy and also with a lot of excitement.
As Keeley is also prominent as a keyboardist,
one can imagine him writing a very exciting
two-piano work for himself and Martin
Roscoe to perform.
In the aforementioned
Chopin Ballade No.1 Roscoe is less exciting.
The quick sections are played in true
virtuoso fashion, but are too methodical.
The slower, central section is better
handled and Roscoe masterfully plays
the return to the faster tempo. Roscoe
shows the same disability in the Schumann
Kreisleriana. As is well known, each
of these musical self-portraits has
a fast and a slow section. Roscoe plays
the slow sections both poetically and
with technical ability, but the faster
sections again are too by-the-book:
technically correct, but not very moving.
This CD is a recording
of an actual recital very competently
recorded by Jim Pattison of Dunelm.
The notes are quite good. There are
many recordings of Kreisleriana and
the Chopin Ballade. This recital would
make a good back-up version of these
pieces. But it’s true selling point
is the Keeley Ballade.
William Kreindler
see also review
by Ian Milnes
Martin Roscoe (piano) 
