Marco Sollini has made
something of a speciality of recording
the piano compositions of operatic composers:
his series of the piano works of Rossini
is ongoing with Chandos; on Bongiovanni
(GB 5118-2) he recorded one recital
including works by Bellini, Verdi and
Persiani and another (GB 5100-2) made
up of compositions
for piano by Puccini,
Giordano and Mascagni. The present CD
is the second that Sollini has devoted
to Offenbach’s piano works.The first
volume was reviewed earlier in these
pages (review).
It will come as no
surprise to hear that this is not a
disc for those who insist that their
music must have intellectual weight
or emotional profundity. This is decidedly
lightweight, largely superficial, emotionally
uninvolved. But it is also witty, sparkling
and imbued in every bar with the spirit
of the dance. Here are engaging, if
not especially distinctive, waltzes,
polkas, mazurkas and galops.
The booklet notes tell
us that as a young man Offenbach – always
good at self-publicity – contrived to
get himself mentioned in a Parisian
magazine, Ménestrel, in
the following terms:
This Offenbach regularly
composes three waltzes, before breakfast,
a mazurka after lunch, and four gallops
between two meals. This young wonder
asks us to communicate that he has just
lost a white handkerchief on which he
had scribbled the notes of a waltz composition.
A high reward is promised to the person
who finds the handkerchief".
The facility of composition
claimed here, while obviously exaggerated,
has some truth to it – as reflected
in the sheer number of operas he wrote!
The piano pieces were not, one suspects,
the fruits of great struggles or deliberation.
Though precise dates aren’t given it
appears that most of the music heard
on this CD comes from the period between
about 1850 and 1875. These are salon
pieces, many of them bearing titles
grounded in the details of Offenbach’s
personal life – the polka-mazurka ‘Madeleine’
was dedicated to the actress of the
Théatre Français, Madeleine
Brohan; the ‘Schüler-Pola’ bears
the name of the singer Clara Schüler,
with whom Offenbach was amorously involved;
the suite of waltzes entitled ‘Jacqueline’
honours Offenbach’s daughter; the ‘Herminien-Walzer’
is dedicated to Herminie d’Alcain, the
beautiful Spaniard he married in 1844.
There is, indeed, a sensuous and amorous
quality to much of this music, its exhilarations
dedicated to at least two muses, Terpsichore
and Erato.
Occasionally Marco
Sollini’s ‘dancing’ at the keyboard
seems just a little stiff-limbed, a
little too straight-backed as it were;
one can imagine more fluid, more insinuatingly
amorous readings of some of these pieces.
But for the most part these are lively,
committed and obviously affectionate
performances, and they make for an enjoyable,
refreshing programme – even if Offenbach’s
writing for the piano doesn’t stimulate
the desire for champagne with quite
the potency that his best writing for
the stage does!
Glyn Pursglove
Marco Sollini (piano: Steinway & sons mod.
D) 
