Comparative review
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Sept06/Pierce_KL5137.htm
This is the first
of three discs received for review featuring
the American pianist Joshua Pierce.
That he is a fine player is evident
from this collection, and biographical
information in the booklet and elsewhere
suggests that whilst perfectly at home
with the standard repertoire he has
also forged a reputation for contemporary
music, John Cage in particular, and,
more recently, Daron Hagen.
The rationale behind
the rather unusual programme is explained
by Eric Salzman in the accompanying
notes. He argues that the orchestra
and the piano were the dominant means
of musical expression throughout the
Romantic period, developing side by
side, the orchestra making the big public
statements while the piano served as
the ideal instrument for domestic music
making. It was this period of music
history, of course, which gave birth
to the piano concerto as a dramatic
battle between soloist and orchestra.
The writer uses this fact to draw attention
to another kind of writing for piano
and orchestra which he calls a "lyric
or narrative poem" in which the piano
tells the story and the orchestra "provides
the setting" (with these roles sometimes
reversed). There are, apparently, a
"huge number" of works in this vein
which are now forgotten. Well, I for
one have forgotten most of them, and
the argument seems only partly convincing.
Salzman's presentation of each of the
four works, however, is really excellent,
perfectly balanced between descriptive
and technical writing and a model of
what CD insert notes should be.
From the opening notes
of Finzi's Eclogue the composer
is unmistakeable. The work was to be
the slow movement of a piano concerto
which never saw the light of day. It
is an affecting piece, if without the
melodic distinction to be found in other
Finzi works, thinking of the concertos
in particular. The performance is a
thoughtful one, but a certain hardness
of tone from the soloist allied to a
close balance negates somewhat the pastoral
tone of the piece. (An eclogue is defined
in my dictionary as "a pastoral or idyllic
poem usually in the form of a conversation
or soliloquy".)
The soloist seems more
at home in the suite of twelve short
pieces which make up Milhaud's Le
Carnaval d'Aix. The themes are taken
from an earlier ballet entitled Salade
and elements of folk music from Sardinia
rub shoulders with jazz and tango. The
music is mainly lively, often brash,
though there are a few short moments
of repose. It is all great fun, I suppose,
and the work has become one of the composer's
more popular pieces. But it is a bit
relentless, and the steely-fingered
pianist plus orchestral playing which
also has its moments of harshness do
nothing to counteract this effect.
Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo
was composed in 1942 to a commission
from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
and the composer was the soloist in
the first performance. For one reason
or another he immediately withdrew the
work and it was only heard again after
his death. The music portrays the young
god in all his hard, dazzling splendour.
The opening is as icy-cold and brilliant
as that of Les Illuminations
(completed some little time before despite
the later opus number) and the two works
share the same voice. (Interestingly,
at the very end of his life, Britten
returned to a similar sound-world to
evoke the Athenian sun in Phaedra.)
The transformation of the opening theme
into the closing gesture is typical
of the composer's precocious talent
during this period. A short reflective
passage just before the end is sensitively
handled by the soloist and the challenging
bravura throughout the rest of the piece
holds no fears for him. The orchestral
playing is excellent. Peter Donohoe
and Simon Rattle on EMI found rather
more human sentiment behind the steely
sheen of this piece, but I suspect that
Joshua Pierce is more faithful to the
composer's intentions. The work has
had very few recordings and this performance
is easily good enough to make the disc
valuable for this work alone.
The programme closes
with the concert suite Strauss prepared
in 1920 from the incidental music he
had composed for an earlier German-language
production of Molière's Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Incorporating
many elements of eighteenth-century
music, the suite is sufficiently well
known to need no introduction. It is
rather the odd-man-out in this programme
though, since the piano part is fully
integrated in the orchestra and is arguably
even less important than the solo parts
for violin and cello, excellently played
here by Frantisek Figura and Pavol Simcik.
The playing is well up to the standard
of the rest of the disc, but again I
sensed a lack of charm and elegance,
a feeling confirmed when I played Jeffrey
Tate's reading from 1986 with the English
Chamber Orchestra.
The programme is interesting
and a welcome change from the usual
concerto fare. Joshua Pierce is a pianist
who need fear no comparison with the
finest and the orchestral support from
two Slovak orchestras led by the English
conductor Kirk Trevor is excellent.
The recording is close and rather unforgiving.
These elements combined work well in
the Britten and Milhaud pieces, and
if there is more tranquillity in the
Finzi and more simple charm in the Strauss
than these performers display, this
really is no reason not to invest in
this excellent disc if the programme
appeals.
William Hedley
And Rob Barnett writes:-
Trust Kleos to approach
a collection of music for piano and
orchestra in an unhackneyed way. This
medley of works from the first half
of the last century makes for a provocative
mixture. There's two British works -
each very brief, one quintessentially
spiritual-pastoral; the other pagan,
dazzling and international. Milhaud
and Strauss stand as representatives
of the two major European nations.
The Britten is work
of gilded youth and celebrates - even
idolises - youth in much the same way
as Britten did at the other end of his
life in the opera Death in Venice.
Comparing Pierce with the Peter Donohoe/Rattle
version on EMI Classics (CZS 5
73983 2) Pierce comes off best with
a much more vivid immediacy to the piano
and orchestra. The demerit is that the
Kleos sound does not make as much of
dynamic contrast as the 1982 EMI recording
now available as part of a very compactly
packed 2 CD set. Young Apollo
was written in Woodstock, New
York in 1939. It depicts the birth,
to renewed youthful godhead, of Apollo
'quivering with radiant vitality'. The
music has a static quality, a barbaric
shimmer and a sense of fanfares, and
awed celebration. The composer withdrew
the work shortly after the premiere
but it was revived three years after
his death in 1976.
The Carnaval
d'Aix took twelve of the seventeen
segments Milhaud had written in 1926
for the commedia dell'arte ballet
Salade to a scenario by Albert
Flament and arranged them for piano
and orchestra. He called it Carnaval
d'Aix as a salute to Saint-Saëns'
Carnaval d'animaux and as a tribute
to his home town Aix. The Cinzio
and Souvenir De Rio are a
sort of mediation between Provencal
folk dances and the tango and maxixe.
As the author of the liner-note says,
the finale like everything else here
is brief, witty and charming. If you
enjoy Stravinsky's Pulcinella,
Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit and
La Création du Monde and
Ibert's Escales then do not hesitate.
The de Froment-conducted version of
Carnaval (on Vox) has more pepper
and keeps you in closer and more tangy
touch with the orchestral details. Pierce
and his Slovakian colleagues are no
slouches either.
Finally we come to
the Finzi Eclogue which
originally was to be the middle movement
of a piano concerto (never completed)
in much the same way as Introit was
the middle movement of a violin concerto.
The piece we know today has been edited
by Joy Finzi, Christopher Finzi - who
conducted the famous Wilfred Brown recording
of Dies Natalis - and Howard
Ferguson - who did so much for the Finzi
revival including recording the song
cycles for Lyrita and arranging the
Oboe Interlude for orchestra.
This version of Finzi's
Eclogue is not at all recommendable.
It is here despatched as a piece of
workaday routine with none of the vernal
melancholy-ecstasy that lends wings
to Finzi's works. Better to seek out
the Philip Fowke version although the
1994 one on Classics For Pleasure
7243 5 75983 2 3. Best of all, though
currently inaccessible despite its strengths,
is the Lyrita LP version by Peter Katin.
Katin seems better adjusted to the pastoral
spirituality of the piece.
The Strauss Le Bourgeois
Gentilhomme is the most extensive
piece here. It dates from 1912 when
it was linked into the opera Ariadne
auf Naxos. This version is clever
and entertaining in a neo-classical
style.
This is an unusual
and well assembled collection that should
appeal to the adventurous listener.
Rob Barnett
Joshua
Pierce (piano)
for
details
