This disc seems to present seemingly irreconcilable poles in the
shape of the introspective oeuvre of Mompou and the volcanic Volodos, oftime
purveyor of the conveyor belt of romantic warhorses. In fact the tension
generated between repertoire and interpreter proves remarkable. I’ve
reviewed several all-Mompou recitals lately but none has proved nearly so
vivid and in many ways revelatory.
The main sequence is a selection from
Música callada.
This was a collection Mompou wrote between 1959 and 1967, and all of which
he recorded in an extensive series of sessions in 1974 [Brilliant 6515]
amongst most of his solo piano music. Mompou remains the starkest
interpreter of his own music, with a direct, un-refulgent, occasionally
aloof but harmonically fascinating approach. He is generally, as with most
composers, fleeter in tempi than other executants, and that’s almost
always the case here as well. The dryer, less dreamy aesthetic is explicit
in Callada No.1 but it’s No.2 that shows Volodos most on his mettle.
He varies his tonal weight and rubati with great subtlety and whilst he
prefers a more lateral approach than the composer - he doesn’t explore
the harmonic implications so searchingly - he vests the music with
considerable beauty. What I sometimes miss in Volodos’s
interpretations, as I do in many of those of his contemporaries, is an
appreciation of Mompou’s occasional strangeness. Through sparing use
of the pedal and a sense of distance and reserve, the composer turns No. 27,
a
molto lento, in to a truly inspiring but very otherworldly affair.
Employing far more pedal and richer tonal weight Volodos rather misses out
on the extra poignancy of the very lyrical B section here. Thus equally in
No. 25 - the pieces are not programmed chronologically in Volodos’
recital - one finds that his dynamics are quite sculpted and emphatic: a
beautiful touch to be sure, but sometimes one feels that there’s an
enveloping quality at work that smoothes out the individual pieces’
individual character.
For Volodos it’s limpid delicacy, the shimmering and richly
toned that lies at the heart of Mompou’s music. I’ve always
found Mompou’s stoicism and emphatic structural quests remarkable
examples of his playing even when his technique was no longer quite what it
had been. Thus whilst Volodos seems to assert the Debussian element in No.
16 Mompou points the left-hand harmonies in preference to stylistic homage.
I suppose that I am groping toward the fact that Volodos, for all his
aristocracy of phrasing and tone, can be just too overtly sophisticated in
this repertoire; his battery of expressive devices in No.21 seems sometimes
alien to the sparer aesthetic of the composer’s own performances.
The
Scènes d'enfants offer a rich variety of effects,
many of which are pronounced in the extreme, and Volodos’s tonal
reserves are alluring, to say the very least. The variations of texture and
colour Volodos evokes are remarkable; the half-lights too. That said, the
composer’s own plain speaking performances offer a perspective that no
self-respecting lover of the repertoire can possibly do without. Note, too,
how in the last of these brief five pieces the insinuating waltz that
emerges does so in a very much more pained way under the composer’s
fingers; the sense of loss, of looking back, is tautly evocative, whereas
Volodos’s view is, if I can put it this way, more conventionally
romantic.
Mompou is very much faster in
Le Lac, the sixth of
Paisajes but Volodos is full of suggestive metrical elasticity and
rippling quietude. It’s a ravishing performance though not one,
perhaps, that Mompou quite envisaged. There are also two lovely
transcriptions by Volodos to round out a programme that reveals his
identification with - and mastery of - this music. Presented in a sumptuous
hard-backed ‘book’ and engagingly illustrated, the performances
have been recorded with great warmth and richness. I enjoyed them greatly,
but the composer’s own way with his music remains a very different
landscape altogether.
Jonathan Woolf
See also review by
Brian Reinhart
