Herman D. KOPPEL (1908-1998)
Piano Concerto No.3, Op.45 (1948) [32:31]
Pastorale (1942) [3:32]
Ten Piano Pieces, Op.20 (1933) [7:20]
Benjamin KOPPEL (b.1974)
Nine Dialogical Responses, for alto saxophone and piano (2019) [20:53]
Rikke Sandberg (piano)
Benjamin Koppel (saxophone)
South Jutland Symphony Orchestra/Bo Holten
rec. 2019, Alison Concert Hall, Sønderborg
DANACORD DACOCD856 [64:12]
Herman D Koppel’s Third Piano Concerto was premièred in September 1948 on the same programme as a Handel Concerto grosso and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Nikolai Malko conducted. In three conventional movements it illustrates all that is most approachable about his music. Its opening is droll and dapper with very clear orchestral strands supporting a general level of insouciance. Matters pass back and forth between the solo piano and the orchestra, whilst Koppel reserves particular interest when he pitches the piano against the solo winds. Cast somewhere between Prokofiev and French models, there is much pianistic refinement to be savoured in the slow movement, where Koppel also ratchets up tension via brass calls and glinting treble. For lovers of bravura, head for the finale where a gloriously off-kilter giocoso air prevails.
After the generously engaging theatrics of this performance, pianist Rikke Sandberg presents a kind of bonne bouche in the form of Koppel’s 1942 Pastorale, brief and deft, a delicious solo on which to ponder the prevailing circumstances at the time of its composition.
Thereafter there is a piece, the presentation of which might concern or even alienate some listeners. This is Koppel’s series of Ten Piano Pieces, Op.20 of 1933, and they are very brief and apercu-like. One or two last 15 seconds, several others 30 seconds, a couple last a minute and only one, the final piece, stretches nearly two minutes. Restful and intimate Koppel’s pieces are, however, each followed by his grandson Benjamin Koppel’s Nine Dialogical Responses for alto saxophone and piano, composed in 2019. They are intended both as a commentary on the preceding piano piece and a preparation for the next one. Thus, you can’t very well hear the Ten Piano Pieces as a cycle. I happen to like Benjamin Koppel’s ‘call and response’ work, enjoying the up-tempo and tangy, raunchy, jazz-rocky and occasionally wailing pieces – even when he half quotes Gershwin. But whereas Herman Koppel’s pieces are largely aphoristic, Benjamin’s tend to be blues-drenched and stomping and significantly longer. How you respond to this dichotomous, hybrid presentation is up to you.
Perhaps this is of a piece with the engaging booklet notes written both by Sandberg and Benjamin Koppel, which range intimately and personally across the music covered. With Bo Holten directing the South Jutland Symphony so well in the concerto one is assured of incisive orchestral support and there’s a fine recording to go along with it. There’s just a little nagging thought in my mind that the Concerto could have better bracketed with other large-scale works.
Jonathan Woolf
