Aram KHACHATURIAN (1903-1978)
Piano Sonata (1961) [26:45]
Two Pieces (1926) [3:54]
Childrens’ Album, Book 1 (1947) [18:30]
Poem (1927) [9:46]
Sonatina (1959) [9:10]
Toccata (1932) [5:04]
Iyad Sughayer (piano)
rec. 2018, Stoller Hall, Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, UK
Reviewed in Stereo and Surround
BIS BIS-2436 SACD [74:46]
It must be a dilemma for young pianists making their way in the profession to decide what to record for their debut disc. I’m sympathetic to the majority who seem to adopt a ‘safety first’ approach in choosing repertoire which is already familiar to the listening public, who can then make relatively informed comparative judgements regarding the abilities, personalities and idiosyncrasies of the young performer, but it arguably takes greater courage to select music that is virtually unknown, albeit by a composer whose name just about remains familiar. So hats off to 25 year old Iyad Sughayer for choosing Aram Khachaturian’s little-known piano music for his first recital disc.
I found a recent interview in which this Jordanian-Palestinian performer justified the decision in two ways. Firstly, after initially taking lessons in his native Amman, at age 14 Sughayer won a place at Chetham’s School in Manchester, the city which to all intents and purposes has become his adoptive home, and where he subsequently attended the RNCM. His most influential teacher has been the indefatigable Murray McLachlan who is perhaps best known for his evangelical advocacy of twentieth century Soviet piano music and who eventually introduced his new protégé to this repertoire. Secondly, Sughayer suggested the overlap between the folk-influenced exoticism of the native Armenian music which so inspired Khachaturian and the sounds of his own upbringing in the Middle East was a big factor in his choice, as were the considerable technical challenges presented by these pieces.
In point of fact the first all Khachaturian piano disc I recall was Murray McLachlan’s own traversal of many of these pieces, originally issued by Olympia in the 1990s, reissued more recently by Regis and reviewed here. More recently, a Grand Piano issue including four of the works on the new disc (including the revised version of the Sonata) played by the composer’s compatriot Kariné Poghosyan certainly impressed my colleague Steve Arloff (review). As a boy of 13 I remember picking up Peter Katin’s account of Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto with the LSO and Hugo Rignold on an ancient Recorded Music Circle LP and being blown away by the work. Decades later I remember hearing the McLachlan disc and feeling distinctly underwhelmed by much of the music but impressed by some of the technical aspects of the Sonata and the mechanical vitality of the Toccata.
What is beyond question about the new disc is Iyad Sughayer
’s exceptional pianism and BIS’s magnificent sound. I note that it was recorded on a Steinway ‘D’ in Manchester (is this a first for the label?) at the splendid new Stoller Hall, appropriately part of the Chetham’s campus, and whatever reservations one may have about the actual music I suspect very few listeners will fail to be impressed by the ravishing colours and percussive power Sughayer
draws from the instrument, by his machine-like rhythmic consistency in the most rapid passages of the Sonata, Sonatina and Toccata and by the phenomenal dynamic range the recording faithfully reproduces in both sound formats, although I confess to having a preference for listening to solo instrumental recitals through two speakers.
Khachaturian tinkered with the 1961 Piano Sonata right up to the final years of his life and in my view Sughayer
makes the right choice in playing the revised version. MacLachlan recorded the original; the central Andante tranquillo – Allegro ma non troppo comes in on his disc at almost 14 minutes and I find the rather thin material quite outstays its welcome as well as seeming gawky and out of kilter with the outer panels. In the revision the central movement carries a leaner, cooler countenance which provides an atmospheric counterbalance to the thrilling motoric passages which dominate the outer movements. Sughayer
conveys an austere Bartokian mystery at its opening which is most appealing, while his deep appreciation of the movement’s strange architecture seems to elicit unusually organic shifts between its alternating angularity and romanticism. However it’s the scattergun excitement Sughayer
generates in the first and third movements which truly registers. He somehow manages to keep the latent energy generated by the music on a tight rein and seems to tame Khachaturian’s motoric excesses by carefully tiering the dynamics in these rapid episodes. This is most apparent in the Allegro assai opening of the finale, whose fearsome machinery Sughayer
keeps under tight control, and the nagging melody which pokes through is varied most tastefully, creating an impact not unlike that of a Soviet counterpart to Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. This dazzling account certainly raises the bar in terms of presenting the work as a coherent, convincing whole; notwithstanding the best efforts of Murray McLachlan and others I have previously found much of the Sonata repetitive, diffuse and ultimately rather empty.
Khachaturian’s Sonatina predates the original version of the Sonata by a couple of years and superficially at least can almost be taken as a study for the bigger work. However, as Richard Whitehouse explains in the note it was intended as a training piece and dedicated to the students of the music school in Prokopevsk. Sughayer
dashes off the attractive two-part writing in the opening Allegro giocoso and finds unexpected depths in its colours and beats; his fluency and precision in this deceptively simple music is oddly compelling, as is his seemingly innate ability to reveal its unexpected lyricism. He makes as good a case anyone could possibly make for the central Andante con anima whose Ravelian stylings are rather too obvious, although the work as a whole is redeemed somewhat by its Allegro mosso finale by dint of the composer affording a little more space for the development of his ideas, and ultimately achieving something more obviously individual.
Apart from an intense, tightly argued, deliciously coloured account of the Toccata, certainly Khachaturian’s most renowned piano piece, the composer’s early oeuvre is represented by two products from the mid-1920s. Sughayer
chances upon both Rachmaninov and Prokofiev in the rather repetitive Waltz-Caprice from the Two Pieces of 1926, while the second of these miniatures is a spiky and unmemorable Allegro Marcato. The Poem of 1927 is a rambling, rhapsodic construction in which the young soloist nonetheless manages to find both soulfulness and logic. Where the collision of episodes could so easily jar, Sughayer
somehow finds an easy contiguity between passages that evoke Albeniz at one moment and York Bowen the next. Potential listeners need to forgive any limitations of the music per se and absorb instead Sughayer
’s ravishing playing, his judicious layering of dynamics and his sensitivity to the shifts in mood implied by the piece. The Poem gets a performance and recording it scarcely deserves.
Completing the disc are the ten lightweight pieces from Book 1 of Khachaturian’s Children’s Album. I found them inoffensive, infrequently charming, obviously pedagogic. The final two pieces linger longest in the memory; the concluding In Folk Style blends simple diatonicism with Bartokian acerbity, while Sughayer
’s galloping equestrianism in the ninth piece, The Cavalry constitutes a highlight of a sequence which apart from its utilitarian educational purpose only really serves to fill out one’s appreciation of the breadth of this composer’s piano output.
In the final analysis I commend this disc to lovers of magnificent pianism and outstanding recorded fidelity. The style, technique and taste of the performer and the sonics in both formats (unquestionably helped along by the remarkable acoustics of the Stoller Hall) will amply reward the curious, more than the attractions of Aram Khatchaturian’s defiantly uneven piano music. Having said that, while I have no doubt whatsoever that Iyad Sughayer will in time make far more important recordings than this, I applaud his imagination and sense of adventure in kicking off his career with Khachaturian as opposed to more tried and tested repertoire. BIS appear to have unearthed another piano-playing diamond.
Richard Hanlon
