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March/April,
2003
I've long
since given up being surprised at the quality of music by composers writing
outside the mainstream: some of the figures who haven't had a look-in are
masters nonetheless. What can still bring me up delightedly short is the
discovery that a composer of whom I thought I had the measure turns out to have
a much more substantial creative profile than I had suspected. It's heartening
to have to eat one's words when that happens, of course, and I am glad to make a
public apology to Reinhold Glière. Under the influence of his Third Symphony
(Ilya Mourametz), the Concerto for soprano and orchestra and other such syrupy
scores, I had thought Glière (1875-1956) was a man of overblown late-Romantic
gestures. Anthony Goldstone's recording of his 25 Preludes,
Op. 30, of 1907 (Olympia
OCD 711) demands a re-assessment. Arranged in pairs of major and minor keys,
and rising by semitones, the Preludes are a major
discovery. The style has its anchor in Chopin, with a tonal richness earned via
Schumann and Brahms, and just a hint of Scriabin's chromatic nervousness;
Goldstone's excellent notes point out other resemblances - here Fauré, there
Liszt, here again Rachmaninoff. The piano-writing is prodigious -
virtuosic without being flashy, powerful without sacrificing melody. The set
lasts some 50 minutes and would provide an enterprising pianist with the meat
of a pioneering recital; cherry-picking would also furnish some audience-elating
selections. Goldstone adds the Three Mazurkas, Op. 29 (1906),
which grow from teasingly coy to imperiously assertive, and the Twelve
Esquisses, Op. 47 (1909) - some surprisingly bluesy touches here - and he
plays all of it with sonorous aplomb, in the best-recorded piano tone I have
heard in a long time. A magnificent release, hotly recommended.
Martin
Anderson
by courtesy of International Piano and Martin Anderson
Piano NEWS (Germany)
Piano News, Magazine for Piano and Grand Piano, 2 / 2003 March / April (originally: Piano News, Magazin für Klavier und Flügel)
It
is remarkable that Reinhold Glière (1875-1956), born in Kiev, was so little noticed
by the pianists until now even though he composed so
marvellous music for this instrument. Could it have been that this composer,
who studied in Berlin for three years, then was a director of the Kiev
conservatory and later among other things taught Prokofi'ev, Mijaskovski and
Chatschaturjan, was regarded as "decadent" during the Russian
revolution? Or could it be, that he was never the innovator in a time,
in which Skrjabin designed a harmonic system of its own?
Nevertheless
one must inevitably admit when hearing this CD, Glière made marvellous cycles.
Some of the 25 Préludes of the year 1907 constantly remind in the cyclical
construction of
other composers like Chopin, Skrjabin and perhaps of some of the romantic heroes, who write for the piano. Nevertheless Glière
with his connection of Neo-Romanticism
and Russian folk-songs created independent works, which are worth-while to get
to know. The British pianist Anthony Goldstone knows how to play these works in
a marvellously accurate detail and transposes them according to the partly virtuoso
demands.
In
this way the Préludes become a statement of the Russian departure between
Romanticism and Modern age, the 3 Mazurkas remind for a tangy comparison with
those of other composers and are equal to those in every aspect. Especially the 12 short
"Esquisses" of the year 1909 are marvellously subtle miniatures
which reflect the imaginativeness of this composer.
A
CD that should be listened to, if one wants to enlarge his/her horizon.
Carsten
Dürer
by courtesy
of Piano
NEWS and Carsten Dürer
(translation into English by Olaf Schnadt)
