composer - OZArtsReview

W.A. Symphony Orchestra

reviewer Live Performance April 20, 2018June 5, 2018Achim Freyer, Chon, chopin, Cohn, composer, Covent Garden, Ettinger, London, Neville Chon, Neville Cohn, orchestra, Perth, piano, symphony, viola, WASO

Perth Concert Hall

reviewed by Neville Cohn

On Saturday, Shostakovich’s Festive Overture was informed by a sense of immense gaiety, an ideal way to launch an orchestral program. Brass calls and woodwinds in fine fettle brought the overture to genial, pulsing life. The joie de vivre that lies at its heart was evoked to the nth degree by visiting Israeli conductor Dan Ettinger, a conductor who knew exactly what he was doing. The roar of approval that greeted the conclusion of the work was thoroughly warranted.

Ettinger has conducted opera at Covent Garden and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He has also made a DVD of Wagner’s Ring cycle of operas directed by Achim Freyer as well as conducting the Ring at Tokyo’s New National Theatre.

Unlike its heyday when it featured in the repertoire of just about every pianist in Europe from Liszt down, Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto in G minor is seldom heard these days. On Saturday, the featured soloist was Argentine Ingrid Fliter, gowned in black with a floral motif. After some initial blurring and slips of the finger, the soloist retrieved the initiative, marshalling Mendelssohn’s floodtide of often ferociously taxing notes with gratifying skill and elan.

Violas were in particularly fine fettle in the slow movement with Fliter revealing its introspective, lyrical essence with very real understanding. And in the finale, the soloist gave us a scintillating account in a way which allowed the composer’s ideas to be heard in the most meaningful of ways. From first note to last, Ettinger took the WASO through an ideal accompaniment.

Warm, protracted applause was rewarded by a perhaps overlong encore – the first of Chopin’s published waltzes – played with a flair and fluency that informed the music with a delightful buoyancy.

There wasn’t an empty chair – with many standing – to listen to Tim White’s first rate pre-concert talk, brimming with fascinating fact. For those standing further back, though, there was a need for greater sound amplification.

All-Mozart Compilation

reviewer Recordings - CDs August 28, 2017June 5, 2018c minor, Chon, Cohn, composer, conertgebouw orchestra, Cyrus Meher-Homji, mozart, Neville Chon, Neville Cohn, orchestra, Perth, perth concert hall, symphony no. 29, vn beinum

various concerto soloists

Symphonies 29, 33 & 35

Concertgebouworkest

Eduard van Beinum, conductor

Eloquence 482 5525 (2CD)

TPT: 147’ 11”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Not the least of the many good things flowing from this re-issue of Philips LP recordings in the compact disc format is making available to an entirely new constituency of listeners the work of musicians of considerable consequence whose recordings of decades ago, for a variety of reasons, have, as it were, fallen through the cracks. The tireless Cyrus Meher-Homji continues this important work with a 2CD re-issue of an all-Mozart compilation of recordings that thoroughly deserve being brought back to life.

As a young teenager, I was given an LP recording of Hubert Barwahser playing on the now defunct Philips label. I still have it. Here, Barwahser sounds at his eloquent, articulate best in ensemble with another almost-forgotten soloist: Phia Berghout on harp in the Concerto for flute and harp. Yet another musician richly deserving this resurrection is the formidably gifted English pianist Kathleen Long who in the mid-20^th century enjoyed a dazzling career.

This is vintage Long. Listen to her playing Mozart’s C minor concerto; it’s a joy from start to finish, blissfully free of fuss or frills.

Presiding over events from the podium is Eduard van Beinum, a first rate musician to which the players of the Concertgebouw Orchestra would respond time and again to provide some of the most satisfying and meaningful recorded music in mid-century Europe and further abroad.

Bram de Wilde is a fine soloist in the Clarinet Concerto. Tone quality is particularly appealing in the chalumeau register. The work unfolds near-flawlessly.

Van Beinum recorded Symphony No 29 in 1957. Sixty years on, it’s as relevant and stylistically meaningful as it would have been when first made available on LP.

This CD is all the more to be treasured because these works are the ONLY Mozart works which van Beinum recorded with the Concertgebouworkest.

The Operatic Pianist

reviewer Recordings - CDs March 30, 2017June 6, 2018andrew wright, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Veronika Eberle, Chon, Cohn, composer, Neville Chon, Neville Cohn, Perth, piano, Sigismund Thalberg, the operatic pianist, Western Australia

Andrew Wright (piano)

Divine Art dda 25113

TPT: 64’48”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

During the 19^th century, there was a remarkable flowering of operatic composition. It met a huge popular demand and every European city of significance built an opera house to cater for the genre’s enthusiasts. But for opera lovers living in small towns, say, or in villages, there was almost no opportunity to experience opera, apart from, perhaps, a visit from this or that small touring company. To counter this shortage – or complete absence – of opera beyond the big cities, pianists responded to this need by incorporating into their recitals arrangements of operatic excerpts, most frequently a favourite aria, say, or this or that overture or dance episode.

This was a successful development and some pianists were able to maintain careers based largely on these operatic offerings. And until radio and recordings made opera more widely available, operatic extravaganzas at the keyboard kept many pianists very busy on the concert circuit.

Nowadays, operatic excerpts in piano recitals are rare – and Andrew Wright is one of the few musicians to maintain the tradition. This fascinating CD includes not only 19^th- century operatic extracts but some composed by Wright himself.

They make intriguing listening.

Operatic extracts for piano solo or piano duet were also very popular in the drawing rooms of wealthy homes in European cities. This was especially so for young ladies for whom some accomplishment at the piano was considered desirable in the marriage stakes.

Numbers of significant composers made arrangements of grand opera for piano solo, the most famous being Liszt. His versions of extracts from Wagner’s operas are still occasionally encountered in piano recital programs. Israeli conductor Asher Fisch recently brought out a memorable CD of piano arrangements of Wagnerian opera extracts.

During much of the 19^th century and up until the 1920s, virtuosic arrangements of this type were an ineradicable feature of just about every pianist on the international concert circuit.

But in broad terms, the age of virtuoso arrangements for piano of operatic extracts is largely past – but there’s a good deal to be said in positive terms of Andrew Wright’s CD “The Operatic Pianist”.

In the grand tradition of pianists playing their own arrangements of excerpts from this or that opera, we can listen to Wright’s own keyboard versions of extracts from, inter alia, Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable in which he seems positively to revel in the many challenges posed by music that was never intended to be played on the piano. I think Meyerbeer would have been chuffed no end by Wright’s keyboard arrangement. It’s a winner.

Listen to the version of Casta Diva from Bellini’s Norma, here in an arrangement by Sigismund Thalberg (no mean pianist himself). It is most beautifully played, its inherent simplicity of line presented with most appealing tone quality. Wright is no less persuasive in an arrangement of one of Wagner’s most loved arias: The Evening Star from Tannhauser. And the aching beauty of Liszt’s version for piano of Isolde’s Liebestod is splendidly revealed.

(piano)

Divine Art dda 25113

TPT: 64’48”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

They make intriguing listening.

During much of the 19^th century and up until the 1920s, virtuosic arrangements of this type were an ineradicable feature of just about every pianist on the international concert circuit.

Grigory Sokolov (piano)

reviewer Recordings - CDs March 30, 2017June 6, 2018beethoven, brahms, Chon, Cohn, composer, Neville Chon, Neville Cohn, Perth, Rameau, Schubert, Sokolov, Western Australia

Schubert, Beethoven, Rameau

DG 479 5426

reviewed by Neville Cohn

During the years when I taught music criticism, I would, early on in the course, ask how many of the students had listened to Beethoven’s Hammerklavier piano sonata, either ‘live’ or recorded. Not a single student had done so. And during a lifetime of working as a critic, I recall only a very few occasions when I was able to listen to a ‘live’ account of this extraordinary work.

Its physical demands are so immense and its ideas so complex and taxing in both physical and emotional terms that only a very select few are game – and able – to traverse its dauntingly challenging terrain with confidence.

Decades ago, at a recital in Cape Town, one of a series devoted to Beethoven’s complete 32 piano sonatas, the Hammerklavier was given a performance which was unforgettable – but for all the wrong reasons.

It was only moments into the performance by a pianist who will remain nameless that it became clear – and depressingly clearer as the work unfolded – that physical management of the notes was the sole aim of the performer. So involved in the notational management of the piece was this player that very little attention had been given to revealing the demon lurking behind the printed note. It remained almost totally hidden.

What we were given was a race to the end (which faltered increasingly) in purely physical terms. It was a depressing experience.

But to listen to Grigory Sokolov is to experience music making at the highest imaginable level. Remember: this is no studio recording allowing for bits and pieces of it to be recorded and recorded again until the soloist feels satisfied by that particular succession of notes. No. This is music that in the most frank and alert way brings the listener face to face with the composer.

There’s an immediacy about the playing that that makes one feel that if Beethoven himself had been present at this performance, he might well have wanted to embrace this remarkable Russian. At its most extravert, this is playing that sets the pulse racing; it is a reading of the most authoritative sort – and all the more welcome for its rarity. In this deeply probing, thoughtful reading, listening to Sokolov becomes a journey of discovery, the playing revealing detail and insights only very infrequently encountered in other, lesser, accounts of the work,

There would be very few pianists anywhere on the planet able to match this recording which, in the most meaningful sense, is evidence of greatness. Sokolov makes the unplayable accessible. He reveals its myriad details without losing sight of its overall design as only few can, Sokolov taking the listener into the composer’s idiosyncratic world and makes it accessible, meaningful, unforgettable.

The sonata was recorded ‘live’ at a recital given by Sokolov in Salzburg.

Also on disc are Schubert’s Impromptus D899 and Three Piano Pieces D946 as well as encores by Rameau and Brahms.