Fur Elise - OZArtsReview

Geoffrey Lancaster (fortepiano) James Huntingford (fortepiano)

reviewer Live Performance July 4, 2018Chon, Cohn, Fur Elise, Geoffrey Lancaster, James Huntingford, WAAPA

WAAPA Music Auditorium

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Prior to the performance at WAAPA Auditorium on Saturday, how many concertgoers, I wondered, would have realised that the opening item on the program, listed as Bagatelle in A minor, was, in fact, the much-loved Fur Elise? And as Geoffrey Lancaster ushered in what could arguably be the most famous of any keyboard piece described as bagatelle, there was a faint but nonetheless audible sigh of recognition as Fur Elise registered its presence. Prior to that, we listened to a very brief overture to the celebrated bagatelle, a flurry followed by a more sober statement that led into the piece proper.

This was of course, standard performance practice in Beethoven’s day.

But as Fur Elise unfolded, I noticed a number of concertgoers turning to their companions with a puzzled look. Others seemed almost offended.

These were perfectly understandable reactions because the underlying beat of the bagatelle was often extraordinarily elastic, now an acceleration, now much slower and introverted.

It’s playing that is utterly at odds with current conventional treatment of the piece.

But this was not some wilful or eccentric caprice on Lancaster’s part. On the contrary, what we were listening to was the product of years – decades – searching for musical truth – and offered with an authority born of the most detailed research.

For those with access to the very first recordings made by pianists in the early years of last century – many of these are now available – it may well be instructive, even revelatory, to discover how similar to Lancaster’s keyboard approach to Fur Elise some of these very early recordings are. Careful listening to these will show how much in evidence this elasticity of the beat the playing of the era was, how frequently hands were not precisely in accord with one another. There’s a mood of extemporisation to much of it.

But within a remarkably short period after those first recordings being made available, this manner of performance was to vanish almost completely to be replaced by the far stricter treatment of rhythm and hand co-ordination that we now take for granted. And Lancaster is at the forefront of those bringing back that style into play (no pun intended). It’s too early to tell whether it will ultimately prevail.

It takes considerable courage to place so drastic an alteration to the status quo before the public. It’s an initiative that can so easily backfire courtesy of those who won’t hear (no pun intended) of so drastic a change to the status quo. It’s the music equivalent of an earthquake.

We also listened to Beethoven’s Rondos opus 51. These are great favourites with earnest young piano pupils at local eisteddfodau. But, again, as in Lancaster’s treatment of Fur Elise, there was authority in every measure as we were taken back in time to listen to music as those in Beethoven’s time might well have experienced it. Sonata in C minor from opus 10 (most of the program consisted of music in either C major or C Minor) was frankly fascinating; it was if we were hearing it for the very first time – and as Beethoven himself might have wanted it to sound.

James Huntingford played, inter alia, the Waldstein sonata, music that is no-man’s-land for any other than musicians with complete physical mastery of the instrument. I especially admired the closing pages of the first movement, given magical treatment, the sound reaching the ear as if through layers of fine gauze. It called to mind Moiseiwitch’s unforgettable 78rpm recording for HMV made during the 1950s.. The Pathetique sonata, too, fell well on the ear. Its lengthy adagio introduction could hardly have been bettered. On the evidence of this performance, Huntingford is clearly a fortepianist on the rise.

Eileen Joyce – The Complete Studio Recordings

reviewer Recordings - CDs June 10, 2018482 6291, beethoven, Chopin’s Waltz in E minor Op, Eileen Joyce, Fur Elise, Grzegorz Fitelberg, London Philharmonic, Mewton Wood, Neville Chon, Neville Cohn

DECCA 482 6291 (10 CDs)

reviewed by Neville Cohn

I was a junior school boy when Eileen Joyce came to Cape Town and I still recall the thrill of hearing the great Australian pianist playing Beethoven’s Fur Elise as an encore – and her predilection for wearing a different gown for each work on the program.

At the time, it would probably have been fair to say that Joyce and Donald Bradman were the two most famous of living Australians. Times change. While Bradman still holds an honoured place in the affections of Ozzies, Joyce’s star has dulled somewhat.

Recently, I spoke to a number of concertgoers in their 70s and older; they instantly recalled the great pianist. But of eleven teenage piano students I spoke to about Joyce, only three knew who she was. Another wondered if she was in one of Australia’s swimming teams at the Commonwealth Games. Another asked if she was the pianist who was born in a tent!

This collection of ten CDs incorporating just about everything Joyce recorded over the years will go a long way to rescuing her from an increasing and undeserved obscurity.

Joyce had a penchant for the music of Grieg with which she was strongly associated A good deal of her celebrity rests on her many accounts of his piano concerto: this one is splendid – as are her performances of many of the celebrated Norwegian’s miniatures. In Joyce’s hands, they come across as a catalogue of delights, a series of tiny sonic gems which variously gleam, glitter or twinkle. They were recorded for the Parlophone label in 1939.

During 1938 – also for Parlophone – Joyce recorded a number of Rachmaninov’s preludes. They come across like a chaplet of flawless gems.

I listened with particular interest to her account of Tchaikowsky’s Piano Concerto No 2. It’s a frankly terrible performance dating from 1946 with the London Philharmonic conducted by Grzegorz Fitelberg. It was never released during Joyce’s lifetime, a completely understandable decision. Its opening is as stodgy as a cake fallen flat – and it was with a sense of relief that I listened to its closing moments. It is 33 wasted minutes.

(Intriguingly, there’s another early recording of the work by yet another Australian pianist – Noel Mewton Wood, sadly now almost forgotten. His virtuosity is thrilling. It does not so much attract the attention as seize it in a vice-like grip. Mewton Wood died tragically young, committing suicide in the wake of the death of a lover.)

Incidentally, there’s another Joyce recording now released for the very first time: Chopin’s Waltz in E minor Op. Posth, dating from 1947.

In choosing the repertoire which made her famous, Joyce was a realist. She played only that over which she had complete physical and emotional control (except, of course, the Tchaikowsky concerto). Not for her, say, the Everests of Beethoven’s late sonatas or the intricacies of the preludes and fugues of Shostakovich.

In public and in the recording studio, she played what she knew she could do as well – and often better – than her fellow musicians: miniatures by Grieg, early Beethoven, numbers of contemporary concertos, usually by British composers. Listen to Joyce playing John Ireland’s Piano Concerto in E flat: it’s a model of its kind. She sails through it’s often excruciatingly taxing measures as if to the manner born. And her account of Shostakovich’s Concerto for piano, trumpet and orchestra, with Leslie Howard presiding over the Halle Orchestra, comes up trumps, too.

There’s a very rare recording of Turina’s Rapsodia Sinfonica with orchestra conducted by Clarence Raybould – and a tidal wave of piano miniatures many of long vanished from the repertoire notwithstanding their charm: Henselt’s Were I a Bird, Farjoen’s Tarantella, Bergman’s Polka Caprice and Schlozer’s Etude in A flat – and more.

Some commentators have been snide about Joyce’s work in the baroque revival which opened up a new world for many whether as performers or listeners. Since

then, much scholarly research has delivered ever more meaningful and stylistically accurate recordings of baroque-era keyboard music demonstrating an understanding simply not available when Joyce made these recordings. But without those early efforts, the baroque renaissance may well have been delayed for years, decades even.

There is, incidentally, a series of remarkable water colours of Joyce, some alone at the keyboard or with co-harpsichord players George Malcolm, Thurston Dart and Denis Vaughan in London’s Royal Festival Hall. These now grace the walls of the Eileen Joyce Studio at the University of Western Australia.

Ample liner notes include a first rate commentary on Joyce’s early years by David Tunley – and fascinating material by Cyrus Meher-Homji on the technical side of producing Joyce’s many recordings.