Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 3 and 4; Triple
Concerto.
Inon Barnatan, piano; Stefan Jackiw, violin; Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Academy
of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Alan Gilbert. PentaTone. $24.99 (2
CDs).
Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 80 and 81; Piano Concerto
No. 11.
Lucas Blondeel, fortepiano; Le Concert d’Anvers conducted by Bart Van Reyn.
Fuga Libera. $18.99.
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 6, 18 and 23
(“Appassionata”); Rondo in C, Op. 51, No. 1. Young-Ah Tak, piano. Steinway & Sons.
$17.99.
Haydn: Piano Sonatas Nos. 48, 50, 54, 59, and 60. John O’Conor, piano.
Steinway & Sons. $17.99.
Charles-Valentin Alkan: 25 Préludes dans Touts
les Tons Majeurs et Mineurs, Op. 31.
Mark Viner, piano. Piano Classics. $18.99.
The
inevitable flood of releases marking the 250th anniversary of
Beethoven’s birth has begun, and quite a few of those releases are sure to be
of his works for piano. Since 2020 is, after all, such a notable anniversary
year, it is a fair bet that the recordings will generally be high-level
performances and, at least in some cases, interesting combinations of music.
The new two-CD PentaTone release featuring pianist Inon Barnatan certainly fits
the bill: the interpretations are exceptional and the combination of music
rather unusual (the package is labeled “Beethoven Piano Concertos, Part 1”).
These are Beethoven’s second, third and fourth piano concertos –No. 1 is later
than No. 2, although it was published first – and Barnatan plays them with
lightness and transparency that recall Leon Fleisher’s recordings from the
mid-1960s. Furthermore, Alan Gilbert conducts the Academy of St. Martin in the
Fields with precision and balance that are reminiscent of the way George Szell
and the Cleveland Orchestra accompanied Fleisher in his classic readings. This
is quite an accomplishment, made even more interesting by the fact that the
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields has never recorded a Beethoven concerto
cycle before. Apparently the 250th-anniversary celebration will
bring some genuinely new elements with it. What impresses the most about
Barnatan’s performances is not their strength, although they certainly have
that when needed, but their delicacy: Piano
Concerto No. 1 sounds positively Mozartian in its pose and balance, and
even in the cadenzas, which Barnatan plays with considerable flair, there is
nothing the slightest bit proto-Romantic. The comparative lightness of Piano Concerto No. 3 is even more of a
surprise, since this minor-key concerto is often presented with a certain
portentousness that the music can certainly handle but that is not quite in
keeping with a sensibility that remains closer to Mozart’s than to that of the
Romantics or of Beethoven’s own later works. It is only in Piano Concerto No. 4 that Barnatan and Gilbert let a degree of
emotional expansiveness begin to emerge clearly. That is entirely appropriate,
and this still-underrated concerto, with its exceptional slow movement, here
sounds like a piece in which Beethoven definitely began stretching the
piano-concerto form even while maintaining elements from the Classical era.
“Part 2” of these performers’ Beethoven cycle will include the composer’s first
and last concertos, and this “Part 1” certainly whets the appetite for what can
be anticipated as showcasing the significant contrasts between those two. The
current release also has a most-welcome bonus in the form of the Triple Concerto, in which Barnatan is
joined to very fine effect by Stefan Jackiw and Alisa Weilerstein. This work is
essentially a concerto for piano trio and orchestra – still a very unusual
concept – and it leans more heavily on the cello than might be expected from
Beethoven’s other music. The key to a fine interpretation – and this one is
very fine indeed – is to handle the three solo instruments’ roles in the
“conversational” manner familiar from chamber music, not in any competitive or
assertive way. And that is just what Barnatan, Jackiw and Weilerstein do: this
sounds like an intimate music-making session among friends, despite the
presence of an orchestra (which Gilbert avoids using to compete with, much less
swamp, the soloists). This entire release is a genuine pleasure and, one hopes,
a harbinger of further excellences in the Beethoven celebration.
Despite writing a great deal more music
than Beethoven did, Haydn has not attained the same performance regularity for
his concertos. This is partly because he was not himself a virtuoso performer
and partly because he focused so strongly on symphonies when he was not
producing works to order, such as puppet-theater operas, for his princely
employers. There is also still uncertainty about just which concertos Haydn
wrote: he was so immensely popular that many works were circulated as his but
were certainly written by others. In terms of piano concertos, there is no
doubt that he did not write 11 of
them, even though the most popular nowadays is the one labeled No. 11, in D. It
was intended for fortepiano (it is worth remembering that Beethoven also wrote
his concertos for instruments quite different from today’s); and hearing this
Haydn work played on an appropriate instrument by Lucas Blondeel on a new Fuga
Libera disc shows just how sparkling and wonderfully balanced this concerto is.
Haydn sought neither emotional depths nor significant virtuosity in his
concertos, whether for piano or for other instruments: these were works of
courtly pleasure, but with some sly humor and intriguing thematic material,
such as the delightful Rondo all’Ungarese
that concludes No. 11. Blondeel handles Haydn’s keyboard writing with just the
right touch, and Le Concert d’Anvers, a 24-member period-instrument ensemble,
provides just the right balance and backup. Bart Van Reyn also leads the group
in two of the less-often-played later Haydn symphonies, Nos. 80 and 81 – the
second and third of a group written by Haydn just before he accepted the
commission that led to the six “Paris” symphonies. No. 80 features a
particularly energetic first movement that does not, however, plumb any significant
depth even though the symphony is in D minor. Indeed, the work is more upbeat
than would be expected, and when there is serious material, it tends to be
balanced quickly by lightness. No. 81, in G, is actually a more subdued work,
with its gentle second-movement siciliano
a highlight. The disc as a whole is an effective and somewhat unusual one,
thanks to its choice of repertoire and its keen attention to historically
informed performance practice.
The pianistic contrasts between Beethoven
and Haydn are as clear in their sonatas as in their works for accompanied
piano. Beethoven’s sonatas are sure to receive numerous performances and
recordings throughout the 250th-anniversary year, and the high
quality of the new Steinway & Sons one featuring Young-Ah Tak will likely
be found in other releases as well. But the Beethoven sonatas admit of so many
interpretations that fine playing is not the first thing one notices about any
given release. It is the underlying approach to the material that stands out –
which in Tak’s case is reflected in a light touch that places most of the
sonatas she plays on this CD firmly in the orbit of Mozart, if not Haydn. Piano Sonata No. 6, Op. 10, No. 2, an
early and less-often-heard work, is a real gem here, light and bright and
beautifully balanced throughout. It juxtaposes nicely with the Rondo in C, Op. 51, No. 1, which is
quite an early piece despite its misleading opus number. Tak plays both the
sonata and the rondo with relaxed charm and very smooth flow, never pushing the
works beyond their modest boundaries but letting them emerge with charm and a
fine sense of tastefulness. The slightly later, four-movement Sonata No. 18, Op. 31, No. 3 also gets a
highly commendable reading. It is an interestingly structured work without a
designated slow movement – instead, the third movement, Menuetto (Moderato e grazioso) fills that role, contrasting with
the second movement, Scherzo (Allegretto
vivace). Having both a minuet and a scherzo in the same work is rare, and
Beethoven’s contrasting use of the two movements is quite unusual. Tak does a
fine job showcasing their differences and their centrality to the overall
structure and argument of the sonata. It is only in the best-known work on this
disc, Sonata No. 23, Op. 57
(“Appassionata”), that Tak’s approach falls a bit short. This is not for
any technical reason – her ability to play the music is certainly never in
doubt – but because the intensity of this F minor work never quite comes
through here as effectively as it can. The opening movement is fine, if a bit
on the episodic side. But the second movement is marked Andante con moto and is definitely not supposed to be an Adagio, much less a dirge. Tak tries to
make it over-serious, continuing much of the feeling of the first movement, but
Beethoven quite deliberately wanted to lighten the sonata’s mood here, making
the second movement almost an intermezzo, so as to heighten the effect of the
finale. Tak’s second movement drags the sonata down – not to a great extent,
but enough so that the finale does not have the power of contrast that it
should, ideally, possess. And while Tak never struggles technically with the
final movement, neither does she come entirely to grips with its intensity,
with the result that when the concluding Presto
arrives, it seems a lightening of the entirety rather than an insistence on its
minor-key power. Yet Tak’s technical prowess is undoubted, as is the thoughtfulness
of her playing, so this disc is a worthwhile addition to the considerable
library of Beethoven sonata recordings even if the reading of the Appassionata somewhat misfires.
Today, Haydn’s piano sonatas require
something very different from what Beethoven’s are accorded automatically:
respect. That is, in modern times, what they especially need is not to be
regarded as unimportant or as throwaways – which is how they tend to be seen
when compared with Beethoven’s or, for that matter, Mozart’s (and even Mozart’s
do not always get the respect they deserve). A Steinway & Sons release
featuring five Haydn sonatas played by John O’Conor is an unalloyed pleasure
because it handles these works exactly as they should be handled, treating them
as unassuming but not naïve, and showing how they share the poise, balance,
delicacy and (frequently) humor that are characteristic of so much of Haydn’s
music. The unusual tempo marking of the first movement of the two-movement Piano Sonata No. 54 can almost stand for
a foundational approach to Haydn’s sonatas in general: Allegro Innocente. There is a straightforwardness to these sonatas
that can make it difficult to remember exactly which pleasure comes from which
work (Vivaldi’s concertos have a similar issue); but as O’Conor shows, what
matters is the sheer amount of pleasure in all
the sonatas, even though they (again like Vivaldi’s concertos) have mostly the
same structure. Indeed, aside from the two-movement No. 54, the sonatas O’Conor
offers all have a fast-slow-fast arrangement, with all the middle movements
marked Adagio. But details matter in
Haydn, and it is no accident that the longest single movement in any of these
five sonatas is the central one of No. 59, which is the only movement in which
the word Adagio comes with a
qualifier: e Cantabile. O’Conor is so
well attuned to Haydn’s sonata design and structure that he manages to bring
out the singing quality of this movement without in any way pushing the music
beyond the strict Classical boundaries to which Haydn always adhered. All the
performances here are equally impressive. The five sonatas are all in major
keys: No. 48 in C, No. 50 in D, No. 54 in G, No. 59 in E-flat, and No. 60 in C.
But just as in his major-key symphonies, Haydn expertly dips the music into the
minor from time to time, always appropriately and tastefully, hinting at
slightly more inward-looking material without ever turning the atmosphere
significantly darker. O’Conor’s pianistic delicacy – even on a modern concert
grand, which is decidedly not the historically correct instrument for this
music – keeps the sonatas in the realm of elegance and, in general,
stateliness; but Haydn’s sparkle and occasional puckishness come through as
well, just as in his other works, and O’Conor’s skill at eliciting them is just
one of this recording’s many pleasures.
The
contrast between the solo-piano writing of Beethoven and Haydn is considerable,
but the contrast between both of them and Charles-Valentin Alkan is far greater
– truly a stylistic abyss. Twenty years after Beethoven’s death, in 1847, Alkan
created an astonishing set of 25 piano preludes in all the major and minor keys
– yes, 25, adding a second C major one at the end to bring the grouping full
circle. Even the stylistic and harmonic amazements of Beethoven’s late
solo-piano music scarcely prepare listeners, or pianists, for what Alkan did.
This cycle, 25 Préludes dans Touts
les Tons Majeurs et Mineurs, Op. 31,
is comparable to almost nothing else in the piano literature except other,
later Alkan works. Marc Viner, a young pianist (born 1989) with stupendous
technique and a strong commitment to performing less-known music, presents the
sequence on a Piano Classics CD that really does have to be heard to be
believed. This is especially true of the best-known of the preludes, No. 8,
whose title translates as “The song of the madwoman on the seashore.” It is
almost unbelievable to hear what Alkan has the piano do here: the sound is
truly otherworldly and sends chills up one’s spine. The method Alkan uses can
certainly be analyzed: he keeps the left hand entirely in the piano’s lowest
reaches while confining the right entirely to its highest, and contrasts
largely chordal lower material with higher portions in individual notes. But
who thinks like this? What sort of composer even comes up with something this
outré? The answer is that Alkan was one of a kind (even Liszt thought so), and
his music sounds like nobody else’s. Again and again this comes through in
Viner’s recording. Three of the preludes are marked as prayers, and very
different prayers they are; in addition, one has a title relating to Psalm 150,
and another refers to a specific passage of the Biblical Song of Songs. Still another is designated Ancienne mélodie de la
synagogue, reflecting Alkan’s Jewish
heritage and beliefs; yet another is a decidedly solemn piece even though it is
marked Anniversaire – a word that
turns out to refer to a Jewish day of lamentation. Yet the considerable
religious gloss of these pieces shows nothing about the sheer pianistic
amazement they possess: most are on the slow side, reflective and
inward-looking, but some are so ebullient that they barely seem to have been
written by the same composer; some are extensively ornamented, others plain;
some rely on heavy chordal elements and ostinato
material, while others require so much lightness of touch that they practically
seem to float to and beyond the ear. Alkan’s music is so variegated and so
difficult that even today many pianists will not attempt it. Specialists in it,
such as Viner – who plans to record all of it, a monumental project if there
ever was one – are extremely rare, and their recordings, definitely including
this one, are must-haves for anybody interested in hearing just how far it is
possible to stretch the communicative power of the piano.
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