(++++) THE EXPRESSIVE PIANO

Franz Xaver Mozart: Polonaises Mélancoliques, Opp. 17 and 22; Two Polonaises, Op. 26. Robert Markham, piano. Grand Piano. $19.99.

Schubert: Piano Sonatas Nos. 14, D. 784, and 18, D. 894. Young-Ah Tak, piano. Steinway & Sons. $17.99.

Schubert: Wanderer Fantasy, D. 760; Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 3; Louise Talma: Alleluia in Form of Toccata; Debussy: L’Isle joyeuse; Ernő Dohnányi: Pastorale on a Hungarian Christmas Song; Ligeti: Études, Book I—No. 5, Arc-en-ciel. Orion Weiss, piano. First Hand Records. $14.99.

William Bland: Piano Sonatas Nos. 6 and 15. Kevin Gorman, piano. Bridge Records. $16.99.

     The piano’s ability to evoke emotion was noticed in its earliest days, when its predecessor, the fortepiano, allowed nuances in performance and sound that were not available to the harpsichord and clavichord. As the piano steadily progressed toward its modern form, which it reached in the mid-to-late-19^th century, composers delved ever more deeply into its emotive capabilities and produced a wider and wider range of music designed to connect emotionally with audiences – and, not incidentally, to bring new and expanded expressive challenges to pianists. One of the less-known early transitional figures in pianistic warmth was the sixth and youngest child of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Franz Xaver Mozart (1791-1844). A new CD featuring Robert Markham provides a very welcome chance to make (or perhaps renew) this composer’s acquaintance and hear the ways in which his music helped pianistic technique and emotional connection advance. F.X. Mozart was especially adept at a kind of salon music known as polonaises mélancoliques, two sets of which take up almost the entire Grand Piano disc. The Op. 17 set (1811-1814) contains six pieces; the Op. 22 grouping (1815-1818) includes four. All 10 works share distinct similarities of style, mood and pianistic requirements: each opens and closes in a minor key and has a central major-key section marked Trio that provides a contrast with the seriousness (which is not really depth) of the start and finish. The sets are arranged as cycles in ways designed to heighten their overall impact on audiences, and there is some sense of emotional progress through both sets despite the formulaic nature of the individual pieces within each group. The right hand inevitably carries the melody, while the left provides foundational support and helps extend the feelings evoked by the right. Among the points of interest in Op. 17 are No. 3 in C minor, whose main sections are marchlike, and No. 5 in F minor, whose elaborate writing looks ahead to the works of Chopin. In Op. 22, the drama of No. 1 in C minor is notable, as is the intimacy of No. 3 in F minor. Markham plays the two sets skillfully and without overdoing their emotional content or making them out to be more expansive (emotionally or otherwise) than they really are. The minor-key pieces are separated on the disc by a pair of polonaises from 1824, both in major keys (D and C). The first has an attractive pastoral atmosphere, while the second has a notably bright central section. There is no great music here: F.X. Mozart was himself a pianist, but seems scarcely to have wanted to challenge himself or anyone else through compositional depth. But there is much that is pleasantly engaging, and the occasional hints of music by better-known composers are intriguing – for example, Op. 17, No. 4 in G minor has the sorts of mood swings associated with Schubert, whom F.X. Mozart met a number of times.

     Schubert was born six years later than F.X. Mozart and died 16 years earlier, but he broadened and expanded the piano repertoire in ways far beyond anything that F.X. Mozart ever produced. His piano sonatas – many unfinished, Schubert’s habit being to leave a large number of works partly completed, possibly with the never-realized intention of returning to them later – have scale and emotional scope extending far beyond the poise and prettiness associated with salon music. Some of his sonatas, including the two played by Young-Ah Tak on a new Steinway & Sons CD, are significant contributions to the solo-piano genre and continue to challenge performers and delight audiences today. The three-movement No. 14 (D. 784) in A minor dates to 1823 but was not published until 1839, which was 11 years after Schubert’s death. Its first movement is unusually sparse in texture and has few of the modulations of which Schubert was generally fond. It is a bleak movement that leads to an Andante with a straightforward theme that is handled in some unusual ways – and then to a finale that seems to inhabit an altogether different world, being complex, virtuosic and thoroughly unsettling in mood. The difficulty for performers lies in integrating the three movements into a unified whole – something that Schubert himself did not really succeed in doing. Tak’s approach is to focus on the singing quality that all the movements share and to use the gently rocking sections of the finale as, in effect, auditory throwbacks to what has come before. She does not downplay the fireworks that dominate the finale, but she pays equal attention to the lyrical elements and thus maintains a sense of expressiveness throughout. This results in an interesting contrast with No. 18, D. 894, which dates to 1823 and was the last of Schubert’s piano sonatas published during his lifetime. It is a much larger work than D. 784, running 35 minutes to 19 for D. 784. And D. 894 is in four movements, not three. Instead of featuring varying moods that can be difficult to capture and contrast, D. 894 is mainly peaceful, with its relatively rare moments of darkness sounding more poignant than tragic. The challenge with this sonata is to retain its generally sunny mood without trivializing any of its gently contrasting feelings as they emerge in various guises and then ebb. This sonata is in G, and from the start of its opening movement – the longest in the piece – there is a sense that the mood will be Molto moderato e cantabile throughout, not just in the opening movement, which bears that designation. Indeed, everything in D. 894 is moderate: the second movement is Andante, the third Allegro moderato, and the fourth Allegretto. The subtle distinctions among the tempo indications require pianists to find ways both to connect the movements and to allow their individual characteristics to flow forth. Tak does a fine job with the music, keeping it moving at a reasonable pace while using its warm flow to carry the listener along gently through an aural landscape that is mostly pleasant and serene. These are well-considered performances that delve into Schubert’s expressiveness sure-handedly and with fine attention to the works’ emotional impact.

     Schubert makes an appearance as well on a First Hand Records CD featuring pianist Orion Weiss – although in this case Schubert’s music is not featured in and of itself, but as part of a program designed to make specific nonmusical points. This does no favors to Schubert or the five other composers whose music appears on the disc, and for that matter does little for listeners who are not thoroughly versed in and supportive of Weiss’ approach to the material. The CD is designated “Arc III” and is intended to be heard in the context of two earlier releases: “Arc I” included works written shortly before World War I and moving in a generally gloomy direction; “Arc II” focused on feelings of grief and loss occasioned by that war and World War II; and now “Arc III” is intended, in contrast, to provide positive emotions and uplift. Well, maybe. But it is scarcely reasonable to expect audiences to own the two earlier volumes (both released during 2022) and to be ready and willing to connect the works on them (by Granados, Janáček, Scriabin, Ravel, Brahms and Shostakovich) to the pieces on the new disc. If the music requires so much scaffolding that it cannot stand by itself, then it is less than consequential as music and is required to be seen in the context of a “cause.” Certainly listeners who do own the earlier Weiss releases and who wish to follow his thinking regarding this music and the world at large will find this new CD attractive, but the gloss required to connect the musical material with other elements of life will be off-putting to anyone interested in the music for its own sake. This is nevertheless a (+++) disc simply on the strength of Weiss’ performances and despite (rather than because of) his attempts to force the works into juxtapositions reflective of his overarching “Arc” ideas. Weiss gives the Schubert Wanderer Fantasy an especially bright and upbeat reading, downplaying its darker elements and emphasizing its many lighter ones – and it scarcely matters if this is done in the service of a nonmusical argument, because the performance is effective in its own right. The approach is less congenial with regard to Brahms’ Piano Sonata No. 3, however. This is a passionate work in the key of F minor, and although it eventually finds its way to F major – as prescribed by sonata form – it is scarcely a brightly upbeat piece, giving instead an impression of considerable struggle that eventually leads to hard-won triumph. That may indeed serve Weiss’ thematic proclivities, but positioning this work as a joyful and celebratory one is something of an overstatement and leads to an underplaying of the deep conflicts within the music. The Brahms is by far the longest work on this CD, the Schubert being second-longest. The remaining pieces are smaller and easier to view unidimensionally. Alleluia in Form of Toccata (1945) by Louise Talma (1906-1996) is quite a find: bright, energetic, pianistically challenging, and decidedly upbeat within a midcentury musical idiom. Debussy’s L’Isle joyeuse is pleasantly evocative of outdoorsy scenes and is played by Weiss with notable delicacy of touch and phrasing. Dohnányi’s Pastorale on a Hungarian Christmas Song is peaceful and rather sweet, the underlying carol (The Angel from Heaven) not being especially well-known but not being necessary for listeners to know in order to enjoy what is, in the main, a pleasantly unprepossessing treatment. And Ligeti’s Arc-en-ciel, whose harmonic language is as up-to-date as befits a work from 1985, is essentially a display of delicacy, meandering through disconnected aural elements that appear and disappear hither and thither until they simply stop. It is not really optimistic or buoyant, but it is certainly not dour or dull, and thus it allows Weiss to say it connects with his overall thematic concept. Whether it does or not, his playing of the piece, as with his renditions of the other works, is assured, well-controlled and convincing. The Brahms sonata does not quite work in this hodgepodge of not-really-related music, but the other pieces blend and contrast well enough, and listeners interested in some finely honed pianism will enjoy the disc even if they do not unthinkingly accept the framework within which Weiss wants it to be experienced.

     The framework of William Bland’s piano sonatas is a time-honored and strictly musical one rather than one focusing on any extra-musical context: Bland (born 1947) started composing a set of 24 sonatas, one in each major and minor key, in 1998. Kevin Gorman made his recording debut with a Bridge Records release of Bland’s Sonatas Nos. 17 and 18 in 2021; his recordings of Nos. 9 and 10 followed in 2023; and now Volume 3 of what may well turn into a full set of the Bland sonatas is available, offering Nos. 6 and 15. There is obviously no particular order in which the sonatas are being released, and the CD lengths vary quite a bit: Volume 1 runs 58 minutes, Volume 2 (which also includes the brief Nouveau Rag) lasts 70, while the new Volume 3 runs a mere 47. The recordings will have obvious appeal to those who know Bland’s works and are interested in his way of interpreting the challenges of the sort of major-and-minor-key composition cycle that dates back at least to Bach. However, for an audience not already familiar with and committed to Bland’s music, these are (+++) CDs that present some well-made piano music that is, in the main, tonal, but that includes elements of atonality and some scarcely unusual dips into jazz and pop material. Sonata No. 6, in C minor, dates to 2001 and is titled “Bestiary – Con Amore.” It is a strong (and perhaps, in its own way, loving) five-movement string of Impressionist tone painting with movements called Bear Dance (suitably strong, lumbering and awkward); Song of the Great Hawk (surprisingly gentle and delicate); A Panther with His Head Turning to the Right (also delicate in its own way, with poise but without apparent connection to its title); Dragon (suitably dark, deep in the piano’s nether regions, and with a sense of controlled power); and – a real mouthful – “Regard” on the Painting ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’ by Edward Hicks. This last does require familiarity with the referenced painting for full effect, but even without it, the gentle undulations and mild dynamics of the movement paint a suitable picture of lovely (if thoroughly unrealistic) coexistence within the animal kingdom. Bland’s Sonata No. 8 in E-flat minor (2004) is more traditional in layout, having three movements marked Waltz, Lento and Fantasy. It is, as a whole, rather thick-textured. The first movement is a bit more elaborate, emphatic and dissonant than might be expected, although it does retain the dance rhythm. The second also has something insistent, even demanding, about it, and assiduously avoids any significant amount of warmth. The finale has a somewhat self-consciously contemporary feeling in its contrasts of leaps around the keyboard with more-extended, modestly lyrical passages. Gorman plays both sonatas convincingly, and even if the works are somewhat self-limiting in their appeal, they are solidly constructed and well-presented, doing credit both to the composer and to the performer.