Brazilian pianist Fabio Martino studied and now lives in Germany. His second solo recital disc concentrates on the big guns of the Romantic repertoire: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 23 (Appassionata); Liszt’s three Liebesträume, and Schumann’s Fantasy in C, Op. 17. Martino’s Appassionata is clearly conceived as a whole. He saves the surging drama for the final movement, notably the closing Presto, and deliberately understates the work’s opening movement, which proceeds prettily with no overt suggestions of significance. The work unfolds naturally: an approach I like in Beethoven. The Liszt pieces are sympathetically done, with poise and a feeling for rubato that gives them an improvisational feel. Martino seems especially in touch with the sound world of Schumann. In the rhapsodic Fantasie of 1835 he sweeps through the Sturm und Drang with passion, and is suitably restrained in the final movement. Here’s a young artist whose superlative technique is placed completely at the service of the composer. Who is Zequinha de Abreu? He wrote the song Tico Tico, made famous by an older Brazilian bombshell, Carmen Miranda. Marc-André Hamelin’s challenging arrangement provides the quirky (and, to be honest, not entirely appropriate) encore to this recital. Martino tosses it off with controlled…

Richard Strauss’s Elektra premiered in 1909, representing the cutting edge of modernist expressionism. Two years later, Der Rosenkavalier proved an even bigger triumph. Also to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, this opera was crammed with tuneful waltzes in imitation of the ‘other Strauss’. Musically it seemed like a backward step, but Strauss had never aimed to be progressive. A true man of the theatre, he simply treated Hofmannsthal’s subject matter as the drama demanded. Hearing both works today, it is clear they have much in common: soaring soprano lines, restless chromatic harmonies and extremely lush orchestration.   Strauss prepared two “Waltz Sequences” from Der Rosenkavalier for concert use. A longer suite was arranged by the conductor Artur Rodzinski. It was reworked later by Josef Krips, who restored the concluding music of the opera in place of Rodzinski’s inflated ending. (The Rodzinski version is performed here, but I prefer the Krips.) The suite from Elektra is new: “conceptualised” by Manfred Honeck and realised by Tomáš Ille. In both cases I miss the vocal component, especially in the Presentation of the Rose and the great final trio of Rosenkavalier. In the melodramatic Elektra, all of Strauss’s orchestral wizardry is expended on…

Virtuosity and poetry from the young Russian in a truly memorable recital.

While not demanding technically, Chopin’s Nocturnes contain pianistic pitfalls. Some artists over-prettify them – easy to do when the melodic line is highly decorated – and they can seem fragile and precious. Australian-based pianist Nancy Tsou avoids these traps by taking most at a reasonably fast pace. The popular Op. 9 No 2 in E Flat provides a good example: it is lyrical and flowing, not (as it can be) interminable. In terms of dynamic shading and rubato, Tsou’s playing reveals a genuine personal connection to the composer’s spirit. The quasi-improvisational feeling and quiet inwardness are beautifully captured. Yet Chopin’s nocturnal world was not all contemplation and nightingales. In later pieces he brought much personal angst to the form. I feel Tsou understates the drama of the C Minor Nocturne, Op. 48 No 1 and elsewhere, possibly so as not to overinflate the music. Her dynamic range never ventures above mf, a marked contrast from Maurizio Pollini (DG, 2005). Some find Pollini too determinedly unsentimental, but I respond to the backbone he finds.  Tsou’s incomplete but representative selection gives us just 13 of the Nocturnes. Her instrument is closely but beautifully recorded, aptly placing the listener in the front row…

Perlman and Argerich have only played together once before, but there is no denying their synchronicity.

Maria Razumovskaya is a London-based pianist who thinks deeply about the music she performs. As well as pursuing a performing career, she has a PhD in the life and work of Heinrich Neuhaus. Her veneration of such Russian giants influences her performance style and programming. This disc gives us two Bach transcriptions by Busoni: Chaconne in D Minor and Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ; Busoni’s own Fantasia in the style of Bach; Liszt’s Vallée d’Obermann and Funérailles; an Elegy by Rachmaninov, and a Fantasia by CPE Bach. They are all predominantly slow, minor-key pieces, either monumental or melancholy and often both. Razumovskaya’s polished technique is big enough to encompass the bell-suffused climax of Vallée d’Obermann, but she tends to approach every piece in the same ultra-Romantic way. CPE calls for spontaneity and unpredictability, qualities her carefully considered reading negates. Her most satisfying interpretation is of Busoni’s arrangement of the Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No 2. Busoni completely reconceived it in pianistic terms, and the result is as solid as a set of variations by Brahms. Razumovskaya has the work’s measure and it encourages greater light and shade in her playing, but as a whole this recital is… Continue reading Get…

Benjamin Northey is expressive and authoritative in superb performances of works by the Finnish master.

Jayson Gillham is a 30-year-old pianist, originally from Queensland, who is now based in London. He has won several prizes, and his career is progressing nicely as he performs solo recitals, concertos and works with various chamber groups including the Jerusalem Quartet. He won the 2014 Montreal International Music Competition with a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4, a work he recently played in Sydney as part of a national tour. Two previous solo discs are available on his website. At the 2016 Perth International Festival, a reviewer remarked on Gillham’s “bell-like tone and… sense of expressive lyricism”. The former is certainly in evidence in this recital from ABC Classics. It informs the final Allegro movement of Schubert’s A Major Sonata, D664, giving the music a fresh and unbridled pastoral feeling. Gillham captures the improvisatory style of Bach’s Toccata, BWV911, and once the work is fully underway his playing has real sinew and finely controlled momentum. Young pianists today (unless they are geniuses like Trifonov) fall into one of two broad approaches: either they attack music in a deconstructive way to make it sound newly minted, or they see themselves as part of a long concertising tradition and convey…

If you want to hear a dazzling young female pianist with a promising career ahead of her, try this. Such creatures are common today, but this set is special. It collects unreleased recordings Argerich made in 1960 and 1967 for North and West German Radio. At the time of the earliest of these, she was studying with Friedrich Gulda, who famously said he had nothing to teach her as “she could already do everything”.  Argerich’s recognisable characteristics are here: lightning reflexes; pithy attack; astounding nuance at high speed. She has since abandoned the solo repertoire, so it is fascinating to hear her in Mozart (Sonata No 18, K576) and Beethoven (the Sonata in D, Op. 10 No 3). The latter particularly benefits from her vitality and velocity; it is a shame she never recorded more Beethoven sonatas. The second disc contains works she rerecorded shortly afterward for DG: Prokofiev’s Toccata, Ravel’s Sonatine and Gaspard de la Nuit. In Ravel’s Ondine she is arguably too volatile – tranquillity is not in her armoury – but Scarbo is a knockout. So is her 1967 performance of Prokofiev’s Sonata No 7: the sharpness of her rhythmic response takes your breath away.  Throughout her…

It took Franz Liszt 26 years to produce the final version of his Twelve Studies in Increasing Degree of Difficulty. The earliest version dates from 1826, but the pianist-phenomenon decided that these pieces were not difficult enough. Other pianists could still manage to play them! The most challenging version of the expanded and elaborated studies appeared in 1837, but the final version of 1852 – dedicated to Czerny – brought a reduction in technical obstacles. Stretches of over a tenth were eliminated, for example.  While these 12 Etudes and the others in this recital were designed to showcase Liszt’s superhuman technique, Liszt the poet is still in evidence. Additional to the pyrotechnics lie delicate textures, presaging those of Debussy in terms of color if not harmony. These textures require all the subtlety of nuance that the later composer would demand.  Recordings have tended to lean towards one or other extreme. Generally, young pianists use the Etudes to show off their pianistic skill: the young Bolet, Cziffra and Ovchinnikov come to mind. Older pianists stress the poetry and musicality, like Arrau and late Bolet, both in their 70s when they recorded these works. Arrau’s Transcendental Etudes have been described as magisterial,…

This double-CD set is a collection of favourite encores, comprised of well-loved piano pieces that are recorded infrequently today, and hardly ever performed all together. The programme includes two of Scarlatti’s most popular sonatas, K380 in E Major and K159 in C Major, La Cacchia, five Bach Preludes (including the popular No 1 of “the 48” in C Major), Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca, Beethoven’s Für Elise, Schubert’s Moment Musicale No 3 in F Minor, several Chopin Etudes and two Preludes (including No 15, the Raindrop), and music by Liszt, Brahms, Grieg, Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, finishing with Gershwin’s own arrangement of I Got Rhythm. The performances? They are impressive in their precision and polish. The clarity and evenness of James Brawn’s playing is a major asset in the early works – such as the Bach D Major Prelude with its moto perpetuo semiquavers – and a piece like Chopin’s Black Keys Etude holds no terrors for him.  His approach is less suited to the C Sharp Minor Prelude of Rachmaninov, where a minimum of Romantic ebb and flow makes it either refreshingly straightforward or lacking in personality, depending on your point of view. Similarly, Brawn goes for clarity over sheer fire…

The recently appointed Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, continues his series of the ‘war symphonies’ of Shostakovich in this double-disc set. The Tenth appeared a year ago to great acclaim, and the Sixth and Seventh are slated for future release. This series of symphonies is the pinnacle of Shostakovich’s achievement in the form, reputedly mapping the composer’s anxiety, anger and subversion during the fraught years of war and Stalin’s rule. Valery Gergiev recorded much the same selection with the Kirov (Mariinsky) Orchestra in the early 2000s for Philips (leaving out the post-war Tenth, arguably the best, and adding the experimental pre-war Fourth). That set makes for an interesting comparison. The Boston Symphony is known for its polish, and it is an aural pleasure to revisit their beautifully upholstered, well recorded sound. Nelsons has galvanised these musicians.Dramatic moments like the descending brass motifs in the Eighth’s third movement absolutely tell. Quirky, pointed phrasing from the clarinet brings Shostakovich the clown to life in the central movement of the Ninth, and the Fifth’s first movement climax carries plenty of weight. The passage that follows, with flute and horn mingling in gentle counterpoint, is as meltingly lovely as it…