Fast Piano

This CD introduces to disc the newly formed Florestan Trio comprising Susan Tomes, Anthony Marwood and Richard Lester, all now-familiar and highly respected artists after their many earlier recordings, both as members of other ensembles and as soloists. Miss Tomes and Mr Lester were, of course, members of the now-disbanded piano quartet Domus (which was joined by Mr Marwood in its last, award-winning recording of the two Fauré Piano Quintets on CDA66766).

Pierre Boulez - Notations & Piano Sonatas - Pi-hsien Chen (2005) {hat[now]ART 162}
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© 2005 HAT HUT Records | hat[now]ART 162
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Post Modern / Piano Solo

Chen's survey of Boulez's piano music (bar the little competition piece Incises) invites comparisons with Paavali Jumppanen's accounts of the three sonatas released by Deutsche Grammophon earlier in the year. Both are first rate; Chen's tempi are marginally slower, but her approach is more dramatic - some of the early Notations are positively explosive - while Jumppanen explores Boulez's command of keyboard sonority more fastidiously. Both convey the energy of the young Boulez's piano writing. It's hard to believe the Notations were composed 60 years ago, and the First Sonata, with its strange, intensely French flavour, followed a year later; this music still sounds astonishingly fresh.

I was amazed to discover this wonderful performance of Schubert's D.959, by a pianist who I usually consider a bad Schubertist (in the Impromptus and last sonata, for example). In this work, however, he seems to get the very essence of the music. I've listened to many good and bad recordings of the work, notably Uchida, Eschenbach, Bolet (good performances) as well as Serkin, Brendel (worse, to my taste) and many others. The only good rival of this performance is another surprise: the romantic Liszt expert Jorge Bolet (Decca, not released on CD). Perahia seems to understand Schubert magnificently in this sonata.

Bartók's influence in the Forties and Fifties grew to a great height throughout the Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe, particularly among the better composers. True, one found serialists like Eisler in East Germany and Tadeusz Baird in Poland, but they seemed exceptions, rather than the rule. In Poland, for example, we meet the examples of the remarkable Grazyna Bacewicz and Witold Lutoslawski. Lutoslawski especially seemed to regard Bartók as Brahms did Beethoven, a spiritual father who inspired within him both an almost stifling reverence and the need to break free.