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After his sparkling C P E Bach disc, released on the Hyperion label in January 2022, Marc-André Hamelin, that fearless master of the piano who seems to be able to playing anything (and I mean anything!) moves seamlessly from the precision and clarity of early classical keyboard music to an album of piano rags, written over the last 50 or so years, by American composer William Bolcom (b. 1938).

In the generous liners notes, the composer himself introduces the repertoire, explaining how his discovery of the music of Scott Joplin, which had fallen into obscurity after the composer’s death,  led him to explore the genre himself in the late 1960s, at a time when Joplin’s opera Treemonisha resurfaced and his music, and ragtime in general, was being revived, and a new generation of American composers were writing new “tradition-style” rags. This music has an enduring appeal to audiences, and for Bolcom and others, reviving ragtime was a way of “picking up a dropped thread of our emerging American tradition”; paying homage to and continuing the genre.

The elements of traditional, Joplin ragtime are evident in Bolcom’s rags – the distinctive musical DNA of syncopation and swing, which Hamelin perfectly captures – but Bolcom allows himself to stray into more unusual territories, for example in Rag-Tango which alternates between the gritty sensuality of Argentine tango, piquant “crunchy” harmonies, and traditional rag elements.

In fact, such is Bolcom’s skill with the genre, and Hamelin’s pitch perfect execution, that it’s easy to forget one is listening to ragtime at all. The third of the ‘Ghost’ rags, Dream Shadows, has a lazy, hazy late-night jazz club vibe, to which Hamelin brings his remarkably sensitive sense of timing and atmospheric rubato. Meanwhile, other rags are more traditional in their toe-tapping rhythms and hip-swinging syncopation. Some are exuberant, almost Lisztian in their scope – and here that sparkling clarity and nonchalant technical assuredness that is so characteristic of Hamelin’s playing in more traditional or mainstream repertoire is once again on fine display – while others are easy-going, evoking humid evenings in the American South (with brisket cooking low ‘n’ slow on the coals, perhaps?). The rag fantasia Serpent’s Kiss opens with rumbling, pulsing notes redolent of Schubert’s Erlkönig before slipping into something more akin to silent film music, interspersed with contrasting interludes suggesting shifting narratives and characters (there’s even a Fred Astaire style tap-dancing routine!).  Some of the rags are very personal (Lost Lady and Graceful Ghost, for example), others celebrate friendships, musical collaborators, and other composers, such as Louis Chauvin and Ernesto Nazareth (Joplin’s great Brazilian contemporary); some are wistful, others are punchy, in-yer-face, rags, but all are distinctive, appealing in their references back to Joplin’s model, but with multiple moods and harmonies, and brilliantly presented by Hamelin, who seems to really relish this repertoire (and if you didn’t know it, listening to him you’d never guess he’s a classical pianist – there’s a natural jazz insouciance to Hamelin’s playing throughout the disc). There’s wit and humour aplenty, tempered, when needed, by tenderness and poignancy, whimsy, much charm and ingenious invention.

If you don’t know the music of William Bolcom, this disc should absolutely be your starting point.  It’s a wonderful, revelatory, and, above all, really enjoyable listen from start to finish.

William Bolcom: The Complete Rags is available on the Hyperion label. With detailed liner notes by the composer.

This review first appeared on ArtMuseLondon.com

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Piano Sonatas D664, 769a & 894 – Stephen Hough (piano). Hyperion, 2022

In his memoir ‘Every Good Boy Does Fine’, American pianist Jeremy Denk says of Schubert, “He likes to let his ideas spread out, like pets that hog the bed.” He’s referring specifically to Schubert’s penchant for length or expansiveness, most evident in his late piano sonatas. This is not a criticism from Denk; later in the same paragraph he goes on to explain how Schubert uses his “heavenly length” to accumulate meaning.

In the first movement of Schubert’s G major piano sonata, D894, which opens this new recording from recently-knighted Stephen Hough, the ideas are certainly spread out, each clearly delineated, from the chordal, prayer-like first subject to the delicately dancing second subject (where the cantabile clarity of the upper registers of the piano is utterly beguiling in Hough’s hands), yet without the longueurs of Richter’s interpretation (and such a slow tempo really only works in Richter’s hands!). Hough favours a molto moderato which moves forward with vigour and colour when required but also allows time to savour all the details and nuances of this wondrous first movement.

The second movement is genial and intimate, a simple aria elegantly sculpted by Hough, reminding us that this is music for the salon rather than the concert hall. Hough really appreciates this, creating intimacy and introspection through supple phrasing and rubato, pauses (so important in Schubert’s music to create drama and breathing space) and tasteful pedalling.

The third movement scherzo revisits the chords of the first movement, this time in B minor, its robustness quickly offset by another dance figure. The trio, almost entirely in ppp, weaves a pretty melody around a handful of notes, with an offbeat bassline, like the memory of a forgotten Viennese waltz. And when the music shifts into the major key, it is almost more tender and poignant than when Schubert is writing in the minor key. The rondo finale is also a dance, graceful yet playful, occasionally insistent, played with an elegant clarity and some delicious bass details.

A curious interlude between two complete sonatas comes with the unfinished sonata fragment in E minor, D769a, a mere 1 minute of music yet profound and inventive in its expression. It finishes on a repeated figure, pianist and listener suspended, wondering where Schubert might have gone next with this music.

The Sonata in A, D664, is wholly delightful, Schubert at his most good-humoured. The affable first movement sings in Hough’s hands, while the second movement is thoughtful, poignant and tender, marked by gently sighing phrases. The sunny mood is soon restored in the finale, to which Hough brings a joyful light-heartedness with its tumbling scales and dance-like passages.

The recording was made on a C Bechstein Model D piano and there’s an intimacy and warmth to the piano sound which perfectly suits Schubert’s introspection, while a bright but sweet treble brings a lovely clarity to the melody lines and highlights Hough’s deftness of touch.

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034571282602‘Vida Breve’ (Short Life) – Stephen Hough, piano (Hyperion CDA68260)

It seems fitting that Stephen Hough’s new album ‘Vida Breve’, featuring music on the theme of death, should be released while we are still in the thrall of the coronavirus. But this album is not a response to the pandemic and was in fact conceived and recorded long before any of us had heard of coronavirus or COVID-19.

Yet its theme is highly relevant to our Corona times when death dominates the news, from the daily tally of COVID deaths and grim predictions from scientific and medical experts. Despite this, as Stephen Hough says in the CD’s liner notes, we are still reluctant to talk about death, a reluctance which has increased over the past 50-odd years during which medical science has made it possible for people survive better and for longer and has led to a greater disassociation from and hyper-sensitivity to discussions about death.

For artists, writers and composers death has always been a central preoccupation, resulting in some of the most extraordinary, exultant and emotionally profound expression in painting, literature and music – amply demonstrated in the works on Hough’s new album. In the nineteenth century people were far closer to death than we are today, and for Chopin (whose short life was dogged by ill-health), Liszt and Busoni, composers whose music is included on this CD, death was understood and accepted as part of the natural course of life.

As a Catholic, I suspect Stephen Hough has a fairly robust attitude towards death, perhaps more closely aligned to that of the composers featured on his new disc (and remember Liszt was a devout Catholic). Hough’s faith teaches us not to fear death but to accept it as the only certainty in life, and his own piano sonata ‘Vida Breve’, the work which lends its title to the disc, explores the brevity of life, a reminder that our allocated time is short. An abstract, introspective work constructed of five tiny motivic cells, which interact contrapuntally and include a quotation from the French chanson En Avril à Paris, made famous by Charles Trenet, ‘Vida Breve’ lasts a mere 10 minutes, a comment on the transient, fleeting nature of life, its passions and turmoil.

Bach’s mighty Chaconne from the D minor violin Partita opens this recording, in Busoni’s glorious, romantic transcription for solo piano. This epic cathedral of sound is an awe-inspiring, emphatic opener (Hough played it at his Wigmore Hall livestream concert in June 2020), and here Hough gives it an authoritative, multi-layered, orchestral monumentalism. It’s opening is dark and sombre, yet the processional nature of this piece, with its sense of building, dying back, then increasing again, brings a remarkably uplifting atmosphere to this music, and of course its final cadence, a Picardy Third, ensures that it closes with a clear sense of positivity.

After the towering majesty of the Chaconne, Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 is fleet and turbulent, its anxious intensity tempered when Hough lingers over the more lyrical Nocturne-like passages in the opening movement and the Scherzo, or when he allows the essential nobility of the music to shine through over disruptive bass motifs. Like the Chaconne, the famous Marche funèbre is magisterial rather than simply funereal, while the tender, dreamy middle section lends an other-worldliness to the music’s atmosphere before the tolling bass and mournful theme return.

In addition to the thematic associations between the pieces, there are musical connections too: the dark rumbling bass octaves in the Bach/Busoni Chaconne are reiterated in the Marche funèbre – a plangent left hand accompaniment which, in the reprise of the famous theme dominates, with a dark tolling grandeur. And this figure is later heard again in the opening of Liszt’s Funerailles, to which Hough brings an ominous darkness, its slow-march meter suggesting the dead weight of a bier on the shoulders who carry it, before a more reflective, wistful section. The other piece by Liszt, the Bagatelle Sans Tonalité, is a musical gargoyle with its wayward harmonic language and grimacing, dancing rhythms.

The remaining works on the disc are encores of a sort – a reminder that this final recital is not quite over….. Busoni’s Kammer-Fantasie über Carmen uses familiar melodies and motifs from Bizet’s opera and transforms them into a witty concert piece, to which Hough brings a warm romanticism. His own transcription of Arirang, a traditional Korean folksong, is gentle and contemplative, its lyrical melody singing out over a flowing accompaniment. It leads naturally into Gounod’s recasting of Bach’s Prelude in C into Ave Maria (also transcribed by Hough), a popular work at funerals, perhaps because it is both perfect music for the transit to the afterlife and for reflections on life and the inevitability of its end. Death, now where is thy sting?

This album is masterly is its programming; stimulating and provocative, it’s a superb recital disc and, being Hough, the music is thoughtfully chosen and impeccably played.

Highly recommended

FW

‘Vida Breve’ is released by Hyperion on 29 January 2021. 

This review first appeared on The Cross-Eyed Pianist site

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Stephen Hough’s Dream album

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A few years ago, I heard Stephen Hough in concert in a programme of “serious” music: the premiere of his ‘Trinity’ Piano Sonata III alongside Cèsar Franck’s mighty Prelude, Chorale & Fugue, plus works by Liszt and Schubert. And the encore? Eric Coates’ By the Sleepy Lagoon, which many will recognise as the theme tune from the BBC’s long running Desert Island Discs programme. Played with as much care and expression as the main programme, it was a delightfully witty and nostalgic close to the evening. This charming miniature appears on Stephen Hough’s latest release ‘Stephen Hough’s Dream Album’ and is given a lilting Chopinesque delicacy by Hough.

Dreaming – Isn’t this what we do when we listen to any kind of music? We suspend the reality of our ordinary lives, we long for spells to be cast, for phantoms to be grasped, to enter a state of ecstasy. (Stephen Hough).

Most of us go to concerts and listen to music to be taken to another place, and this album succeeds in this objective in spades, offering a varied selection of flights of fancy, erotic reveries, melancholy ponderings, and fleeting visions. All the works on the disc are transcriptions, by Hough himself and others (if you, like me, own Hough’s ‘Tributes and Transcriptions’ collection of piano music, you will be delighted to hear his mischievous Radetzky Waltz, the witty Niccolo’s Waltz with its nod to Paganini, Osmanthus Romp and Reverie, and Lullaby played by the composer/performer himself). Here, Hough the concert pianist is cast also as transcriber, interpreter and re-creator, and his own transcriptions are a testament to his musical insight, skill, and whimsy.

What makes this album so charming is Hough’s skilled programming, mixing high art with pieces, which in the hands of certain others, could sound schmaltzy and sentimental. Thus powerful performances of works Liszt and Dohnányi sit happily alongside Hough’s cheery Matilda’s Waltz (a reference to his father’s heritage and scored as a rumba) or amusing transcriptions of dances from Don Quixote. Hough avoids kitsch and brings to every piece his characteristic clarity, musical intelligence, wit, elegant phrasing, tasteful pedalling and an intoxicating kaleidoscope of expressive colours and moods to create an album which delights and surprises at every turn. It’s also deeply personal (two pieces were written for Hough’s partner), ending with “the piece I want to be the final piece I play in concert – the last encore of my last concert which I first heard on my first LP“. Nostalgic and bittersweet, redolent of “at homes” in Edwardian drawing rooms or pre-war cocktail hour, the music evokes a dreamy golden age tinged with poignancy. Hough’s magical soundworld brings an intense intimacy and elegance to every piece. Listen to it as an entire recital album or dip in and out of it: you will be utterly charmed and transported.

Stephen Hough’s Dream Album is available as a CD or download from Hyperion

 

 

 

 

 

A few years ago, I heard Stephen Hough in concert in a programme of “serious” music: the premiere of his ‘Trinity’ Piano Sonata III alongside Franck’s mighty Prelude, Chorale & Fugue, plus works by Liszt and Schubert. And the encore? Eric Coates’ By the Sleepy Lagoon, which many will recognise as the theme music from the BBC’s Desert Island Discs programme. Played with as much care and expression as the main programme, it was a delightfully witty and (for those of us of a certain age) a rather nostalgic close to the evening. This charming miniature appears on Stephen Hough’s latest release ‘Stephen Hough’s Dream Album’.

Dreaming – Isn’t this what we do when we listen to any kind of music? We suspend the reality of our ordinary lives, we long for spells to be cast, for phantoms to be grasped, to enter a state of ecstasy. (Stephen Hough).

Most of us go to concerts and listen to music to be taken to another place, and this album succeeds in this objective in spades, offering a varied selection of flights of fancy, erotic reveries, melancholy ponderings, and fleeting visions. All the works on the disc are transcriptions, by Hough himself and others (if you, like me, own Hough’s ‘Tributes and Transcriptions’ collection of piano music, you will be delighted to hear his Radetzky Waltz, Niccolo’s Waltz, Osmanthus Romp and Reverie, and Lullaby played by the composer/performer himself). Here, Hough the concert pianist is cast also as transcriber, interpreter and re-creator, and his own transcriptions are a testament to his musical insight, skill, and whimsy.

In others’ hands, this music could sound schmaltzy and sentimental, but Hough brings to it his characteristic clarity, wit and an intoxicating kaleidoscope of expressive colours and moods to create an album which delights and surprises at each turn. It’s deeply personal, ending with “the piece I want to be the final piece I play in concert – the last encore of my last concert which I first heard on my first LP“. Nostalgic and bittersweet, redolent of “at homes” in Edwardian drawing rooms or pre-war cocktail hour, the music evokes a dreamy golden age tinged with poignancy. Hough’s magical soundworld brings an intense intimacy and elegance to every piece. Listen to it as an entire recital album or dip in and out of it: I guarantee you will be utterly charmed and transported.

Stephen Hough’s Dream Album (Hyperion)