Beethoven reputedly said of his pupil Ferdinand Ries that he was
talented but that he "imitates me too much," and the few earlier
recordings of Ries' piano concertos, naturally enough taken from the
first part of his career when he was a star virtuoso, did nothing to
challenge that evaluation. This album, however, contains Ries' last two
concertos and is an entirely different story. By the early 1830s, Ries
was not such a renowned figure, but he was clearly keeping up with new
trends in the piano music of Hummel, Field, and even perhaps Chopin, of
whom the middle Introduction and Polonaise is strongly reminiscent. The
two concertos are spacious works with ornamented figuration, chromatic
modulations, and, yes, a bit of Beethoven, but Beethoven is present in
little quotations or strong allusions, indicating perhaps that the
student by this time was confident enough of his own identity. Sample
perhaps one of the slow movements, where Ries' skill as an orchestrator
is on full display. Pianist Piers Lane and New York state's little-known
Orchestra Now give the music its appropriate weight under
scholar-conductor Leon Botstein, and Hyperion's engineers do very well
in the unfamiliar surroundings of an auditorium at New York's Bard
College. An above-average entry in Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto
series, and one that has contributions to make to the music history
books. James Manheim
Tracklist :
Piano Concerto No 8 In A Flat Major 'Gruss An Den Rhein' (29:56)
Piano Concerto No 9 In G Minor (28:38)
Credits :
Conductor – Leon Botstein
Orchestra – The Orchestra Now
Piano – Piers Lane
sábado, 6 de janeiro de 2024
RIES : Piano Concertos Nos 8 & 9 (Piers Lanee • The Orchestra Now • Leon Botstein) (2018) Serie The Romantic Piano Concerto – 75 | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless
terça-feira, 2 de janeiro de 2024
RUBBRA ♦ BAX ♦ BLISS : Piano Concertos (Piers Lane • The Orchestra Now • Leon Botstein) (2020) Serie The Romantic Piano Concerto – 81 | FLAC (tracks), lossless
The Hyperion label's Romantic Piano Concerto series here reaches its
81st volume. If there's any sign of a diminution, it's that one of the
present works was written in 1938 and the other in 1955, neither date
conventionally placed in the Romantic era. Yet the two main attractions
here can indubitably be described as Romantic, and both are entirely
distinctive pieces well worth a revival; neither is commonly heard, even
in Britain. The Piano Concerto No. 1 in G, Op. 85 (the lack of
designation of major or minor is perhaps intentional), of Edmund Rubbra,
is the later of the two works. The work was dedicated to Indian sarod
player Ali Akbar Khan, an influence audible from the beginning of the
work (beautifully handled here by pianist Piers Lane and the Orchestra
Now under Leon Botstein) and elegantly integrated into concerto form.
It's also very much the work of a symphonist, which was Rubbra's primary
métier; the piano is sometimes a soloist, sometimes an element of
orchestral color. The slow movement is a lovely nocturne. The Piano
Concerto in B flat major, Op. 58, of Arthur Bliss, was composed for the
1939 New York World's Fair and dedicated to the American people. Perhaps
this circumstance brought forth an unusually broad musical language
from the once-modernist Bliss, who remarked, "Surely the Americans are
at heart the most romantic in the world." The finale is an energetic and
technically challenging romp that lives up to Bliss's stated ambition
to produce a British "Emperor" Concerto. All of the musicians approach
the music with freshness and commitment, and the whole project is of
interest far beyond the usual circles of Romantic music specialists and
enthusiasts. James Manheim
Tracklist :
Piano Concerto In G, Op. 85 (29:54)
Composed By – Edmund Rubbra
Morning Song 'Maytime In Sussex' 7:38
Composed By – Arnold Bax
Piano Concerto In B Flat Major (39:54)
Composed By – Arthur Bliss
Credits :
Conductor – Leon Botstein
Piano – Piers Lane