These recordings are not BIS originals. However you
would not know that from the booklet or cover; a surprising oversight
from this company. BIS's standards are usually exemplars for the 'crowd'
to follow. I was sorry that they did not mention that these had first
appeared on Jesper Buhl's Danacord label. …. Or did I miss the note.
When first published the three discs appeared with
disastrous timing at about the same time as a clutch of other Medtner
CDs in 1991-2. Demidenko was on Hyperion. Tozer began his cycle with
Chandos. Testament issued Medtner's own 78s recordings of the second
and third concertos back to back. After drought a flood. The drought
had not been complete but the Concertos had until then been hard to
track down in LP land. You might have picked up Melodiyas (either on
Russian domestics or Western licensed discs) of the First Concerto,
the Second played by Shatskes and the Third, wonderfully, by Nikolaeyevna
long before she was fêted. Candide even had the Third Concerto
(now available as part of the VoxBox Romantic piano concerto series).
In any event the Danacords suffered against the Chandos/Hyperion competition.
The critics washed the Danacords out, largely, I suspect, because of
their profligate layout across three CDs and for coupling several solo
piano sonatas with the concertos.
The First Concerto: Much of the first movement
(in fact the First Concerto is laid out as a single movement in three
distinct parts) is in step with the Scriabin Concerto (a work for which
I zealously hold a none too subtle torch), the Arensky and the Rachmaninov
First. It comes as a jolt when the second movement opens in macabre
garb as if the composer had been listening to Prokofiev. Despite the
facile propaganda you will catch nary a whiff of Brahms in this music.
The First Concerto suffers from inspirational sag during the second
movement which is too tranquillo and self-absorbed by half; the
same can be said of the Romanz of the Second Concerto. The third
movement (all of 18.04!) warms up considerably and there is some zestful
syncopation well ahead of its time as in III 3.47 as well as the strongest
cross-references with Rachmaninov (7.12). Madge is superb when the music
calls for great animation as in 10.59 of III. He is the prince of the
leonine flourish - generous of soul in the last five minutes of the
concerto - very much the counterpart of Art Nouveau in sound - almost
Baxian in its saturated undergrowth. No wonder Sorabji esteemed this
work so.
The three sonatas fill out the first disc alongside
the First Concerto. The Op. 22 work is given a turbulent Lisztian reading
- elbows out. The Reminiscenza will be known to many through
the much-travelled Gilels recording. Strange how Gilels seems to have
dropped Medtner once he achieved international status. Madge makes more
hay with this work than with the Op. 22. There is about it the romantic
nostalgie of Prokofiev's psychologically probing waltzes. In
the Tragic Madge is nowhere near as fluent as in Hamelin's equivalent
recording as part of the invaluable Hyperion sonata cycle. However there
is still much to appreciate. Madge never leaves you intellectually starved.
The Second Concerto: The Second Concerto is
dedicated to Rachmaninov whose own Third Concerto must have been ricocheting
around Medtner's head at the time. Stupel and the Lodz orchestra play
their hearts out in a work in which inspiration is memorable. Waltonian
syncopation in step with the Oldham composer's contemporaneous Sinfonia
Concertante can be heard in the first movement alongside a defiant
gruffness familiar from Brahms' Tragic Overture and Schumann's
Fourth Symphony. The first movement lasts 18 minutes - as long as the
final section of the First. Madge contrives the return of the graceful
understated theme at 13.02 treating it to a bluesy transformation at
15.33. The Divertissement finale skitters capriciously.
The Third Concerto is the strongest of the three
with resilient ideas and more concentration and directional sense than
its predecessors. It was premiered on 19 February 1944 at the Royal
Albert Hall. It was conducted by Boult and the dedication was to the
man who had offered to finance a recording of all of Medtner's music,
Sir Jaya Chamaraja Wadiyar, The Maharajah of Mysore. Medtner claimed
a Lermontov plot for the music but we do better to listen qua music
not qua storyline. Its subtitle, Ballade, is of course
consistent and is a title common to many pieces in the Medtner catalogue
- also appearing in other language variants such as Skazka and
Conte. There is nothing as clumsy as a bar by bar storyline -
the quintessence of a tale is Medtner's aim. The music encapsulates
spirit: seduction, nobility, fantasy landscapes, heroism. We might be
describing Bax's Winter Legends (also for piano and orchestra)
but Medtner works in relation to bounds set by German romanticism (Schumann)
fused with Rimskian liberation. Listen to the way Madge halts, slows,
quietens, stills and animates the line at the start of the Finale -
it is superbly done. Experimenters should sample the whole of the finale
(CD2 track 6).
By the time of the premiere of the Ballade concerto
Medtner had spent almost a decade in England. As will be apparent from
the dates this is a wartime work. It is remarkable that Medtner's voice
is as individual as ever; true to the same beacon-light that suffuses
the First Concerto. The deciso staccato writing at the start
of the Interludium is fascinating for its juxtaposition of such
graven playing with lyrical fancy.
Listening to these concertos and to Madge I fervently
hope that Hyperion will be persuaded to follow up their phenomenally
successful set of the Medtner sonatas with the same composer's complete
Ballades. Also if ever Madge showed even passing interest in recording
the Piano Quintet or the four Rachmaninov concertos one of the companies
would do well to step forward. Madge would also be a natural choice
for the Alan Bush piano concerto, the six Sorabji concertos and the
six by English Rachmaninov epigones, Roger Sacheverell Coke, Josef Holbrooke
(three concertos) and York Bowen (four concertos).
We should doff our hats (metaphorical hats are permitted)
to BIS for restoring this unjustly demeaned set to currency. It is available
at a great price (2-for-1) and for the Medtner-curious it makes first
recommendation for convenience and integrity of artistic values. The
Hyperion pair of CDs is more intimate in sound and more equable; Tozer
on Chandos is highly poetic and the composer on Testament has barely
passable mono sound. Madge and his orchestra give the best approximation
of a big concert hall sound and that with a scaled up epic set to the
jaw.
Rob Barnett
Geoffrey Douglas Madge
(piano)