Volume 1 (8.557474)
[64:32]
Two Minuets, op.28/B.58, Dumka in D
minor, op.35/B.64, Theme with Variations
in A flat major, op.36/B.65, Three Album
Leaves, 8 Waltzes, op.54/B.101
Recorded 7-9 April 1999, Studio 10,
DeutschlandRadio Berlin, Germany
Volume 2 (8.557475) [56:52]
2 Furiants, op.42/B.85, 4 Eclogues,
op.56/B.103, 4 Compositions without
Title, 6 Pieces, op.52/B.110
Recorded 5-8 October 1999, Studio 10,
DeutschlandRadio Berlin, Germany
Volume 3 (8.557476) [71:29]
Dumka and Furiant, op.12/B.136-7, 2
Little Pearls, B.156, Poetic Tone Pictures,
op.85/B.161
Recorded February 1995, Sonia-Henie
Art Centre and Sofienberg Church, Oslo,
Norway
Volume 4 (8.557477) [63:56]
8 Humoresques, op.101/B.187, 6 Mazurkas,
op.56/B.111, Silhouettes, op.8/B.98
Recorded June 1998, Stavanger Concert
Hall, Stavanger, Norway
Volume 5 (8.557478) [38 :29]
Polka in E major, B.3, Scottish Dances,
op.41/B.74, Humoresque, B.138, Impromptu,
B.129, Suite in A – "American",
op.98/B.184, 2 Pieces, B.188
Although
Naxos tells us that “Dvořák’s piano
works are perhaps the least known of
all his music”, I should have said that
dubious honour belonged to his songs
and smaller vocal works, which have
never been systematically explored to
the best of my knowledge (even
the operas are no longer quite the closed
book they used to be). It is true that
we rarely encounter the piano music
on the concert platform but the musically
curious have had reasonable access to
it over the last three decades or so,
ever since Radoslav Kvapil’s series
of six LPs recorded for Supraphon in
1967-70 and issued, first separately
and then in a box with very detailed
notes and some thoughtful observations
on Dvořák’s
piano style by Kvapil himself. I am
not sure about the current availability
of the Kvapil discs but I presume they
could be hunted down if there were still
a pressing reason for preferring them
to this new cycle by Stefan Veselka,
a pianist of Norwegian
birth but of Czech parentage and a relative
of Janáček.
Kvapil’s discs are
entitled "Piano Works", those
of Veselka are more specifically claimed
as the "Complete Solo Piano Music",
yet each pianist manages to include
something that the other misses.
On the face of it this seems strange,
since Dvořák is not one of those
composers whose works are still being
researched in old libraries; everything,
even the most lightweight juvenilia,
has been lovingly gathered together
by his compatriots and published
in the Complete Edition, so if you want
to record any aspect of his work complete
all you have to do is take the relevant
volume(s) and play it (or them) from
cover to cover.
In Kvapil’s case space
may have been a factor. The accompanying
essay refers to a polka called "Forget-Me-Not"
of c.1855/6 (with the trio provided
by the composer’s teacher) and another
polka from 1860; it dismisses them as
"of historical interest only"
and they are not recorded. Veselka gives
us the second of them, B.3, (a first
recording,
I suppose) and it proves charming if
hardly vintage Dvořák, so what
about “Forget-Me-Not”?
The same essay also
loftily refers to a decision to ignore
"two children’s compositions called
Two Little Pearls from 1887" (would
one also omit Schumann’s and Bartók’s
children’s compositions from a complete
recorded edition?). Veselka plays them
and they prove charming in their small-scale
way – and surely still useful additions
to the repertoire of children’s pieces
by "real" composers.
On the other hand,
Kvapil has seven mazurkas while Veselka
has only six. This is because Kvapil
concludes with a piece in D which Dvořák
had originally intended as no.4 but
then rejected and replaced with a much
more characteristic piece. I agree that
a complete edition should include it,
but I would have put it in appendix
at the end rather than run the risk
of having lazy listeners supposing
the composer intended it as a grand
finale to the cycle. Rather for the
same reason, while I agree with both
pianists in their decision to record
all six of the “Four Pieces” op.52 (Dvořák
withheld the last two and the set of
four makes a better-balanced
whole) I would have kept the rejected
pieces separate.
Since both of them
play a set of "3 Album Leaves"
you might suppose that the pieces would
be the same but no, just one is (Kvapil’s
no.2 is Veselka’s no.1) while Kvapil’s
other two are the first and third of
Veselka’s 4 untitled pieces. The third
of Veselka’s Album Leaves (another first
recording I suppose) is a little gem;
a pity it only lasts 56 seconds. Kvapil
would appear to have an Impromptu in
G not played by Veselka, but in fact
it is the second of Veselka’s untitled
pieces. So if, conversely, Veselka’s
untitled pieces look like a new discovery,
Kvapil actually has three of them (with
titles) and only the last is new.
In short, neither is
wholly complete, but they are both a
good deal completer than Dvořák
himself would have wished, though in
the case of the four Eclogues his withholding
of the music is quite inexplicable –
they are among the most attractive piano
pieces he wrote, their gracious dance
rhythms assuming human dimensions worthy
of Schubert.
Having
got this out of the way, what of the
music and the performances? I must say
that, as a pianist and ardent lover
of Dvořák, one of the early delusions
of my life was the realisation that
he had not written for my instrument
any great sonatas or other extended
pieces to put alongside the finest symphonies,
the cello concerto, the best string
quartets and Rusalka. Listening to these
two sets has made me realise that I
have been insufficiently appreciative
of what he did write, for his
personality shines through all but a
few of these pieces, the piano writing
sounds effective, however it may look
on the page, and through the homely
dance rhythms and romantic melodies
there are more than occasional glimpses
of a Schubertian transience of life.
The high points are not always where
one would expect them; I have mentioned
the Eclogues, which the composer actually
withheld, and the untitled pieces have
much of the same quality. The Poetical
Tone Pictures, into which he put much
effort, perhaps hoping to create his
pianistic masterpiece, have been dismissed
as laboured and overwritten, yet both
pianists are able to show that, if you
study them long enough for their difficulties
to become no longer apparent to the
listener, what emerges is characteristic,
satisfying and, indeed, poetic.
Putting on Veselka’s
first record we are struck by the warmth
and mellowness of his tone, captured
in a richly sonorous recording, and
by the freedom of his approach. All
the way through he gives you the idea
that he is improvising the music on
the spot, yet rarely does this get out
of hand. Turning to Kvapil we find him
sometimes straighter, sometimes freer
still, but even when he is straighter
the effect seems more discontinuous;
he lacks Veselka’s ability to make his
rubato actually help to clarify
the sense of the music. Compare them
in the first of the op.54 Waltzes and
you will find Kvapil separating the
music into short cells while Veselka
leads you onwards. On the other hand
in some of the non-dance-based smaller
pieces, such as the untitled piece which
Kvapil calls Impromptu in G, Kvapil
creates a sense of self-communing which
leaves Veselka sounding relatively uncaring.
I was definitely disappointed
by Veselka’s Humoresques; these pieces
can easily degenerate into piquant little
moments without any real shape, and
that is what happens here. Given Kvapil’s
track record I expected him to be worse
still, but evidently he realised the
problem and binds the whole cycle together
by somehow relating each moment to what
has gone before (even if the tempo changes);
furthermore, he must have been in a
state of grace on that particular day,
for I can only describe his performance
as truly inspired. So I won’t be throwing
out my Kvapil set and ultimately in
both sets the pianist’s love of the
music shines through.
All the same, taken
overall Veselka does seem to have the
edge, though not to the extent that
you need to go out and get him if you
have Kvapil, but this is where I would
direct first time listeners. The more
modern recording and the Naxos price
(but note that it could all have been
fitted onto four discs) are added points
in his favour; the booklet notes (by
Veselka himself) are much briefer but
at least they are to the point. The
discs come in a box but each has a jewel-case
(and number) of its own which seems
to indicate than they can be bought
separately. At this price I would say
get the lot, but if you are not sure,
try Vol.2 first.
In conclusion, I hope
that pianists (and record companies)
who may be interested will not suppose
that these two pianists have, between
them, said all there is to say. The
B minor Mazurka, for example, a profoundly
touching, melancholic piece, is perfunctory
in Veselka’s hands and only just about
acceptable in Kvapil’s. This is a rare
disappointment
but it reminds us that so far we have
had no Dvořák piano performances
on record of the stature of Rubinstein’s
Chopin or Gieseking’s Debussy.
And now, Naxos, how
about the complete songs?
Christopher Howell
Stefan Veselka (piano)