The CD booklet is rather
coy, to say the least, about the origin
of these recordings. Felicja Blumental,
whose biography is given, was a leading
pianist of her day having been born
in Warsaw in 1908 and who lived on until
1991 when she died in Tel Aviv.
I assume that these
recordings dated from the 1950s or 1960s
and are taken from LPs. I can say that
with a little confidence as the sound
is typically boxy and from time to time
little pops and bleeps are audible.
I should add though that the ears adjust
and one’s enjoyment is not particularly
hampered. Even so, surely details on
the recording would have added to one’s
interest and admiration. After all,
I suspect that Blumental recorded this
repertoire when early music was not
especially fashionable.
She is a typical pianist
of her time and it would be wrong to
compare her style with modern early
music performances. Here slow movements
are indeed quite slow but the Allegros
are full of crisp finger-work and the
use of the sustaining pedal is limited
or non-existent. Having won competitions
in the 1950s in South America she comes
to this Iberian music not as an outsider
although it was her Mozart performances
which especially caught the critics’
attention at that time. The rather quaintly
written but mostly handy booklet notes
give us information on the composers
although little about the individual
pieces. They also tell us that "it
was in the 1960s that Felicja Blumental
made a speciality of music outside the
regular piano repertoire". It goes
on to list Clementi, Field, Busoni,
Paderewski and Ferdinand Ries as some
of her specialities. I was surprised
not to see Scarlatti on that list: a)
because he is, to all intents and purposes,
a Spanish composer and b) because so
much of this music is unimaginable without
Scarlatti.
Many of you might well
want this music played on the harpsichord
anyway. I have heard Seixas’s sonatas
work excellently well on the organ,
but a sensitive pianist does have certain
expressive advantages over a harpsichord;
they can make second-rate music more
interesting. Am I alone in finding Scarlatti,
for example, more acceptable on the
harpsichord than, say, Handel?
As for the music itself
I cannot make out much of a case for
most of it. Carlos Seixas is strongly
represented and although I couldn’t
rate him anything better than a second-rater,
much of his work is distinctly tuneful,
as in the Sonata in C’s movement 1.
It is also often quite rhythmical as
in the curious two movement F minor
sonata which, in its slow movement,
is quite touching. The Toccata in E
minor is formally an interesting experiment
being in three movements officially
but really in two with a brief and affecting
Adagio introduction to the second movement,
a Minuet. Oddly enough the middle movement
of Seixas’s D minor Sonata is a Giga
which is followed by a Minuet. Perhaps
he knew his J.S. Bach. Seixas’s so-called
Fuga is really a two movement Sonata
that is little more than unusually contrapuntal
with the fugue being somewhat limp and
only a weak succession of imitative
entries. Nevertheless it is an interesting
piece.
Antonio Soler is almost
a clone of Scarlatti yet it is fascinating
to see him experimenting in the otherwise
uncommon key of C# minor with one or
two distant modulations. He was a priest
yet one who was obviously allowed to
compose freely. Angles and Jacinto were
also ‘Brothers’ but little of their
work survives.
It was quite fun to
discover that Frexanet’s one movement
sonata has the same rhythm at Bernstein’s
‘America’. Bernstein calls it a ‘Huapanga’
rhythm in the score but it is simply
six quavers followed by three crotchets.
Also it is delightful to discover the
beautifully melancholy Sonata in one
movement by Cantallos of whom we have
no more works and of whom we know nothing.
This is a binary form sonata, the form
favoured by Scarlatti. Like Scarlatti,
counterpoint is out, in favour of a
melodically superior ‘galant’ style
which was popular c.1730; a date suitable
for many of the pieces recorded here.
So, to sum up. These
CDs are arguably period pieces but the
repertoire is of interest from a rarity
value and the performances are true
to the music and to the time in which
they were recorded. Worth exploring.
Gary Higginson
Felicja Blumental - piano