I was prompted to review
this disc by a pretty happy encounter
with Linn’s anthology of songs by Strauss,
Marx and Walter. The Walter songs struck
me as fresh, vivid and poetically engaging:
review
Digging deeper I wondered
about Walter’s other compositions largely
despised and rejected by a man who was
to rise to sustained fame as a conductor.
There are two symphonies (1907, 1910),
Das Siegesfest (Schiller) for
soli, chorus and orchestra (1907), a
string quartet (1903), a piano quintet
(1904), a piano trio (1906), a violin
sonata (1908) and various songs. I am
indebted to the liner notes provided
by Martin Anderson whose adventurous
Toccata Classics label has just (September
2005) been launched.
Goldmark, best
known for his Violin Concerto (beloved
of Nathan Milstein) wrote several pieces
for violin and piano. There are two
suites (1869, 1893), a violin sonata
(1874) as well as various smaller genre
pieces. The notes suggest a baroque
influence but it passes
right by me. What I hear is a sequence
of five romantic movements spun from
the heritage of Schumann but looking
towards the grace and smiles of Bruch
and Dvořák. True there is a certain
Bachian repose in the cantilena of the
andante sostenuto but it is given
the hybrid treatment with bardic arpeggiation
from the piano. The finale is busy,
brisk and breezy with a nod towards
Mozart but a deeper obeisance to the
Beethoven of the first two piano concertos.
This is a work long on smiles; short
on sighs.
The Walter Violin
Sonata is lavishly proportioned though
still twenty minutes shorter than Marx’s
First Sonata. While I might take issue
over the memorability of the Goldmark
finale I entirely agree with Mr Anderson’s
nice parallel drawn between the style
of the Walter and the music of the precociously
blessed Korngold who in 1908 lived upstairs
from the Walters in Vienna at Theobaldgasse.
The music is determinedly tonal and
typically late romantic. In the first
movement the piano uses a foreboding-heavy
echo of the fate motif from Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony. The work has a number
of intensely imaginative moments such
as the syncopated sinister bass reflections
of the Andante serioso. The third and
final movement is a rather bitty Moderato
in which Brahmsian manner meets Korngold-like
sensuousness and dignified poetry.
Throughout Graffin
and Devoyon respond with thoughtful
poetry rather than unbridled abandon
- such is the nature of this music.
Rob Barnett
See also review
by Terry Barfoot
Philippe Graffin (violin,
Pascal Devoyon (piano) 
for details
