Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor Rob Barnett Editor in Chief
John Quinn Contributing Editor Ralph Moore Webmaster
David Barker Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf MusicWeb Founder Len Mullenger
Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Symphony No.1 in A flat major Op.55 (1908) (transc. solo piano Sigfrid
Karg-Elert)[54:57] Alan
BUSH (1900-1995)
Piano Sonata in B minor Op.2 (1921) [11:47]
Mark Bebbington
(piano)
rec. Symphony Hall, Birmingham, August 2006 SOMM SOMMCD069 [66:47]
After
the immense success of Elgar’s First Symphony, Novello’s – the
composer’s publisher – selected Sigfrid Karg-Elert to write
a piano reduction. Such was the success of this that he was
engaged a few years later to write an arrangement of the
Second Symphony as well. Karg-Elert is now best known for
his organ and harmonium works, though he wrote for the orchestra
and piano as well and this is a feature that is becoming
more apparent on disc – indeed CPO has an exhaustive series
of his compositions underway at the moment. Largely an autodidact
and a generation Elgar’s junior Karg-Elert was fortunate
to be befriended and helped by such as Grieg and Reznicek.
And he was the ideal man for the job.
The
arrangement lays bare the harmonic bones of the Symphony
and Karg-Elert’s meticulous work also ensures that he has
attempted to reproduce facets of orchestration and colour
in the piano writing. This is a terrifically difficult matter
given the nature of Elgar’s opulent late Romantic scoring,
the intense, quivering and jagged nature of much of the first
movement, motifs coursing throughout, the legato beauty of
the slow movement, the difficult scherzo and the pile-driving
element of the finale’s ambiguous triumphalism.
It’s
the teeming incident of the opening movement that causes
the most problems pianistically. Bebbington is a remarkably
agile and sensitive player as we have heard before on disc
but neither nor David Owen Norris, whose Radio 3 broadcast
is the only other performance of the Karg-Elert that I’ve
heard, can escape the palpable tension and strain that is
inherent in the reduction. There are times when six hands
are called for not two. The thematic and harmonic complexities
of this movement and the finale then are the most difficult
to convey; especially the more declamatory writing in the
finale. The Scherzo is less awkward and the slow movement
too. Here the plasticity and nobility of the writing is at
its most marked, and maybe Karg-Elert’s mind turned to Liszt
and to Schumann in his work.
Bebbington
has been accorded a remarkably sonorous and sympathetic recording
in Symphony Hall and full justice has been done to Karg-Elert’s
monumental work.
The
coupling is unusual, the first recording of Alan Bush’s 1921
one movement B minor sonata. It’s a chromatically powerful
twelve-minute affair richly indebted to Liszt and written
when Bush was a student at the Royal Academy, Its most attractive
feature is the warm, untroubled lyricism at its heart and
the rather decisive snappy themes and rich chording; a good
re-discovery which Bebbington, its champion, plays with rich
eloquence.
With
fine notes and another first class recording for the Bush
this is splendid undertaking. A niche market disc undoubtedly
but a valuable one.
Reviews
from previous months Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the
discs reviewed. details We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin
Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to
which you refer.