Just over a year after I reviewed the first of the projected eight disc
cycle
of the solo piano music of Alexander Tcherepnin we are up to number three
(see
reviews of
Volume
1 and
Volume
2). The excitement and wonder continue. What continues to amaze, delight
and
fascinate is the breadth of Tcherepnin’s invention. Couple this with
the
fact that, based on what I have heard, there is never a dull moment in
anything
he wrote nor any feeling that his material is either wasted or undeveloped.
This
composer prayed to an icon as a young boy to be a composer like his father.
His
father was initially against the idea believing it would be a hard and
difficult
road to embark on though he clearly never thought the same about himself. By
his
late teens he had already composed hundreds of pieces. His
8 pieces,
which
he wrote during his time in Chicago in the mid-1950s, are proof of the
extent
to which he was a master of the miniature though that could be said of the
entire
disc since no single piece lasts as long as three minutes. In many ways he
reminds
me of his compatriot Nicolai Medtner though Tcherepnin’s music has a
more
spiky edge when it is not equally dreamy.
The accompanying booklet notes explain that Philip Ramey the writer of
biographical
notes to be found on
www.tcherepnin.com
(a website well worth exploring by anyone interested in discovering more
about
this composer) says that at the time they were written he was making a
conscious
effort to synthesize all the previous elements of his style. That is
something
I as a mere listener rather than a musicologist find difficult to determine
but
I do find his music has an overall style that this cycle is making
increasingly
clear. I would find his music easy to identify now whichever period of his
life
it came from. I say that because the following
Feuilles libres were
written
35 years earlier in 1920 during the time he spent in the Georgian capital
Tbilisi
where the family had moved to escape the events surrounding the revolution
in
Petrograd. They were obliged to move again, eventually to Paris. In fact the
ensuing
fourteen pieces were written in the 1920s and all show a fully formed
musician
with an incredible flair for invention. It is always exciting to me to hear
world
première recordings. So far in this series there have been plenty and
indeed
Feuilles libres is one such and there are three more on this disc.
One of Tcherepnin’s particular strengths, and there are many,
is the ability to portray sadness, nostalgia and regret. This is done in
such richly beautiful ways as three of these four pieces conclusively show
with only the third showing an excited and agitated side. The sad side
continues in the
4 Prèludes nostalgiques. This group begins
with a deliciously doleful piece which combines a brooding left hand with a
yearning melody from the right hand in the upper register. The third of
these shows another of his abilities, which is to be able to produce a wild
and fiery mood out of nothing. The last is a wonderfully melancholy piece
with a tune crying out for further development. His
Quatre
Préludes, his next composed set continue the reflective mood
though rather more subdued but all with his characteristically original
approach. The booklet notes point out that his
Intermezzo could
easily fit into Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet ballet score for
it has the same spikily rhythmic edge that Prokofiev employed. It was
interesting to read that Tcherepnin took it from a larger work for flute,
violin and chamber ensemble thus giving it another life altogether, but then
he always wrote so exceedingly brilliantly for piano.
His
Tanz, another world première recording, which was
published after his death, is another revision of a longer work for piano
quintet written the previous year (1927). It is further proof of his
facility with invention since it contains a wealth of material within its
minute and a half.
The first of his
7 Etudes from 1938 show the influence he
drew from a visit to the Far East on concert tours, during which he met his
second wife Lee Hsien Ming. The second and third reminded me very much of
Stravinsky’s
Petrushka with a jaunty air about each. The fourth
reveals a fondness Tcherepnin had for exploiting the piano’s very
highest notes in trills making for tiny bell-like sounds. The remaining ones
are all interesting for their melodic invention with the last one very
lovely indeed with long flowing lines conjuring a magical conclusion to this
set.
The ten pieces that constitute his
Expressions and which date
from 1951 are utterly fascinating and the booklet note writers have pointed
out the similarity with Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition
though in miniature by comparison. The composer wrote that his intention was
to allow the pianist sufficient leeway to lend their own interpretation to
the content of the pieces. Each of the ten pieces has a title and
Entrance again brought Stravinsky to mind with its confidently
strutting air. The booklet gives a good description of each piece so I will
not try simply to find other words to do so but suffice to say that the
whole set is highly effective. For a fourth time in
At the Fair with
its peasant dance-like sounds Stravinsky seemed to watching over
Tcherepnin’s shoulder; then again it could just be a ‘Russian
thing’.
At Dawn also uses the trilling of the highest notes,
this time to evoke chattering birds most convincingly. The
Exit
brings us back to earth and the set to its end.
Grand Piano, a Naxos label, is planning to release the remaining
five discs in the series by the middle of 2014. They can’t do so quick
enough as far as I’m concerned. Tcherepnin is so beguiling that
listening to his music can become truly addictive and having to wait any
length of time between ‘fixes’ is hard to do.
This disc has been as thoroughly rewarding as the first two and as
before Giorgio Koukl establishes himself as the perfect vehicle through
which this superb composer finds a voice that shows his brilliance to the
greatest effect.
Steve Arloff
