Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952)
Fantasiestücke Op.61 (1942)
Lyrica Nova Op.59 (1940)
7 Préludes Op.40 (1931)
Piano Sonata No.2 in C Sharp Minor Op.60 (1942)
Sławomir Wilk (piano)
rec. 2021, Performance Hall of the European Centre Matecznik Mazowsze, Otrębusy, Poland
Notes in Polish and English
DUX 1775 [64]
I was introduced to the piano music of Bortkiewicz on one of my first ever LPs, a Decca Argo transfer of piano roll recordings by Moriz Rosenthal on which he played the luxurious Etude op.15 no.8. It was to be a quarter of a century before I heard substantially more of his music with the release of Stephen Coombs' two CDs for Hyperion (now on Hyperion Dyad CDD22054 not reviewed) and since then all of his extant solo piano music has been recorded; there are however some works such as his op.68 Tom Sawyer's adventure and the Esquisses de femmes op.70 that are still untraced.
Sergei Bortkiewicz was born in Kharkov, Ukraine. His father was a wealthy man and Sergei and his siblings grew up on the family estate Artemivka outside of the city. He had lessons with Ilya Slatin, the head of the music school in Kharkov before travelling to St Petersburg to study law though he also entered the Imperial conservatoire of music, studying piano with Leschetizky pupil Karel van Arek and theory with Anatoly Liadov. After the student uprising of 1898 and military service he moved to Leipzig where he studied with Liszt pupil Alfred Reisenauer and then lived in Berlin until the outbreak of the first world war whereupon he returned to Kharkov. Once again he had to flee, this time from the communists and he spent time in Constantinople where his success enabled him to set up a conservatory of music. Most of the rest of his life was spent in Berlin, until the rise of the nazis, and Vienna where he continued to compose; he had lost much of his income from his compositions when publishers were forced to sell to German houses and the publication of Russian music was banned. The works on this disc except for the preludes, date from this difficult time but despite this they exhibit little of the angst that one might expect; the melancholy we do hear is no different to that found in the works he wrote in the first decade of the twentieth century.
I often hear Bortkiewicz likened to Rachmaninov and it is fairly certain that if you respond positively to the latter then Bortkiewicz's music will appeal; there is that grandeur of style combined with deep Russian melancholy and passion and this is echoed in the E major Prelude from op.40 and other pieces. Indeed the first movement of the Second Sonata almost screams Rachmaninov C minor Concerto at 1:13! That said I am more reminded of Tschaikowsky and the Russian miniaturists, Chopin and early Scriabin – try the second of the op.40 Preludes for this. He met Scriabin and it is not surprising to read that he admired his music; his description of the composer was imagine Chopin or Raphael with a moustache à la Wilhelm II. Ultimately however Bortkiewicz sounds like Bortkiewicz, one of those composers who despite following paths already trodden managed to craft exquisite music. There is nothing here that isn't über-romantic; one of the reasons that his light has faded is that musicians steered clear of such overt romanticism in the aftermath of the war but one can now appreciate the kaleidoscopic range of tone colour, melody and invention that he was in possession of.
The Fantasiestücke were only published in 2012; legal complications ensued after the war as publishing rights were being returned to heirs and hurdles such as the original publishers going into receivership. So it was that several pieces saw the light of day for the first time just a decade ago; in addition to these Fantasy Pieces there was the a Yugoslavian Suite op.58, three Mazurkas op.64 and the second Sonata op.60 also recorded here though that work was already known as the manuscript was held at the Nederland Muziek Instituut. The six pieces from op.61 are Warum?, a sad, questioning piece and Ein Traum, a gently flowing nocturne. Third is and the awakening, a restless, stormy piece with a surging drive throughout, followed by a minuet entitled humoreske, mock-baroque but with some romantic decorative additions. She dances is a lovely homage to the waltzes of his adoptive city Vienna, playful and nostalgic by turns while serenade is something of a sad song, more of a serenade to lost love than to a prospective date.
The four pieces of Lyrica Nova are full of the same kind of nostalgic lyricism. Shimmering harmonies are apparent in the rippling first piece while the second, melancholy and haunting, opens with something of a Grieg Lyric piece to it before its Russian roots become apparent. The third has elements of early Scriabin in its figuration, almost like one of the early Poèmes while the final piece, bold but brief, breaks the restraint of its companions with its huge chords and optimistic mood. Many piano composers after Chopin adopted the term for prelude for short miniatures and Bortkiewicz was no exception, writing 26 of which the op.40 set written just prior to his fleeing Berlin are typical. Once again there are many echoes of the early Scriabin of the op.8 études and op.11 Preludes, especially in the impressionist fourth or the impassioned final prelude. The ghost of Rachmaninov rises in the beautifully mournful sixth and the fifth is a delicious study in octaves, thirds and fourths that has some of the exoticism of the Crimea that nationalist composers like Borodin and Balakirev captured so well.
The second Sonata was the first major work that Bortkiewicz wrote in his Vienna years and it was a great success when he performed it there. It is in four movements full of grand gestures and virtuosic writing; the opening of the first movement is indicative of its sweeping style, with wide-ranging left hand arpeggios accompanying a big declamatory opening theme and this urgency of writing continues up to the second theme, a rising motif that is developed further in a style reminiscent of figuration in Chopin's F minor Piano Concerto. The gruff, heavily chordal second movement enjoys copious use of the bass of the instrument and its rising motif is an inversion of the opening theme of the first movement, a theme that also makes an appearance here. The triple time middle section is more mischievous in its writing and the Rachmaninov theme from the first movement is now turned into a polonaise. The slow movement combines a lyrical main section in D flat major that has echoes of Chopin's Berceuse with a hymn like central section. The finale is short but exciting, Scriabinesque and full of cross rhythms with a big tune and even bigger accompaniment at the end – stirring stuff!
Polish pianist Sławomir Wilk clearly loves this music; he revels in its grand style and bold gestures as well as its delicate, yearning poetry. Three of the opus numbers here also appear on Nadejda Vlaeva's wonderful Hyperion disc (Hyperion Records CDA68118 review review), a disc I cannot recommend highly enough and if she has a lighter touch in a piece such as the Sonata's second movement compared to Wilk's darker tones I am glad to have them both in my collection. Certainly this is a disc I will return to and it is an excellent starting point if Bortkiewicz is an unfamiliar voice.
Rob Challinor
