Howard Shelley and
the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra have
already recorded Herz’s concertos nos.
1, 7 and 8 in this series (Hyperion
CDA67465 review),
so one further issue of the remaining
two concertos might safely be predicted
to be in the pipeline.
Henri Herz is a name
which was completely new to me, and
my inquisitiveness has been rewarded
with a pleasant surprise. Herz was a
composer, teacher and all-out piano
nut whose playing was regarded as the
most sensational of his day. In the
1840s he outsold and commanded higher
fees than Liszt and Chopin. While his
commercially successful music might
have been lambasted by Schumann there
is no evidence here that these works
are merely trendy pot-boilers. Sir George
Grove observed that ‘Herz found out
what the public liked and would pay,
and this he gave to them’. On the strength
of this recording the public of the
time had good taste.
The little orchestral
touches which support the piano solo
with brush-strokes of colour in the
first movement of the Concerto No. 3
remind me of Schumann a little, but
as a Parisian by adoption Herz avoided
the more weightily teutonic musical
statements of the German school. For
this reason his music has long been
dismissed as superficial and irrelevant.
Even without plumbing the profoundest
of emotional depths the music here is
filled with exuberance, is cleverly
orchestrated, and goes far beyond mere
technical bravura in the piano writing.
There are some beautifully expressive
moments in the second Andante sostenuto
movement in this concerto, and the
Finale: Allegro is indeed (con
fuoco ed appassionato).
The Concerto No. 4
is shorter and less ambitious in terms
of content and structure than the 3rd,
but nonetheless contains some remarkable
passages. Herz has a sneaky way of wrong-footing
the listener with something entirely
gorgeous and then moving swiftly on
to more standard musical business, making
you want to play the thing all over
again. Such ‘moments’ were no doubt
part of the attraction of Herz’s work
to audiences both in Paris and on his
American tour (1845-51), which provided
him with the wealth with which to expand
his piano factory, and which paved the
way for names such as Gottschalk and
Anton Rubinstein.
The Concerto No.5 in
F minor has an attention-grabbing opening,
with the entry of the principal theme
being delayed behind a rhapsodic prelude.
In his excellent programme notes Jeremy
Nicholas suggests that the finale might
have been written first, given its thematic
relationship with the first movement.
Certainly the rising patterns of each
are comparable, but the atmosphere of
each movement could hardly be more different.
Once again, the central Andantino
is a beautifully conceived slow
movement, but Herz has another little
trick up his sleeve, waking the sleepy
listener with a ff final cadence.
This is the kind of
thing we old lags of Farringdon Records
would have called ‘a winner’ and would
have received multiple daily airings
over the shop HiFi – almost invariably
whipping up interest and selling copies
each time. The orchestral playing is
warm and sensitive, and Howard Shelley
is on top form. He gives just the right
kinds of gentle rubato and dynamic expression
which are idiomatically sensitive, but
prevent such music from turning into
stylistic parody. I am grateful to Hyperion
for introducing such a neglected name
into the catalogue, and am happy to
recommend this recording wholeheartedly.
Dominy Clements
Howard Shelley (piano/conductor) 
for
details
