At one time the province
of the romantic piano concerto belonged
to Genesis and Candide-Vox-Turnabout.
Now it has been well and truly occupied
by Hyperion; not that they have things
all their own way. The concerto by Pavel
Pabst emerged on Cameo Classics
not so long ago. Similar concertos have
appeared from Kleos
(Achron) and here and now on Martin
Anderson's Toccata
Classics.
Sergei Taneyev was
a composer with a rigorously applied
value code. He was a doyen of the Moscow
Conservatoire where his pupils included
the pianist Goldenweiser, the critic
and composer Leonid Sabaneyev as well
as Scriabin, Medtner, Gliere and Rachmaninov.
He had in the last year of his studentship
premiered the Tchaikovsky Piano
Concerto and some of that work's sound-world
suffuses his own sole piano concerto
of 1876 - a work sadly left incomplete.
It has many facets including a Beethovenian
grandeur, a predilection for Lisztian
glitter, a Schumann-like romantic waywardness
and the sort of tuneful gift we can
hear in the piano concertos of Scriabin
and Arensky. The melody that dominates
the first of the two surviving movements
is rather done to death but it stands
up pretty well across a massive 25 minutes.
The diminutive 8:24 Andante Funebre
announces a grave nobility; something
of the Chopin funeral march about it.
Those sombre brass voices unmistakably
suggest the catafalque. That we can
hear even this fragment is down to the
orchestration and realisation of Vissarion
Shebalin. Had this concerto been completed
in proportion - and assuming a three
movement schema - we would have been
confronted with a work of some seventy
minutes. Fascinating. What remains and
has been salved is impressive in its
own right.
The solo piano music
now .... The 1895 Prelude is
the only survivor of three written for
Alexander Siloti. There is something
of Medtner's nobility of spirit about
this work from a then mature composer.
The folk origins of the 1881 Lullaby
can be heard. The Theme
and Variations of 1874 were
inspired by the Tchaikovsky Original
Theme and Variations of 1874. It
must not be forgotten that Taneyev and
Tchaikovsky held each other in trusted
esteem. They were accustomed to criticising
each others works in a way similar to
that of Holst and RVW. Taneyev weaves
into the work a melody from Tchaikovsky's
Second String Quartet. The Schumann-inflected
Allegro in E flat major belongs
to his student years. The Andantino
Semplice is coloured by the
music of Brahms and of Anton Rubinstein.
The scudding March of
1879 is lively and full of bounce. The
joint work of Taneyev, Glazunov, Arensky
and Rachmaninov can be heard in the
collaborative Four Improvisations.
This is a light-hearted piece. Of the
four the Largo in F minor is
especially regal and effective. The
Composer's Birthday is for narrator
and piano four hands with the speaker
and the other pair of hands here being
those of Vladimir Ashkenazy. We get
to hear both the version with narration
and without. The Composer
in question is Tchaikovsky. Taneyev
wrote the work for Tchaikovsky’s 52nd
birthday and wove into it quotes from
Mazeppa, Queen of Spades,
Iolanta, Maid of Orleans and
Onegin - Tchaikovsky's first
love was opera - alongside Francesca
and the Second Symphony.
The thorough notes
- with the luxurious addition of music
examples - are by Anastasia Belina whose
research on Taneyev is displayed to
grand effect.
I see that Chandos
have just issued their second pair of
Taneyev symphonies conducted by Polyansky.
Taneyev wrote four. This joins an earlier
CD of the other two symphonies to bring
all of them into availability for the
first time. If this new disc is anything
like the first it will find Polyansky
- an artist seemingly addicted to lethargic
tempi in his Glazunov cycle - in magnificent
form. He continues to surprise though
we seem to hear less of him these days.
Quite apart from the
string quartets, once available on Melodiya
LPs, the other work that merits urgent
revival is Taneyev's stern opera The
Oresteia. This was issued on Olympia
in 1988 (Olympia OCD195A+B) but has
now disappeared from circulation. Will
some company rescue this superb and
volatile recording from oblivion? I
hope so. It is probably Taneyev's finest
piece.
This is the first appearance
on disc of the surviving head and trunk
of the Taneyev concerto - a work in
a tradition both grand and florid. It
is coupled with some attractive music
for solo piano. The playing time is
generous and Toccata uphold an admirable
and quickly established tradition for
excellence in recording and in sumptuous
annotation. Now if only they would turn
their attention to the pair of piano
concertos by Dzerzhinsky and the symphony
by Yuri Shaporin.
Rob Barnett
Joseph Banowetz (piano) 
