Hamish Milne was a tall and distinguished presence at the R.A.M.
and instantly recognisable even to ignorant non-pianists such
as myself when I was there in the 1980s. He has of course since
had a remarkable if unconventional recording career, specialising
in ‘unplayable’ work such as the sonatas of Medtner
and including recordings of Bach
transcriptions, so this new disc from Hyperion always promised
to be a bit special. Over here in The Hague we had until recently
another figure who ate such pieces for breakfast, Geoffrey Madge,
and it is partly as a result of his influence on colleagues of
mine with regard to Busoni that I particularly appreciate the
chance to review this disc.
Even fans of serious romantic piano music often shy away from Ferrucio
Busoni. Most will know the Bach Chaconne arrangement,
but vast and complicated works such as the Fantasia contrappuntistica
rarely appear on concert programmes. In fact, this piece
is part of Busoni’s lifelong study of Bach, and based on The
Art of Fugue. When listened to with Bach’s ‘last and greatest
work’ in mind, most perceived difficulties fall away quite quickly.
Agreed, there is a good deal more tricky chromaticism and virtuoso
pianism in Busoni’s contrapuntal writing than in anything by
Bach, but to my ears this is easier to cope with than, say,
the grandest works of Franz Liszt. Part of the problem as a
listener has been somewhat over-indulgent performances of this
work in the past. My own reference has been that of the formidable
Viktoria Postnikova on a 1991 Erato set which also includes
the incredible Concerto op.39. Postnikova signs off after
a timing of 43:40, so you have some idea of what’s going on
already. Vastly florid pianism, pedal held down for long periods,
rubato to the point at which the flow of the music seems to
be struggling uphill and leaking over the sides of whatever
container it is supposed to inhabit. This is a pianist’s view
of Busoni the visionary, viewed from the extreme late-romantic-down,
and now appearing rather gross and old-fashioned compared to
Hamish Milne’s healthily sanguine baroque-up reading of the
score.
Returning to Milne, I like his lightness of touch in the piano ‘rumbling’
which goes on in the opening. Quite rightly he hears these as
orchestral effects, like the booming of a gong – avoiding making
the piano sound like a barrel organ or player-piano programmed
by Mrs Mills. In essence, what Busoni does is introduce the
possibilities in harmony for his day, and apply them to the
advanced polyphonic techniques which Bach used in his Art
of Fugue. Busoni held himself to strict rules, in which
“new harmony could only arise naturally from a foundation of
an extremely cultivated polyphony and establish a right for
its appearance...” This is often more clearly audible than you
might expect, and some of the more extreme moments arise simply
as a result of Busoni’s through-working of his own invention
in Bach’s polyphonic terms. Bach is quoted as well, his fugue
style being introduced and distorted in a fascinatingly modern
fashion in the Fugue I, which treads a fine line between
parody and bizarre genius. The B-A-C-H moment which appears
in the unfinished Contrapunctus XIV is introduced in
Fugue III, and if you know point at which the music stops
its ongoing, unheeding flow is quite disconcerting. While the
music is pretty much continuous in the Fantasia Hyperion
are to be applauded for introducing access points for each section.
This makes it easier to know when you are talking about the
mysterious, insinuating echo-version of the fugue subject in
the Intermezzo, or the marvel of the developing contrapuntal
complexity of the three subsequent variations, just over three
minutes of endlessly fascinating composition. Milne makes sense
of and communicates with ease even the most mind-mangling counterpoint,
and quite incredibly manages to make it entertaining – not in
a straw-boater slapstick fashion, but leading even mere mortals
such as your friendly reviewer to believe that yes, one can
understand this music, if one were really to put one’s mind
to it. This may be a delusion, but if the illusion is an apparently
real one then the trick has been a success. In fact, as I say,
the difficulties are more often in ones preconceptions: anyone
with an ear which can cope with or accept Shostakovich’s more
complex fugues will have no trouble enjoying this magnificent
musical edifice.
The Liszt arrangement has been criticised for a lack of clarity in
at least one
performance, but this is not something I can say I experienced
with Milne’s recording. There is actually a good proportion
of fairly open sounding music in this piece, which was of originally
written for organ and never transcribed for piano by Liszt himself.
Milne’s own excellent booklet notes admit to ‘the grandeur,
even bombast of Liszt’s conception’, but makes a claim for the
piano arrangement that it gains over the organ
original in terms of clarity - certainly in the likely environment
and acoustic in which such complicated and ambitious music would
be played. The meditative central Adagio is full of gorgeous
progressions, and initially sounds the most like a transcription
in need of development, up until the rippling arpeggios start
doing just that about 3 minutes in. The sheer beauty of sound
in the passage from 5:22 is a real treat, turning the piano
almost into an organ in its own right. The final Fugue is
remarkably effective on the piano, while having all of those
high-romantic effects, what Milne points out as the ‘Mephisto-style’,
full of high drama and passionate and turbulent churning.
The ‘Aphorism on Mozart’ played here was part of a set written to
celebrate Mozart’s 150th birthday. This one springs
from the Andantino of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E flat
major K 271, and is interesting for its absence of the kind
of pianistic effect for which Busoni is justly renowned. There
is a fairly hefty but in-proportion cadenza in which Busoni
lets his hair half-down, but for the most part this is a fairly
accurate representation of Mozart’s movement, with a few of
the orchestral ‘ripieni’ shortened, the repetitious conversational
exchanges becoming meaningless on solo piano.
As part of that canon of piano blockbusters with which you may be
sparring, wondering whether to take the plunge, the Fantasia Contrappuntistica is probably
less troublesome than you might imagine. I certainly found it
easier to digest this time around than something like Schubert’s
‘Grand Duo’ Sonata D812. This is however in large part
due to the skill, clarity and sheer musicianship of Hamish Milne.
This is the first occasion I’ve responded to this piece in such
a way, and it feels as if I’ve made a new friend. For sure,
there are other versions, and some of them are no doubt very
good indeed. Here however is one especially free of extra-musical
pianistic nonsense. This is, if you like, a composer’s performance
– one which conveys and expresses the force of the musical arguments
to the full, but without the imposition of an added ‘creative
personality’, a pianist who ‘interprets’. This is not to say
that Hamish Milne has no musical personality or individualism,
but to say that he plays Busoni the way it’s written, rather
than the way anyone else thinks it should sound. As Busoni did,
he takes the music back to Bach as a basis, rather than approaching
it as ‘romantic’. If you’ve never tried this piece, or even
if you have and couldn’t bear it, maybe the time has indeed
come to hear how it should sound.
Dominy Clements
Hamish Milne (piano) 
