GIOVANNI SGAMBATI (1841-1914)
Piano Concerto in G minor (1878)
37.34
JOSEPH RHEINBERGER (1839-1901)
Piano Concerto in A flat (1876) 31.55
Jorge Bolet (piano - Sgambati)
Adrian Ruiz (piano - Rheinberger) Nürnberg SO/Ainslee Cox (Sgambati);
Zsolt Deáky (Rheinberger)
first issued on LP 1972
GENESIS GCD 111 [61.41]
Genesis did well to secure a pianist of Bolet's standing and temperament
long before Decca-London took him under its wing. He gives the Sgambati a
fiery following wind. Sgambati is attracting more recordings and both Dynamic
and ASV are engaged with his chamber music. I await recordings of his two
symphonies with avid interest.
The Concerto resonates on the same spiritual wavelength as the Tchaikovsky
and Schumann concertos and slightly more obscurely with the decorative delights
of the five Saint-Saens and Palmgren works. After an impetuous stormy first
movement (almost as long as the whole Berwald concerto), with some hoarse
defiance from the brass section, the Romanza is touching and emphatic - replete
with many refreshing instrumental details and with ideas of enlivening
originality. Think in terms of the middle movements of Beethoven 5 and
Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto. The finale is boisterous and if it falls
victim to easy bombast is pretty effective in a way similar to the counterpart
movement in Stanford's much later second piano concerto. It too is not without
fresh poetry as in the piano part at 7.40. The orchestral contribution is
a tad throatily undernourished, distant in the strings, unconfident in the
woodwind - but nothing to unduly hinder the pleasure of discovery.
Name a single Lichtensteiner composer? Rheinberger is your man. He was less
associated with the Principality largely because his fame as a teacher and
musician centred on Munich. His half hour concerto parallels the Schumann
concerto in its sentiment and pearly ebullience. If it does not have the
heavenly inevitability of the Schumann but it abounds in beautiful moments
and in sentiment. This is not one of those obscure thin-intellect
glitter-vehicles to which nineteenth century re-animative musical archaeology
is prone. The strings sound more impressive than in the Sgambati especially
in silky calms of the middle movement which, after its Macdowell-accented
opening, becomes almost Russian exuding a yearning which is also in the bones
of the demonstrative finale.
The disc repays with a rich musical experience - varied and generous combining
the contents of two Genesis LPs.
Good notes by Bea Friedland and David Dubal respectively.
We should salute Robert Commagère's excellent work and remind ourselves
that these recordings (usually of splendid quality) were made at the excitingly
risky cutting edge of discovery at a time when this repertoire was deeply
unfashionable.
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
http://www.genesisrecords.com
