2011 marked the quarter-century of performances from this splendid and
much-admired
festival near the North Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein. As befits the
significance
of the celebration, frequent performer Marc-André Hamelin performed
in
the larger Congress Centre, and a celebratory 232 page book was launched.
So,
all in all, it was something of a good year for Husum.
As always, the 75-minute CD that documents some of the performances
contains
a wealth of rare and exciting items for the questing pianophile.
Håvard
Gimse brings a quartet of Nordic gems starting with Grieg’s potent
little
Modersorg Op.52 No.1 with its deep melancholy and Lisztian asides.
Alf
Hurum was a delightful new find for me, one whose
Miniature has a
taut
folkloric quality whilst Sverre Bergh’s
Norwegian Dance
cleverly
evokes the Hardanger fiddle. Sibelius’s early
Impromptu is
very
attractive with its rich cascades of notes, but you’d be hard
pressed
to tell it was Sibelius.
Each pianist brings something new, something unusual to the mix. Artur
Pizarro
plays Vierne’s
Nocturne, possibly written in 1928, though it
could
date from a decade earlier, and the earlier date might make more sense
given
its indebtedness to Debussy and affinity with Fauré. He also plays
cellist
Gaspar Cassadó’s
Habanera from the
Four Spanish
Pieces.
Anatoly
Alexandrov’s Scriabin-inclining
Nocturne is
played
by Jonathan Powell
as is Konstantin Eiges’s
Skazka,
which
is very freely lyric and not really like Medtner’s pieces of the
same
name. I’ll leave you to read of the genesis of
Strangers in the
Night,
played by Hamelin, in a summit conjunction of Bert Kaempfert and arranger
Frédéric
Meinders. Meanwhile we hear the opening movement of York Bowen’s
last
sonata - I assume Danny Driver played the whole thing at Husum - a richly
romantic
piece, as well as the same composer’s Prelude in B flat minor which
is
an especially exciting affair. Olga Solovieva contributes the driving
Prokofiev-like
Sonatina of Boris Tchaikovsky.
Piers Lane contrasts the limpid poetry of John Field’s
Nocturne
in E minor with Schumann’s
Variations on a Nocturne by
Chopin,
completed by Joachim Draheim. Nadejda Vlaeva, whose disc of Bach piano
transcriptions
by French composers for Hyperion I hugely enjoyed, plays two pieces by
Hans
von Bülow.
Dante’s Sonnet, in Liszt’s arrangement,
is
refined and elegant, and the
Intermezzo scherzoso is fast and
droll.
This last element is picked up in programming terms by
Pick-Mangiagalli’s
La Danse d’Olaf (played by Roland Pöntinen) with its
will
o’ the wisp element. Finally Daniel Berman plays hyphenated
Rachmaninoff-Wild,
in honour of Earl Wild, at whose memorial concert Berman played, and the
droll
Valse viennoise from the pen of the celebrated accompanist Otto
Schulhof.
Doubtless 2012’s edition is hatching as we speak. When a series digs
out
such interesting fare and goes to the trouble of commissioning
well-researched
booklet notes, you know you are in the safest of hands.
Jonathan Woolf
Reviews of previous issues in this series
Track listing & performance details
Edvard GRIEG (1843-1907)
Modersorg Op.52 No.1 (1864-68) [3:29]
Alf HURUM (1882-1972)
Miniature Op.5 No.2 (1912) [1:59]
Sverre BERGH (1915-1980)
Norwegian Dance No.2 [2:09]
Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957)
Impromptu Op.5 No.5 (1893) [3:22]
Håvard Gimse
(piano)
Louis VIERNE (1870-1937)
Nocturne Op.35 No.3 (1928) [7:00]
Gaspar CASSADÓ (1897-1966)
Habanera, from 4 Spanish Pieces (1920s-30s) [2:57]
Artur Pizarro
(piano)
Anatoly ALEXANDROV (1888-1982)
Nocturne Op.3 No.1 (1919 version) [5:25]
Konstantin EIGES (1875-1950)
Skazka Op.12 No.2 [2:11]
Jonathan Powell (piano)
Leonid SABANEYEV (1881-1968)
Prelude Op.10 No.5 [2:17]
Bert KAEMFERT (1923-1980)- Frédéric MEINDERS
(b. 1946)
Strangers in the Night [4:37]
Marc-André Hamelin (piano)
York BOWEN (1884-1961)
Sonata No.6 in B flat minor Op.160: 1. Moderato e serioso (1961) [7:44]
Prelude in B flat minor Op.102 No.22 (1950) [1:12]
Danny Driver
(piano)
Boris TCHAIKOVSKY (1925-1996)
Sonatina (1946) [3:37]
Olga Solovieva
(piano)
John FIELD (1782-1837)
Nocturne No.8 in E minor (H.46) (1821) [2:54]
Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Variations on a Nocturne by Chopin (1834) completed Joachim Draheim
[4:01]
Piers Lane (piano)
Hans von BÜLOW (1830-1894)- Franz LISZT (1811-1886)
Dante’s Sonnet (1865, arr Liszt, 1874) [6:16]
Hans von BÜLOW (1830-1894)
Intermezzo scherzoso (Il Carnevale di Milano) Op.21 No.9 [1:14]
Nadejda Vlaeva
(piano)
Riccardo PICK-MANGIAGALLI (1882-1949)
La Danse d’Olaf Op.33 No.2 [3:30]
Roland Pöntinen
(piano)
Sergei RACHMANINOV (1873-1943)- Earl WILD (1915-2010)
O, Cease Thy Singing Op.4 No.4 [4:12]
Otto SCHULHOFF (1889-1958)
Valse viennoise Op.22 [2:58]
Daniel Berman (piano)
