Review of Charles Rosen Plays Modern Piano Music Box Set
COPLAND: Pianoforte Sonata. IVES: Iii Page Sonata (ed. Cowell). Sonata No. 1 for Piano. CARTER: Piano Sonata. BARBER: Piano Sonata, Op. 26. GRIFFES: Sonata for Piano. SESSIONS: 2nd Sonata for Piano.
Peter Lawson, pianist
VIRGIN CLASSICS 61928 (ii CDs) (B) (DDD) TT: 75:30 & 72:14
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NOT for Rollos, as Charles Ives scornfully labeled listeners who constitute "modern" music repellent - "modern," that is, by the bulwark-breaking, often anarchic mensurate of avant garde-ism before and after World War ane. Simply for those with grown-upward palates, who don't mind some dust in their spinach, this collection is a treasure - in the EMI Virgin vault since 1989 (CD-1) and 1991 (CD-2), respectively. They may have been issued previously in Britain, but non here that I've been able to track down.
Why not? Probably because Peter Lawson isn't a Large Box-Function Name. He'south a helluva pianist, all the same, and every bit idiomatic a player equally you'll find anywhere in these seven sonatas large and minor on generously filled discs. Powerfully recorded, likewise, equally well as naturally by producer John Wise and engineer Mark Vigars in trusty Studio No. 1 on Abbey Road, which has been in use since the appearance of electric recording. Equally for Lawson, he is a Mancusian of undisclosed years who nevertheless teaches at Manchester, in Chetham's School of Music, and is said to be at dwelling in jazz as well as the classics, although "early 20th century American and contemporary British music" fascinate him most. He studied stateside on a Churchill Fellowship awarded in 1993 (notation, after recording these ii discs). Otherwise, on Electric Candle (a Brit visitor I suppose) he'south also recorded "New British Pianoforte Music," plus a CD of Satie for EMI/Classics for Pleasure in 1989, and "Michael Nyman The Piano Concerto"on Tring.
In the repertory here he challenges some potent contest: the late William Kapell, for instance, in Aaron Copland's self-consciously austere Piano Sonata (as well equally the composer himself). Competition in the 1949 Hairdresser Sonata ranges from Horowitz who deputed, premiered and first recorded information technology, to John Browning and Van Cliburn, with Garrick Ohlson a heavy-handed fourth - fifth, actually, given Lawson'south suave estimation, outstandingly poignant in the Adagio mesto slow movement, and outright blithe in a finale that has taxed the resources of more than celebrated pianists. He does right past Ives, besides, in both pieces - although Henry Cowell "edited" the 1905 Three-Page Sonata posthumously. It still lasts vii'18"with wisps of folk and hymn tunes leavening a lot of thrashing and bashing. Sonata No. one (worked on between 1902 and 1908, but not published until 1954, the twelvemonth of Ives' death) is style longer, full of cocky-quotation, and for me a chore to parse - Ives would have damned me as a Rollo, and I'd have replied that he was a pretentious humbug when the mood seized him. Lawson plays it without qualm or misstep; his performance is masterful.
And so is his unraveling of Elliott Carter's gnostic Piano Sonata from 1945-46, revised almost 40 years later on - for a long time the province of Charles Rosen. Roger Sessions' 2d of 3 sonatas, dating from 1946, is a holy relic of American Schoenbergism - unyieldingly serious of purpose, albeit with a clangerous passion for intervals of the 2nd (every bit in C and D played together). That sonata I don't expect ever to play over again (or the Carter, and probably not the Ives No. 1), but information technology has value as a betoken of reference.
Finally there is short-lived Charles Griffes' surprisingly sculptured Piano Sonata ,written in the terminate month of 1917 and the get-go one of 1918. No White Peacock or Pleasure Dome of Kublai Khan here, but instead a tightly organized, frequently dissonant essay in one movement, welcomely met and decidedly worth revisiting at a later appointment. All this and at budget price! Notes are basically informative but 3 pages too cursory (in the despicable cause of trilingualism), amounting to arcana for the untutored. Perhaps, though, Virgin never expected the untutored to buy American Pianoforte Sonatas.
They should, though, and get some of the wax out of their ears. In sum, one of the waning year'south major events. Bravo, Lawson! Come back in person and rescue us from the same short list of pianists twelvemonth-in, year-out in the same shopworn repertory - Manny Ax, Andr� Watts, the aforesaid Ohlsson. But you know who I hateful if yous wait at the symphony and recital ads in your local paper. Somebody, delight, throw open the shutters, enhance the windows, and let fresh air in.
R.D. (Dec. 2001)
Source: http://www.classicalcdreview.com/apspl.htm
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