It is no easy task to select 80 minutes of music from the roughly 12 hours played at the annual Husum Festival of Piano Rarities. Each live performance must be error-free, without intrusive noises from the audience or the appreciative ducks that live in Husum castle’s moat, not be subject to copyright or label restrictions, be approved by each artist and show the music in the best possible light. Jesper Buhl of Danacord has been wrestling with these nice problems since 1987. For the 2023 Festival edition, he has also once again contributed a genial and erudite booklet note.

Still a lone beacon shedding its light on the shadowy corners of the piano’s vast literature, Husum’s ethos is to give some of the others a chance. Frequently, those ‘others’ are composers whose works, though immensely popular in their day, have, like the mosaic floor of some Northumbrian Roman villa, been unintentionally obscured over the centuries. William Sterndale Bennett, for example, was eminent enough to have earned a resting place in Westminster Abbey. His Three Pieces, Op 28 (1846‑49), surely earn a place in a recital today. Daniel Grimwood, making his Husum debut, thought so and provided delightful openers. Buhl also includes a Grimwood encore: Sophie Menter’s Romance, Op 5. But the most substantial offering (and by far the longest contribution from any of the six featured artists) is Grimwood’s fearless account of Liszt’s Grosses Konzertsolo, better known in its later form as the Concerto pathétique for two pianos. It’s the kind of performance that gets you invited back to Husum.

Nothing after Grimwood’s section appeals so consistently. Jean-Frédéric Neuburger’s sole contribution is ‘Le violin de Crémone’, the first of the 10 Contes fantastiques de Hoffmann by the obscure Juliette Dillon (1823‑54), which has its moments but outstays its welcome. Alfonso Soldano offers his own masterly transcription of Rachmaninov’s song ‘Night is sorrowful’, Op 26 No 12, followed by a Nocturne by Sergei Bortkiewicz, a composer admired by so many pianophiles and played by so few pianists. Andrey Gugnin maintains the reflective, introspective mood with the four Fantasien über Gedichte von Richard Dehmel by Zemlinsky – late Brahms, early Korngold come to mind – the last of which is cleverly dovetailed into Grieg’s ‘Little Brook’ from Book 7 of Lyric Pieces, Op 62. Vadym Kholodenko is heard in two Chopin-Godowsky studies, the notorious ‘Ignis fatuus’ Study No 4 (a contrapuntal treatment of Op 10 No 2) and Op 10 No 6 arranged for the left hand alone. A second Husum debutante, the Californian Tanya Gabrielian, continues with Godowsky’s Meditation and ends the album with Siloti’s (rather than Sgambati’s) ‘Melody’ from Orfeo e Euridice.

This review originally appeared in the SPRING 2025 issue of International Piano