DOHNÁNYI Complete Solo Piano Music Vol 4 (Roscoe)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Ernö Dohnányi
Genre:
Instrumental
Label: Hyperion
Magazine Review Date: 04/2019
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 81
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDA68054
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(6) Concert Etudes |
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer Martin Roscoe, Piano |
Suite in the Old Style |
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer |
(6) Pieces |
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer Martin Roscoe, Piano |
Passacaglia |
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer Martin Roscoe, Piano |
Rondo alla Zingarese |
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer
Ernö Dohnányi, Composer Martin Roscoe, Piano |
Author: Michelle Assay
For me the highlight is the Passacaglia, whose combination of complex counterpoint and a thrilling, apparently improvisatory style make it fully worthy of concert-hall rehabilitation, as Jeremy Nicholas also noted in his review of Daniel Röhm’s account (CPO, 9/16). Roscoe achieves more clarity than Röhm, and the Hyperion piano sound is more pleasing, but I can’t help wishing for a little more Sturm und Drang here, even a sense of danger, of the kind Dohnányi himself probably felt as he approached the end of the work at its London premiere, when he reportedly improvised the last few bars, having failed to complete the piece on time.
Roscoe makes no attempt to match the composer’s recorded tempos for the Six Concert Études, Op 28. The results are effortless and characterful if, again, a little low on risk. The last étude (Capriccio) has attracted the attention of some of great pianists, including Rachmaninov. Stephen Hough’s account is stupendously clear and efficient, at an exhilarating tempo (on his first ‘Piano Album’, now Erato), but it is only Horowitz at his most spellbindingly manic (Naxos Historical) who shows how caprice can truly manifest in music (he clocks in at 2'11", compared to Roscoe’s 2'48").
Composed around the same time as Debussy’s exploratory, Prokofiev’s iconoclastic and Bartók’s future-looking studies, Dohnányi’s set, as with so much of his output, looks to the past, mining techniques that had already been extensively probed by the great Romantic composer-pianists. His interest in the Baroque is most explicit in the Suite in the Olden Style. Roscoe brings a touch of grace à l’ancienne to the more lyrical movements while not holding back from suitably Romantic expressivity for the six Op 41 pieces, in particular the poignant final movement, ‘Cloches’. As always, he shines in the layering of Dohnányi’s expansive, quasi-orchestral textures, responding astutely to rhapsodic changes in moods and colours. In short, an eloquent conclusion to a reliable and revealing series.
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