The second volume in Andreas Staier’s Dussek series (Vol. 1 was reviewed in February 1995) includes two of the last and finest sonatas by this fascinating, wayward Bohemian. The F sharp minor, Elegie Harmonique, is a memorial to the composer’s patron, friend and fellow-roisterer, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, who fell in the Battle of Saalfeld in 1806. Cast in two movements only, it opens with a brooding, quasi-improvisatory slow introduction which quotes the sixth of Haydn’s Seven Last Words, “Consummatum est”, and continues with a Tempo agitato of mingled pathos and protest, full of halting melodic lines, shadowy harmonies (the minor mode retained almost throughout) and disconcerting dynamic contrasts. The syncopations of the finale have an edgy obsessiveness, relieved only in a beautiful, consolatory G flat episode which distantly echoes the A flat episode in the finale of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.
Dussek’s characteristically rich pianistic effects, inspired by the new, sonorous Broadwood grand, are still more in evidence in the expansive four-movement A flat Sonata. The composer wrote this with a dual purpose: to mark his final return to Paris in 1807 (hence the title), and to outdo the provocatively titled Ne plus ultra Sonata by one Joseph Woelfl, intended to be the last word in wrist-breaking pyrotechnics. Formidable the challenges of Dussek’s first movement, in particular, may be, but there is never any question of vacuous virtuosity: from the opening theme, with its exotic harmonic colouring (whose implications are subtly explored in the recapitulation), the music cultivates a very individual vein of impassioned, rhapsodic romanticism. The Molto adagio, by turns grave and luxuriant, justifies its marking dolcissimo, con anima ed espressione, the minuet-scherzo hints at a remote F sharp minor before confirming the tonic, A flat – a haunting effect, typical of Dussek’s harmonic daring – and the brilliant, volatile finale opens with a theme which sounds as if it might be a folk-dance from the composer’s native Bohemia.
As in his previous disc of Dussek sonatas, Andreas Staier uses a restored 1806 Broadwood grand, less refined but more vibrant and powerful than the contemporary Viennese piano. The purposely inefficient damping mechanism produces what the restorer, Christopher Clarke, describes in his note as an “elemental wash of sound”, with a “permanent halo of harmonies”. Its bell-like treble, veiled middle and lower registers and wide dynamic range are eloquently exploited by Dussek; and if here and there Staier’s attack seems unduly aggressive, he, like the composer, palpably relishes the instrument’s possibilities. In both the Sonatas and the Fantasia and Fugue (which grows ever less fugal as it proceeds), his playing is brilliant, dramatic and richly imagined.
The recording is vivid, though as in the previous disc in this series, the close miking places the listener only a few feet from the instrument. I look forward now to Staier’s recording of Dussek’s magnificent final sonata, the F minor, Op. 77.'