Lange-Muller (1850-1926) will be a fascinating discovery for many listeners, and Vol. 1 of what promises to be a complete cycle of his piano music should be heard by all who love music’s most rewarding byways. As Geoffrey Thompson tells us in his excellent notes, this often touching and occasionally robust Danish composer was a conservative only in a subtle and inclusive sense. Thompson aptly evokes Faure to define the intricate harmonic life of many of these works; also their elusive and recondite nature. The Fantasy, for example, is subtitled “Autumn” and a similarly seasonal haze hangs over Soft Melodies (meaning, again, muted or autumnal). In Memoriam, as its title declares, is a funeral elegy, while the Seven Woodland Pieces return us not so much to Schumann’s Waldszenen, with their alternations of lightness (friendly landscape) and darkness (place of evil fame), but to Grieg’s Lyric Pieces.
Yet despite the evocation of such names, Lange-Muller’s writing has a distinctive flavour and character. His Fantasy is a large-scale offering from a composer who clearly delighted in the miniature or lyric, and the title of Op. 68 is misleading when you consider the set’s frequent blossoming into breadth and complexity. A Nordic introspection envelops the Woodland Pieces and it is sad to think of the composer’s despair when he considered such music too tame and unadventurous to appeal to the taste of his time. Those who consider that Faure showed little beyond a distinguished monotony (a tired yet familiar accusation) should steer clear, but others will surely find that Lange-Muller yields up riches and secrets on repeated hearings.
I can imagine performances of greater pianistic colour and freedom (too often melody and accompaniment become one and the same thing) yet they have a cool authority. They are also finely recorded and I, for one, look forward to Volume 2. '