The 1996 Husum Festival of Piano Rarities was the tenth such event organized by Peter Froundijan (recorded highlights have been released of each festival since 1989), celebrating the breadth and diversity of the piano repertoire. Last April BM enthused about the highlights from four previous festivals, and this issue, while probably not reaching the heights of previous volumes, is just as wide-ranging and offers plenty to enjoy. After Kathryn Stott’s Poulenc, played with bold directness but with a slightly hard sound, there follow some real obscurities. Piers Lane is a piquant guide through the gossamer textures of Siegfried Karg-Elert’s delightful Filigran and Frank Bridge’s deceptively simple Fragrance. He ended his recital with Grainger’s In Dahomey, a ragtime piece of outlandish technical trickery, performed with characteristic spirit and energy, although he is outdone by the breathtaking aplomb of Marc-Andre Hamelin’s unforgettable recording (Hyperion, 1/97).
Hamelin is featured next, playing three charming pieces by the Brazilian composer Radames Gnattali (1906-88). Hamelin is an ideal pianist for this kind of event, endlessly exploring and proselytizing new works with his luxurious and seemingly effortless facility, utilizing his exceptional abilities with a searching and discriminating musical mind. His articulation of Gnattali’s dance rhythms and jazz-influenced passages portrays a wonderfully animated sense of enjoyment. Hamish Milne, another regular visitor to this annual festival, is suitably brooding and mysterious in a slow and fairly long Prelude by Alexander Goedicke (1877-1957). By far the largest work given here (and it has been usual in previous years to include a performance of one substantial piece) is Scriabin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 11, played by Igor Zhukov. This is an unmistakably live performance, technically fallible but (far more importantly) intensely dramatic and exciting. Many studio recordings are more polished, but few have such raw energy and passion. Zhukov follows this with Ravel’s La valse in the composer’s own piano transcription, stoking some truly infernal sonorities, complete with a bass note-cluster played, quite literally, with a clenched fist.
To celebrate the tenth festival at Husum, the event opened with an evening of “Pastiche and Parody”, including a performance of (as it translates) Anton Note-crusher at the Piano by the brothers Alexander and Moritz Moszkowski. Much of the dramatic effect is, of course, lost on the recording (and it helps if your German is up to scratch), but this curious bonus seems to go down well with the audience. At 38 minutes, however, there was surely room on this second disc to give us a selection from the remaining recitals, especially those by Artur Pizarro and Carlo Grante. The generally excellent, and impressively recorded, piano playing on the first disc should, nevertheless, be sufficient to appeal to piano lovers and inveterate repertoire explorers.'