Mendelssohn: Piano Music Vol. 2

“Frith is a powerful player...This is music of substance and Frith gives it its due.”

2010

“The multiplicity of notes in Mendelssohn's piano music sometimes lays him open to the charge of 'note-spinning'. So what higher praise for Benjamin Frith than to say that thanks to his fluency, not a single work outstays its welcome here. The unchallengeable masterpiece is the Variations sérieuses, so enthusiastically taken up by Clara Schumann, and still a repertory work today. Frith characterises each variation with telling contrasts of tempo and touch without sacrificing the continuity and unity of the whole.
Equally importantly, he never lets us forget the sérieuses of the title.
No less impressive is his sensitively varied palette in the early E-major Sonata (unmistakable homage to Beethoven's Op-101) so often helped by subtle pedalling. But surely the recitative of the Adagio at times needs just a little more intensity and underlying urgency. Of the miniatures the six Kinderstücke ('Christmas Pieces' – written for the children of a friend) emerge with an unforced charm. As music they lack the romance of Schumann's ventures into a child's world, just as the Three Studies do of Chopin's magical revelations in this sphere. However, Frith's fingers never let him down. In the first B-flat Study he even seems to acquire a third hand to sustain its middle melody.
For sheer seductive grace, the independent Gondellied haunts the memory most of all.
With pleasantly natural sound, too, this disc is quite a bargain.”