Dutilleux: Piano Sonata

“For my first recording I wanted to conceive a recital programme that would be diverse yet coherent, encompassing different periods of the piano repertoire…..” So states Cathy Krier in the booklet accompanying this release and she lives up to her promise playing music by Chopin, Dutilleux, Scarlatti, Haydn and Mullenbach. Born in Luxemborg and at the start of a glittering career, Cathy Krier has already received international acclaim for the emotional subtlety and maturity of her playing.

This is Bernadette Harvey’s debut solo CD, proudly released by Tall Poppies.

Bernadette is one of the best Australian pianists with a scarily accurate technique, a fearless approach to the nuances of the music she plays, and an ability to make clear at first hearing the intentions of the composer.

The five works she has chosen for this recording show the range of her interests: the Dutilleux Sonata is one of the best piano works from the 20th century - very French and very brilliant; Kevin Puts’ Alternating Current is demanding on many levels, but always pianistic; Ross Edwards’ Etymalong explores the meditative qualities of nature; the Bacewicz Sonata is an explosive tour de force; Vine’s Bagatelles are by turns cheeky and virtuosic. A pianist has nowhere to hide in this program, and Bernadette responds magnificently to the varying demands of this music.

The first-ever release on ECM of music by the doyen of French contemporary composition Henri Dutilleux (born 1916) features a comprehensive overview of his highly original piano pieces from his early period (around 1948) to the late eighties. They are played by American pianist Robert Levin, a personal friend of Dutilleux’s, who gives performances of gripping energy and serene clarity.

Levin notes: “Dutilleux has always kept a discreet profile, composing with painstaking perfectionism, subjecting his works to relentless revision before, and sometimes after, they have been presented to the public”. So his output is rather small, but these polished masterworks follow the ideals of beauty and poetic mystery – structurally complex but full of colouristic and rhythmic appeal. This programme opens with the ground-breaking piano sonata of 1946-48, marked by a personal synthesis of French Impressionism and the clear-cut rhythmic contours characteristic of Soviet music of the same period. The shorter pieces – radiant, playful and highly sophisticated music condensed to its very

essence – “document Dutilleux’s trajectory from extended tonality to a sound world totally of his own invention, in which harmonies of dazzling iridescence inflect brilliant rhythmic and melodic gestures”.[.i]

Robert Levin (born 1947) is an internationally-renowned expert on classical period practice of improvised embellishments and cadenzas. His many recordings include Mozart concertos with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, and Beethoven concertos with John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. As Kim Kashkashian’s regular piano partner, he has recorded for ECM since 1984, most recently Songs from Spain and Argentina. In Figures de résonances the second pianist is Ya-Fei Chuang.

John Ogdon was born on 27th January, 1937 in Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire and died on 1st August, 1989 in London. His first serious study of the piano was at the Royal Manchester College of Music where his contemporaries were Alexander Goehr, Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies; he also studied composition with Richard Hall, all of whom have music recorded in this collection. His prowess was noticed when he replaced an indisposed soloist in Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto in Liverpool and played almost at sight. At the age of 21 he made his London debut at the Proms in 1958 with Busoni’s Concerto (which he recorded in 1967).

In 1961 he was awarded the Liszt Prize in Budapest and the following year shared the coveted first prize at the Moscow Tchaikovsky competition with Vladimir Ashkenazy; this achievement launched his international career. His recordings from this time not only attest to his remarkable virtuosity and intense musicianship but also his determination to explore both rarer and modern repertoire and give them the performances that show them to their best advantage.

This collection therefore contains not merely the classics – concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Schumann and Grieg and solos by Liszt and Chopin – but rarer concertos by Mendelssohn, Glazunov Bartók as well as the aforementioned Busoni. The major contribution to the catalogue of recorded music must be the solo piano works by the 20th century composers: Sir Michael Tippett, Alan Rawsthorne, Alun Hoddinott, Christopher Headington, David Blake, Robert Sherlaw Johnson and his teacher and colleagues from his days in Mancheser: Richard Hall and the previously mentioned Goehr, Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies as well as works by himself. One further work requires especial mention: Ronald Stevenson’s Passacaglia on DSCH, the composer’s tribute to Dmitri Shostakovich.

At over 85 minutes duration it has to be split across two CDs and the work together with Ogdon’s support of it yielded the highest praise.