Customer Reviews

Korngold: Piano Concerto, Op. 17; Marx: Romantisches Klavierkonzert

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Korngold Concerto is one as much for orchestra as it is for the Piano. It's primary challenge is formal, as a broad sonata form is used very freely to present many ideas based upon a variant of his "motive of the happy heart". In its way, it is rather forward looking, the harmony pointing towards the 3rd String Quartet and the late Symphony in F#.

The Marx is the gem of this disc. If you only know Marx as a composer of songs (and he was one of the greatest at lieder writing) you will be shocked. The melodic material is memorable, particularly the 2nd subject of the first movement and the primary Rondo theme of the 3rd movement. The piano writing is of the utmost brilliance, yet never seems to be so for its own sake. It just fits. Harmonically, Marx is extremely ingenious working within an expanded tonal framework. If you listen closely you will hear this tonal framework undermined by constantly shifting lines in the middle register, which lends the work a more complex feeling than the title "Romatisches" implies. The concerto is more subdued than the composer's large orchestral canvasses, but still has the characteristically Marx sound: an all-consuming love of nature seemingly conveyed by endlessly imaginative detail in extension of melodic material.

It's really amazing music. Hamelin is very good as always. (Try to hear the Jorge Bolet aircheck for an interesting contrast in the interpretation of the Marx. He is far more poetic, if less fiery.) This cd gets 5 stars because the Marx is one of the absolute greatest of Piano Concerti. You must hear it.

Marx's concerto, one of the most wildly romantic and absolutely ravishing piano concertos, lush as lush can be, though never overwhemling or prodound, is an enormous pianistic feast, not to mention pianistic feat! Indeed, it contains a legion of difficulties! It mixes some of the best influences of Scriabin, Korngold, Debussy, and Delius. A work of exceptional craftsmanship, it's always a delight to hear, especially from the hands of Hamelin, who brings it all off with consummate ease... Korngold's remarkable and left-hand concerto makes such a virtue out of gladiatorial spread-chords trickery that it is striking how incredibly difficult it would be to play this piece as written with the right hand in addition to just the left! Such a splendid and romantic Hero concerto of struggle this is, symphonically blending piano with orchestra. Hamelin delivers a luxuriant reading filled with poetry, tremendous power, and authority. A thoroughly pleasant and pleasing disc. Highly recommendable; Highly recommended!

Once again, Marc-André Hamelin delves into far corners of the piano world and delivers fearless performances of two seldom-played pieces. The Korngold, written for Paul Wittgenstein who also commissioned masterpieces such as the Ravel "Left Hand" Piano Concerto, is marvelously satisfying and should be performed more often. Sumptuously written for both the piano and the orchestra, it is filled with memorable moments. I like the Marx, also, even if it is (perhaps) not quite up to the level of the Korngold. Never mind: these are pieces that deserve to be heard more often, especially when performed like this.

In recording after recording, Hamelin proves that he is one of the most brilliant pianists working today. Often choosing neglected repertoire, he illuminates as very few artists do - and invariably with stunning playing. After hearing his performance of the Korngold, you might walk away thinking that it is the finest piano concerto ever written - at least while the final chords linger in your mind.

Osmo Vänskä, the conductor-designate of the Minnesota Orchestra, also deserves credit for his outstanding direction and balancing of these immense forces, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is superb. Hyperion offers typically clear, wide-ranging sound, and excellent program notes as well. (This is but one of an impressive Hyperion series called "The Romantic Piano Concerto," including many large-scale works which are all but forgotten.)

An unusual find, and for piano lovers, perhaps essential.

Ever wonder what it would have been like had Richard Strauss composed a Piano Concerto instead of, say, "Don Juan?" (Yes, I know he wrote a Burleske, but that is a relatively youthful piece.)

Well, wonder no longer. From the very opening bars, Joseph Marx's "Romantic Concerto" virtually shouts that it is that concerto. Here we have the lush orchestration, wide-ranging tunes and glorious excess which one finds in Strauss' tone poems. This piece has more calories than a whole double chocolate cake.

Whether I enjoy that much excess depends completely on my mood, however. Frequently, it seems bombastic unlike, say, the Rachmaninoff Concertos which have real emotion under a virtuosic sheen. Still, it is an enjoyable, if shallow, piece with a lovely, poetic slow movement which provides relief from the overkill of the outer movements.

The Korngold is a more sophisticated piece with slightly more astringent harmony and orchestration. It makes a good discmate for the Marx, however, because it has the same compositional ethos (ie. why give us a simple tune and harmony when you can have three tunes interweaving amid an overheated atmosphere! ) Besides, you'll be amazed that Korngold wrote soo many notes for one hand!

Regardless of the content of this music, it is wonderfully played by Hamelin and the recording is up to Hyperion's high standards. Both pieces would certainly bring the house down in a concert hall.

Not my favorite disc in this terrific Hyperion series, but when I'm in the mood it's a great wallow!

Most people would expect the Korngold work to be the melodious one here. And also the one with the better orchestration. How wrong they would be! Korngold rumbles and grumbles his way through the concerto with lots of "sturm und drang" and very little memorable music. And the orchestration is far less inventive than so many of his other compositions such as the Violin Concerto, the Cello Concerto, the Symphony and (especially) the operas Die Tote Stadt and Die Kathrin.

The Marx Piano Concerto is the "find" here. What a marvelous composition this is! And in a great performance that really does it justice, too. Just sit back and let the good sounds wash over you. This CD merits 5 stars on the strength of the Marx work alone.

Joseph Marx wrote some very fine music that has not gained much of a foothold in concert repertory. He called his concerto a Romantic Piano Concerto and the music lives up to its name. It was composed during the turbulent years 1918 - 19 and premiered in 1921.

The concerto begins with a passionate opening melody for the orchestra. The soloist enters with a flourish and proceeds to develop the melody. The music is passionate leaning more toward the Russian romantic composers, like the young Scriabin, with influence from Max Reger. The music remains optimistic and develops with several climaxes and closes with a brilliant passage for the soloist and orchestra. The slow movement is pastoral in tone. The opening melody played by the winds and strings is picked up and developed by the soloist. The music develops with dreamy and passionate melodies with the piano played with long unaccompanied passages. The Finale is a glittering rondo with brilliant interplay between the soloist and orchestra. A passionate theme is announced by the bassoon and the soloist embarks on a series of difficult variations.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in 1922 for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who, for a change, liked the music. Korngold was in his 20s and had just completed his opera Die tote Stadt. Unfortunately, because Wittgenstein owned the performance rights of the music, and ceased to perform it in the 1930s, the concerto was not performed until the 1980s.

The concerto opens with a jagged melody for the soloist who is joined by the orchestra with a thunderous opening chord. The music develops with a more lyrical melody, somewhat reminiscent of Rachmaninov. This is followed by a dance-like melody punctuated with chords by tympani and orchestra succeeded by a somber passage announced by the trombones. The concerto continues to develop with alternating reflective and a more agitated theme based on the opening bars. The concerto concludes with a witty rondo ending with the opening phrase.

Marc-Andre Hamelin plays both of these difficult concertos with mesmerizing beauty, teasing out the texture of the music. The recording is excellent and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vanska provides masterful support.

Both performances by Hamelin are superb as are both concertos, albeit in different ways. (Marx's gem looks backward to the 19th century, while Erich Wolfgang Korngold's concerto could only have been written in the 20th, after the collapse of Late Romanticism.) I write only to express my exasperation with cute comments like that provided by Jed Distler (next to the Amazon.com comment, above) about the quality of Korngold's music. The "more corn than gold" quip circulated decades before Distler, a relic of the narrow-minded, modernist bias that dominated some musical quarters in the 1940s and 1950s. It's been rendered quaintly irrelevant since the late 1970s when people with discerning (and unbiased) minds began to really listen to the man's music. It remains true that Korngold virtually invented the motion picture soundtrack score in the 1930s, and the very recognizable sound of "movie music" from the 1930s-1940s continues to ring in a lot of ears. But Korngold shouldn't be held to blame for the often godawful schlock films Hollywood produced. My bottom line: folks who continue to assert that there is something intrinsically "cheap" about Korngold's music are essentially unable (or unwilling) to hear Korngold's music per its own merits, i.e., separate and apart from that Hollywood context. And there is no reason for that except critical failure; certainly that is the case when cnfronting music as knotty and challenging as EWK's superb Piano Concerto. IMHO, anyway.

I agree with one of the previous reviewers: the Marx concerto is certainly the weaker of the two on this CD. It almost sounds like a combination of the worst aspects of late romanticism (cheesy orchestration, excessively flashy piano part, rambling structure, etc.). Not my cup of tea. The Korngold concerto is much more satisfying (IMHO). True, its narrative structure is not flawless, but it holds together well enough (like Liszt's Sonata in B minor, it's basically one gigantic sonata-allegro movement, encompassing a "slow movement" and a "scherzo" in the development section). It contains some of Korngold's most interesting harmonic progressions (the initial presentation of the opening theme, for example), and the writing for the left hand is very effective (almost as ingenious as that in Ravel's left hand concerto). There is only one other modern recording of the Korngold concerto (on the Chandos label), but the present recording is hands down much better -- it has more thrust and forward momentum, and certain details like inner lines and splashes of colour (like some of Korngold's characteristic harp arpeggios) come across much more clearly. What's more, Hyperion's sound is far superior to the Chandos recording. If you're interested in the rarely recorded and rarely performed Korngold concerto, this is the CD to get.

The Romantisches Klavierkonzert of Joseph Marx (1882-1964) has been recorded elsewhere, on an ASV disc where it is coupled with his second concerto, Castelli Romani, by David Lively and the Bochum Symphony Orchestra under Steven Sloane. I have not heard that recording, but at least the performance on this one is utterly superb. The concerto itself is also an extremely worthwhile one (and insofar as Hyperion has yet to give us the other concerto, one might be excused for being tempted to go for the ASV one instead (or perhaps preferably both)) Stylistically, Marx was a conservative, with Brahms and Reger being perhaps the closest comparisons, but the musical language is still individual and imaginative. From the riveting orchestral opening with the piano entering in a cadenza, the music grabs one's interest, with its richly lush orchestral writing and glitteringly brilliant and powerful solo part, building up to a series of climaxes. The second movement starts out reflectively with an appealing piano tune that builds up to something more emotionally turbulent, whereas the final movement is a colorful flurry of buoyant dance rhythms and mischievously playful piano passages, culminating in a brilliant coda and a triumphant orchestral ending.

Korngold's concerto for the left hand, written in 1922-23, is even better. Written in one continuous movement, the work is a simply ravishing display of formal mastery, melodic invention and dramatic tension, with the melody winding its way through modulations and a kaleidoscopic fabric of colors and moods (take for instance the c sharp minor chords that concludes the somewhat anxious C major opening). A little too clever at times, perhaps, but this ever-inventive, imaginative and adventurous music truly demands to be heard.

The performances are superb; Osmo Vänskä leads the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a scintillating performance which impressively realizes the colorful textures and dramatic cohesion of the works, developing the material and building up climaxes with an unerring pacing. They also constitute an excellent companion to Hamelin's dazzling handling of the solo parts; his technical mastery never fails to impress, of course, but equally impressive is his musicality and sense of color and form. Sound quality is superb as well, and this one really stands out as a mandatory release in a distinguished series.

The Marx concerto is a slagging, tepid thing, and I'm not sure what would inspire Hamelin to record this one in particular, if simply to display his hyper-virtuosic skills yet again. The Korngold is a great piece, however. I guess Hamelin's Busoni concerto really raised my expectations. I'd love to see Hamelin record Ornstein's piano concerto or some such unknown masterpiece, rather than the banal Marx...