Piano music by Xaver Scharwenka, Vol. 4 [Import]

Franz Xaver Scharwenka (Composer), Seta Tanyel (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Seta Tanyel
• Composer: Franz Xaver Scharwenka
• Audio CD (November 11, 2003)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Hyperion UK
• ASIN: B00008JL6M
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,078 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ...and it doesn't matter much that Scharwenka's best pieces were composed 20 to 50 years after time, June 26, 2011

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Discophage (France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Piano music by Xaver Scharwenka, Vol. 4 (Audio CD)

It was brave and useful and laudable of Seta Tanyel and the now-defunct label Collins Classics to have embarked, in the 1990s, in a thorough exploration of the music of Xaver Scharwenka (1850-1924), and one must be grateful to Hyperion to have reissued almost all of it. The 4-volume traversal of his solo piano music doesn't embrace I think Scharwenka's complete piano output, but it is still very substantial. Add to that the three first piano concertos (apparently Collins didn't live long enough to record the Fourth, and the first is the one disc that Hyperion did not reissue, Piano Concerto 1, obviously because they already had another one in their catalog, Rubinstein: Piano Concerto No. 4; Scharwenka: Piano Concerto No. 1) and what I think was the complete chamber music. However, I didn't always feel that the results lived up to the project's promises.

In fact, I was to a certain extent mislead by Tanyel's two CDs of chamber music, which were my introduction to the cycle and to Scharwenka's music (see my review of Chamber Music Complete). Of them, I commented that, when it comes to chamber music, there seemed to be no "minor" romantic composer, and Schwarwenka's compositions seemed as "major" to me as those of Brahms, Schumann or Dvorak.

But the first two volumes of Tanyel's traversal of Scharwenka's piano music weren't so rewarding, and there, I understood why Scharwenka could indeed be considered as a "minor" romantic composer after all, a composer of salon music, derivative (of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt or Brahms) but without his models' unique melodic, harmonic and rhythmic personalities (Scharwenka: Piano Works Vol. 1 - Piano Sonata Op. 6 / Polish National Dances Op. 3, Piano Works 2). Likewise, listening to Piano Concertos No. 2 & 3, I felt, even with the help of the scores, that those works were full of notes and grand to grandiloquent gestures, but short on music that left a true imprint in one's memory (Piano Concertos 2 & 3).

Therefore I am happy that I can be somewhat more positive with the volume four of Scharwenka's piano music.

Not so much with the Chopin-derived works, though. Although trained in Germany, Scharwenka was born near the (now) Polish city of Poznan, back then in East Prussia, and the Polish roots can be easily heard in the Four Polish Dances, op. 47. They sound like Chopin's Mazurkas, usually more pounding and less subtle and without Chopin's unique rhythmic and melodic twists. They are enjoyable, but pretty fluffy - an impression I never get with Chopin's Mazurkas. The six Waltzes op. 28 stand somewhere between those of Chopin and those of Brahms, but emulate neither in quality (not that those of Brahms are part of his top-drawer, either). They alternate between the assertive ("passionate" would be an overstatement to describe the first), the festive (last) and the pensive-wistful. I wouldn't trade 24 of them for one of Chopin, though. This is the kind of music that you'd expect The Pianist to be playing in a fashionable Warsaw Café with nobody listening.

The second Klavierstück op. 65/2 (Scherzo), track 6, was better, with the turbulence of a Brahms Capriccio, but the preceding Menuett op. 65/1 sounded like a charming and gentle, but rather inconsequential derivation of a Mendelssohn Song without word, despite a nicely passionate middle section. So the overriding impression was again that of a derivative composer without much distinctive personality, and I was about to give up on Scharwenka. Then came the Variations opus 57.

Again the model and influence here seems to be Brahms. The Variations - on a none too promising theme by a wealthy and powerful Prinz-friend of Scharwenka - may not have the harmonic richness and the melodic invention of, say, the Haendel variations, but looking at the score (available on download, with the others, from the International Music Scores Library Project, I will ever genuflect to them in worship), the compositional technique is very Brahmsian indeed and Scharwenka factors in enough science of the piano and of the variation to make them always interesting - and even more than that in some of the variations: mentioning only two, the 7th, with its hushed and dreamy arpeggiated chords, sounds like an old fairy-tale being told and in the 11th, Scharwenka succeeds where I've found that he often failed: he composed a melody that is sentimental AND beautiful, not just sweet and sentimental and mawkish. The Variations are one of the real finds of this volume 4 and they deserve to be played more regularly as an encore to the various variations of Brahms.

The Three Klavierstücke op. 86 from 1913 are even more beautiful. Here, Liszt seems the predominant model. Nocturne is reminiscent of such meditative works of Liszt as Consolation No. 3, and again Scharwenka has fashioned a beautiful, brooding melody in the deep mid-range of the piano over softly rippling triple-time accompaniment, with some occasional and fascinating counter melodies sprouting out of the texture. There is a lovely whimsicality to Serenade, and Märchen is exactly that, the dreamy and evocative music to a fairy tale. In its very bareness, it sounds like a piece the old Liszt could have written. And that Scharwenka composed the Klavierstücke 20 to 50 years after time doesn't matter much. Although written much earlier, in 1870, and showing young Scharwenka's debt to Schumann (the Schumann of Kinderszenen), the two Erzählungen am Klavier op. 5 (the booklet translates them as "Legends", but it is rather "Stories") are good and enjoyable imitations.

Following with the scores, I am under the impression that Tanyel does justice to this music. There might have been room for a little more animation in Märchen, perhaps. So, I was about to give up on Scharwenka, and maybe I won't after all. I still have Tanyel's volume 3 to hear (Piano Works, Volume 3), and maybe I'll even go back to volumes 1 & 2 with the IMSLP's scores, just to make sure I didn't miss anything of value.

The original, Collins issue of this volume 4 can be found under Piano Works 4.