CD Review: Sandro Fuga - Piano sonatas 1-3 (G and C Fuga, C Voghera, piano) Naxos 8.579110

Sandro Fuga (1906-1994) was a prolific composer who has been somewhat overlooked in recent years. Like several other Italian composers of his generation, he came under the influence of Franco Alfano and Giorgio Federico Ghedini – very much opposite ends of the spectrum – both of whom he studied with.

It would appear that when it came to the sonata form, for Sandro Fuga they came in threes: there are a trio of sonatas for piano, violin (recorded on Naxos 8.573142) and cello (recorded on Tactus TC900601). The first and third sonatas are in four movements, the second sonata in three movements.

Fuga’s piano writing, if these recordings are anything to go by, was extremely varied. That said, in these works the imprint of Alfano and Ghedini is hard to detect. There is little doubt that the sonata form pre-occupied him, yet repeated listening shows that his approach to it became more sequential and episodic rather than focussed upon thematic development. As Flavio Menardi Noguera’s useful liner notes make clear, Fuga’s writing is honest, direct and founded upon the many fluctuations of tempo and sonority that inhabit his works. Melody, harmony and rhythm are Fuga’s bedrocks, though sometimes it is all too easy to hear the cracks between them, as it were. Fuga was not always the master of integration, which is why perhaps why I find them of niche interest, rather than something I will revisit often.

The recordings are fine – family members Giacomo and Carlotta Fuga (Sandro’s children, one assumes) take the first and second sonatas respectively. The third sonata is played by Claudio Voghera, who studied with Luciano Giarbella, one of the elder Fuga’s pupils. Each artist has the measure of their respective works and one has the feeling that each recording is more personally important to me than I find them.

CD Review: Enescu Piano Quartet 1; Piano Trio in A Minor (Josu De Soluan, piano, etc) Naxos 8573616

This cracking release brings together two of Enescu’s most brilliant, yet neglected, chamber music compositions.

He attempted writing a piano quartet in 1893, aged twelve, when the young violinist and composer was already a well-established student at the Vienna Conservatoire. His first mature and complete piano quartet, op.16, only followed in 1909 by which time Enescu had transferred to Paris to continue his studies. An early performance was given at Ravel's newly-established Société Indépendante Musicale on 18 May 1910 with Enescu at the piano. The piano quartet is a lengthy work that has sometimes been criticised for not deliberately advancing Enescu's compositional style, but its generosity of expression, thematic material and warm mood peppered with purposeful contrasts offer ample compensations to the listener and makes it deserving of a far wider audience. Throughout, one senses Enescu the composer-architect at work, concerning himself with structural balance and sonata form as integral elements that build and shape his musical edifice. Unsurprisingly, given his Parisian surroundings, various French influences are to be detected.

The opening Allegro moderato at times can sound rather like Chausson, given that the piano part is filled out with tremolo and arpeggio figures, and the movement's lengthy, inexorable fugal elaboration owes much to Fauré, but the unison opening strikingly gives prominence to Enescu's Romanian musical roots; recall similarly narrative passages in the Octet or First Orchestral Suite, for example. The closing coda is noteworthy also for the intricacy of its construction. The second movement is sparsely scored, as befits the marking Andante Mesto, mesto meaning 'sad'; Enescu heightens the effect through rhythmic ambiguity. Fauré again casts a shadow, but discernibly with an Enescuvian turn of phrase, thus bringing matters to a head before subsiding. The closing Vivace brings welcome humour to the proceedings; the strings are once again in unison whist the piano makes pointedly abrupt contributions to impart a Bachian feel momentarily. The middle section contrasts at length through its lyricism, before elements from both sections are woven together by way of conclusion.

The Piano Trio in A minor is one of three compositions he completed in 1916. Apparently written at speed within a month – the final movement is dated 22 March, when Enescu was in a Bucharest hospital – the work remains without an opus number. The opening Allegro Moderato’s notable feature is a real Enescu hallmark: marrying rhapsodic feeling within a tightly structured sonata form. The Allegretto con Variazioni, the last formal set of variations Enescu wrote, begins with less harmonically demanding writing that is closer in flavour to the piano suite. However much of the material given by the violin and cello is quite depressing, with the listeners invited to witness something akin to a Marche Funebre. In contrast to many other of his wartime works, here the emotional atmosphere of the times fully breaks through into Enescu’s writing. The closing Vivace amabile sees a return to the happier mood that imbues the opening movement in music that is replete with freshness and sparkle.

Both performances capture the requisite moods for the works. The performers play the music with such sweep and grandeur of ensemble that demonstrates it is fully within their fingers. Additionally, there is attention to individual lines and details: with Enescu the devil is always in the detailed myriad of markings and instructions that litter the score. The violinist Stefan Tarara, viola player Molly Carr, cellist Eun-Sung Hong and pianist Josu De Solaun all acquit themselves with honour. De Solaun’s experience with Enescu’s solo piano music – his cycle on the Grand Piano label is a good supplement to Luiza Borac’s recordings on Avie – pays dividends on the present recording too. Yes, good alternatives to this recording do exist, but if you have not heard these works before, why look any further? Useful if brief liner notes and demonstration quality sound round out this highly recommendable recording. Recordings like this are exactly what Enescu’s music needs (and requires) to bring it to the widest public, presented it in the best possible light. More from these artists, please.

CD Review: Ukrainian Piano Quintets (Bogdana Pivnenko. violin, etc) Naxos 8.579098

Ukrainian composers have gradually been achieving wider international recognition through several notable recordings in recent years, several on the Naxos label. Two composers who have fared particularly well in this regard are Boris Mikolayovich Lyatoshynsky and Valentin Silvestrov.

Boris Lyatoshynsky (1895–1968) is often considered the father of Ukrainian music. That said, he often found influences in western composers and forms that were brought to bear on his writing. The Ukrainian Quintet, dating from 1942, is certainly expansive at over forty minutes’ duration, but it is also an extrovert and emotional one. There is a sombre intensity to the first movement that is realised through an uncompromising approach in the instrumentalists’ playing. Sensitivity is not the primary quality here, but it is more evident in the second movement. Forming the heart of the piece, the writing affords each of the musicians to shine individually. The violins of Bogdana Pivnenko and Taras Yaropud are bright and incisive, Kateryna Suprun’s viola provides warmth in the mid-range, whilst Yurii Pogoretskyi’s cello grounds the strings and provides much character. Iryna Starodub’s pianism is superbly musical and partners the strings with unassuming confidence. Much of the last two movements consist of writing that has a direct, even confrontational character. The third movement scurries along in trenchantly hushed tones before turning more towards dance-like forms. The various instrumental dialogues that make up the final movement are uncompromising scored, yet they are realised with a sense of atmosphere from the players that leaves one in no doubt that this is music of deep personal meaning which has been lived with for many years.

Valentin Silvestrov (born 1937) dedicated his Piano Quintet, written in 1961, to Boris Lyatoshynsky. Written at a time when Silvestrov was starting to pursue a modernist path in reaction to the Socialist realism imposed upon Ukrainian composition in the period of Stalinist occupation, it is a work that is at once powerful yet restrained. The opening movement, Prelude, is sombre and if not a little ironic in outlook. The second movement Fugue is an impetuous allegro that is initially carried along by the piano whilst the strings weave lines of contrast around and alongside it. The finale has a somewhat elusive character, with its music pared back to the extreme: solo violin and cello parts dominate, albeit in their restraint, alongside the brooding piano.

Victoria Poleva (born 1962) has written in a style called ‘sacred minimalism’ since the late 1990s. Her Simurgh-quintet, written in 2000 and revised in 2020, has a three movements-in-one structure. Her piano quintet provides a significant contrast to much of the music in the other two works on this recording. Of its compact form of 17’45”, the first 12’55” is a mysterious sequence of string textures played at a mezzo-piano or piano dynamic marking laid over minimal chords and repeated notes on the piano. The effect is somewhat meditative with its sense of calm introspection. The middle section coalesces around a growing sense of dynamic intensity that builds inexorably towards an emotional climax, after which the dynamic recedes into a manner that echoes the quintet’s opening. There are qualities in the execution of this recording that make this an immediately impressive listening experience. Listen to the precision with which the sonorities are unobtrusively blended between the individual string parts and in combination with the piano. Or the delight with which tonalities shift and merge with the glissandi, which are playfully realised.

The recording quality of this Naxos release is excellent, faithful and atmospheric. Richard Whitehouse’s introductory liner notes are up to his customary high standard. If you are looking for some interesting chamber repertoire off the beaten track in superbly played performances at a great price, then look no further.

CD Review: Scriabin / Langgaard: Towards the Flame (Gustav Piekut, piano) Naxos 8.574312

 Esben Tange sums up the unusual pairing of the composers on this release effectively in his liner notes:

“Both the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin and the Danish composer Rued Langgaard were ‘sun-burnt’ – musical loners who in a related way believed that through their art they could light a sacred fire and pave the way for a spiritual world revolution. […] Despite the fact that Scriabin and Langgaard aimed at the greatest possible, they are both very much masters of the intimate format. For both of them, the piano was a primary medium. Via the piano we get close to their innermost thoughts.”

The 26-year-old Danish pianist Gustav Piekut provides a recital that alternates four pieces by Scriabin with three of Langgaard’s.

A pair of works imbued with a late Romantic sensibility begin the journey this recording presents. Scriabin’s Trois morceaux, Op. 45 (1904–05), is a trio of individually slight yet atmospheric miniatures. Feuillet d’album is wistful and reflective, whereas the ensuing 26-second Poème fantasque nervously anticipates the closing Prélude, in which Scriabin discovers something of his searching mature idiom. Langgaard’s Sponsa christi taedium vitae. Fantasia virtuosa, BVN 297 (1944), speaks unforcefully of the composer’s own religious nature through the warmth of tone and texture in his writing. What is immediately impressive in Piekut’s playing, quite apart from the delicacy of his touch, is his ability to let the music breathe and, thus, register its own inner beauty.

In his single movement Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70 (1913), Scriabin sought to crystalise what could be achieved within a compact form whilst exploring new and daring tonalities. Piekut’s playing holds little in reserve. He conjours the misty sonorities of its opening with beguiling effect before dispatching the successive trills convincingly against the lingering shifts of Scriabin’s somewhat pensive developing musical argument. Even in the wilder passages of the movement’s second half, everything is musically and technically secure in Piekut’s hands. The irony that Scriabin arrived back at the note of C after seeking to find an alternative tonality is caught with some inevitability here.

Langgaard’s Afgrundsmusik (Music of the Abyss), BVN 169 (1921–24), written in Venice, sets an altogether more destructive path that is merciless in its power. Cast in two parts, Langgaard pits a theme extracted from Liszt’s B-minor sonata against a chorale of his own devising. Initially the writing is demonstrative, rising to unremitting raw savagery that almost cannibalises itself by the conclusion of the Frenetico second part. Piekut’s playing meets the demands made at every turn to make a convincing case for this music. He’s aided in no small part by the ambient warmth of the recorded acoustic. You begin to realise just why the Danes long considered Langgaard something of a musical outsider.

Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 ‘Messe noire’ (1912–13), perfectly partners the preceding Langgaard work. Although Scriabin claimed it amongst his most depraved works, this comes through only gradually. Again, I am drawn in by the innate sense of touch that Piekut brings to proceedings. He captures the mystérieusement murmuré (in mysteriously murmuring fashion) fingerings wonderfully so the music does indeed almost seem to foreshadow itself. Quite apart from that, listen to how he skilfully integrates the sonata’s secondary material without disrupting the flow of main ideas.

A pair of works exploring the semitone round out this voyage of musical discovery. Despite this similarity, there’s a contrasting approach to be explored and enjoyed, thanks to Piekut’s thoughtful programming. Lannggard’s The Flame Chambers, inspired by Dante, draws the listener downwards to the flames of hell. Whereas in Scriabin’s Vers la flamme, to quote Esben Tange again, “we encounter aspiring music full of sweetness, which with an increasingly feverish nerve accumulates energy before, striving towards the sun, it culminates in a heavenly explosion.” As elsewhere on this disc, I can find no argument with Piekut’s enviable pianistic gifts: in this music he is a heavenly guide.

Only one fly in the ointment: coming in at a shade over 56 minutes the playing time is disappointingly short. Particularly so given that there’s plenty more piano repertoire from both composers an artist of Piekut’s quality could have usefully explored. More please, and soon!