From: rtut@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Raymond Tuttle)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Piano discs on review (Kubalek's Brahms, Shannon's Ives)
Date: 6 Nov 92 22:30:06 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)

The cover art for Dorian's recordings of Brahms' piano music depicts
the composer, cigar in hand, as a stern old man with intense eyes,
rather like a civilian Santa Claus confronting an outrageous request for
an expensive toy. In actuality, pianist Anton Kubalek plays a more
giving and loving Brahms, one whose benign  countenance more
resembles that of Walt Whitman. 

This disc (DOR-90159) is the second in what might or might not be
(according to Kubalek's liner notes) a series of Brahms' complete works
for piano.  I have not heard the first disc (DOR-90141) which includes
big macho works like the Third Sonata.  The present disc contains more
introverted and intimate music: the Op. 116 Fantasias, the Piano Pieces
from Op. 118 and Op. 119, and the two Op. 79 Rhapsodies.  Kubalek's
soft-spoken playing suits these later pieces well, although its overall
mellowness is often far removed from the consensus even in these
works.  One has a hard time imagining Kubalek playing the great Handel
or Paganini Variations, although he just may have it in him; after all,
Kubalek can be brusque and rather clattery, even when he is speaking
softly.  But all in all, Brahms rarely has sounded so much like Chopin. 

The recording, like the others Dorian has made in the Troy Savings Bank
Music Hall in upstate New York, is carefully engineered to pick up
Brahms' and Kubalek's finest nuances via the American Steinway D
piano.  The locale's spaciousness is belied by the recording's intimate
sound. 

One gets the feeling that Brahms and Charles Ives might have enjoyed
each other's company.  A wonderful new CD from Bridge Records (BCD
9036) contains Ives' mammoth Piano Sonata No. 2, better known as the
"Concord" Sonata. 

The pianist on this disc, his second for Bridge, is Robert Shannon, a
faculty member at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.  He seems
unfazed by the music's technical and interpretive difficulties.  This
work can seem confused and confusing,  but Shannon's clear-headed
playing see him and the listener through.  Ives' metaphysical
ponderings, his tender nostalgia, his manic energy and his Yankee
iconoclasm are fully realized in this recording. 

John Harbison's First Piano Sonata lasts for less than 17 minutes, but
it makes a good coupling for the Ives.  The subtitle ("Roger Sessions In
Memoriam") might suggest a funereal, or at least elegiac cast to this
music, but much of it is a Messiaenic riot of color and rhythm.  Having
heard Shannon play it once, I had to hear him play it again, immediately. 
Shannon was one of three pianists for whom the work was written (the
other two were Ursula Oppens and Alan Feinberg), but it is difficult to
imagine anyone playing it better than he does. 

Bridge's recording, made in 1990 in the American Academy and
Institute of Arts and Letters, is clear  and lets the listener feel the
sonic punch of both these works.  This is an important CD for those who
like gutsy American piano music. 





--
****************************************   Raymond S. Tuttle
"Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod,"       University of Rochester
but it's nothing to get depressed about!   (still with his two little 
****************************************   white mice).