REVIEW: Music of the Romantic Pianist-Composer
In full command of the poetry and ecstasy of these difficult works, Dubal creates a world that is at once sensual as well as visionary...In all, Music of the Romantic Pianist-Composer is that rarity: a journey of discovery, masterfully performed.
To tackle the titans of the Romantic keyboard takes courage and daring, but pianists David Dubai and Stanley Waldoff have ventured where angels fear to tread, performing several works of electrifying complexity and offering a small yet potent galaxy of compositions long out of the concert repertoire. The heady combination of virtuosity and musical discovery makes this collection both thrilling and historically viable.
The music Dubai and Waldoff have so punctiliously dusted off harks back to an era during which the pianist-composer reigned supreme, and where the likes of Chopin, Liszt, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff (to name the best known composers represented here), astonished international audiences with their greatness as performers of their own works. But the fast-vanishing tradition of the pianist-composer also included such names as Carl Czerny, Sigismond Thalberg, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Ferrucio Busoni, Leopold Godowsky, Josef Hofmann, Charles A. Osborne, John Field, Moritz Moskowsky, Anton Rubinstein, and Ernst von Dohnanyi, each of whom brought their keyboard artistry to bear upon original compositions long fallen out of fashion, yet entirely worthy of resurrection.
Sharing one side each, the two pianists give preferential, as well as reverential, treatment to these relatively obscure works, making clear that there are still many untapped riches in the piano repertory -- pieces of brilliance, charm, and winning eccentricity.
Stanley Waldoff plays, Czerny, Thalberg, Chopin, Gottschalk, Busoni, Hofmann, and Rachmaninoff with uncommon polish and flair. Certainly Carl Czerny's "Octave Etude," for all its piano exercise connotation, is negotiated like the bravura concert piece it surely is. Thalberg' s ''Le Depart,'' a recklessly Romantic tour-deforce, finds Waldoff searching-out sentiment rather than sentimentality, as he does in Godowsky' s "Alt-Wien." A special sheen is reserved for Gottschalk' s infectious ''Pasquinade,'' played with wit and dazzling clarity. Rachmaninoff's compelling Etude Tableau in E-Flat Minor is charged with color and light, with tone and structure kept in superb control.
David Dubai, offers works by Osborne, Field, Liszt, Moskowski, Rubinstein, Dohnanyi, and Scriabin. Mr. Dubai is a pianist who evinces a musical sensibility of very particular individuality-a depth of feeling that at all times melds and often transcends the music at hand. From the fleet and engaging ''La Pluie des Perles,'' by the Irish-born Osborne, to Field's haunting Nocturne No. 5, to Moskowski's beguiling Romance in E-flat, the pianist unfolds a technique that is both disciplined and musically cohesive. In the grander pieces, such as Liszt's Transcendental Etude No. 10, and Scriabin's Etude in D-sharp Minor, we are in touch with a musician unafraid to paint in the broad, lush strokes of the Romantic tradition. In full command of the poetry and ecstasy of these difficult works, Dubai creates a world that is at once sensual as well as visionary.
In all, Music of the Romantic Pianist-Composer is that rarity: a journey of discovery, masterfully performed.
