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Michael Houstoun - Piano Concertos (MMT2035) |
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Michael Houstoun
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Piano Concerto No.3 in C, Op.26 Sergei Prokofiev
1 Andante – Allegro (9:22)
2 Tema con variazione (9:20)
3 Allegro ma non troppo (9:54)
Piano Concerto No.5 in E-flat, Op.73 ‘Emperor’ Ludwig van Beethoven
4 Allegro (19:40)
5 Adagio un poco moto (7:37)
6 Rondo: Allegro (10.12)
Total Duration 66:25
MMT2035 Live Digital Stereo Recording
© 1996, 2001 HRL Morrison Music Trust
P 2001 HRL Morrison Music Trust
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The Prokofiev Concerto was recorded live by Trust Records in the Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, New Zealand, 20 May 2000.
Producer and Engineer Keith Warren
The Beethoven Concerto was recorded live by Concert FM in the Wellington Town Hall, Wellington, New Zealand, 18 November 1995.
Producer David McCaw
Engineer Richard Hulse
CD Compilation, Digital Editing and Mastering Keith Warren
Executive Producers Russell Armitage and Ross Hendy
Booklet Notes Joy Aberdein and Allan Badley
Cover Painting Detail from Coast Landscape, Kaikoura by Rudolf Gopas
(© The Estate of Rudolf Gopas).
Design Cato Partners, Wellington, New Zealand
Thanks to Gregory O’Brien, City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
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Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Piano Concerto No.3 in C, Op.26
Sergei Prokofiev was a difficult and rebellious student and in his younger days was considered to be a disturbing and dissonant composer. Stifled by the conservatism he found in Russian academia, he quickly left for London where he met Igor Stravinsky and the great ballet impresario, Serge Diaghilev. Stravinsky’s music had a lasting – if unacknowledged – impact on Prokofiev and his relationship with Diaghilev was equally fruitful. However, unlike them, he was later persuaded to return to live in Russia, where he saw himself as apolitical (although this did not prevent life being difficult and unpredictable, especially through the Stalin era).
Prokofiev achieved early fame as a pianist, and his idiomatic and piquant writing found easy expression in the basic percussive qualities of the piano – at the same time, he remembered that the piano can also sing.
Time has shown that Prokofiev belongs to the same musical tradition as Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky. He integrated the rich, bold colours of the nineteenth-century Russian nationalists with his own sardonic and witty style, and it is this, along with his gift for ravishing melody, which gives his music its individuality. He composed in nearly every genre – ballet (Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella) opera (War and Peace) orchestral (seven symphonies) and instrumental (including a large body of piano music). This is all the more impressive considering how much of it was written in the face of World War II and Stalinist repression.
Prokofiev wrote five piano concertos before he was 40: the first was described as the work of a "musical madman" and the second left one reviewer "frozen with fright, hair standing on end". The third, written between 1917 and 1921, has become the most popular. It was Prokofiev’s visiting card to the USA where he premiered it with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1921. It offers a memorable clarinet introduction and is reminiscent of his opera The Love for Three Oranges (1919-21) in its lyricism. The second movement is a theme with five variations, while the ferociously difficult finale begins with a staccato theme for bassoons and pizzicato strings interrupted by the blustering entry of the piano. There is a great deal of argument leading to a climax followed by some caustic humour, and it ends with a brilliant coda. From beginning to end, this dazzlingly effective concerto is a verification of Prokofiev’s brilliance as a pianist.
The music writer Norman Lebrecht has written of the composer: "It is impossible to divine what Prokofiev wanted from art or life, beyond the desire to be left in peace. He was a victim of Russian history and his own indecision – torment that invests his intimate music with singular pathos."
Joy Aberdein
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto No.5 in E-flat, Op.73 ‘Emperor’
According to the most recent research, Beethoven’s last and most famous piano concerto was probably written early in 1809 when Austria was poised once again on the brink of war with France. On 12 May, after two days of heavy bombardment, Vienna surrendered to the victorious Imperial Army. Beethoven, whose apartment was right on the city ramparts, spent the greater part of these two days in his brother Caspar’s cellar with his head covered with pillows to protect what remained of his failing hearing.
By the time he completed the Fifth Concerto he must have been aware that he was now too deaf to risk giving the premiere himself. The solo part was clearly conceived for a virtuoso and the first performance was given by Johann Schneider, possibly a former Beethoven pupil. It was a brilliant success. The reviewer in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung reported that the new work "put a numerous audience into such a state of enthusiasm that it could hardly content itself with the ordinary expressions of recognition and enjoyment".
This concerto is without question one of Beethoven’s most heroic works. In size and complexity it bears a similar relationship to the earlier concertos as the Eroica does to the first two symphonies. But the real difference between the Emperor and its predecessors is more fundamental: while the first three concertos and, to a lesser extent the Fourth, are firmly rooted in the language of the Viennese classical period, the Fifth draws much of its inspiration from the music of French Revolutionary composers like Cherubini and Méhul.
The first movement is a virtual compendium of French Revolutionary devices including the characteristic martial theme, described by Alfred Einstein, as "an idealised quick march...often brusque in manner". The opening however, with its imposing orchestral chords punctuated by rhapsodic piano writing, is pure Beethoven.
The tranquil and exceedingly beautiful slow movement presents an enormous contrast of mood and style from the turbulent opening Allegro, and is linked to the finale by a short transitional passage which contains the essential thematic building blocks of the ensuing Rondo.
The finale is conceived on the same majestic scale as the opening movement, full of rugged strength and massive sonorities. For all that, the solo part is never overshadowed by the orchestra. The piano writing is of a power and complexity never seen before in a concerto and pushed Beethoven’s instrument of 1809 to its absolute limit.
Allan Badley
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