(1882-1971) IGOR STRAVINSKY SOMMCD 266-2 Music for Solo Piano (CD1) Music for Piano and Orchestra (CD2)* Music for

Southampton Piano Solo and Piano and Orchestra TURNER

SIMS piano Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra * David Atherton conductor *

CD1 1 - 3 Three Movements from Petrushka 16:50 4 - 7 Four Etudes, Op. 7 8:19 2000 © 2000. Venue & Personnel as above. & Personnel Venue 2000 © 2000. 8 - bm

 Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor 29:15 bn - bp Piano Sonata (1924) 10:18 Total duration: 64:43

CD2 1 - 4 Serenade in A 11:43 5 Piano-Rag-Music 3:34 6 Tango 3:13 7 - 9 Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments* 19:18 bl - bp Movements for Piano and Orchestra* 9:30 bq - bs Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra* 16:35 PETER DONOHOE piano

2000 HK Phil under exclusive licence to GMN Inc to © 2000 GMN licence under exclusive 2000 HK Phil Total duration: 64:04 CD 1 and tracks 1 to 6 of CD 2 recorded 14-16 6 of CD 2 recorded 1 to CD 1 and tracks September 2016 and 24 June 2017 Arden-Taylor. Engineer: Paul Oke. Siva Southampton. Producer: Sims Concert Hall, Turner at 4-6 July 1995. Hong Kong, Hall, Town Wan Tsuen in : Recorded Capriccio  Earth. Engineer: Mike Floating Johns. Hatch, Stephen Producer: Jan 26-29, 1999. Concerto & Movements: Piano Front cover photo: © 2017 Olivier Fleury / Festival International de Musique de Dinard International de Musique de Dinard © 2017 Olivier Fleury photo: / Festival cover Front Design: Andrew Giles Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra © &  2018 SOMM RECORDINGS · THAMES DITTON · SURREY · ENGLAND DDD Made in the EU DAVID ATHERTON IGOR STRAVINSKY CD 1 IGOR STRAVINSKY CD 2

Three Movements from Petrushka (16:50) Serenade in A (11:43) 1 1. Danse Russe: Allegro giusto 2:26 1 1. Hymne 3:25 2 2. Chez Pétrouchka: Stringendo – Allegro – 5:12 2 2. Romanze 2:55 Furioso – Adagietto – 3 3. Rondoletto 2:33 Andantino – Allegro Peter Donohoe 4 4. Cadenza finale 2:49 Peter Donohoe 3 3. La semaine grasse: Con Moto – Allegretto – 9:11 piano piano 5 Piano-Rag-Music 3:34 Tempo giusto – Agitato 6 Tango 3:13 Four Etudes, Op. 7 (8:19) Hong Kong 4 1. Con moto (C minor) 1:33 Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments* [19:18] 7 Philharmonic 5 2. Allegro brillante (D major) 3:07 1. Largo – Allegro – Maestoso 7:23 8 Orchestra * 6 3. Andantino (E minor) 1:43 2. Larghissimo 7:01 9 7 4. Vivo (F-sharp major) 1:55 3. Allegro – Agitato – Lento – Stringendo 4:53 Movements for Piano and Orchestra (9:30) Sonata in F-sharp minor (29:15) * David Atherton bl 1. = 110 2:47 8 1. Allegro 10:45  conductor * bm 2. = 52 1:25 9 2. Vivo 5:07  bn 3. = 72 1:09 bl 3. Andante 7:13  bo 4. = 80 1:59 bm  4. Allegro – Andante – Allegro 6:09 bp 5.  = 104 2:08 Sonata (1924) (10:18) Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra* (16:35) bn bq 1.  = 112 2:58 1. Presto 6:34 bo 2. Adagietto 4:44 br 2. Andante rapsodico 4:37 bp bs 3..  = 112 2:35 Total Duration: 64:43 3. Allegro capriccioso ma sempre giusto 5:23 Total Duration: 64:04

2 3 culled material for solo piano in 1921. puppets (Petrushka, the Moor and IGOR STRAVINSKY Music for Although written for, and dedicated the Ballerina) come to life and find to, Arthur Rubinstein, in the event the themselves involved in a third, more Piano Solo and Piano and Orchestra pianist performed the work only once, timeless tradition: the ménage à trois. There was little in Stravinsky’s music for a new age. Others reviled him as the in Memphis, Tennessee, and then only It prompted from Stravinsky one of his before the trio of ballets that propelled creator of a cacophonous noise that several years later. richest and most animated scores. So him to fame and notoriety to suggest smacked – and rudely so – of vulgar rich, in fact, that distilling it into a version he was a revolutionary in waiting. disregard for the past. Wary of being seen to exploit the for solo piano posed considerable Not even the success of L’oiseau de feu success of the ballet, Stravinsky insisted challenges despite the employment of (‘The Firebird’) in 1910 or Petrushka Stravinsky, himself, was keenly aware the Three Movements from Petrushka athletic technical devices demanding the following year prepared audiences that his music divided opinion, telling were not mere piano transcriptions of gymnastic flexibility and dexterity from for the seismic shock of Le Sacre du The Observer newspaper in 1961 that it the orchestral score. Instead, he said, the pianist. printemps (‘’), the was “best understood by children and “My intention was to give virtuoso premiere of which, in Paris in 1913, animals”. That throwaway, tongue-in- pianists a piece of a certain breadth that Setting three of the ballet’s four provoked a near riot to create one of cheek comment both masks and alludes would permit them to enhance their tableaux (‘The Moor’s Room’ excluded), nascent modernity’s defining moments. to the primary attraction of a body modern repertoire and demonstrate the first of the Three Movements, of work characterised by innocence a brilliant technique.” Such are its Danse Russe, depicts the moment at The furore that greeted that fateful and insight, and distinguished by a demands that Stravinsky, although a which the three puppets are conjured evening seemed to fix, as if in aspic, mercurial sleight of musical hand that more than competent pianist himself, into delirious, dancing life; the second, the conjoined but conflicting images disguises an acute technical facility in never performed it in public because, Chez Pétrouchka (‘Petrushka’s Room’), of Stravinsky that stubbornly persist which heart-stopping poetic delicacy he candidly confessed, “I lack the finds the eponymous puppet alone nearly half a century after his death in and pulse-quickening primality are technique”. and disorientated by his love for the 1971 at the age of 89. Janus-like, he was, fused with compelling immediacy. Ballerina; the third, La semaine grasse for some, a radical innovator sweeping Petrushka had fused two great Russian (‘The Shrovetide Fair’) depicts the bustle aside the pastel-hued politeness of It was from Petrushka, a decade after traditions – folk music and puppetry – and colour of a carnival populated to usher in a new music the ballet’s first staging, that Stravinsky into a ‘ballet burlesque’ in which three by various characters, grotesque and

4 5 comical. In a marked departure from continuing onwards (from bar 99) with uncle, Alexander Yelachich, fondly He was clearly unhappy with this the ballet, Stravinsky spares Petrushka fresh borrowing from the orchestral remembered by his nephew as fledgling work (he was just 21 when his murder at the hands of his jealous score. The result restores to the “a passionate amateur musician” he began it) considering it “fortunately love rival, the Moor. narrative – and the music – a degree – Stravinsky had been steered lost”, as he told Robert Craft as late as of cohesion incongruously absent from resolutely away from music by his 1960, unaware that it was safe in the Linking each of the scenes in the ballet the original. concerned parent towards a career archives of the Leningrad State Public was the ingenious use of a drum-roll in law. That was to change, with his Library (now the National Library of in F-sharp, a device omitted from the The often caustically imperious uncle’s encouragement, following an Russia in St Petersburg). It remained piano score. Recognising its value, Stravinsky had little regard for the encounter with Rimsky-Korsakov, then unpublished until 1973, two years after Peter Donohoe here substitutes it music of the increasingly idiosyncratic the elder statesman of Russian music, his death. with a new phrase on piano (also in Alexander Scriabin. He did, however, in 1903. F-sharp) that adroitly restores dramatic grudgingly confess to being influenced If Rimsky-Korsakov’s influence is to momentum and maintains the sense of by him “in one insignificant respect, Under Rimsky-Korsakov’s tutelage, the fore in a four-movement work continuity between each of the scenes. the piano writing of my [Four] Stravinsky began the Piano Sonata whose adherence to convention owes Etudes, Op. 7”. Composed in the early in F-sharp minor in the summer of everything to his pupil’s inexperience Also missing from the piano version summer of 1908, their preoccupation the same year while holidaying on with large-scale forms, the thumbprints was a telling interlude in La semaine with irregular, wilfully disrupted his uncle’s estates east of the Volga of others – notably Prokofiev, Scriabin, grasse featuring a peasant (depicted rhythms and heightened chromaticism River, completing it in 1904. The Rachmaninov and Glazunov – are also by high clarinet) coaxing his reluctant point, in hindsight (and on a less grand piano had been central to Stravinsky’s readily identifiable. Stravinsky regarded bear ( and basses) to perform, scale), to the mutable mercuriality of musical life since the age of nine. It it as “an inept imitation of Beethoven”. and the bear’s clumsy mimicry of the Petrushka and Le Sacre du printemps a transformed him into an autodidact peasant (tuba). Here, Donohoe alters few years hence. (his early understanding of harmony Imitative perhaps, but by no means bars 96-98 of the piano score to more and counterpoint gleaned from inept. If the artifice is borrowed directly reference the original ballet Although born into a musical family textbooks and scores) and it would (and it is), the execution is lithe and and inserts a piano version of the – his father, Fyodor, was the leading become, quite literally, the instrument liquid, the Sonata’s outer movements abandoned interlude before deftly bass of the St Petersburg , his of all that he composed. weighted down by grave solemnity,

6 7 its core distinguished by a lively, composer Stravinsky had once reviled By contrast, 1919’s Piano-Rag-Music originally conceived as a song (though agile and communicative Vivo-cum- but came to regard as one of the – composed for Arthur Rubinstein but never published as such) and intended Scherzo and an attractive Andante of “greatest musical geniuses”. premiered by José Iturbi – illustrates to flatter his new hosts. It was also charming delicacy. Stravinsky’s awareness of developments composed with the intention of making Composed the following year during outside of his own musical sphere. money, to which end he also produced The three-movement Piano Sonata Stravinsky’s first tour of America, Soon to move to a Paris in thrall to two arrangements for chamber orchestra of 1924 was an inevitable, if belated, the miniature Serenade in A was American jazz music, it anticipates and another for violin and piano. development of the earlier work. prompted by the offer of a recording his fascination with the genre’s free- Composed as Stravinsky’s neo-classical from the Iowa-based Brunswick label. wheeling exploitation of the keyboard. Curiously, perhaps, it looks towards period was getting into its stride, Stravinsky duly proffered a work Essentially, it’s an exercise in de- and Latin America rather than the perhaps it inked in his credentials as a true whose four movements could be re-construction in miniature, Stravinsky too diverse, not yet fully defined, music innovator; one who knew when to look accommodated by the three-minute teasing apart jazz’s improvisatory of his adopted country. More explicably, backwards as much as when to push capacity of each side of a 78rpm building blocks to reassemble them tango’s terse, statuesque formality forwards. It hymns the 18th century shellac disc. Although conceived “in – complete with irregular, dislocating and biting rhythmic vibrancy clearly (Haydn and Bach especially) with all imitation of the Nachtmusik [‘Night metre – in something jazz-like but exerted its own allure on a composer the unabashed conviction of the newly music’] of the 18th century”, there’s discernibly not jazz to exploit the for whom rhythm was paramount. converted. Even so, it is by no means something of Chopin in the crystalline idiom’s vitality and vivacity. Tellingly, Stravinsky probes beneath slavish to classicism, decorated as it is glint of the opening ‘Hymne’. The the form’s surface to dwell on its darker, by splashes of baroque brilliance and ensuing, arioso-like ‘Romanze’ tributes Six months after his wife of 33 years, dangerously combustible passions. infused with latent romanticism. the imagined assembly of guests, Katya, died of tuberculosis, Stravinsky the ‘Rondoletto’ third movement an emigrated to the United States. Within Sitting in Stravinsky’s neo-classical While its outer movements are effusive evocation of period dance the year he would be re-married and period but rooted in the concerto unabashed in their echoing of baroque styles. With its Debussyian overtones, contemplating encroaching poverty, grosso form favoured during the and classical idioms, the central section the chiming finale deftly pulls the focus the payment of European royalties baroque, the Concerto for Piano owes a more explicit debt to the darker, away from the past and determinedly obstructed by legal disputes and the and Wind Instruments teems with emerging romanticism of Beethoven, a towards the present. outbreak of war. 1940’s Tango was wholly modern idioms. Suggested by

8 9 the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, – before claiming two grandstanding as both instigator of, and intermediary have exercised a spell over me” at the composed in 1924 and cast in three solo passages during its working out. between, their various responses. The time of its writing in 1929. contrasting movements, it stresses experience is of something atomised the new (not least in the unorthodox The “breathless Allegro” finale re- straining to achieve definition and As with the Concerto for Piano and pairing of piano and winds, augmented fashions the Concerto’s opening toccata form, each of the five, short movements Wind Instruments, Capriccio (described by double basses and timpani) as much style with bravura virtuosity in a fugal confined within a contained timbral by Joseph Horowitz as being “as playful as the classical. “Strings and piano, a treatment of a theme built on the range in which often wild polyrhythmic as the Concerto was earnest”) was sound scraped and a sound struck, do concluding cadence of the previous combinations are loosely held conceived as a vehicle for Stravinsky’s not sound well together,” Stravinsky movement. A momentary pause – together by the unifying pull of tempo own talents as a concert pianist. Its asserted. “Piano and wind, sounds solemn and stately – just as proceedings relationships. composition immediately followed struck and blown, do”. come to the boil, is answered by a return that of his ‘Tchaikovsky ballet’, Le of the initial theme and a race towards Designed as much as it was composed baiser de la fée (‘The Fairy’s Kiss’), Evident in the introductory toccata – the final emphatic chord. (“every aspect of the composition and it shares that work’s gracefully described by Stravinsky as a “short, was guided by serial forms”) it reveals elasticated rhythms and refined crisp dance” – is the influence of the Whether chameleon or magpie, Stravinsky, then aged 77, as a Prospero- melodic signature. Conspicuously, it French baroque’s fondness for heavy Stravinsky’s appetite for the new like figure, one who was still as protean carries itself throughout with a spryness drama although its main subject – remained undiminished throughout his and pioneering as he had ever been that some would deny Stravinsky, the introduced by the ever-dominant and life, 1959’s Movements a product of his in a career that changed the course of central rhapsodic movement glinting percussive piano, and treated to a three- later preoccupation with serialism. They contemporary music. with baroque effervescence, the part invention – owes obvious debts were, he claimed, “the most ‘advanced’” outer movements marked by dance- to Bach and Scarlatti. The more lyrical works he had composed, their meaning Ever alert to the past, Stravinsky took like formality and freedom, the finale middle movement is a “sonorous largo” and effect best realised when viewed “as the character of his Capriccio from a especially sprightly and tinged with the that retains the piano’s prominence though through a crystal”. definition by Praetorius “meaning a energy and excitability of jazz. as it introduces the theme – shot fantasia – a free form made up of fugato through with striking dissonances and With the orchestra fractured into instrumental passages”. He also later Michael Quinn subsequently taken up by the orchestra chamber-like sections, the piano serves admitted that Weber’s sonatas “may © 2017

10 11 Peter Donohoe European countries, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Russia and USA. Other Peter Donohoe was born in Manchester engagements include performances of in 1953. He studied at Chetham’s School all three MacMillian piano concertos of Music for seven years, graduated in with the BBC Scottish music at Leeds University, and went on Orchestra, a series of concerts for to study at the Royal Northern College the Ravel and Rachmaninov Festival of Music with Derek Wyndham and at Bridgewater Hall, and numerous then in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and performances with The Orchestra of Yvonne Loriod. He is acclaimed as one the Swan. of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and Donohoe is also in high demand as a jury commanding technique. member for international competitions. He has recently served on the juries In recent seasons Donohoe has at the International Tchaikovsky appeared with Dresden Philharmonic Piano Competition in Moscow (2011 Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic and Concert and 2015), Busoni International Orchestra, Cape Town Philharmonic Competition in Bolzano, Italy (2012), Orchestra, St Petersburg Philharmonia, the Queen Elisabeth Competition RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, in Brussels (2016), Georges Enescu Belarusian State Symphony Orchestra, Competition in Bucharest (2016), Hong and City of Birmingham Symphony Kong International Piano Competition Orchestra. He has undertaken a UK tour (2016), and Ricardo Viñes International with the Russian State Philharmonic Competition in Lleida, Spain, along Orchestra, as well as giving concerts with many national competitions both in many South American and within the UK and abroad. photograph: Sussie Ahlburg 12 13 Recent discs include a new recording disc was highly praised by The Times, at many other festivals including six Donohoe has worked with many of the of Shostakovich’s Piano Concertos and Birmingham Post and Jessica Duchen. consecutive visits to the Edinburgh world’s greatest conductors: Christoph Sonatas with the Orchestra of the Swan, Other recordings include Cyril Scott’s Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, Eschenbach, Neeme Järvi, Lorin and a disc of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes Piano Concerto with the BBC Concert and at the Ruhr and Schleswig Holstein Maazel, Kurt Masur, Andrew Davis and and Fugues (both Signum Records), Orchestra and (Dutton Festivals in . In the United Yevgeny Svetlanov. More recently he which was described as ‘thoughtful Vocalion) and Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy States, his appearances have included has appeared as soloist with the next and poignant’ by The Guardian; a disc on a Theme of John Field with the Royal the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston, generation of excellent conductors: of Scriabin Piano Sonatas (SOMM Scottish National Orchestra and Martin Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit Gustavo Dudamel, Robin Ticciati and Records) which was called ‘magnificent’ Yates (also Dutton), for which BBC Music Symphony Orchestras. Peter Donohoe also Daniel Harding. by The Sunday Times; a recording of Magazine described him as an ‘excellent performs numerous recitals internationally Witold Maliszewski’s Piano Concerto soloist’, and Gramophone stated that it and continues working with his long Peter Donohoe is an honorary doctor in B flat minor with the Royal Scottish ‘compelled from start to finish’. standing duo partner Martin Roscoe, as of music at seven UK universities, and National Orchestra conducted by well as more recent collaborations with was awarded a CBE for services to Martin Yates (Dutton Vocalion); and Donohoe has performed with all the artists such as , Elizabeth classical music in the 2010 New Year’s three discs of Prokofiev piano sonatas major London orchestras, as well as Watts and Noriko Ogawa. Honours List. for SOMM Records, the third of which orchestras from across the world: was released at the end of April 2016. the Royal Concertgebouw, Leipzig The first Prokofiev disc was described Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, by Gramophone as ‘devastatingly Swedish Radio, Orchestre Philharmonique • effective’, declaring Donohoe to be ‘in de Radio France, Vienna Symphony Our discs are available worldwide from all good record shops. In case of difficulty and his element’, and a review in Classical and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras. for further information please contact us direct: SOMM Recordings, Sales & Marketing Dept., Notes identified Donohoe’s ‘remarkably He has also played with the Berliner 13 Riversdale Road, Thames Ditton, Surrey, KT7 0QL, UK. Tel: +(0)20-8398 1586. Fax: +(0)20-8339 0981. Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.somm-recordings.com sensitive approach to even the most Philharmoniker in Sir Simon Rattle’s virtuosic of repertoire’. His second opening concerts as Music Director. He WARNING Copyright subsists in all Somm Recordings. Any unauthorised broadcasting, public performance, Prokofiev disc was given 5 stars by made his twenty-second appearance at copying, rental or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an infringement of such copyright. In the United Kingdom licences for the use of recordings for public performance BBC Music Magazine, and the third the BBC Proms in 2012 and has appeared may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London W1R 3HG

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