CHAN 9914 Front.qxd 17/7/07 4:07 pm Page 1 CHANDOS CHAN 9914 CHAN 9914 BOOK.qxd 17/7/07 4:09 pm Page 2 Franz Liszt (1811–1886) AKG 1 Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este 8:06 from Années de pèlerinage, Troisième Année Venezia e Napoli, S162 18:00 2 I Gondoliera 5:41 3 II Canzone 5:37 4 III Tarantella 6:40 Alberto Ginastera (1916–1983) Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 22 15:30 5 I Allegro marcato 4:03 6 II Presto misterioso 2:26 7 III Adagio molto appassionato 6:31 8 IV Ruvido ed ostinato 2:29 Samuel Barber (1910–1981) Piano Sonata, Op. 26 18:25 9 I Allegro energico 7:06 10 II Allegro vivace 1:58 Franz Liszt 11 III Adagio 5:01 12 IV Fugue 4:09 3 CHAN 9914 BOOK.qxd 17/7/07 4:09 pm Page 4 Terence Judd (1957–1979) Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Nothing can dim one’s sense of waste and Whether of Liszt, Ginastera, Barber, futility when the dazzling light cast by a Shostakovich, Balakirev or Ravel, these 13 Prelude and Fugue No. 15 4:36 young and brilliantly gifted artist is abruptly performances may be heard as reminders in D flat major • in Des-Dur • en ré bémol majeur and inexplicably extinguished. My analogy is of an artist captured ‘live’, on the wing, from Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 prompted by a description of Terence Judd and at the zenith of his youthful powers. as being like a meteor streaking across the This CD, together with Chandos’ reissue of Mily Balakirev (1837–1910) sky and bringing an intense pleasure and Tchaikovsky’s First and Prokofiev’s Third 14 Islamey 8:22 delight to his many admirers. Reaction to piano concertos taken from the finals of the tragic death of this outstanding the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition English-American pianist remains bewildered (CHAN 9913), is reissued both in memory Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) and intense, and yet there is, finally, and celebration of Terence Judd. 15 Oiseaux tristes 4:53 something uplifting and moving in the Terence Judd was primarily associated with from Miroirs contemplation of those all-too-brief but romantic nineteenth-century virtuoso works TT 78:21 hectic years so alive with activity, work and which allowed his agility and verve their the charm and exuberance that were fullest scope. It is therefore hardly surprising Terence Judd piano Terence’s hallmarks. that Liszt should have featured prominently So young a pianist has only begun the in his repertoire. Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa steep, uphill path towards artistic maturity or d’Este is taken from Liszt’s Années de poetic truth, but Terence offered so much pèlerinage, Year Three, while Venezia e more than mere potential. That his career Napoli forms a garland of encores or a ended when he was about to reap the dazzling supplement to Year Two. Composed benefits and satisfaction of international between 1867 and 1877, the Third Year stature and recognition is of course a cruel belongs to Liszt’s final period when much of blow, but that he achieved such distinctive the outward pomp and circumstance of his qualities – qualities permanently captured life gave way to a cloistered and often bitter here on record – inspires eternal gratitude. introspection (a change from l’exubérance de 4 5 CHAN 9914 BOOK.qxd 17/7/07 4:09 pm Page 6 cœur to l’amertume de cœur). Les Jeux d’eau à scored an immediate success. The opening firmly established in the repertoire. A a variety of snooks at convention, including a la Villa d’Este (No. 4 from Year Three) Allegro marcato is terse and alive with virtuoso’s paradise, the writing is stuttering attempt to find the right final foreshadows Debussy’s impressionism and is motoric energy, and includes hints of neo-romantic yet fiercely contemporary in cadence, while the Fugue turns such mordant also the starting point for Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, twelve-tone and polytonal procedures. The idiom, the characteristic toughness and wit into open savagery. Here, violently making it among the most historically second movement is a Presto misterioso, its angularity of much of the first movement in warring elements lead to an emphatic D flat, important works Liszt composed. Hence pianissimo quaver octaves interrupted by particular deriving from polytonal harmonic a mocking victory for a long-delayed but Busoni’s description of Liszt’s work as ‘the strains of the triunfo – a characteristic textures and canonic writing with strong solid-gold tonality. model for all musical fountains which have Latin-American rhythm heard again in the fugal elements. The melodic variety, too, is From fierce Russian miniatures we turn flowed since then’. finale –, a Bartókian pedal-point (lasciare remarkable, with some themes short and back in time to Balakirev’s Islamey and to a Unlike Ravel’s, however, Liszt’s fountains vibrare) and a ghostly fragmentation of the jagged and others long and sinuous. The world of transcendentally difficult pianism. were not inspired by poetry but by mystical movement’s principal motive. The slow second movement has an almost French An ‘Oriental Fantasia’ based on Crimean and and religious symbolism. The quotation movement is marked Adagio molto clarity while the Adagio, with its heavy Caucasian folk melody, Islamey, with its from the Gospel according to Saint John, appassionato and, despite sparse textures, the despondency, derives from the nineteenth defiant virtuoso challenge, was ‘But the water that I shall give him shall be music is exceptionally wide-ranging. The century’s grandest, most opulent style. understandably admired by Liszt. One of the in him a well of water springing up into pianist is instructed to be lyrical, agitated and The final fugue is unusually long and is finest works of the Russian nationalist everlasting life’, is inscribed in the score, and precipitate, and the hammering climax is to developed with a savage momentum and school, it is the product of a fastidious, lucid rarely can Liszt’s shimmering trills and be played rubato and con passione. The music ingenuity which not even a playful and notoriously self-critical mind in which tremolandi have been used to a more ends as it began, with a slow, astral and scherzando episode containing strong folk exotic colouration and formal ingenuity are luminously poetic end. For Liszt, who could questioning ascent brutally answered by the elements can check. superbly combined. be modest as well as vainglorious, such toccata-like finale. Dance rhythms hinted at Shostakovich’s Twenty-four Preludes and Ravel considered Oiseaux tristes the most things, while worth the effort, could be earlier now become boldly explicit and the Fugues, Op. 87 were modelled on Bach’s characteristic piece in his set of Miroirs pitifully inadequate, leaving him to note music races from its pungent opening Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues and were (1904–5), saying, ‘In this work I evoke birds ‘how dry and unsatisfactory omnipotent (Ruvido ed ostinato) via biting octaves and inspired by the playing of Tatyana lost in the torpor of a sombre forest during Nature’s sonorous laments and sighs sound split chords to a conclusion marked Tutta la Nikolayeva, to whom they are dedicated. the most torrid hours of sunshine’. Oiseaux on the piano’. forza, feroce. But although Shostakovich pays tribute to tristes also demonstrates the intention behind Moving firmly into the twentieth century, Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26 was Bach’s hallowed austerity he also turns it Debussy’s remark that he would like to write Ginastera’s Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 22 was commissioned to mark the twenty-fifth topsy-turvy, impishly delighting in every music whose form would be so free as to composed for the 1952 Pittsburgh anniversary of the American League of outlandish surprise in an effort to make appear improvised. Such carefully contrived International and Contemporary Music Composers and, since its introduction by whimsy and respectability walk hand in licence together with an accumulation of Festival and, first performed in that year, Vladimir Horowitz in 1950, has become hand. The faux-naïf Fifteenth Prelude cocks tonic triads over extended periods and 6 7 CHAN 9914 BOOK.qxd 17/7/07 4:09 pm Page 8 unresolved chords over pedal-points proved tristes, performances of which were given initially, and sometimes perpetually, at Terence’s funeral in 1979. Together Terence Judd (1957–1979) confusing, particularly for the work’s first with everything else on this recording and conservative audience. they will serve to remind us, in the Finally, in selecting the works for this words of George Eliot, ‘of those immortal Nichts kann das Gefühl von Verschwendung Ende fand, als er kurz davor stand, die programme from Chandos’ original dead who live again/in minds made better und Sinnlosigkeit mindern, welches sich Genugtuung und die Früchte internationalen three-disc set entitled In Memory of Terence by their presence’. We shall always aufdrängt, wenn das durch einen jungen und Rangs und Zuspruchs zu ernten, ist Judd I thought it appropriate that the disc remember… außerordentlich begabten Künstler natürlich ein furchtbarer Schlag, daß er should open with Liszt’s Les Jeux d’eau à la verbreitete Licht unvermittelt und aber solche außerordentlichen Qualitäten Villa d’Este and end with Ravel’s Oiseaux © 2001 Bryce Morrison unerklärlich ausgelöscht wird. Dieser erlangte – Qualitäten, die auf dieser Gedanke lehnt an eine Analogie an, die Einspielung festgehalten sind –, verpflichtet Terence Judd mit einem Meteor vergleicht, zu bleibender Dankbarkeit. Ob es sich der über den Himmel streifte und seinen nun um Liszt, Ginastera, Barber, vielen Bewunderern dabei ungemeine Freude Schostakowitsch, Balakirew oder Ravel bescherte.