Sara Feigin: Piano Works

Benjamin Goodman, piano.
Navona Records 6147
Total Time: 46:53
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Latvian composer Sara Feigin (1928-2011) is perhaps best known in Israel for her work as a music educator and the founder of the Conservatory of Music in Holon.  It was here, beginning in the 1970s where she would shift some of her compositional focus to developing methodology series for young pianists and violinists and a long series of educational concerts.  This was quite a shift from her concert work that appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, including five ballets.  Her music is notable for its traditional harmony that is infused with unique folk influences both taking inspiration from many events, both personal and cultural.

For this release, British-born pianist Benjamin Goodman has chosen a program of her works from across her oeuvre.  First up are the very brief Two Pieces (2003).  These feature a more romantic “Prelude” and an intense brief “Storm.”  They are interesting piano miniatures that help invite the listener in to the music that follows.  Dissonance comes more to the forefront in the intense Toccata (1972) which zips along with breakneck speed.  A lyrical central section creates a clearer statement of the Latvian folk theme basis for the work.  The piece though is a perfect virtuosic too mixing modern harmony and slight dissonance in a quite dramatic style.

A brief collection of Four Scenes (1992) provide a further window into Feigin’s blend of traditional and quartal/quintal harmonies with slight dissonances for dramatic effect.  The music is filled with alternations of more lyrical segments and virtuosic displays, often kicked off with a few dissonances to mark the shifts.  Sometimes, it feels  a bit jazzy as in the “Joke”, and wistful “Memories.”  Here the music feels like a modern Impressionist style, equally like late Debussy in the final “Perpetuum Mobile”.  Underlying all this is a continued rhythmic vitality. A set of Variations (2002) gives the listener a further glimpse of her compositional style taking a beautiful folkish melody with extended jazz-like harmonies on an intriguing journey.

The final work on the program is the 1972 Sonata for Piano.  Here is a work that exemplifies the musical aesthetic and approaches that inspired Feigin.  A four-movement work, its genesis was inspired by a painting by Joseph Kuzkovsky and bears a dedication to the victims of the Babi Yar concentration camp.  Here two are these interesting jazz harmonies and ballade-like lyrical moments that are interspersed with more dissonant and dramatic gestures.  The ideas seem to float with ease with interesting motivic development that helps hold the work together.

Feigin’s music is quite accessible to those familiar with modernist-Romantic styles.  Goodman proves to be a committed interpreter to these pieces lending them a great sense of energy with clear melodic contours for the more lyrical moments of these pieces.  Certainly, this is an important disc of modern piano music that is filled with engaging and often touching music.

 Bright Circle: Music of Schubert, Brahms, Del Tredici
Beth Levin, piano.
Navona Records 6074
Total Time:  78:02
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Pianist Beth Levin made her concert debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 12.  Her teachers have included Leonard Shure, Dorothy Taubman, and Paul Badura-Skoda.  She is equally at home in contemporary music as well as the classics and has chosen a couple standard works plus a more recent piece by David Del Tredici.

The album begins with one of Schubert’s last piano sonatas written in the last weeks of his life.  The Piano Sonata in A, No. 20, D. 959.  Originally intended to be dedicated to the celebrated pianist Johann Nepomuk Hummel, the publisher instead dedicated them to Robert Schumann as Hummel had died two years before these last three sonatas were published.  In this work, we see Schumann continuing to expand upon the structures of classical form.  The first movement is in sonata-allegro form.  It is in the stunningly beautiful “Allegretto” though that we get a glimpse of some of more melancholy and haunting melodic content in what is essentially a barcarole.  The serenity though is shattered by a rather intense middle section with lots of rapid passage work and passionate music.  The third movement brings us a fast scherzo driven by the driving harmonic motion.  The final movement recalls a rondo from Beethoven’s sixteenth piano sonata (Op. 31, no. 1).  Schubert revisits a melody explored in his earlier Piano Sonata no. 4 in a, D. 537.  Levin’s performance here shines in the poignant slow movement.  Here the interpretation is quite beguiling.  The opening movement has good energy, but seems hampered at times by the response of the piano she is using.  The rhythmic detail in the performance as a whole is quite crisp and impressive, especially moving into the toccata-like center of the second movement, and in the scherzo.  Perhaps at first, the somewhat aggressive attacks in the first movement will catch listeners off guard expecting something more serene, but it does work quite well.  The final movement is a wonderful balance of her serene playing as well as the attention to clarity and detail.  One of my favorite performances of this work is by Murray Perahia.  Levin’s tempos are not far off from that 1988 (!) release.  Sound is of course far superior here and the coupling will also make this attractive as we move on to the Brahms.

Brahms 1861 Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op. 24 is a set of 25 variations culminating in a massive fugue.  All based on Handel’s a melody in the third movement of the Harpsichord Suitei No. 1 in Bb, HWV. 434.  The variations here wend their way through expected shifts in mode and tempo on the surface.  But listening through the work one hears Brahms fully exploring the range of the piano, expanding upon what Handel had attempted for the harpsichord.  The pianist must be particularly adept with technical proficiency in the left hand as bass lines are as much part of Brahms’ rhythmic exploration as the right.  Each variation explores these quick shifts in tone and technique lending the piece its own forward motion towards the center, pulling back to allow the final fugue to really shine.

Admittedly it is not one of the Brahms’ piano pieces that I tend to grab often.  The two recordings that have lasted in my own collection were dated when I first experienced this music featuring Julius Katchen and Van Cliburn.  Levin’s earlier recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and of the Beethoven Diabelli Variations received high praise for her technique and interpretation.  In this piece, we can hear the melding together of those approaches that explores this music with depth and draws the listener in to her interpretation.  We do not hear the work as a series of little composition experiments, but as a piece that ebbs and flows from the different variations allowing clear connections as she moves from one variation to the next.  It is an often stunning performance.

The final work on the disc is David Del Tredici’s Ode to Music (2015).   The piece was premiered by Levin last year.  The work is sort of an homage to the grand piano fantasias of the 19^th Century.  The departure point is Schubert’s An Die Musik though with approach as if Schubert’s musical language followed the likes of Wagner and Liszt rather than preceded it.  On this program, it fits quite well bringing us in one sense back in a perfect circle to begin back at the opening track and reflecting along with Levin about these pieces and their connections large and small.  It has a bit of the grandiose romanticism one would anticipate with touches of parlor music making it a perfect finale for the disc.

The first few moments of the Schubert felt a bit unsettling but, the performances eventually settle in well clicking with Levin’s interpretations and demonstrating an amazing clarity of technique and personal conceptualizing of these works.  The Brahms is really the highlight of the disc here, along with the second and fourth movements of the Schubert, and the Del Tredici.  They are certainly performances that make you want to listen closely to what is unfolding here.