Amy Beach (1867-1944)
Out of the Depths Op.130 (1932)
Variations on Balkan Themes Op.60 (1904)
Dreaming Op.15 No.3 (1892)
Serenade Ständchen after Richard Strauss (1902)
Prelude and Fugue Op.81 (1914)
Canoeing Op.119 No.3 (1927)
Honeysuckle Op.97 No.5 (1922)
A Hermit thrush at Eve Op.92 No.1 (1924)
Nocturne Op.107 (1924)
Three Pieces Op.128 (1932)
Martina Frezzotti (piano)
rec. 2023, Westvest Church, Schiedam, The Netherlands
Piano Classics PCL10277 [65]

A little while ago I evaluated a disc of Amy Beach’s complete music for two pianists (review) which included the two piano version of the Variations on Balkan Themes that Beach made in 1937. I was keen to hear the original and am very pleased to hear this recital with these momentous variations as its core.

Beach was a prodigy; the booklet tells us that she could sing some 40 songs accurately by the age of one and goes on to list her similarly extraordinary annual achievements – aged two, improvising counter melodies and aged four, composing away from the piano while at her grandparents’ farm, only performing the resulting waltzes when she arrived back home at her parents’ house. Her early performances may have outnumbered those following her 1885 marriage to Boston surgeon Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach but composing remained a big part of her life. Success in this field followed in 1892 with her Mass in E, her Gaelic Symphony in 1896 and her Piano Concerto in 1900. The Variations on Balkan Themes, written four years later, share the key of the concerto, C sharp minor, are nearly as monumental in feel and scope and are certainly as demanding. In a way they are fantasy variations as Beach bases the set on not one but four Balkan themes. O Maika Moya (O my poor country…why art thou weeping?) is the principal melody and features in the first five variations; it develops contrapuntally before bursting forth in an expansive and passionate variation, all keyboard encompassing arpeggios and octaves. Variation four is a lilting barcarolle while in my review of the two piano version I described the fifth as a warm hearted nocturne. It is that and more in the solo version which Beach writes predominantly for the left hand, the right providing trills and gossamer webs of light decoration. A new melody enters for the sixth variation, Stara Planina, a hymn to the mountains which is given the Hungarian dance treatment. The final variation is an extended fantasy that opens with a playful but also sad little tune Nasadil e Dado – Grandpa has planted a garden – but also takes in a funeral march, a cadenza quasi fantasia and an epic revisiting of the second variation that tries to scale even greater heights. Undaunted Nasadil e Dado takes over and calms things down for a return to O Maika Moya and a tranquil, optimistic ending. Beach revised the work in 1936 to pare back its scale but Frezzotti plays the original version which certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome, especially when given such a wonderfully vivid performance. She plays with a broad range of colours, sparkling imagination and, with a disdain for technical difficulties, her fingers fly over Beach’s treacherous but undeniably thrilling writing with unerring command. Why isn’t this work played more often? The writing is excellent and marvellously communicative and would appeal to anyone who liked Liszt or Brahms, those disparate composers who both provide influence here; for me the nature of the themes and their origins also evokes occasional hints of Ernö Dohnànyi’s harmonic style.

Equally monumental is the Prelude and Fugue from 1912. Prelude and Fugue both share a motif announced in declamatory style in the opening bars and as with the variations there is a sense of fantasy about the writing with both parts falling into different sections; the fugue’s texture not only thickens as it progresses but Beach writes in a gradual quickening of the tempo with the underlying texture changing from quavers to triplets to semiquavers before it begins to focus on developing small motifs and bursting triumphantly into the major key for its grand peroration. Liszt and his Fantasie and fugue on BACH or his Meyerbeer epic Ad nos ad salutarum undam hover over much of the writing which often sounds like three or more hands are actually playing. The somewhat tragic Out of the depths is actually written on four staves at one point but only to differentiate the chromatic falling octave theme from the chthonic bass chords. 

A lighter note is struck in dreaming from the four sketches op.15, a beautiful and rather intricate song without words. Its accompaniment weaves inner voices through its texture and the elegant chromatic harmony with subtle side shifts of key is mirrored in the equally passionate Nocturne op.37. A real Song without words comes in the form of a transcription of Richard Strauss’ glorious Ständchen, one of only a couple of transcriptions she made. The booklet claims it remains a faithful transcription of Strauss’ original but I have to say that while it keeps to its dimensions there are some delicious little turns of harmony and she is as inventive as Godowsky is in his 1922 transcription. A Hermit Thrush at Eve, the first of two Hermit thrush pieces was written while she was at the MacDowell colony and where she heard the birds and notated their song. Nocturnal in mood there is a sense of Rachmaninov’s early Élégie in keyboard texture but things are quite different as the arabesques of the thrush’s song trill in the upper keyboard. Honeysuckle from the 1922 set From Grandmother’s Garden is a moto perpetuo of a waltz, sinuous, graceful and utterly delightful. It is preceded by the short flowing Canoeing whose melody sings over an arpeggio accompaniment, it’s simplicity a far cry from the tumultuous Variations. Another work from Beach’s time at the MacDowell colony is the set of three pieces op.128; the close contact with nature that the colony offered is also apparent here in these three short descriptive pieces. The scampering of A Peterborough Chipmunk is brilliantly captured in the opening scherzino while the susurration of the wind in the treetops of Young Birches is evoked by the sempre murmurando – always murmuring – of the right hand’s double notes. The recital ends with A Humming-bird, a quicksilver etude with all the sparkle and flashing iridescence of the tiny bird that inspired it.

I was really swept up in the performances here; Frezzotti is magnificent in Beach’s grander passions but also shines in the more lyrical items and has a genuine feel for the flow of the music. I had to reprise Dreaming as soon as the track had finished to enjoy again the lovely sounds that Frezzotti was coaxing from her Steinway. A winning recital.

Rob Challinor

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