Amy Beach (1867-1944)
Piano Music
Contents listed after review
Virginia Eskin (piano)
Kathleen Supové (piano, Suite)
rec. 1994, Music Room, Cambridge, USA
Alto ALC1481 [68]

The pianist Virginia Eskin has long been known for the variety of her repertoire. While particularly notable for her performances of American music, she has also recorded ragtime and music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and helped revive the music of the all too short-lived Vítězslava Kaprálová (review ~ review). She has featured a wide range of American women composers, most especially Amy Beach, whose music she has been performing since the 1970s. This disc a re-release originally from 1994, shows Ms. Eskin in fine form as she presents Beach’s works from 1889 to 1924.

Valse caprice of 1889, very difficult to play, shows the range of Beach’s pianistic abilities. Quite different is the 1894 Ballad. It still shows the influence of Chopin but – as Ms. Eskin points out in her notes – becomes more individual as the work progress, and ends with a dramatic flourish.

From about the same period, we have the Four Sketches. Their titles may bring to mind Edward MacDowell, but Beach’s music is more impressionistic than that of the older composer. The enjoyable In Autumn is like a brisk walk in the woods in November; Phantoms is less impressive. My favorite of the four was Dreaming, a lovely reverie. I also enjoyed Fireflies, where the composer’s love of nature is fully in evidence.

A jump of over twenty years brings us to the Prelude and Fugue. One of Beach’s most powerful piano works, it cries out for orchestration. As Ms. Eskin points out, the piece is quite Franckian, especially harmonically. The Prelude itself is almost violent in its intensity; the Fugue, while impressive, lacks a little of that fire. The two pieces from 1921, Hermit Thrush at Eve and Hermit Thrush at Dawn are based on actual bird calls that the composer heard during one of her stays at the artists’ colony at Peterborough, New Hampshire. It is amazing how much she gets out of this natural material.

The Nocturne dates from the Jazz Age, and even Amy Beach was not totally immune to jazz influence, as seen in the start of this piece. Most of it, however, is a quite passionate production of the mature Beach.

For more on the Suite for Two Pianos on Irish Melodies, see my review of a recent disc with Beach’s piano duo music. Despite differences in recording quality, I found Virginia Eskin and Kathleen Supové’s version more appealing.

Virginia Eskin perfectly understands the mixture of drama, nature worship and contemplative qualities that characterize these pieces.Kathleen Supové ably assists her in the Suite. The disc can serve as an introduction to Beach’s piano works and as a sample of the playing of a ground-breaking pianist fortunately still with us.

William Kreindler

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Contents
Ballad in D-flat, Op 6
Valse Caprice, Op 4
Nocturne, Op 107
Prelude and Fugue, Op 81
Four Sketches, Op 15
Hermit Thrush at Eve, Op 92 No 1
Hermit Thrush at Morn, Op 92 No 2
Suite for Two Pianos on Irish Melodies, Op 104