Hyperklavier
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)
Concertino JW 7/11
Capriccio JW 7/12
Reinhard Febel (b. 1952)
Hyperklavier
Óscar Martín (piano)
Zahir Ensemble/Juan García Rodríguez,
rec. 2020-21, Manuel da Falla Auditorium, Seville, Spain
IBS Classical IBS22025 [70]

Hyperklavier the latest album from the  Zahir Ensemble under Juan García Rodríguez with pianist Óscar Martín, is a most curious case of programming and marketing. Two brief concertante works from late in the life of Leoš Janáček are paired with an impenetrable non-concerto by German Reinhard Febel. The promotional material may have lost something in translation but has sentences like  “… all of them are compositions for piano and ensemble which try to construct the literal Hyperklavier Febel mentions in his title, a sound conglomerate that extends the semantic possibilities of a solo piano through the employment of different instruments.”  The  “common points” that apparently link the three works were not apparent to me – and believe me, I did try. 

I have always been fascinated by Janàček’s sound world, though I must confess to not really understanding it.  I love the energetic dance rhythms and the quite outrageous demands he places on performers, especially the brass, but as to a real understanding of how he achieves this, no.  I am very fond of the two mini-concertante works recorded here and am always interested in new performances of them.   

In 1925, Janàček  put aside the composition of his opera The Makropulos Case to write the Concertino for piano and six instruments (two violins, viola, clarinet, horn and bassoon). The work is  dedicated to the pianist Jan Heřman, whose playing had impressed the composer. It was at first intended to be a piano concerto, but as it progressed it shrank into this small chamber work. Originally entitled  “Spring”, maybe because it was completed on 25 April 1925, it has never been performed as that and there is nothing particularly seasonal Spring-like about it. The première took place on 16 February 1926, with the piano part taken by Ilona Štěpánová-Kurzová,  not Jan Heřman. It is an ingratiating work, and I would speculate that only the unorthodox scoring has limited performances of it. 

In 1927 Janáček added a commentary to the piece. He wanted, he said, to evoke the atmosphere of a fairy tale, where different woodland animals interact and play with each other. The theme from the first movement is compared to a “grumpy hedgehog”, the clarinet in the second movement to a “chattering squirrel”, the atmosphere of the third part is compared to a “night owl and other night animals”, and the last movement is considered by the composer as the “scene from a fairy-tale, where everybody is arguing”. The first movement contains only horn and piano, the second only clarinet and piano; other instruments join in during the third and fourth movements.

For such a short work, the piano part is quite demanding and for some reason Janàček instructs right at the beginning that “The piano part is to be memorised” – certainly an unusual request for a chamber work and maybe yet another reason why it is not often performed, as the amount of time taken to memorise it would not match the number of performances in any season.

An understanding of the forest creature setting is not really needed to get into the work. The movements are all very short and the musical material sharp, brilliant and diverting.  It is fascinating that  in such a short piece the first two movements are duets. The opening, with just piano and horn, is beautifully realised for the two instruments. The almost incantatory first statement on the piano holds the movement together and is economically developed. The second movement for piano and  Eb clarinet is in ternary form with a stabbing aggressive piano part in the A section and more rhapsodic writing in the B section, which still manages to be disturbing. The rest of the ensemble make a surprise, enigmatic entry in the final five bars. Whether or not the players were thinking of the composer’s forest I cannot say but this is a very fine performance. The interaction between piano and ensemble is very well managed. It is hard to believe that there are so few instruments so much and so varied is the sonic landscape.  For my money, Mikhail Rudy on EMI (review) has a better piano sound and a more playful approach to the work.

The second short work by Janàček entitled “Capriccio for Piano Left-Hand and Chamber Ensemble” was written in the autumn of 1926. The small ensemble used is even more outlandish than that of the Concertino, being scored for piano, flute doubling piccolo, two trumpets, three trombones and tenor tuba – definitely a performance-breaker. Unlike most works written for left-hand piano, this one was commissioned not by Paul Wittgenstein but Otakar Hollmann who, like Wittgenstein, had lost the use of his right-hand during World War 1- his was paralysed whereas Wittgenstein’s was amputated . 

Janáček does not come out well in the commissioning process. Initially, he refused to write it rather heartlessly, telling Hollmann,  “But, my dear boy, why do you want to play with one hand? It’s hard to dance when you have only one leg.” Later, he changed his  mind and began writing it without telling Hollmann who found out about in in the press. Even though he inspired it, the work is not dedicated to Hollmann and Janáček refused to guarantee him the premiere, saying, “I cannot give any kind of rights to the first performance. Whoever manages to do it can play it.” However, the composer seems to have relented and in 1927 sent the score to the Hollman. The work had its first outing in the privacy of  Janáček’s apartment in Brno on February 6, 1928.  Janàček was pleased, though he did make some changes to the score at the time. There is no record of what his neighbours thought.

In one of his letters to Kamila Stösslová, his muse some forty years his junior, he said that he had considered calling the work “Defiance,” to indicate the pianist’s indomitable spirit, but in one of his final interviews, he said that the work was “a series of pranks.”  Maybe this is in the scoring, which came after the brass heavy Sinfonietta, but if it is in the material it is a dark sense of humour.  

It goes without saying that any work for left hand alone is difficult but there is a difference between difficult and awkward and this work is the latter. The manuscript contains many changes made by the composer after the run through. Strangely, though, there are many passages in the published score in which an unidentified editor has written alternatives which for the most part make the piano part even more awkward. 

The score begins with an aggressive, march- like theme in the piano, accompanied by the trombones, before the piano comes to a dead halt and the trombones play a spooky ostinato. There is a fierce mini-cadenza for trumpet before the piano returns with the march. Movement two is a fascinating juxtaposition of disparate elements. It opens with a gentle lyrical, almost Romantic melody in the piano which alternates with aggressive brass fanfare like figurations before ending in sad resignation. It contains some of the most awkward writing for the piano with scales in thirds and leaps in chords which the soloist throws off with aplomb.

Movement three is a disturbing and scherzo-like, with some exacting writing for the brass who stay remarkably in tune. A short scale pattern introduced by the piano is a feature of the movement. It extends to two octaves in the final bars and Martín uses the sustain pedal to great effect to give the illusion of veiled harp glissandi.  

The finale always sounds to me like winter music, bleak and a little disturbing. It is a melancholic, eight- note figure in the piano which descends then turns on itself dominates the movement, often accompanying an elegiac melody first laid out in the flute. A stormy piano cadenza marked ff in the score is a little too gentle here to be as disturbingly disruptive as it should be. Also, the dynamics towards the end which should vary between mp to ff to f are not as varied as they could be. This means that the final bars which finish on an optimistic Db major chord are not as cathartic as is implied in the score.

This is a very tough work to bring off. There are many technically awkward challenges for the players, the conductor and in a recording the engineers to bring off. My favourite is Jean-Efflam Bavouzet  and Edward Gardner on Chandos (review). Bavouzet gives a flawless, fleet footed flawless performance, while Gardner pays closer attention to the dynamics in the score which the engineers capture.  

German composer Reinhard Febel is a name new to me. Apparently, in German-speaking countries he has found great success with his operas. On listening to the work here, I can hear that he is greatly influenced by post war modernism, although the dissonance and fragmentation associated with that style seem to be tempered by some nods to Minimalism.

Hyperklavier was composed between 2015 and 2017 and consists of five pieces for piano solo and a variable ensemble featuring different combinations up to thirteen instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, two violins, viola, cello and double bass). The hyper piano of the title is achieved by the use of amplifications, reverberations and extensions provided by precisely notated orchestral techniques. The composer’s aim was to explore the possibilities of the piano  which he does “not think … has yet been completely exploited”.  

I found the four quick movements and one slow one very difficult to assimilate. The ideas laid out in the liner notes did not seem to translate so well to actual sounds – or at least the actual sounds did not seem as interesting as the ideas. Even the last movement, with its almost minimalist patterning, perhaps owing something to Minimalism through the lens of Ligeti, outstays its welcome.

Looking to extend the sound of a modern piano is not something new in post-war music. George Friedrich Haas in works such as his Piano Concerto (2007), Fremde Welten, Concerto for piano and 20 strings (1997), and  Limited Approximations – Konzert for six micro-tonally tuned pianos and orchestra (2010), or Horaţiu Rădulescu in his ground breaking piano concerto The Quest (1996) have extensively explored the extension of the piano into a ‘hyper piano’ with far greater success. 

This is a curious, mixed bag of programming, well recorded and presented in a glossy triptych case with programme notes that would do well in Private Eye’s “Pseuds Corner” column. Marketing clearly thought Hyperklavier rather than the Janáček was a good selling point; sadly…

Paul RW Jackson

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