Manu Sinistra
Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952)
Piano Concerto No. 2, Opus 28 (1922)
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Concerto in D major for the left hand (1931)
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Piano Concerto No. 4 in B flat major, Opus 53 (1935)
Illia Ovcharenko (piano), MDR-Sinfonieorchester / Oksana Lyniv
rec. 2025, Leipzig, Germany
Reviewed as a digital download
Pentatone PTC5187498 [73]
llia Ovcharenko is a young Ukrainian born pianist who, having won the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition, is now making quite a name for himself on the international circuit. In his first concerto recording for Pentatone, he plays three concertos for piano left hand, commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm in WW1. The disc is entitled Manu Sinistra – Latin for “with the left hand.”
The three works are all very different, which serves to highlight the enormous service Wittgenstein did for the musical world in commissioning works for left hand from a very wide range of composers. His open outlook of course meant that sometimes he was less than satisfied with the music produced.
He was very much a product of the 19th century, commissioning works in the 20th, so was in sympathy with the likes of Strauss, Schmidt, Korngold etc. However, he struggled with Ravel and Britten, driving both to distraction and beyond with his changes to the written scores. They at least heard their works, but he refused to play the scores by Prokofiev and Hindemith.
Sergei Bortkiewicz was born in Kharkov, then in the Russian empire and now in Ukraine. He had recently settled in Vienna when Wittgenstein commissioned the work originally called ‘Concerto Fantaisie’ and it is easy to see why he went to this composer. The style is firmly rooted in the late Romantic period with Tchaikovsky, Lyapunov and Rachmaninov to the fore, a style that went out of fashion before WW2 but just hung on into the twenties. It would be easy to call the work a potboiler, but it is absolutely gorgeous. In four sections, played without a break and lasting almost half an hour, it is full of wonderful tunes, brilliant orchestration, and what Wittgenstein wanted: a virtuoso piano part. It is extremely difficult technically and also stamina-wise, as the piano seldom gets a break.
The work opens with the full orchestra playing a stormy descending chromatic figure marked Allegro Dramtico. It is certainly dramatic and is just the sort of music that Hollywood would later cheapen in overwrought B movies. The piano enters with cascades of arpeggios surrounding a big melody picked out with whichever fingers happen to be free. Things calm down and the following episodes are by turns lyrical and jovial, although the dramatic opening is never far away. The final Allegro vivace, is a delicate dance or nursery song in ¾ time. With the addition of some showy writing for the piano, the work ends on an upbeat cadence guaranteed to leave a smile on the listener’s face. I have heard performances of the work where the conductor has not managed to smooth out or make sense of the many sections and tempo changes, but here Ms Lyniv has no such problem. Perhaps her experience in the opera house with the necessary shaping of vocal lines has helped in this. She certainly shapes the many wind solos beautifully.
As I said, it is not the subtlest of works – none of Bortkiewicz’s concertos are – but it is full of such enjoyable music that one cannot help but love it. Illia Ovcharenko and the orchestra clearly love it also and are a match for Stefan Doniga who recorded it for Piano Classics with the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra under David Porcelijn (review). That recording couples it with the extraordinary third concerto subtitled Per aspera ad astra (through hardship to the stars) which is the only piano concerto I know that ends with full organ and tubular bells added to the orchestra. It is well worth a listen.
Nigel Simeone’s excellent notes quote from a review of the premiere in 1923 which stated, “Paul Wittgenstein performs miracles of energy with his one left arm…A musician of outstanding calibre, he masters the piano with one hand better than most of his two-armed colleagues.” I find this fascinating; all the works he commissioned are extraordinarily difficult and at some stage he must have been able to play them, yet the recordings he made, admittedly in later life, of the Ravel Concerto and Strauss Parergon are terrible, full of wrong notes and changed piano writing. What went wrong and when?
If Bortkiewicz’s work is seldom performed, Ravel’s concerto has become the only left-hand concerto to enter the standard repertoire. It is easy to see why; in form, structure and content, it is a masterpiece; not a note is out of place. That was not what Wittgenstein thought, however, and he made numerous changes to both the piano and orchestral part. Ravel was understandably furious and was barely speaking to him at the time of the Paris premiere.
Here, happily, we have all the right notes in the right order but with so many versions to choose from what does Illia Ovcharenko bring to work? The answer is rather a lot. He has a very lyrical concept of it, particularly in the two big cadenzas by which it is bookended. I was quite critical of Yeol Eum Son’s approach to the work (review), finding it too fragmentary. There is none of that here; both the cadenzas are beautifully and organically shaped and I can think of no one who makes the final one seem so sad. In the exposed virtuosic section beginning at letter 43 in the score (about 12 minutes in), Ovcharenko is faster than even Yuja Wang, and to thrilling effect. If I have any quibble, it is with the long high bassoon solo that begins about minutes in which is not nearly sleazy enough. As in the Bortkiewicz the sections are seamlessly held together by the conductor.
Prokofiev’s left-hand concerto was rejected outright by Wittgenstein, and it had to wait until 1956 for its first performance. It is classic, if not top draw, being full of Prokofiev’s leaping, angular piano writing with some very dissonant harmony, all offset by bittersweet, almost balletic, melodies. It has never been one of my favourite left-hand works, as most performances I have heard have been too brittle, even in the lyrical second movement but, as in the Ravel, Ovcharenko draws out lyrical lines where others have stabbed. This is clear from the outset, where, with clever fingering, he makes the skittish patterns flow. At about two and a half minutes in there is a very dissonant section based around major and minor ninths. It is all smoke and mirrors, as it is basically just a chromatic scale, but here Ovcharenko makes it sound like ingenious Bachian counterpoint. The lyrical second movement sounds as though it came out of notebooks for Romeo and Juliet. It has a dark, tragic lyricism about it which the performer’s exploit to the full.
I speculate that even if Wittgenstein could have gotten along with the first two movements, the third would have would have confirmed to him that this was not his sort of music. It is a curiously fragmented, bellicose scherzo which even in Ovcharenko’s elegant hands is not likeable. The concerto could have ended there, but Prokofiev chose instead to end with a shortened version of the first movement. It is over before you know it and that still puzzles me. This is as good a performance of the work as I have heard and the performers make a good case for it but of the three on the disc it is one to which I shall not often be returning. I wish rather that they had recorded Bortkiewicz’s other Wittgenstein concertante work, the Russian Rhapsody, which was also completed in 1935.
I am not really sure why this gifted young pianist chose to make his concerto debut with three left hand works but I am glad he did. He has found sympathetic partners in fellow Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv and the MDR Sinfonieorchester. The recorded sound is excellent, and booklet stylishly presented with informative notes and colourful photographs.
Paul RW Jackson
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