Antal Doráti (1906-1988)
Piano Concerto (1974)
Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960)
Orchestral Suite from ‘The Invitation’ (1960)
Renaissance Dance Suite (1959)
Oliver Triendl (piano), Staatskapelle Weimar/Domonkos Héja
rec. 2024, Orchesterprobensaal, Weimar, Germany
Hänssler Classic HC24035 [66]
Antal Doráti’s Piano Concerto was composed in 1974 and premiered two years later by its dedicatee, his wife Ilse von Alpenheim, with Doráti conducting the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC. A Turnabout LP commemorates the collaboration. The Concerto is an example of Doráti’s ear for sonority and texture and the opportunities he allows for abrupt conjunctions, cast in a broadly romantic form. Allied to this, there are some delicious melodies and in every way it’s a characterful, approachable work.
Doráti is fond of contrasting dappled piano writing with powerful brass and percussive orchestral figures, alternating between solo reverie and a massed dynamism which generates fruitful tension. The florid romanticism also includes some filmic panels reminiscent of Rózsa or even Waxman. This element of pianistic refinement continues in the central slow movement of a conventionally laid-out concerto where the orchestration is more focused, generating a landscape of quiet, repetitive patterns – a deliberate limitation of colouristic potential, almost, at time, pointillistic. The finale resumes the effusive romantic warmth of the opening movement but infuses some crabby elements, allowing the soloist – here the intrepid, indefatigable, Oliver Triendl, who must learn a new concerto every morning over his cornflakes – to show virtuoso chops. Progressing almost in block-like form, the finale gets more and more agitated and dramatic and ends in a flourish. Why is this approachable, traditionally-conceived work not performed more often?
The coupling is an adroit all-Hungarian, and – again – traditional one. Mátyás Seiber’s Orchestral Suite from his ballet The Invitation’(1960) was his last completed work, as he was killed in a car crash in South Africa later in the year. The suite lasts 23-minutes and highlights its somewhat curdled atmosphere as well as its dances which include a rich pas de deux, a mocking Polka (with neo-classicism of the Stravinskian sort), an exciting, comic Carnival scene, and an uneasy, mysterious seduction scene that turns into Straussian waltz before ending in pounding vehemence. The final three-minute panel ends in stasis – very effective as a listening experience and doubtless visually so, too.
The disc’s pleasures are completed by Seiber’s brief Renaissance Dances of 1959, three charmers lasting no more than seven minutes in total, that stand in the lineage of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances and Rubbra’s Improvisations on Virginal Pieces by Giles Farnaby – among other equally vibrant models.
Triendl is a fearless exponent of the concerto and he is backed to the hilt by the Staatskapelle Weimar under Domonkos Héja who perform the Suite and dances with equally convincing results. The recording in the Orchesterprobensaal, Wiemar has been splendidly balanced and Triendl’s notes are excellent. If you’re looking for a snappy, sensitive and totally tonal, no-nonsense modern(ish) concerto, lend an ear to this disc.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review: Hubert Culot (October 2024)
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