Aristo Sham (piano)
Timeline
rec. 2025, Emil Berliner Studios, Berlin
Decca 4879522 [68]
Aristo Sham, who took the Gold medal and audience prize at the 2025 Van Cliburn competition, brings together a wonderfully curated programme of music that showcases his ideas and thoughts around the passage of time. The timelessness of Bach in its purest form, of time reaching forward across the decades in Busoni’s transcriptions of Bach and Brahms and his reworking of Chopin as well as the reverse in Grieg’s homage to an earlier age in his romantic baroque suite From Holberg’s Time. It is clear from the very first notes that Sham was a worthy winner. The Toccata is played with a supreme but unassuming technique and a fluidity of line that is breathtaking even in the most taxing moments of the piece; the fugue is taken at a spirited tempo, maintained in its second half when the demi semi quavers begin to proliferate. The original meaning of toccata stems from the verb to touch and Sham definitely brings a wide variety of touch to his playing; the rich harpsichord-like arpeggios in the lead up to the fugal section with a real sense of purpose, the lightness of touch after the initial introductory passages or the deft little touches within the legato of the first adagio.
Italian composer pianist Ferruccio Busoni had a fascination with Bach throughout his lifetime resulting in editions of the keyboard works and many transcriptions and original works that paid homage to the master. His transcription of the chaconne for solo violin is probably the most played and is marvellously effective in re-inventing the violin’s unique timbre in terms of the piano, even going as far as to suggest organ sonorities. Sham’s precise control of tone and dynamics make for a powerful reading, thoughtful and careful not to treat it as a showpiece, allowing each section to evolve from the previous one. Displaying Sham’s balancing and blending of voices is Wachet Auf, ruft uns die Stimme, Sleepers awake from ten chorale preludes that Busoni transcribed between 1907 and 1909. It serves as a bridge between the pure Bach and the grandiose realisation of the chaconne. Far less well known than the Bach transcriptions are Busoni’s transcriptions of six chorale preludes by Brahms. These eleven short organ preludes were composed by Brahms in 1896 shortly after the death of his beloved Clara Schumann but were not published until 1902. As Sham writes there is surprisingly little sorrow but more of dignity and reflection, sentiments that shine through the lilting Herzlich tut mich erfreuen or the chromatic es ist ein Ros entsprungen. Brahms composed two different settings of Herzlich tut mich verlangen and it is the very Bach-like second that encapsulates grief the most while the first is rather strident and forthright. Even in the final Welt, ich muss dich lassen hope and a sense of peace are uppermost in the writing.
Busoni recorded Chopin’s A major prélude in 1922 but it was the C minor prélude that provided inspiration for two sets of variations. In 1894 he wrote 18 Variations and Fugue on the celebrated Prelude in C minor and in 1922 returned to it for the Ten Variations on Chopin prelude in C minor recorded here. The original large scale set underwent serious revision – Busoni was a very different composer in 1922 than the 18 year old who wrote the first set after all – and this a much more concise set that, after a broad and sombre variation, quickly moves away from Chopin into phantasmagoric territory with a kaleidoscopic range of variations. Chopin peeps through every now again but always in shadowy garb; humour, passion and exuberance are reserved for Busoni’s own imaginative writing and what fearsome writing it is though Sham is every bit its equal. He enjoys the ever changing moods and responds with aplomb and character aplenty.
He closes with Grieg’s suite in olden style commonly known as the Holberg Suite. Grieg wrote this for piano in 1884 to celebrate the 200 year anniversary of the Danish-Norwegian playwright Ludvig Holberg. Grieg completed the more familiar string version a year later. He adopts old dance styles for the five movements, a prelude, sarabande, gavotte and musette, air and rigaudon, looking back to the music of the time even if the style of the work remains adamantly romantic. It presents a very different approach and after the sacred, devotional, spiritual and somewhat rarified atmosphere of Bach and Brahms or the puckish imagination of the Chopin variations Grieg’s has a more wordly feel. Sham buoyant playing sparkles throughout and he brings tenderness to the sarabande with its unmistakeable Grieg harmonies and the air, closest in mood to what has gone before. As we might expect after the Bach toccata his rigaudon is brisk but with exemplary clarity and lightness of touch.
This is a highly impressive debut disc and with the breadth of command he shows in all this music I am curious to hear what he does next.
Rob Challinor
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Contents
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Toccata in C minor BWV.991 (c.1713)
Johann Sebastian Bach arr. Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme BWV.645
Chaconne from Violin Partita No.2 in D minor BWV.1004
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) arr. Ferruccio Busoni
6 Chorale Préludes, excerpts from Op.122 (1902)
Ferruccio Busoni
Ten Variations on Chopin prelude in C minor B.V.213a (1922)
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Holberg Suite Op.40 (1884)
