Godowsky: Piano Sonata in e; Passacaglia (44 variations, cadenza and
fugue on the opening of Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony)

Marc-Andre Hamelin, piano

Hyperion CDA67300

Summary: Big ideas, big music, big performances

I had to live with this CD for several months before I felt sufficiently
acquainted with this previously unfamiliar music to write this review.
My pleasure in this music grew with each hearing.

The disc contains Leopold Godowsky's two largest pieces for piano.
He is primarily remembered as a piano virtuoso and for his miniatures,
particularly the transformations of Chopin's etudes (53 of them, based
on the 26 Chopin pieces, 22 of them for left hand alone) already brilliantly
recorded by Hamelin.

The Sonata was composed in the decade that also brought us the Dukas
'Grande Sonate' and the Berg Op.  1 Sonata, a period that some feel
was the last flowering of the Romantic piano sonata.  It is huge--five
movements lasting almost 50 minutes.  Two very large movements, the first
and fifth, surround three gentler, dreamy, graceful movements, each
containing luscious Schubertian melodies.  The two end movements, though,
are filled with serious, lush, even hyper-romantic stuff.  The first
movement, in fairly strict but extended sonata form, has six distinct
themes that are combined, altered, recollected (as some of them are
again in the final movement), all clothed in highly chromatic harmonies.
Somehow Godowsky is able to use fistfuls of notes but still keep the
contrapuntal lines going perceptibly.  And certainly Hamelin's ability
to take dense music of this sort and make intelligible MUSIC out of it
is indispensable here.  The last movement, all in slow tempo, starts
with a short introduction followed by a delicious Larghetto--Godowsky
also arranged it for violin and piano, and later for cello and piano--not
a man to let a good idea go to waste), which is then followed by a huge
fugue on the notes B-A-C-H, in turn followed by a touching funeral march.
The piece ends quietly with the Dies irae slowly intoned in the bass
followed by a short repetition of the funeral march.

The Passacaglia is based on a theme from Schubert's 'Unfinished'
Symphony--not the familiar tune that every school child knows, but the
tune in b minor that opens the first movement.  Among pianists the piece
is known as almost impossibly hard; in fact, Horowitz, after studying
the piece for some time reportedly said 'It's hopeless.  You need six
hands to play it!' Abram Chasins, who heard Godowsky play the piece at
a private gathering, wrote:

"This was sheer enchantment, both the work itself and Godowsky's pianism.
It had the cool, colorful clarity of a stained-glass window.  Although
I was greatly moved and impressed by what I heard, Godowsky's effortless
mastery made me unaware of the vastness of his pianistic feat that night."
(quoted in Robert Rimm's "The Composer-Pianists")

And indeed, it is the case that the piece's horrendous difficulties are
in the service of Godowsky's musical ideas, not simply there for show.

Needless to say, Marc-Andre Hamelin's performances of these two pieces
are ne plus ultra.  One hopes, on the one hand, that these recordings
might encourage others to take up these pieces, but fears, on the other,
that his spectacular musicianship will intimidate other pianists.  We
should be glad we have these recordings.

One personal note: I shall be hearing Hamelin in recital later this
season.  The program has not been announced.  I am hoping that he includes
one of these pieces on his program.  But if he doesn't, at least I have
this disc.

Scott Morrison