Search - Arensky, Neiman :: Piano Music: Pieces / Etudes / Esquisses

Pretty Music, Fantastic Pianist

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 08/02/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The music of Anton Arensky (1861-1906) remains pretty much below the radar. His Piano Trio in D Minor is heard fairly often, and a little less so his orchestral Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky. A pupil of Rimsky-Korsakoff, acolyte of Tchaikovsky, and teacher of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, he was, in his day, a leading light of Russian music. But he led a dissolute life and died in his forties of tuberculosis. He was a virtuoso pianist and wrote voluminously for the instrument. On this CD we hear some of this music and listening to it one recognizes that for all his impeccable craft and his Schubertian ability to write melodies, there is a somewhat gray quality to what he writes and often a sense of prettiness rather than meaning. Still, there is some pretty good stuff on this CD. (I was amused to hear some harmonic side-slipping that reminded me at times of Prokofiev.) Amazon has provided audio clips for all the pieces recorded here and I'd suggest you listen to a bit of the Mazurka or the Elégie from '6 Pieces' or the double-dotted melody of the opening Prélude. Or to the Allegro vivace or the Allegro scherzando from '6 Esquisses' (which, by the way is mistranslated on the Naxos case as '6 Exercises' rather than '6 Sketches'). The two sets of Etudes are skillfully written, and they are certainly virtuosic, but there is a sameness to the constant arepeggiations.



As for the performances, I can't praise them highly enough. Adam Neiman is a young American pianist, born in 1978, of whom I'd never heard but he is really something. Not only does he have terrific technique that doesn't call attention to itself, he is also musical down to his fingertips. In fact, his playing reminds me of that of Marc-André Hamelin, very high praise indeed. He is playing a marvelous sounding Fazioli piano whose regulation is a miracle to behold. (I also note that the recording was made in my home state at 'the Barn on the Miller Estate, Manchester, Vermont'.) The recorded sound is lifelike.



I had the great pleasure, since I'd never heard this music before nor seen the scores, of downloading all of them from the International Music Score Library Project at no cost. The index for the Arensky scores can be found at http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Arensky,_Anton_Stepanovich



Highly recommended for the performances, somewhat less so for the music itself which though pleasant is not exactly deathless. But I can assert that one could spend 63:37 a heckuva lot less rewardingly.



Scott Morrison"