Search - Macdowell, James Tocco :: Piano Works 4

Trite and formulaic MacDowell, Griffes's impressionism more

Discophage | France | 11/20/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is volume 4 of James Tocco's 4-volume series of piano music by Griffes and MacDowell, published by Gasparo in the early years of the CD era, back in 1984. See my review of volume 1 (MacDowell & Griffes, Vol. 1) for a general presentation of the two composers and the reasons why it was a nice and appropriate idea to pair them together. MacDowell's four Sonatas were composed in close succession, between 1893 and 1901, although the dates of the first, which we get here, are not so clear: the liner notes claim that composition was beging shortly after the death of MacDowell's composition teacher, Joachim Raff, in 1882, and completed a year later. But the Sonata was published and first performed in 1892.



Anyway, subtitled "Tragica", it is a Big and Grandiose Romantic Statement, and while I rather enjoyed the Rachmaninoff similitudes of the 4th Sonata (volume 1), and the Liszt-Chopin influences in the 2nd (MacDowell & Griffes, Vol. 3), I find this one (and the same is true with his 3rd, the "Norse", on MacDowell & Griffes, Vol. 2) full of the trite and hollow Romantic gestures of finishing 19th Century. The best movement is the second, a short and lively scherzo with a theme which brings to mind Gershwin's "American in Paris". I have neither score nor comparative versions to assess the value of Tocco's interpretation, but in other instalments from this cycle, where I did have scores and/or comparative versions, I've usually found him outstandingly fiery and passionate, so I assume it is the same here.



Griffes is most popular for his evocative tone-poems "The White Peacock" and"The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Khan", but both actually originated as piano pieces (the former part of the Roman Sketches), which Griffes then orchestrated, and we are told that this is the first recording of the original piano version "The Pleasure-Dome". Judging by ear, it is somewhat shorter than the orchestral version apparently, which seems to have an expanded middle section. Of course one looses the lush orchestral colors of the orchestral version, which put the piece in the family of Rimsky's Sheerazade. What we get is a nice if somewhat inconsequential piece of musical exoticism that does seem to cry for an orchestral garnment.



The "Three Tone Pictures" were published as a cycle but composed separately, between 1910 and 1912.Though not as personal as Griffes' masterful piano sonata, they belong, along with the Roman Sketches, to his best impressionist inspirations, strongly indebted to Debussy and Scriabin (with whiffs of Ravel) but not unworthy of these models. In "The Lake at Evening" I find Denver Oldham's more deliberate and clock-steady ostinato more effective than Tocco's more animated tempo (Griffes: Collected Works for Piano), but otherwise Tocco is always more atmospheric than the perfunctorily objective Oldham, and more attentive to the left-hand details.



"Legend" is a Walz in bitter-sweet harmonies, sometimes reminiscent of Debussy's Prelude à l'Après-midi d'un Faune. Tocco conveys its light-footed and exquisitely subtle charm.



The major drawback of this release, as with the others in the series, is its undefensibly short total time: 45'. It would have all easily fitted on 3 CDs.

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