Search - Henry Holden Huss, Ernest Schelling, Martyn Brabbins :: The Romantic Piano Concerto 16 - Huss/Schelling

Huss Concerto Brash and Compelling

Joseph E. Jalbert | Dover, NH USA | 11/01/1998

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This music is not subtle. If your image of musical virtuosity involves Glenn Gould bending over the keyboard to hear the subtle nuances of a Bach prelude, you will not enjoy this. Huss' music is loud and ornate. If it were a car, it would have a half ton of chrome and tailfins. Listening to it, I hear echoes of Lizst, Rachmaninoff and Bruckner, not to mention every other composer of the last half of the nineteenth century. Huss is travelling over well trodden ground here. I'm glad he made the trip. Themes from the piece echo through my mind again and again, and it stand up to repeated listening. The Schelling piece on the same CD is more polished, as it's author clearly had more training. But of the two I prefer the Huss. The Huss concerto is part of a fairly large body of work from the late Romantic Era which is now almost unknown. It was too early to be recorded, even if popular. The first World War and the subsequent rise of modernism served to hide these works, which were scorned as the relics of an unlamented past. They are buried treasure, which with the help of record companies like Hyperion, can still be recovered and cherished."