Hanni Liang: Voices for Solo Piano (Ethel Smyth; Errollyn Wallen; Eleanor Alberga; Sally Beamish; Chen Yi) (Delphian Data)
★★★★★
Ethel Smyth was a middle-class masculine lesbian from an English army household who went to jail for the Suffragette trigger and was seen conducting fellow-inmates at Holloway Jail with a toothbrush. That, in sum, is the impression given by Thomas Beecham and different cautious admirers. Virginia Woolf as soon as stated that being cherished by Ethel was ‘like being caught by an enormous crab’. The composer’s daunting physicality occluded no matter benefit there was in her music, which pale out along with her loss of life in 1944.
Glyndebourne’s current revival of her opera The Wreckers has been restorative and several other German opera homes have taken it up. So what subsequent?
Attempt the second piano sonata in C minor. Composed in 1877 in a flush of ardour for an operetta singer, the sonata inhabits a patch halfway between Schumann and Brahms, however with a powerful sufficient presence to precise a spiky individuality. Smyth was 19 on the time, a pupil in Leipzig. The promise is there for all to listen to. That is fairly some sonata.
A set of variations in D main on ‘An Authentic Theme (of an Exceeding Dismal Nature)’, written a 12 months later, tells us that Smyth took herself no extra significantly than crucial. It’s a 20-minute suite of cocky facility that places the likes of Grieg and Tchaikovsky (whom she knew) firmly of their place. Not dismal in any respect: extra snarky and mocking of the stuffed male shirts across the dinner desk.
The conviction right here is blazed by pianist Hanni Liang, an academy instructor in Munich. Between and across the Smyth works, Liang performs 4 modernities, of which Sally Beamish’s Evening Dances is brilliantly evocative. The opposite items, extra quirky, are by Erollyn Wallen, Chen Yi and Eleanor Alberga. Not a boring phrase amongst them.
The Delphian label, by the way in which, is an Edinburgh indy with a knack for the surprising. You’d by no means hear a recital like this on Warner, Sony or the opposite classical codgers. 5 stars for initiative.
Evaluation written, I’m relistening now for pure pleasure.
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Norman Lebrecht is likely one of the most widely-read commentators on music, tradition and cultural politics. He’s a daily presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Avenue Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and different publications. His weblog, Slipped Disc, is among the many most generally learn cultural websites on-line, breaking unique tales and campaigning in opposition to human abuse and acts of injustice within the cultural industries.
