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Reviewer:
Lindsay Kemp
Clearly not one
to do things by halves, Daniel-Ben Pienaar – whose releases already include the
complete Beethoven sonatas and the Bach ‘48’ – offers here not just one disc of
early keyboard music on the piano but two. That’s a total of 36 pieces, by a
total of 36 composers, some of whom even harpsichordists and organists might be
hard-put to identify. This is not a man dabbling in the ‘non-piano’ repertoire
but one immersing himself in it and selecting with confidence. What makes it
work is not just the dazzling precision and clarity of Pienaar’s finger
technique (though that is certainly a vital factor), but the intelligence that
has gone into his interpretations. Pienaar is in the company of modern-day
pianists who, while respecting early music, see it as raw material for the
pianistic imagination – similar adventurous souls include Alexandre Tharaud,
Francesco Tristano and Joanna MacGregor – but there is no doubt that he also
works from a position of deep knowledge of the music’s original circumstances.
Busoni once said that any composition is a work of transcription, and crucially
Pienaar allows his awareness that much of this music may have started life away
from the keyboard (as a lute solo perhaps, or a viol consort) to inform his
interpretations – listen to the gorgeous way the colours swell and switch like a
wind band in Gabrieli’s Canzon quarta. He achieves all this by not being
afraid to use the piano’s resources of dynamic gradation, differentiation of
line, quickness of response and some very discreet pedalling, coupled with his
own all-encompassing varieties of colour and touch (so neatly chiselled in
Weckmann’s Canzon, so lovingly cushioned in Philips’s Pavan) to inject the music
with elements that would not have been achievable on harpsichord or organ. Thus
he can dare to give Kerll’s Passacaglia more space between the notes than one
would normally expect, or emphasise the firedoff cross-rhythms in Bull’s Ut,
re, mi, fa, sol, la in a way no harpsichord could have managed. He shapes
some impressive climaxes, too, for instance in Cabanilles’s Passacalles.
Pienaar himself describes his
approach as one of ‘deliberate misreading’; but while the wide range of moods
revealed can be surprising – Frescobaldi’s Toccata cromaticha is achingly
inward and meditative; Sweelinck’s Mein junges Leben hat ein End acquires
a lyrical, almost English pastoral feel; Braga’s Batalha leaks a Beethovenian
energy – it would be hard to say that any of the music here is seriously
misrepresented by what Pienaar does with it. Not only that; he also communicates
an individual and convincing vision for each piece, enough for every one of them
to give delight. Brilliant.
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