Don’t the shoot the pianist. Just give them better advice

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week

Women and the Piano (Hyperion); Alexandre Tharaud: Mémoire (Erato)

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Every now and then a record label allows a pianist to present an album of favourite pieces. The result is usually a disastrous indulgence. The two present releases take us halfway to whimsy, for where there is no turning back.

Susan Tomes, a media-friendly English pianist, set out to show what women have written for her instrument. Her first three composers – late 18th/early 19 centuries – show nothing that might be mistaken for originality. Their ballroom tinklings swiftly pall. Mozart’s wet-nurse could have written better.

By track 9, Tomes reaches Fanny Mendelssohn and we’re in another ballgame altogether. More assertive than her brother and no less gifted, Fanny has far more to say than she can cram into this four-minute miniature. Clara Schumann, next in line, sounds more like the young Brahms than her confused husband. Her G minor Romance is darkly compelling, tinged with tragedy.

Liszt’s lover Sophie Menter is a bit swoony. The Venezuelan Teresa Carreno gets away with an outrageous steal of Happy Birthday – how did she not get sued by its litigious originators? – and the American Amy Beach shows a surprising gift for impressionism. My main regret is that the youngest of these women died in 1944. Has nothing developed since?

The Frenchman Alexandre Tharaud attempts a comparable survey of his nation’s pianism, starting with Couperin, circa 1700, and running through impressionists and post-impressionist all the way down to Jean-Michel Damase, who died as recently as 2013. By the time he reaches Lili Boulanger – why wasn’t she in Tomes’ tome, by the way? -a sameness has set in. When the supremely decadent Reynaldo Hahn sounds much like the well-travelled Darius Milhaud, it fells like something got lost in choice and interpretation. The ear cries out for a burst of Boulez or Barbara or Michel Legrand.

NL

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