Amy Beach - Piano Music Vol.2 - The Turn of the Century

Amy Beach 

Piano Works Vol 2; The Turn of the Century

Kristen Johnson

International Record Review April 2009
Amy Beach, the most illustrious female composer to emerge from the USA, was a child prodigy from New Hampshire. Reportedly, at the age of one she was able to memorize 40 melodies and was competently writing waltzes by the age of four. She was largely self-taught and her compositions include a good deal of piano music alongside larger-scale orchestral and choral works. She was an active educationalist who toured extensively in Europe as well as America and was a fervent exponent of Classical and Romantic repertoire as well as her own piano works.

Kirsten Johnson comments in the booklet notes that the Variations on Balkan Themes of 1904 came in response to a collection of folk melodies brought back from missionaries to Bulgaria. Beach’s prodigious capacities allowed her to score not only four of these from memory but to complete the entire work – which lasts close to half an hour – in little more than a week. She successfully encapsulated the melodies from which the variations are constructed within a highly accessible and tonal language that frequently draws sustenance from figurations owing much to Chopin and Liszt. Yet the music amounts to more than mere parody, for Beach is often capable of revealing a fresh and personal voice: poetic, stirring, virtuosic and highly chromatic. The Variations are superbly executed by Johnson, the pianist controlling the climactic flourishes so as to retain a focus on the all-important melodic thread. This is sensitive playing, the seventh variation (‘ Quasi Fantasia’) enlivened by a delightfully crisp attack and the ‘Marcia funerale’ given a dark, brooding resonance. Before the reprise of the main theme there is a ‘Cadenza’, which holds more than a passing allusion to the extravagant pianistic exploits of Tchaikovsky and Liszt.

I enjoyed the five-movement Children’s Album, a setting of dances ranging from the minuet to the polka, which (surprisingly uncommonly for pieces bearing such a description) can work nicely in a child’s hands. The Serenade, a transcription of Richard Strauss’s song Standchen, turns out to be an exceptionally faithful rendering of the original, the climax none the less acquiring a new and expansive treatment. This is a really effective work, made all the more sparkling by Johnson’ s lightness of touch.

Beach’s fascination for folk melodies continues in the ‘Scottish Legend’, Op. 54 No. 1, a charmingly wistful little piece that raises a smile (there again, I’m no more Scottish than Beach). The ‘Gavotte fantastique’, Op. 54 No. 2 has shades of Rachmaninov, while the work she called Eskimos brings together several Inuit melodies. This is a delightful collection, full of naive character and interest, especially ‘The Returning Hunter’ and ‘With Dog-Teams’, beautifully rendered by Johnson. There is much to enjoy in this album, although one is left with the feeling that while much of the material is rather good, it frequently falls somewhat short of ‘great’. Beach’s mastery of the instrument is abundantly clear, however, the more florid writing demonstrating her own extraordinary facility, and the voicing of the more lavishly constructed chords finely judged.

The composer cannot have anticipated a more attentive champion for her piano music than Kirsten Johnson, although in her notes I would have welcomed a little more of her personal insight into the musical mind of the composer.
Mark Tanner