Hilding Rosenberg - The Piano Works Vol. 1

Hilding ROSENBERG (1892-1985) 

The Piano Works Vol.1 

Plastiska Scener (1921) 

Piano Sonata No. 1 (1923) 

11 Sma Föredragststudier (1925) 

Piano Sonata No. 3 (1926) 

Improvisationer (1939)   

Mats Widlund (piano)   

rec Concert Hall, Örebro, Sweden, 14-16 May 1995 

Review:

 

During the 1920s Rosenberg (a man in his immortal twenties) was very productive of piano works. They tumbled out in profusion and then were forgotten. He returned to piano music in the very late 1930s and 1940s but to nowhere near the same extent.

The Plastiska Scener - an eight piece sequence - is deeply and instantly attractive: pastoral lullabies, glittering scales (the Tempo Giusto arpeggios uncannily predictive of the third movement of Bax's Winter Legends), Brahmsian concision slightly curdled, macabre brevity (the allegretto is 19 seconds long), a Presto like a truncated concert study by Frank Bridge and an unresolved andantino.

The First Sonata's somnambulistic doldrums in the first three movements and the insect scuttling of the Allegro comodo contrast with the Prokofiev-Bach confection of the Third Sonata's first movement, the thickened syllables of its Debussian lento, the sunnily smiling Scherzo and the ringing Poulencian brightness of the Allegro energico. The Third Sonata is certainly a more accessible work although its impact is lessened by a brief recording distortion in track 26 (Scherzo) where for a few instants the sound crumbles and drops out completely.

Wind forward to 1939 and the eight Improvisations. These depart from the Schoenbergian antics of the first sonata. If anything they are Debussian (some Prokofiev in these as well) and are played by Widlund with the greatest sensitivity. Listen to his control of dynamics in the Moderato (track 33) and woodpecker brightness of Allegro Vivace (34). The opening and closing Allegro Energico has the awe and grandeur of Mussorgsky's Kiev Gate.

The eleven studies (1925) trace a charming and unsentimental line from Grieg. Sample tracks 22 and 23; the latter might almost trace a line from one of Macdowell's woodland flowers or Peterson-Berger's delectable Frösoblosomster (wonderfully recorded on BIS by Noriko Ogawa).

Special thanks go to the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs for their singular support for this project carried over two solo piano volumes (1001 and 1003) and into the piano concerto disc (1006).

Rob Barnett (Music Web)