Search - Donald Tovey, Alexander Mackenzie, Martyn Brabbins :: Mackenzie: Piano Concerto No. 19 / Scottish Concerto

A Mixed Bag

Jeffrey Lee | Asheville area, NC USA | 01/20/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"In Tovey's Piano Concerto, with its traces of measured, semi-heroic cadences, there's more than just a slight hint of Brahms' youthful opus 15 d minor Piano Concerto. The impression becomes more obvious as the first movement proceeds with its orchestral swells and pleasant woodwind expressions. A similar pattern emerges in the poetically reflective second movement, but Tovey is no Brahms clone. He does quite nicely on his own. Some of the strains of the last movement give the impression of a mild Mendelssohnian flavor. What develops is a rather pleasant interplay between piano and orchestra. A lyrical tunefulness continues to the end.



Alexander Mackenzie's Scottish Concerto begins with an impressive horn call. What follows for piano and orchestra sounds like a dramatic movie soundtrack theme. Soon, things begin to sound episodic and more theatrical, and start to border on aimlessness. The second movement continues uneventfully. I find it increasingly difficult to hold my interest here. Some catchy, tuneful bits surface in the last movement, but, for the most part, the impresssion of insipidness returns. Sorry, but not for me. In conclusion, however, I do like the Tovey Concerto and plan to return to it for enjoyment. The grooves on the Mackenzie will more than likely remain relatively new. I have no quibble with the performers in these works. Hyperion offers, as usual, very fine sound reproduction."

SECOND SUBJECTS

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 04/13/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"What Georg Szell termed `the English professorial school' of composers probably mainly signified for him, as it does for me, Bernard Shaw's triumvirate of targets Parry, Stanford and Mackenzie. If you recall, Shaw tells us how we know these were all great composers - each of them vouches for the other two. I see and hear less of Stanford these days although Parry lives on immortally through his Jerusalem, but I never heard much by Mackenzie at any stage of my life, so it is a particular pleasure to have his Scottish Concerto for piano now available on disc for the first time.



However if any of us were required to name a famous English professor of music, I suspect that the first name that would spring to our lips would be that of Donald Francis Tovey. Tovey was a pupil, or at least a disciple, of Parry, and what he is famous for is not his compositions but his commentaries on other composers' compositions. This is not how he would have wished matters to be, but it is only fair to say that his analytical essays and other writings have a unique place in the musical education of the English-speaking world for the brilliance of both their insights and their style. Inevitably, Tovey's approach has dated somewhat. Music for me at least has long since ceased to be any matter of second subjects, unexpected modulations to the submediant, codas and the other Toveyan marvels. On the other hand I was more than curious to hear how he went about conjuring up these wonders in his own works, and now here is his piano concerto, as well as Mackenzie's, making its debut on disc.



Before I say anything else, let me commend this disc earnestly and quite sincerely to all music lovers whose interest is not totally confined to established masterpieces by established masters. The pieces are well worth hearing and owning, enterprises like this deserve support, and this particular venture has been well, if not quite ideally, done. My main reservation concerns the recording, particularly in Tovey's first movement. The balance between soloist and orchestra is natural and well judged - it is no longer common to have the soloist only inches from the microphone as used to be the rule - but the piano is liable to be swamped by the full orchestra in a forte, there is a lack of ring in the treble and the effect of the full orchestra at full power is just slightly sooty. In a recording from 1978, perhaps even from 1988, this might not have bothered me, but I see this production is from 1998. By that date Hyperion could certainly do better, and as a son of Glasgow myself I hope the problem was not the acoustics at ra Caun'lriggs. Matters are certainly rather better in the other two movements, and better they remain throughout Mackenzie's concerto. This is only fair to the fine work of the soloist Steven Osborne, whom I'm sure I have heard in broadcasts and whom I could have sworn (from his photo) I had seen as a striker or an attacking midfielder somewhere in the English Premiership.



I must be candid and say that both these concertos seem second-rate to me, although there are some much more famous efforts in the genre that I would call third-rate at best. Unless the composer is Britten, I have learned to beware of British compositions that base themselves on folk music, and Mackenzie's ethnic offering reinforces this view. The work is skilfully scored, but I had only to recall Bruch's Scottish Fantasia to appreciate the difference between true and ersatz inspiration. The quality of such a work is not inherent in the style or idiom, I am convinced by Bruch, but in this case it is probably inherent in the composer. Tovey's work is very much what you might expect - the creative output of a gifted musician whose real vocation was to teach rather than to compose. It is melodious and pleasant, and thoroughly conservative. I would suggest that you ignore the predictable comparisons with Brahms, unless you are able to believe, as I and Schoenberg are not, that Brahms was some kind of conservative too; and indeed unless mild late-romantic music in general manages to sound like Brahms to you. The liner-note trots out this overworked proposition, and in general it is a very disappointing one considering that some reasonable space was for once available to the author. There is some useful background, but the remarks on the music really seem mainly solemn waffle to me, and some of the detail is slipshod as well - Tovey's concerto dates from 6 years, not 3, after Brahms's death, and Tovey did not graduate with distinction from Oxford but gained a third class on account of spending all his time on his precious music and not on the Latin and Greek that he was supposed to be studying. On the other hand Steven Osborne took the top honours at the great Royal Northern College of Music, I am grateful to him for his pioneering work in bringing these concertos into our homes, and I expect to hear great things from him in the future."