Interior voices and details are sensitively highlighted. Like Bonnard’s paintings, Olga’s Debussy is vivid and richly-hued, the finer details of the music revealed through sonic clarity combined with a suppleness of pulse and tempo which never feels contrived or forced. Olga Stezhko – Et la lune descend: Claude DebussyĪppropriately, I listened to this generous new release from Olga Stezhko while reading a review of the new Pierre Bonnard exhibition which has recently opened at London’s Tate Modern.Ĭomprising of five suites, the album ‘Et la lune descend’ marks the centenary of Debussy’s death and charts the development of his writing for piano solo from the very first ‘Suite bergamasque’ to the much lesser known last suite ‘Six epigraphes antiques’. Meanwhile, McCawley’s Wanderer is a muscular majestic canter, positive in message but also replete in subtle harmonic shadings and an eloquent sensitivity to Schubert’s shifting emotional landscape. Schubert’s songs, refracted through Liszt’s genius into wonderfully absorbing pieces for solo piano, are here given warmth, virtuosity and heroism in equal measure – for example in the gradual climatic grandeur of Auf dem Wasser zu singen, beautifully paced by McCawley. This is most clearly demonstrated in the third of the triptych, an energetic scherzo with a hymn-like middle section, and throughout the three works, McCawley highlights their songful qualities and dramatic contrasts. McCawley neatly captures Schubert’s mercurial nature but never dwells too long in the melancholic, reminding us that though these pieces were written the year Schubert died, their composer was still very much alive. They share the same structure as the popular D899 and D935 sets and are works of startling variety, colour and mood. The Klavierstucke (literally, “piano pieces”) were written in 1828 and are impromptus in all but name.
This enjoyable account presents Schubert’s often overlooked Drei Klavierstucke D946 alongside song transcriptions by Liszt and a rollicking Wanderer fantasy. Leon McCawley – Schubert piano music (SOMM)
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