Catalogue Connection: 25113

During the 19th century, there was a remarkable flowering of operatic composition. It met a huge popular demand and every European city of significance built an opera house to cater for the genre’s enthusiasts. But for opera lovers living in small towns, say, or in villages, there was almost no opportunity to experience opera, apart from, perhaps, a visit from this or that small touring company. To counter this shortage – or complete absence – of opera beyond the big cities, pianists responded to this need by incorporating into their recitals arrangements of operatic excerpts, most frequently a favourite aria, say, or this or that overture or dance episode. This was a successful development and some pianists were able to maintain careers based largely on these operatic offerings. And until radio and recordings made opera more widely available, operatic extravaganzas at the keyboard kept many pianists very busy on the concert circuit.

Nowadays, operatic excerpts in piano recitals are rare – and Andrew Wright is one of the few musicians to maintain the tradition. This fascinating CD includes not only 19th- century operatic extracts but some composed by Wright himself. They make intriguing listening.

Operatic extracts for piano solo or piano duet were also very popular in the drawing rooms of wealthy homes in European cities. This was especially so for young ladies for whom some accomplishment at the piano was considered desirable in the marriage stakes.

Numbers of significant composers made arrangements of grand opera for piano solo, the most famous being Liszt. His versions of extracts from Wagner’s operas are still occasionally encountered in piano recital programs. Israeli conductor Asher Fisch recently brought out a memorable CD of piano arrangements of Wagnerian opera extracts. During much of the 19th century and up until the 1920s, virtuosic arrangements of this type were an ineradicable feature of just about every pianist on the international concert circuit. But in broad terms, the age of virtuoso arrangements for piano of operatic extracts is largely past – but there’s a good deal to be said in positive terms of Andrew Wright’s CD “The Operatic Pianist”.

In the grand tradition of pianists playing their own arrangements of excerpts from this or that opera, we can listen to Wright’s own keyboard versions of extracts from, inter alia, Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable in which he seems positively to revel in the many challenges posed by music that was never intended to be played on the piano. I think Meyerbeer would have been chuffed no end by Wright’s keyboard arrangement. It’s a winner.

Listen to the version of Casta Diva from Bellini’s Norma, here in an arrangement by Sigismund Thalberg (no mean pianist himself). It is most beautifully played, its inherent simplicity of line presented with most appealing tone quality. Wright is no less persuasive in an arrangement of one of Wagner’s most loved arias: The Evening Star from Tannhauser. And the aching beauty of Liszt’s version for piano of Isolde’s Liebestod is splendidly revealed.

The focus of this challengingly virtuosic disc is Andrew Wright, a lover and exponent of the Romantic era, and one whose appreciation of nineteenth-century piano transcription saturates the programme. There’s something of the Klaviertiger about him, something too of an element of the pianistic throwback. Given his espoused repertoire and his contribution to it, one feels as if he is situating himself in the continuum of that tradition; thus hyphenated Wright takes its place alongside hyphenated Liszt and Thalberg, and that represents something of a Himalayan challenge to Wright’s credentials. It’s a measure of his aplomb that his own transcriptions fail to wilt even in the glare of such declamatory historic precedent.

He finds the drama and pathos in Martucci’s concert paraphrase on Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, complete with a fine admixture of filigree and Lisztian panache. This is, apparently, its first commercial recording. Thalberg’s transcriptions of the two Bellini pieces are interesting, revealing different sides to his musical personality. A te, o cara from I Puritani is the first in Thalberg’s instructive set of vocal melodies rearranged for piano, called L’art du chant appliqué au piano , Op.70 The Casta diva paraphrase is a lovely, warmly hued work and receives a commensurately fine performance. It too derives from the Op.70 set but is more intricately deployed with the melody lines skittering from hand to hand. The La Traviata concert fantasy is a later work, cross-pollinated by Lisztian influence but containing gravity and refinement as well as virtuosic power.

Wright plays the Wagner-Liszt O, du mein holder Abendstern from Tannhäuser with dynamism, respecting Liszt’s unusually non-interventionist approach but for all the bravura there is also an awareness of the sheer musical refinement involved, qualities amplified in the Liebestod . Andrew Wright’s own fantasies sit co-operatively in the genre. The Fantasy on Bellini’s La Sonnambula bows to both Liszt and Thalberg as inspirations and fuses them into a conception that relishes the powerhouse drama as well as the refined moments of elegance enshrined in it. The bass detonations are certainly vivid. Stand by! Thalbergiana is a tribute to the great man which was partly inspired by Earl Wild’s recording of Thalberg’s Don Pasquale fantasy. And lastly there is the verve and panache to be relished in Wright’s unbridled Concert Fantasy on Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable .

These spirited readings receive good recorded sound and Wright’s own notes cap his recital with insightful commentary.

An attractive recent release from Divine Art Recordings entitled The Operatic Pianist features pianist Andrew Wright. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, and had his first piano lessons at the age of seven. Further study followed with William Stevenson, Kenneth van Barthold and Nicholas Pope.

He has a particular interest in semi-forgotten composers of the Romantic era and has made a detailed study of 19th century piano transcriptions, an interest that is shown by this new disc. The arrangements and transcriptions included here are by Martucci, Thalberg, Liszt and Andrew Wright himself.

The Italian composer conductor, Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909), has received a higher profile in recent years following many recordings of his works. The fact that he did not write operas tended to add to his relative neglect over the years. Here, however, we have his take on Italy’s greatest operatic composer, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). His Concert Fantasy on Verdi’s La Forza del destino receives its first commercial recording here. Full of decorations and rippling scales that weave around Verdi’s themes, it is finely played by Andrew Wright, who reveals it to be a very attractive piece in its own right, full of unexpected variations.

Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871) is a name that many will know but few will have heard, except perhaps his Piano Concerto in F minor, op.5. Here we have his transcription of Vincenzo Bellini’s (1801-1835) A te, o cara from I Puritani which receives a lovely, gently flowing performance, subtly rising and falling throughout its duration with some fine decoration.

Wright then gives us his own arrangement of Bellini in his Fantasy on Bellini’s La Sonnambula, a piece that has a flamboyant, Lisztian opening before moving to a calmer, flowing presentation of the theme. Again there are fine decorations in this attractive fantasy. Part way through there is a rollicking theme that is given a terrific performance with some terrific right hand scales and decorations. Quite a formidable piece, formidable playing.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886), perhaps the finest arranger of other composer’s works is represented by two pieces, firstly his transcription of Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) Recitative and Romance: O, du mein holder Abendstern from Tannhauser. It opens full of mystery before the main theme appears in this remarkably restrained arrangement. Where the music does open out, Wright displays great sensitivity in this lovely performance.

Perhaps the most well-known of Liszt’s Wagner arrangements is his transcription of Isolde’s Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. This is not an easy work to pull off, with Liszt’s difficult approximations of orchestral sounds. Wright deftly takes the music from its quiet, tentative opening through the slowly increasing drama and passion to its calm conclusion. Beautifully done.

For his own tribute to Thalberg, Thalbergiana, Andrew Wright takes the closing theme from Thalberg’s Don Pasquale Fantasy. It moves from a gently rocking theme, through some pretty virtuosic passages with Wright not sparing himself in this terrific piece.

Wright brings more Thalberg with his Concert Fantasy on Verdi’s La Traviata where he brilliantly follows all the little details of the various themes. Thalberg dovetails Verdi’s themes together so well, some of which are subjected to attractive right hand decorations. Again there is writing of some virtuosity to which Wright responds magnificently – particularly towards the end.

Calm is restored with another Thalberg transcription, this time of Bellini’s Casta diva from Norma where Bellini’s famous melody is simply, yet beautifully presented. Wright shapes the melody and all its subtle harmonies so well.

This fine recital concludes with Wright’s own Concert Fantasy on Giacomo Meyerbeer’s (1791-1864) Robert le Diable. There is a spectacular opening before continuing with a lively, robust manner in this piece which contains many attractive themes nicely juxtaposed. There are more extremely taxing passages for the pianist, which Wright throws off with panache and abandon.

This is a disc to sit back and enjoy whilst marvelling at the many moments of virtuosity. It is nicely recorded at Reid Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland and has excellent booklet notes by Andrew Wright.

It is claimed that the Martucci is receiving its first commercial recording here, and I assume that the three contributions – very much in a Lisztian/Thalbergian style, by the way – by Wright himself also are new to CD. Even so, this is a disc that seems warmly familiar the first time one hears it: The operatic melodies are part of the cultural vocabulary, as is the ornate, virtuosic garb in which they are presented. There’s no point in recording a program like this one without panache, and this Scottish pianist sells the repertory in question to listeners without cheapening it. He’s a very capable pianist too, although some of the playing on this disc hardly can be called effortless. The peroration of his La sonnambula fantasy, for example, suggests a heroine not in slippers but in sensible shoes as she gingerly picks her way down the staircase leading from the old village mill. On the other hand, the transcription of the “Evening Star” aria from Tannhäuser really sings, and this is doubly difficult because Wright does not seem particularly enamored of the sustaining pedal. In other words, throughout this recital he doesn’t cheat nearly as much as he might!

Wright is a pianist-scholar, and he penned the booklet notes that accompany this release. He writes that his “introduction to this corner of the repertory came through Earl Wild’s 1964 recording of Thalberg’s Don Pasquale Fantasy – a delightful performance which elevated lightweight music through charm and panache.” Wright doesn’t have Wild’s agility, nor his wit, but these sincere, well-prepared performances have much in their favor, and collectors who enjoy this sort of thing should find Wright’s contributions to this genre, both as a pianist and as a performer, enjoyable, as long as their expectations are not unreasonably high.

Martucci’s splendid Fantasy on Verdi’s la Forza del Destino, previously unrecorded on disc, is the first in this sequence of operatic piano transcriptions that includes three plausible excursions into the 19 th century genre by Wright himself. His goal has been to bring together those virtuoso ‘duellists’ Liszt and Sigismund Thalberg, with a special brief for the latter in his bicentenary year (2012). Thalberg’s Concert Fantasy on La Traviata makes a gripping centerpiece – not least because of an immensely sustained high trill – alongside Liszt’s glorious version of Isolde’s Liebestod. And his rendering of Bellini’s aria Casta diva sounds like a Chopin nocturne, fascinatingly reversing the direction of influence.

Impressive playing as Andrew Wright walks in the footsteps of the 19th century pianist-composer giants, including some no-holds-barred-creation of his own. ****