Extreme demands and extraordinary art
Malcolm Hayes applauds pianist Mark Viner’s superb technical and aesthetic mastery of Alkan
12 Etudes dans tous les tons majeurs, Op. 35 Mark Viner (piano) Piano Classics PCL 10127 68:27 mins
Charles-valentin Alkan’s set of Twelve Studies in the Major Keys, first published in 1847, is not quite as appallingly demanding, in technical terms, as his even longer and more elaborate later set of Etudes in the Minor Keys. But those demands are extreme enough all the same, and Mark Viner responds to them in line with the Lisztian idea of keyboard ‘trancendentalism’ – the sense that any physical difficulties have been absorbed and then left behind, so that both the player’s and the listener’s awareness can be entirely on the music.
Technically Viner is amazingly accurate, yet nothing sounds glib; he never makes a single ugly sound and his pedalling is so surely judged that, even in a top-speed keyboard cascade like the close of the Allegro barbaro (No. 5 of the set), each and every note can be heard.
Enhanced by unexaggerated and beautiful recorded sound, the playing makes a wonderful artistic case for an ultra-idiosyncratic idiom which, as Viner rightly insists in his booklet note, is very different from those of Alkan’s stellar contemporaries, Chopin and Liszt.
In ‘Chant d’amour – Chant de mort’ (the tenth etude), not even Viner’s musicianship can quite loosen up the composer’s compulsive insistence on pedestrian, repetitive four-bar phrase-lengths. Yet everywhere else, one nearintractable technical challenge after another emerges as the vehicle for a haunting work of art – the broken-octave figuration of Allegramente (the sixth etude), or the nonchalant-sounding lyrical whimsy of Lento appassionato (the eighth) with its octopus-like finger-stretching required in each hand.
In short, Viner’s recording is a remarkable release in every respect.
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
Mark Viner makes a wonderful case for an idiosyncratic idiom