Stravinsky

Petrushka; Etudes, Op. 7; Piano Sonata in F sharp minor; Piano Sonata (1924); Serenade in A; Piano-rag Music; Tango; Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments; Movements; Capriccio Peter Donohoe (piano); Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra/

David Atherton

Somm SOMMCD 266-2

64:04 mins (2 discs)

Peter Donohoe’s latest project devoted to a single major 20th-century figure follows his Prokofiev series (also for Somm) and two Shostakovich albums

(for Signum). Here the focus is on Stravinsky as piano composer in both solo and concertante forms. (Donohoe’s recordings of the concertante works date, in fact, from two decades earlier than those of the solo works, recorded within the past couple of years at Southampton’s Turner Sims Concert Hall, but no great differences in sound quality became apparent to me.) Though not every such work of Stravinsky’s is programmed here, what does prove superbly comprehensive is the pianist’s command over every aspect of this particular Stravinskyan compositional sector.

It’s a curiously contradictory one: the piano was both Stravinsky’s own performance vehicle and the ‘typewriter’ of his thought processes, yet the total of pianosolo works is relatively small. And maybe the pianistic ‘personality’ trademarked in Stravinsky’s prime was an artistically limited one, concentrating on percussive potential at the expensive of the instrument’s wider possibilities.

It’s true that the early F sharp minor Sonata, composed in 1904, borrows style and substance from Schumann, even Brahms, in ways Stravinsky later wholly discarded, and indeed disdained. Donohoe here, and indeed throughout this programme, combines virtuoso technique of the highest order with a connoisseur’s ability to draw out previously unsuspected colouristic subtleties, even moments of beguiling lyricism and wit, without ever betraying Stravinsky’s larger musical purpose.

With Donohoe’s qualities, the two-cd programme adds up to a continuous revelation. From those early works through the Petrushka movements (a Donohoe speciality here amplified with his own ballet-score additions) to the late ‘mobile sculpture’ Movements (1959) – brilliantly accompanied, like the neo-classical Concerto (1923-24) and Capriccio (1926

29), by David Atherton and his excellent Hong Kong orchestra – the sense of Donohoe entirely and fruitfully at one with Stravinsky draws unfamiliar warmth as well as invigoration from the entire collection. Max Loppert

PERFORMANCE ★★★★★

RECORDING ★★★★