An artistic highpoint
John Mccabe’s ‘lost’ Australian recordings showcase the pianist at the peak of his talents
Mountains Works by Banks, Childs, Hiscocks, Koehne, Maslanka, Rochberg and Sculthorpe
John Mccabe (piano)
Metier msv 28585 62:40 mins
In 1985 the composer and pianist
John Mccabe made a recording of contemporary Australian and American piano works. An initial edit was made, but the project foundered and the master tapes were lost. Following an enquiry from Wendy Hiscocks after Mccabe’s death, his widow found a tape of the edit, fortunately in good condition, and this superb project can now be heard. Mccabe’s choice and placing of works is typically adroit, moving from the mesmerisingly craggy textures of Sculthorpe’s Mountains via Hiscocks’s crystalline Toccata to David Maslanka’s unashamedly heartfelt Piano Song. The disc also stands as testament to Mccabe’s wonderful pianistic artistry, his touch and sustained stillness being utterly sublime in the Largo doloroso of George Rochberg’s jazzy Carnival Music. In Don Banks’s Pezzo Dramatico Mccabe finds poetry amidst the intensity of the outer sections, he sprays magical colours effortlessly in Graeme Koehne’s Twilight Rain and luminosity abounds in Barney Childs’s Heaven to clear when day did close. In short, a marvellous, utterly compelling rediscovery. HHHHH