Tellefsen • Kalkbrenner
Tellefsen: Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor; Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor; Kalkbrenner: Grande Marche interrompue par un orage et suivie d’une Polonaise
Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra/ Howard Shelley (piano)
Hyperion CDA68345 74:56 mins
One day, wrote composer Ferdinand Hiller, he was sitting with Chopin, Mendelssohn and Liszt in a Paris café, being youthful geniuses together, when they spotted Friedrich Kalkbrenner approaching. Knowing his predilection for pomposity and propriety, they quickly surrounded him and made so much noise that their target was suitably aghast.
Possibly only a self-important character would have penned a ‘Grand march interrupted by a storm and followed by a Polonaise’, a concept with little logic. The result won’t burn the house down, but pianist Howard Shelley and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra make it light of foot and finger. The march begins as a graceful slow movement; blink and you’ve missed the storm; and the Polonaise trips along merrily without tripping up the soloist’s brilliance.
The bulk of this recording – the 86th volume in Hyperion’s impressive Romantic Piano Concertos series – is devoted to two works by Thomas Tellefsen (182374), who hailed from Trondheim in Norway and achieved international repute. In Paris, he studied with Kalkbrenner while waiting for Chopin to take him on; eventually he had three lessons a week with the latter, and went with him on his last, disastrous tour of Britain.
Chopin may have guided him when he composed his First Concerto. This work is perhaps most notable for containing Grieg’s signature motif years before that composer was born – it’s derived from Norwegian folk music – but it is outshone by the Piano Concerto No. 2, which is genuinely lovely and very Chopinesque, especially in the expansively lyrical slow movement.
Shelley’s playing is deft and delicate, with sparkly fingerwork and unerringly musical phrasing. The Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra accompanies him with what sounds like slender forces, warm and modest in the best sense. Sound quality is creditable.
Jessica Duchen
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING