Mily Balakirev - Piano Works (Danny Driver)

Information

Composer: Mily Balakirev

1. Piano Sonata in B flat minor: 1. Andantino
2. Piano Sonata in B flat minor: 2. Mazurka: Moderato
3. Piano Sonata in B flat minor: 3. Intermezzo: Larghetto
4. Piano Sonata in B flat minor: 4. Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco
5. Nocturne No. 2 in B minor
6. Mazurka No. 1 in A flat major
7. Mazurka No. 2 in C sharp minor
8. Valse-Caprice No. 2 in D flat major (after Alexander Taneyev)
9. Waltz No. 4 in B flat major
10. The Lark (after Mikhail Glinka)
11. Scherzo No. 1 in B minor
12. Polka in F sharp minor

Danny Driver, piano

Date: 2010

Label: Hyperion

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Review

After acclaimed recordings of Bowen and Bach (CPE), Danny Driver turns his attention to a third B‑list composer. Balakirev’s Piano Sonata is one of those inexplicably neglected works which remain obstinately on the fringe of the repertoire. With the exception of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, it is the only large-scale solo piano work produced by “The Mighty Handful” and possibly the only piano sonata that opens with a strict fugue (which then alternates with a free rhapsody). Its second movement is a Mazurka written some 50 years earlier, its third a lyrical Intermezzo, characterised by David Fanning in his succinct and perceptive booklet as “an apparent exercise in Russian impressionism”, its finale a more overtly virtuoso display employing some of the same keyboard techniques as Islamey.

Driver presents this uniquely structured work in a tonally ravishing and lucid performance of the utmost sensitivity, similar in concept to Earl Wild’s 2003 account. In the outer movements, though, Louis Kentner is a deal more rhythmically flexible than either – a less literal reading, perhaps – in his pioneering 1949 recording and this, despite the elderly sound, remains the benchmark.

Few glimpses of Balakirev’s much-vaunted nationalism surface in the remainder of Driver’s appealing programme with its Chopinesque titles and figurations, Lisztian bravura and, as Fanning notes, something of the “big-boned grandiosity” of Anton Rubinstein. Occasionally I could have wished for a little old-world charm (Yelena Bekman-Shcherbina’s magical Melodiya recording of The Lark has it) but the disc is unquestionably another feather in the cap of a pianist whose every new release is now eagerly anticipated.

-- Jeremy Nicholas

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Mily Balakirev (21 December 1836 – 16 May 1910) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor. He was leader of the Russian nationalist group of composers now known as The Five (or The Mighty Handful), including him, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It has been said that it was Balakirev, even more than Glinka, who set the course for Russian orchestral music and lyrical song during the second half of the 19th century. His most famous works include the brilliant piano fantasy Islamey, Overture on Russian Themes, Symphony No. 1, and the symphonic poem Tamara.

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Danny Driver (born 1977) is a British classical pianist. He was born and grew up in London, studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, before moving to the Royal College of Music. Driver has performed with the BBC Scottish Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Minnesota Orchestra, and Bournemouth Symphony, among many others. His recordings for the Hyperion label include music by Robert Schumann, C. P. E. Bach, George Frideric Handel, Mily Balakirev, as well as neglected British composers such as Benjamin Dale, York Bowen, and Erik Chisholm.

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