Julius Röntgen - Piano Concertos Nos. 3, 6 & 7 (Oliver Triendl)

Information

Composer: Julius Röntgen

• Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor
• Piano Concerto No. 6 in E minor
• Piano Concerto No. 7 in C major

Oliver Triendl, piano

Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra

Hermann Bäumer, conductor

Date: 2019

Label: CPO

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Review

Gone are the days when Röntgen was merely a name and no note of his music was widely known. CPO is certainly not the only label to devote time and expertise to recording his music, and this has enabled listeners to get to grips with his concertos as much as his music for solo piano.

These three concertos are separated by many years. To be strictly accurate the large-scale Third dates from 1887 and the Sixth and Seventh – which are said to form kind of Siamese twin relationship – were written in 1929-30. The 1887 Concerto owes in genesis in part to the death of a close friend. Its ethos is richly saturated in Dvořák and Brahms. The piano pitches straight in and whilst Brahms is a constant lodestar for Rontgen, his means here are altogether lighter, his orchestration more classically aligned. The indefatigable Oliver Triendl locates the essentially good-natured songfulness at the heart of Röntgen’s conception, enjoying too its more dramatic moments. The second movement is rather folkloric – he had been listening to Dvořák’s chamber music at the time of composition – and there are Bohemian dance intimations. This is followed by a lovely romance – direct, unaffected, and eloquent – and with rolled chords to end and an avuncular finale complete with ‘heroic’ peroration.

If this concerto seems cut from conventional cloth, the later works are rather more challenging. Rontgen himself felt them to be twins, each representing a side of the concerto coin – one a fantasy and the other a more conventional late-Romantic affair. It was his idea for him to premiere them both at a Concertgebouw performance with Mengelberg conducting – they had long had a non-speaking relationship – soon after the ink had dried. They are both compact works, together lasting as long as the Third Concerto. No.6 is cast in one movement with erudite note writer Jurjen Vis adding that it has a 15-minute duration (Treindl and Bäumer take over 17 minutes, if you’re counting with a stopwatch). Its structure does sound rhapsodic – bitty, if you’re unsympathetic – but there is a strong cadenza and trademark lyricism and a delicate end, once past a frisson of bitonality earlier on. The Seventh Concerto is cast in a solid three-movement structure and is much more conventional. Avuncular and extrovert it calls on a solo cello in the central movement (shades of Brahms’s B flat major Concerto, perhaps?) and there’s plenty of folk-like material to enjoy and limpid decorative writing. Similarly, there’s a genial Romanza to conclude.

These astute performances, finely recorded and documented, judge the temper and temperature of the three concertos to perfection. The result is personable, light, deft and charming: no mountain-top assaults or cries de profundis.

— Jonathan Woolf

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Julius Röntgen (9 May 1855 – 13 September 1932) was a German-Dutch composer and teacher. Privately educated, he began composing at age eight and studied under prominent musicians like Ferdinand David, Carl Reinecke and Franz Lachner. A meeting with Brahms in 1874 had a decisive influence on his compositional style. Settling in Amsterdam in 1877, Röntgen co-founded the Amsterdam Conservatory and helped establish the Concertgebouw building. He composed over 650 works in almost every genre, evolving from Romanticism to modern experimentation. His first wife was Swedish composer Amanda Maier.

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Oliver Triendl (born 1970 in Mallersdorf, Bavaria) is a German pianist. Trained by distinguished teachers including Gerhard Oppitz and Oleg Maisenberg, he is a prizewinner of numerous international competitions. Triendl has performed globally as a soloist and chamber musician, appearing with leading orchestras such as the Munich Philharmonic, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and Shanghai Symphony. His unique repertoire includes around 90 piano concertos and hundreds of chamber works, many of which he has premiered or recorded first. His tireless commitment is reflected in more than 100 CD recordings.

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