Joseph Marx - Piano Concertos (David Lively)

Information

Composer: Joseph Marx

• Romantisches Klavierkonzert
• Castelli Romani

David Lively, piano

Bochum Symphony Orchestra

Steven Sloane, conductor

Date: 2005

Label: ASV

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Review

The Romantisches Klavierkonzert is a big play for the soloist, the difficulties of its densely chromatic writing, ‘exuding the aroma of tardigrade romanticism’ (Hinson), not always apparent to the listener. More symphonie concertante than duelling concerto, it can be powerfully effective in the right hands. American David Lively and the Bochum orchestra are faced with the disadvantage of being recorded, apparently, from the back of an empty gymnasium. Steven Sloane’s tempi in the two outer movements are sluggish and his players seem unwilling to put their hearts into this lush score – the last few bars of the work are veritably limp. The competition is Marc-André Hamelin’s world-premiere recording: no one is better than he at unravelling complex keyboard textures and here he is on top form. Powerful, crisply articulate, as well as warmly responsive to the music’s emotional demands, he is more than two minutes faster in the opening Lebhaft and closing Sehr lebhaft movements, to the music’s benefit. (In a live radio broadcast from the 1980s, not released commercially, Jorge Bolet, whose favourite concerto this was, is more magisterial and equally ecstatic in the work’s climactic passages.

ASV’s trump card is the first recording of Marx’s ‘second’ concerto (Walter Gieseking, no less, gave the first performance in 1931). Castelli romani consists of three pieces for piano and orchestra entitled Villa Hadriana, Tusculum (‘an old garden town of ancient Rome’) and Frascati, the latter providing a rare example of a mandolin solo in a piano concerto. The score is less thickly textured (it puts one in mind of Respighi’s Roman trilogy); the players seem more engaged, the so und more focused. The finale, full of southern Italian high spirits, is particularly successful. I do hope, incidentally, that David Lively’s fulsome biography in the booklet was written by his agent and not by the pianist himself.

— Jeremy Nicholas

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Joseph Marx (11 May 1882 – 3 September 1964) was an Austrian composer, teacher and critic. Educated at the University of Graz, he earned a doctorate in 1909 with a study of tonality that introduced the term "atonality". Beginning his compositional career in 1908, he wrote extensively, producing more than 150 lieder, for which he is chiefly remembered, alongside orchestral and chamber works. A longtime faculty member and later rector of the Vienna Music Academy, he influenced numerous students. He was also active as a music critic in Vienna, writing about aesthetics and musical philosophy.

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David Lively (born 27 June 1953, in Ironton, Ohio) is an American-born pianist who later became a French citizen. A pupil of Claudio Arrau, and prize-winner at Marguerite Long–Jacques Thibaud, Queen Elisabeth and Tchaikovsky competitions, Lively has performed with major orchestras worldwide under renowned conductors and built a repertoire of over 80 concertos. Particularly interested in 20th-century American music, he collaborated with composers such as Elliott Carter and Aaron Copland. Alongside performing and recording, he has taught at leading institutions and directs the Saint-Lizier Festival in France.

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