Karl Goldmark: Works for Piano, Vol. 2

At least outside of central Europe, Karl Goldmark is known for the Rustic Wedding Symphony and not much else. This disc and its companion, however, show that there was more to Goldmark than that single work. Goldmark was not a pianist, and this music doesn't have the natural line on the keyboard that characterizes the piano works of the nineteenth century's great composer-virtuosi. It is, however, strikingly forward-looking in some ways, and it will be of a good deal of interest to listeners intrigued by the ebb and flow of large trends in the piano music of the nineteenth century. The chief influence on the young Goldmark (the music here was written early in his career) was Schumann, and the general mood of inwardly recollected experience greatly resembles that of Schumann's famous programmatic sets. Goldmark, though, adds something new: close study of J.S. Bach's music and even the music of earlier eras than that. The result is sets of short pieces that don't have quite the internal consistency of Schumann's, but also sound quite unlike him or anyone else at times. The Piano Pieces, Op. 29, are an odd quartet -- two Novelettes, plus a prelude and a fugue packed with every trick in the book. The very early Three Pieces for Piano have many overtones of Schumann, especially in the final Kinder auf dem Rasen (Children on the Grass). Sturm und Drang, Op. 5, is diverse enough to be called a grab bag, and there's an incredible lurch between the two Rustic Scenes (tracks 11 and 12), cousins to the music in the Rustic Wedding Symphony, and the jittery, almost expressionistic Traumgestalten (Visions, track 13). The set also contains two early and pleasingly odd examples of what might be called
eo-Renaissance music, the opening Am Kreuzwege (On the Way of the Cross) and Im Turnier (At the Tournament, track 15). Pianist Tihamér Hlavacsek doesn't try to smooth out the music's rough edges, and he's a competent and sympathetic interpreter throughout. Another winner in Hungaroton's ongoing effort to resuscitate the lost repertories of central Europe. Informative booklet notes are in English, French, German, and Hungarian. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide