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Piano Music of Jan Levoslav Bella · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Distler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  I want to talk about a fascinating Slovakian composer, Jan Levoslav Bela, who lived from
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  1843 until 1936, quite a long life.
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  In addition to being a composer, he also was a violinist, a pianist, an organist, and a
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  conductor.
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  He was ordained as a priest in 1866, and not surprisingly perhaps, he composed lots of
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  sacred music and works for solo voice and choir.
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  When he left the priesthood in 1881, he became the kapelmeister in the city of Sibiu, which
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  is now in Romania.
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  The city also was known as Hermannstadt, probably on account of its large German population.
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  After retiring in 1921, he moved to Vienna, where he died, and Vienna also was the place
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  where he had pursued his earlier studies.
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  Bela had personal links to many notable composers of his day, including Brahms and Liszt and
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  Dochnani and Richard Strauss.
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  Back in 1994, the Marco Polo label issued a disc of Bela's piano works with the pianist
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  Daniele Roma.
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  And the music is very well crafted and serious in purpose, and I'd say superficially that
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  it represents a fusion of, let's say, Franz Liszt's unbridled virtuosity and Johannes
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  Brahms' structural rigor.
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  And that's especially true about Bela's four-movement sonata in B-flat minor from 1882, a work that
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  he revised in 1889.
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  It's this first 1882 version that we hear on this Marco Polo disc, and a good place
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  to demonstrate what I mean is in the third movement scherzo, where there's a lot of harmonic
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  ambiguity, but there are also the kinds of rhythmic dislocations that Brahms was so fond
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  of and busy counterpoint as well.
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  But the climaxes are powerfully Lisztian in terms of breadth and the rhetoric of the writing.
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  In fact, all four movements of this sonata have a lot to offer, and so do the other works
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  on this disc, which contains two movements from an unfinished piano sonata, two small
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  variation sets, a sonatina that's really a sonata in disguise, and four delightful little
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  character pieces.
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  The Slovakian pianist Daniela Russo first came to international attention as a participant
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  in the 1969 Leeds competition.
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  I have to admit that I don't know very much about her apart from the fact that she did
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  record a very good cycle of the Mendelssohn songs without words for the Amadis label,
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  which was a super, super budget label among the Noxus family of labels.
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  But she brings to Jan Levoslav Bella's works a strong technical command and a fine sense
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  of style.
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  I actually found my copy of this disc in a charity shop for something like 99 cents many,
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  many years ago, and I kept it in my collection and pulled it down again, and I thought I
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  would talk about it.
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  You can download it or stream it as well.
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  But I have to tell you that when I was preparing this podcast, I started looking for other
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  recordings of this music, and I discovered a more recent release on the Pavlik label
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  featuring pianist Peter Pazicki in all of Bella's piano works.
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  And his disc includes a few selections not on the Marco Polo release, as well as an excellent
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  performance of the four movement piano sonata in its later revised version that I was talking
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  about.
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  I think the later version is tighter overall, and probably it's more pianistically manageable.
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  And Peter Pazicki's recording benefits from superior sonics, and I think he's somewhat
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  more of a supple interpreter.
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  So originally I was going to recommend Daniele Russo on Marco Polo, and I still do, but also
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  try to find the Peter Pazicki release on the Pavlik label.
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  Both are really excellent.
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  But what's really important is that you get to know the piano music of Jan Lewoslav Bella,
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  especially the piano sonata in either the 1882 or 1889 versions.
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  This is Jed Dissler, and thank you so much for tuning into the Piano Maven, and for all
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  of your support.
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  Please tell your fellow piano lovers about this podcast.