THE STATESMAN, CALCUTTA:
Music from a pianist who feels every note. Peter Seivewright does not pore over music notations but over every key stroke he makes. The double-CD is one of the finest to appear in recent times. The booklet accompanying the CD also deserves mention. The life of Louis Glass has been captured beautifully in a few words. The best piece on the album is Fantasistykker. Piano music is good company on a quiet evening.
(unnamed reviewer, 1 Nov. 2006)
FANFARE (1):
The music of Danish composer Louis Glass (1864-1936) has slowly been gaining currency over the years. So much so that there are currently no fewer than three versions of his Fifth Symphony (two on Danacord), and two of the Sixth (one Danacord, one Marco Polo). Good to see the enterprising label Divine Art honoring Glass's piano music.
Seivewright brings grandeur to the opening of the First Sonata, op. 25 (published 1898). Coming in at more than 40 minutes, this is an expansive work with ties to late Beethoven. Seivewright points out the wide spacing of the opening as evidence for this; he also presciently discusses the cyclical nature of the piece's musical processes and its links, therefore, to Franck, a composer much admired by Glass. The first movement (13 minutes) unfolds unhurriedly. What is most striking is the sheer compositional confidence, a sort of background calm that indeed links to the Beethoven of the late sonatas. Seivewright discusses the use of the chromatic fourth in the second movement in some depth (a chromatically filled-in descending fourth which then returns to its starting note). The Molto Adagio is the emotional core of the piece, imbued with late-Beethovenian stillness but with some individual and truly magical sonorities (the high right-hand decorations over a subterranean bass around four minutes in furnishes a fine example). More, there is a timelessness evoked here that is most impressive. The recitative-like explorations of the closing pages also serve to evoke a world beyond the mundane. Seivewright has the concentration to bring these off mes-merically. The disjointed, discombobulatory opening to the finale ushers in music of marked disquiet. No mere curtain-closer this, the finale is complex and seems to breathe organicism. The final pages are almost Brucknerian in their majesty (especially as rendered here by Seivewright, and as captured by his excellent engineers).
There is another version of this sonata, on Dacapo, reviewed (none too enthusiastically in terms of the music itself) by David Johnson in Fanfare 19:3. Seivewright proves conclusively that the score does not just "mosey along" (as that review claimed), but that this is music fully deserving of attention.
One has to agree with Seivewright who, in his notes, asserts that "for all its charms" the Second Sonata "cannot be considered quite the equal" of op. 25. There is still a marked Beethovenian element (especially the serenity and the registral extremes of the closing pages of the first movement), but the compositional confidence noted above is not quite as marked. Seivewright is exceptional in the Adagio for the way he sets up and then sustains the utmost concentration; there is a sense of utterly natural unfolding here. The charm of the Scherzo is fully realized here in Seivewright's eminently jaunty reading. Seivewright revels, also, in the finale's unpredictability.
The op. 35 Fantasy was Glass's most popular work in his lifetime. Easy to hear why. The complexities of the sonatas are largely absent. This is music born of the salon and exhibits a decidedly improvisatory sheen. Seivewright seems to delight in the moments of off-the-cuff imitation (counterpoint is too strong a word). Heard immediately after the closely wrought op. 25 Sonata, this piece might sound overlong; perhaps take it in isolation to savor its merits. Seivewright is particularly striking in the more intimate moments (the interiorizing of emotions around the 11-minute mark and their subsequent blossomings, for example). Again, Seivewright is also able to capture the granitic grandeur of the close, relishing, all the while. Glass's ingenious harmonic twists.
Seivewright likens the Bagatelles to Japanese paintings in which "just a few pencil strokes are used to conjure up whole worlds of emotion." The first is a mere 26 seconds, the longest 2:50. Any one (or a selection) of these would be ideal recital encore fodder. Seivewright is correct to identify echoes of Russian Orthodox music in No. 5, which emerges as the most fascinating movement of the set. How frivolous the final poco vivo sounds after this.
The two sets of piano pieces find both Glass and Seivewright at their most charming. Seivewright provides fanciful programs for the Three Piano Pieces, op. 66. The central "Nocturne" (at six minutes the longest movement of the three) is particularly effective, its middle section showing some disturbance without any undue horrors. If the recording of the final piece is somewhat lacking in depth, one can still hear Seivewright's enjoyment of what he describes as an evocation of "Scottish Highland dancing." It is easy to hear (and be amused by) what he says: This is a true Ecossaise. The op. 4 Fantasy Pieces show more Schumannesque leanings, and indeed each movement has a fanciful title ("Freedom," "A Futile Warning," and the like; there's even a "Dreaming," a direct equivalent to Schumann's famous "Traumerei"). The penultimate movement is a glorious depiction of precipitation (it is called "In the Rain").
Peter Seivewright is a most sensitive guide to this music. I should, I suppose, admit to a personal link with him, however tenuous. More years ago than I care to remember, Seivewright accompanied the Bury Metropolitan Youth Orchestra (U.K.: this is plain old "Bury," geographically situated up north, not "Bury St. Edmunds") on a tour in which he was soloist in Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. I was the principal horn player of the orchestra at the time. Just thought you should know.
Colin Clarke
CLASSICALNET:
It is a real tragedy that from the end of the Second World War until the beginning of the 1990's, Danish romantic music was practically ignored altogether both in Denmark itself and elsewhere, as history testifies to a glorious romantic repertoire second only to Germany. The last decade has seen a stirring revival of interest in Danish romanticism, and this double-CD set dedicated to the piano works of Louis Glass is more than welcome. An exact contemporary of Carl Nielsen, but not as influential, Glass composed a considerable number of important works, among which are six rambling symphonies and other orchestral pieces. But it is in the piano and chamber fields that one finds his finest contributions to the canon of European music, and this compilation is indeed a wonderful advert to Glass's precociousness. The mainstays of this album are without doubt the two Sonatas Op. 6 and 25, two huge works of Beethovenian proportions full of dramatic strokes and highly original passages that tax the soloist to the limits.
The 'Fantasi' Op. 35 was Glass' most popular work in his lifetime, while the Lyrical Bagatelles, Op. 26, the Fantasy Pieces Op. 4 and the 3 Piano Pieces Op. 66 highlight the composer's excitable palette for colourful inventiveness.
Peter Seivewright's interpretations are fastidiously detailed, and despite the work's considerable demands, he plays with a winning ease and fluency that serve Glass's cause marvellously well. A fascinating opportunity to discover one of Denmark's most talented musical sons.
Gerald Fenech
FANFARE (2):
I must say at the outset that I admire the ornery, anti-establishment tone pianist Seivewright adopts in his notes to this disc of music by Louis Glass, similar in spirit to the diatribe in his Bach concerto disc. The targets of his venom this time are musicologists who have defined modernism in terms that largely dismiss music that doesn't occupy the cutting edges of the early 20th century. He has a valid point to make, but I'm not sure that I would use that card to advocate for the greatness of Louis Glass, a composer who hasn't exactly earned fervent kudos among the writers of Fanfare. His assertion that no country outside Germany "has such a glorious repertoire of Romantic music as Denmark" is hard to fathom, but such hyperbole may not be altogether destructive from an advocate of the cause.
The two discs represent less than half the total solo piano output from the Dane (1864-1936), but the pianist has taken pains to assemble a collection that represents a wide spectrum of form and breadth. As well as 1 can determine, this is only the second disc recorded of his piano music, and the earlier one (Nina Gade, Marco Polo 9306, reviewed in Fanfare 19:3) contains the same two sonatas and the Fantasy that are included here.
Two consecutive tracks on the first disc represent the structural extremes of Glass's work. The first of his Lyrical Bagatelles runs a mere 26 seconds, and spans only eight bars. Its innate simple charms are typical of the set, and the slight technical demands might suggest their purpose as teaching pieces for children, though the notes do not provide this explanation. Preceding these miniatures is the giant Fantasy, a work the pianist describes as easily the most popular during Glass's lifetime. He correctly describes the harmonies as striking, but I find little sense of genuine surprise and dramatic risk that the best pieces with that title demonstrate.
Even with its unwieldy proportions (a whopping 42 minutes) and Brucknerian ambitions, the First Sonata may be the best work. One interesting feature is that Glass shuns introductions as a way to extend sonata forms. His themes are well crafted, and his sense of structure is sound and traditional. What is missing from most of his works is a sense of dramatic conflict or taste for risk-taking. The pianist apparently either disagrees with this assessment, or believes that these qualities are overrated. His playing is cool and precise, without the kind of exaggerated dynamic contrasts some resort to while trying to make a case for an underserved composer. The recorded sound is first-rate.
I doubt many listeners will adopt his ecstatic assessment of Glass's work, but there is easily enough quality to merit a listen or two, and for those with an appetite for underserved Romantics (and there are many of you), this disc is worth a look.
Michael Cameron
RECORDS INTERNATIONAL:
The three sets of 15 short pieces are an addition to the CD catalogue - romantic character pieces in the vein of Schumann (the “Fantasy Pieces”) and in Glass’ own mature style. The main story is the performance of the two sonatas and the Fantasy; many collectors will have the 1992 Dacapo release with pianist Nina Gade. Compare the timings in the order listed above, Gade first: 27:29 and 37:36, 29:24 and 41:46, 14:46 and 21:14. Astounding, no? Why? Gade plays them like they’re Schumann or Mendelssohn and Seivewright like they’re late Beethoven (or Celibidache conducting Bruckner). Both approaches really work too! The Dacapo is out of print but true Glass collectors will certainly want both anyway.
Un-named reviewer
OXFORD TODAY:
Peter Seivewright has recorded the piano music of a truly international genius, Denmark’s Carl Nielsen, for Naxos. Now he evangelises for Nielsen’s unknown contemporary Louis Glass (1864-1936, but a conservative Romantic),on Divine Art 21205. The double CD includes two piano sonatas plainly using the language of late Beethoven, but without a trace of Beethoven’s speed or originality of thought, of his transcendence. But then Seivewright suggests a parallel with Bruckner, a massive blind spot for me, so others might have more patience with Glass. There’s a big Fantasi too (Liszt/Franck with an untenably Wagnerian apotheosis), but for me the smaller pieces were more interesting – a Grieg-style Pastorale with drone bass, a strikingly Russian bagatelle, and a skittering fantasy which intriguingly fragments into silence. Fine playing.
Graham Topping
KLASSIK.COM:
In this double CD, replete with golden piano pieces of late Danish romanticism, the English pianist Peter Seivewright, almost unknown in this country, provides testament to his productive curiosity in opening up new parts of the repertoire. This production, published by Divine Art, shows that the exercise is worthwhile.
The effort required to delve into the imponderables of late Danish romanticism is highly commendable. As the accompanying text shows (for all that it sometimes overdoes its praise of Danish composers) Seivewright has immersed himself in the material. Anyone who can write about not just Carl Nielsen, but also about Emil Hartmann, Christian Frederik Emil Horneman, Otto Malling, Victor Bendix, Peter Emilius Lange-Müller and August Enna, must really know about the Danish music of the time (which in turn means having studied the scores and some Danish compendia, since recordings of the works of these composers are, unfortunately, extremely rare).
Louis Glass (1864-1936) whose piano music Peter Seivewright introduces on both discs, also formed part of this radiant musical life in Copenhagen between 1890 and about 1930. Raised in a good middle-class household, he continued the private piano school founded by his father, and devoted himself to composition. His opus includes six large-scale symphonies, a good deal of chamber music, and a significant body of piano music – the pieces on this recording do not even represent half of Louis Glass’s total piano output. Seivewright has selected two large scale piano sonatas (each about 40 minutes long), together with the “Fantasie” op.35 and some small piano pieces.
Seivewright begins with a weighty piece, the A Major Sonata op. 25 of 1898. With massive chords Glass forges a plastic and sharply contoured theme. In the development section of the second theme he tricks the listener – a chromatically interspersed figure recalls the fugue theme from Brahms’ op. 8 (the connecting section in the exposition of the main movement in the first version). But in Glass’s work the fugal part does not appear. Instead the accompaniment is overarched with tender melodic points, before chordal progression and melodic relationships characterise the main theme and the songlike secondary theme too. Glass demonstrates here not only good-quality compositional craft, he also shows himself to be an extremely profound creator both in musical terms and in relation to the piano.
With loving attention to detail and a majestic touch, Peter Seivewright understands just how to bring out the varied emotions of this music. The slow movement in particular comes across very expressively, linking closely to the principal theme of the main movement where Seivewright creates very vigorous melodic sweeps. The pianistic brilliance demanded by Fantasi op 35 is something which Sievewright masters effortlessly. He manages to hold the 20 minute piece together convincingly, clearly bringing out the striking creation of themes and their reiterations, without interrupting the tonal flow.
The earlier E Major piano sonata op 6 (1892) shows Glass as a composer clearly oriented to classical forms (and dimensions), for whom Beethoven’s late piano sonatas served as a foundation, albeit interwoven with extended harmonic models.
Peter Seivewright presents short pieces from various cycles, each marked with its own tone. From the cheerful little sugar pieces from the Fantasistykker [Fantasy Pieces] op 4 to the later Klavierstykker [Piano Pieces] op 66, a whole range of different emotions are evoked, from a lively Ecossaise to an almost religious Pastorale in the Lyriske Bagatelle [Lyrical Bagatelle] op 26. Peter Seivewright demonstrates here a technical mastery of the piano, and it is clearly audible that his heart is touched by the music. He plays with a lot of feeling for the colours and tones, but for the compositional form too. This splendid recording demonstrates that Louis Glass belongs to that class of composers who should have earned a firm place in the repertoire.
Unfortunately the sound quality of the recording is less impressive than the interpretation. In places the piano comes through too stark, at times somewhat unbalanced and jangly. But this can be tolerated for such an interesting musical offering.
Tobias Pfleger
GLASGOW HERALD:
Louis Glass was a fairly prolific late Romantic Danish composer who died in 1936. RSAMD pianist Peter Seivewright, who believes Glass is at least of the stature of Carl Nielsen, has recorded this double CD of Glass’s music which includes two large-scale sonatas, an epic fantasy and collections of smaller pieces. Of the two sonatas, the A flat major is a piece of great nobility, well structured and highly integrated thematically. It wears its Romanticism coolly. But Glass’s major strength lies in the exquisite, often wistful and charming small lyric pieces. Seivewright’s performing style, which is structuralist, sometimes at the expense of fluidity, is idiosyncratic and a matter of taste.
Michael Tumelty
MUSICWEB:
It’s difficult to know what to make of Louis Glass. He’s one of those composers who rather flatter to deceive, who begin with a flourish and tend to end in prolixity. Or that’s the impression one often gets. Peter Seivewright’s mission naturally is to prove the virtues in Glass’s Beethovenian-inspired melodrama and to convey it with articulacy and proper scale. I can’t fault his proselytising but I still have problems with Glass.
It’s interesting that Seivewright prefers the A flat major sonata. One can see why. It’s a bigger, bolder work than the more youthful E major, which Seivewright tends rather to slight. But I have a sneaking admiration for the Op.6. The later A flat major sonata opens with bullish Beethovenian rhetoric, ambles into romantic pastures - it was published in 1898 – and then slows right down. Dynamics here are extreme, themes return with rather repetitious regularity. My own instinct was that the music should be taken much faster but Seivewright is a sagacious guide and one should trust his judgement. Seivewright’s booklet digression on the Chromatic Fourth in the second movement would infuriate the Editor but quite interested me, though like many an eminent High Court judge I’ve never heard Miss You Like Crazy by Natalie Cole. Those moments in the second movement that owe their genesis anywhere perhaps owe most to Mussorgsky, a composer Seivewright doesn’t mention - though he does mention Bach, Purcell, Wagner and the song sung by Miss Cole. I’m afraid that hereafter Glass’s inspiration runs pretty empty. The scherzo, despite the pianist’s best protestations, is a trudge and the finale, whilst it revisits earlier material goes nowhere. I can’t sympathetise with the idea that the scherzo boasts a "sublime four-part counterpoint" – it might be lucid to play but it’s prolix to hear.
The earlier sonata attempts slightly less and achieves slightly more, at least in my book. Again there are touches of Beethovenian power but also leavenings of Grieg. It’s a more coherent statement, though only slightly shorter, than the Op.25 sonata though one would have to admit that it’s very much more conventional in tone. I greatly took to the central panel of the scherzo with its rather beautiful melodic impress, surrounded as it is by more extrovert writing. The finale is again rather paragraphal and lacking in cumulative direction. But as a sonata I found it the more engaging.
The Fantasi was apparently Glass’s most popular work during his lifetime. It does have grandeur and it does have a quasi-improvisatory spirit that command attention. But it’s simply too long and for stretches one loses interest. The smaller pieces show us the miniaturist. They consist of character studies, little elfin dances or romances, small moments of concise nobility. The Lyrical Bagatelles whiz by but the Op.66 Piano Pieces are cut from a rather deeper cloth. There’s even a rather assertive Ecossaise. The Op.4 set is pure Schumann - with a twist of Bach for the fifth, In The Rain. They’re not referred to in the booklet notes so far as I can see.
I’m not in a position to compare this two disc set with Nina Gade’s recital on DCCD9306 – she plays the sonatas and the Fantasi. But Peter Seivewright is a powerful and obviously convinced exponent who once again shows his mettle here. For me it’s a losing cause but for others it may well prove, given the sympathetic recordings, a more enjoyable introduction to Glass’s piano oeuvre.
Jonathan Woolf