Ferdinand Ries: Piano Concerto; Swedish National Airs with Variations; etc.
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Composer: Ferdinand RiesConductor: Uwe Grodd
Orchestra: Gävle Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Christopher Hinterhuber
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2007-09-25
Music Label: Naxos
Music reviews of Ferdinand Ries: Piano Concerto; Swedish National Airs with Variations; etc.
Music Review: Ries' Concerto Op. 55: A Musical Hybrid That Doesn't Quite Fit Together
Rating: 4 Stars
When I first heard the Ries Piano Concerto Op. 55 about a hundred years ago, on an RCA recording with Felicja Blumenthal, I was taken aback that a composer who could write music of such power was so little known. I noted the clear similarities to Beethoven's style, but thought that was a given in an age dominated by the master from Bonn. Since then, it has been possible to get to know Ries much better through recordings on cpo of his complete symphonies and some of his better chamber music. And his problem, as far as posterity is concerned, is that he does sound like the master from Bonn. Even Beethoven told Ries, a friend and pupil, that he sounded too much like him.
But there is a bigger problem with the Third Piano Concerto, whose first movement sounds vaguely like a cross between the first movements of Beethoven's Third and Fourth Concertos. The problem is that the piece is a hybrid that doesn't really work. The stentorian orchestral music is pure Beethoven (or Beethoven influence), but the writing for piano is in the brilliant but somewhat brittle style of Biedermeier composers such as Hummel and Weber. The notes to the recording suggest that if Beethoven hadn't stopped composing concerted works in the early 1800s, when he lost his hearing, perhaps he would have followed the pre-Romantic model of Hummel et al. Maybe so, but he wrote solo piano music almost till the end of his life, and it sounds like Beethoven--though stretching the limits of Classical style to the absolute breaking point that it reached in his Sonatas Nos. 29 and 32.
But back to the Ries Concerto. The second movement is an attractive example of the dreamy, proto-Romantic slow movement of concertos like those of John Field. But the last movement rondo's A section is based on a frothy little tune that bustles along like a Weber perpetuum mobile. It provides a comic-opera ending to a concerto that started out storming the heavens in typically Beethovenian fashion. Not an especially happy mix.
The other works on the recording hang together much better, it seems to me. Here, the Beethoven/Hummel axis doesn't seem quite as jarring. The Variations are very accomplished and mostly serious with some flashes of brilliance to keep things interesting. The Introduction and Polonaise is even more expertly put together, a very attractive piece with memorable melodies, fine writing for both orchestra and piano. Alas, by the time Ries composed this late work, he had fallen out of favor with the public, and it will probably be impossible to put him back in wide favor. I doubt his concerted works will return to the concert hall anytime soon, if at all.
Yet there is much to admire in the music on this disc; even the Third Concerto is powerful and pretty enough by turns to be interesting to hear on occasion, which one can do, thanks to this well-done recording by Hinterhuber and Grodd. They're both specialists in this kind of music, and Hinterhuber is a magnificent pianist by any measure, probably in the same class as the better-known Stephen Hough or Howard Shelley. Naxos provides a large-scale, imposing sound recording that matches Ries' big gestures, but Hinterhuber's piano reproduces with a little too much metallic glare, and I don't think he can take the blame for that.
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