Search - Stephen [Classical] Heller, Jan Vermeulen :: Stephen Heller: Piano Studios, Opp. 45, 46, 27

EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 12/30/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This 2-disc set comprises 80 - that's eighty - short pieces with a total playing time of just under two and a quarter hours. Heller was born in 1813, the year of birth of Wagner and Verdi, which makes him just slightly younger than Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt. He was personally acquainted with at least some of these masters, and if a certain influence of Mendelssohn and even of Chopin can be detected in his studies, there is no reason that I know of to suppose that the influence was a one-way street only. In his own day, as in ours, the studies seem to have been what he was best known for. They are collected into three books bearing successive opus-numbers and consisting of 25, 30 and 25 works respectively. The first set is described as `melodic', the second is aimed at advancing to a greater level of difficulty, and the final book is dedicated to the formation and development of `musical rhythm and expression'. Given who Heller's contemporaries were, it would be reasonable to see these compositions as being targeted on players at an intermediate level of attainment. The level and variety of technical issues that they address would not have taxed Chopin or Mendelssohn or Liszt, and the pieces are all brief. The longest etude here takes under three and a half minutes, the shortest less than 40 seconds, and these timings include the short gaps between the numbers.



Like Chopin and unlike Czerny, Heller believed that piano studies should be of musical interest. I find some reason to believe that he may even have thought of the books as suitable for performance as complete suites, like Chopin's preludes. The last piece in each book is more showy than its predecessors, suggesting to me that each was conceived as a finale, and Jan Vermeulen plays each in a way that seems to confirm this view. Such a wholesale rendering might seem a bit much for most of us, but most of us are not the composer, whose fascination with them was probably greater. They are all very pleasant and totally unchallenging to the listener, but very restricted in expression even in ways that are obvious from their description. The range of tempi that they encompass, for one thing, is not wide. There is one solitary adagio among all 80 pieces, and not even a single presto, and a great many are marked allegretto. It would have been helpful if we had been told their keys too - modulations are not part of the style, I did not notice any startling juxtaposition of keys between the separate items, and it would have been interesting to see the composer's key-scheme.



One way to cope with such uniformity would have been to apply a touch of originality in the playing, the way Vermeulen opts for is to play safe. This may be wise - too fanciful an approach could easily become silly. All the same, I can't help feeling that he could have taken a few more chances. His handling of the three `finales' shows what he might have done elsewhere if he had felt like it. There is a sameness about most of the playing, not just in his touch but in his expression too, and I would have liked him at least to do something to add a bit of variety to the speeds where the composer gives him some opportunity for that - surely # 37 on the first disc is never `allegro veloce' for instance?



However I welcome this set thoroughly because it has been done at all, and done very competently too. The musical world of the early 19th century was not just a world consisting of a couple of handfuls of musical giants. Heller, Moscheles and others had something to say that was worth saying as well, and it seems to me that I gain a better appreciation of the giants from listening to the people they listened to and learning from the people they learned from. If Horowitz and Serkin never put any of Heller's studies on disc they're never going to now, and I'm not disposed to be too critical about what I've been given, especially when that might have been nothing. The recorded quality is everything it should be, Vermeulen plays a regular piano and references to a fortepiano in the liner gave me a moment of panic that thankfully was unwarranted. His likeness that gazes out from the back of the leaflet is slightly intimidating, but I really wish he had intimidated me a little more with his interpretation. This is a set that I'm going to be listening to, I sense. Cd technology will enable me to program my own selections of favourites when I have decided what those are. If Hamelin or Kissin (say) decides to offer us a few of these pleasant works sometime, or if Peter Donohoe can take some time off from his British piano concertos, then - I'm listening. Meantime I have something here that I might never have heard, and I commend the experience to all."