One of the recurring themes of this blog is the way that music can be phenomenally popular for a time, and then suffer a fall from grace and popularity to the very depths of scorn.
This cycle, of course, mirrors the conditions of life generally, so astutely observed by an anonymous mediaeval poet and so memorably set to music by Carl Orff in the opening O Fortuna of his Carmina Burana.
I've had several pieces up for discussion at one time or another that have followed this pattern. Now you're getting a double serving of them in wholesale quantity.
The Canadian pianist, Robert Silverman, recorded two CDs for Marquis Records of piano pieces which were beloved of our Victorian ancestors and have for the most part fallen into disuse since. The two records were issued separately under the title The Parlour Grand and have since been reissued as a 2-for-1 CD set. The title, of course, refers to the grand piano in the formal front parlour of a well-to-do Victorian home and the music that would be found stacked on top of it.
What you are most likely to recognize in this album's cover are the titles of a number of pieces which are almost obligatory points of reference in books set in this time period. Among the contents you may well recognize three or four tunes which are equally obligatory in the soundtracks of films set in this era. But for the most part, you will probably find yourself discovering this music for the first time. If that is so, you will likely be pleasantly surprised (as I was) at how melodious, well-crafted and effective these pieces are. Whenever I listen to this album, I inevitably come away humming one of the tunes to myself!
If there's a single overriding reason why most of this music has been neglected for so long, it can be summed up in the pithy proverb, "Familiarity breeds contempt." These two discs are full of very good pieces of music, but none of them is a great enough masterpiece to survive the over-familiarity which was their fate in the late 19th century.
Kudos, then, to Silverman and Marquis for taking so much care to bring this unjustly-neglected music to the wider public again. Performances throughout are of excellent quality -- no surprise to anyone familiar with this fine artist's work. The Marquis sound is nicely judged too, neither too cramped nor too spacious, and with the piano observed not-too-closely by the microphones. The net result is a vivid evocation of a world long gone. I almost feel I could look around the room and see pieces of period china appearing on the tables or antimacassars on the chair backs when listening!
No comments:
Post a Comment