Edward MacDowell - Piano Concertos (Seta Tanyel)

Information

Composer: Edward MacDowell

• (01) Piano Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 15
• (04) Second Modern Suite, Op. 14
• (10) Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 23

Seta Tanyel, piano
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins, conductor

Date: 2001
Label: Hyperion
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67165

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Review

MacDowell is coming into his own after suffering a long run of condescension at the hands of the Americanist lobby. There surely is something rather impressive about the talented youth finding his spiritual home in Germany where he became an ideal student much admired by his teacher, Raff, and by Liszt. Both piano concertos and the Second Modern Suite date from MacDowell’s German years, although the Second Concerto wasn’t performed until he and his wife had returned to the US in 1888.

The First Concerto declares its allegiance at once with grand romantic gestures – 14 years after Grieg’s and in the same key. But it also sounds like a youthful new world music, 11 years before Dvorak’s famous symphony, with the whole work apparently dashed off in about two weeks.

Tanyel and Amato, technically impeccable (on Olympia), both understand the mainstream idiom of the concertos. With Freeman and the LPO, the opening for strings to the Second Concerto is perceptibly slower and more serious than Brabbins with the BBC Scottish. This presages the remarkable series of thematic transformations and cross-references throughout the work. Its second movement is in MacDowell’s scintillating scherzo mode and there are syncopations which could even be American. Prutsman (on Naxos) is the only one who gets up to MacDowell’s specified tempos in the presto movements, although the Irish orchestra lacks refinement. The Naxos CD adds the piano and orchestra version of Witches’ Dance and Romance for cello and orchestra.

Both the Olympia and Hyperion recordings are vivid and well-produced but Hyperion comes off best of all since it also contains Tanyel’s fine performance of the resourceful six-movement Second Modern Suite for solo piano: informative notes from Jeremy Nicholas

-- Gramophone

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: ***** / SOUND: *****
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 7 / SOUND QUALITY: 8
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/June01/MacDowellPC.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/Nov01/Macdowell.htm
https://www.amazon.com/MacDowell-Concertos-Second-Romantic-Concerto/dp/B00005A7LQ

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Edward MacDowell (December 18, 1860 – January 23, 1908) was an American composer and pianist of the Romantic period, and was also a noted teacher of the piano. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites Woodland Sketches, Sea Pieces and New England Idylls. Woodland Sketches includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose". After his death, MacDowell was considered as a great, internationally known American composer. However, as the twentieth century progressed, his fame was eclipsed by such American composers as Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, and Roy Harris.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_MacDowell

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Born in Istanbul of Armenian parentage, Seta Tanyel studied at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik with Dieter Weber and Bruno Seidlhofer, and in London with Louis Kentner. She was a major prizewinner at the 1973 Beethoven Competition and the 1974 Arthur Rubinstein Competition. Acclaimed as much for her distinguished performances of the core repertoire as for her consistent championing of the works of lesser-known composers, Tanyel has excited much attention from audiences around the world. She has received countless critical accolades for her recordings on the Chandos, Collins Classics and Hyperion labels.
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/a.asp?a=A140

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