Ernst Krenek - Complete Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 (Mikhail Korzhev)

Information

Composer: Ernst Krenek

• Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 123
• Concerto for Two Pianos, Op. 127
• Double Concerto for Violin and Piano, Op. 124
• Little Concerto for Piano and Organ, Op. 88

Mikhail Korzhev, piano

Eric Huebner, piano

Nurit Pacht, violin

Adrian Partington, organ

English Symphony Orchestra

Kenneth Woods, conductor

Date: 2017

Label: Toccata

https://toccataclassics.com/product/ernst-krenek-complete-piano-concertos-volume-two/

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Review

There are still sceptics who cling to the notion that an atonal melody is a contradiction in terms. Such diehards would meet an elegant riposte with the opening of Krenek’s Fourth Piano Concerto (1951): angular in shape, yes, but hardly more so than a minor-key quartet melody of Haydn, and developed with a comparable, resourceful invention. The opening percussive shimmer has become a cliché of contemporary British composers but Krenek demanded more from himself. Within its cosmopolitan, mid-century, mid-Atlantic idiom, this music is always heading somewhere with a purpose, underpinned by a thoroughgoing Austro-German understanding of harmony and counterpoint, tension and breadth, cause and effect. Émigré Schoenberg and Bartók offer points of orientation but the more eclectic, jazz-influenced Krenek surfaces halfway through the Fourth’s nocturnal Adagio, in winding countermelodies for clarinet and trumpet that could have been written for Benny and Dizzy.

Ländlers, marches and waltzes are the stuff of the less ambitious, more suite-like constructions of the double concertos as they shift between affection, irony and even savagery. For all its evident challenges, Krenek’s solo writing always sounds pianistic in the hands of Mikhail Korshev, whose touch is necessarily robust but not clangorous in spiky dialogue with Nurit Pacht’s violin and afforded plenty of resounding space by the recording in the Wyastone Leys concert hall. I’ve only praise, too, for the supporting energy of Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra, who play with the conviction that this is music worth believing in.

-- Peter Quantrill, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/May/Krenek_PCs_v2_TOCC0392.htm

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/Aug/Krenek_PCs_v2_TOCC0392.htm

https://www.amazon.com/Ernst-Krenek-Complete-Piano-Concertos/dp/B06XS7PTL3

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Ernst Krenek (August 23, 1900 – December 22, 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. Born in Vienna, Krenek studied there and in Berlin with Franz Schreker before working in a number of German opera houses as conductor. In 1938 Krenek moved to the United States, where he taught music at various universities. He died in Palm Springs, California. Krenek's music encompassed a variety of styles and reflects many of the principal musical influences of the 20th century. His early work is in a late-Romantic idiom, turned to atonality around 1920, and became more relaxed in his later years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Krenek

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Mikhail Korzhev is equally active as a solo recitalist, a chamber musician, a soloist with orchestras, and as a recording artist. He holds a doctorate in piano performance from University of Southern California, where he studied with Daniel Pollack. His previous teachers include Alexander Satz and Vera Khoroshina at Moscow Conservatory College. He taught at University of Southern California, and is on the faculty of California State University at Fullerton and Chapman University. Korzhev’s discography includes CD recordings featuring compositions by Ernst Krenek and Gerard Schurmann.

https://www.mikhailkorzhevpiano.com/

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