Aron Rozsa: Golden Thread: The Art of the Piano Transcription
Acis

In exploring piano transcriptions extending from the 1500s to the twentieth century, Hungarian pianist Aron Rozsa has crafted a seventy-one-minute release that's thematically inspired, not to mention a gripping and formidable display of keyboard wizardry. Golden Thread begins with an early reworking by Peter Phillips of Giulio Caccini's “Amarilli mia Bella” before proceeding to later treatments by Franz Liszt, Sergei Prokofiev, and Ferruccio Busoni of material by, respectively, George Frideric Handel, Dieterich Buxtehude, J. S. Bach, and Liszt himself. As disparate as the selections are, the unifying factor is, of course, transcription and specifically the art and craft involved in reducing symphonic and operatic works to versions for a single keyboard and two hands. Implicit is the idea of one artist paying affectionate homage to a revered other through the interpretive task.

Rozsa certainly has the skills to pull it off. Currently based in London after five years in mainland China, the pianist probably needs a large trophy room for all the awards he's received. He won First Prize at the 2020 Salzburg Grand Prize Virtuoso International Competition and second at the Leo Weiner / Contemporary Hungarian Music competition. In addition, he made a strong showing in the Fifth Adilia Alieva International Piano Competition in Gaillard, France and was one of three prize winners at the Fifteenth Vienna International Music Competition. No more than a single listen to Golden Thread is needed to determine that Rozsa's playing is at an extremely high level.

Transcribed from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book by English composer, organist, and exiled Catholic priest Philips, Caccini's “Amarilli di Julio Romano” inaugurates the set with a regal rendering of a late Renaissance madrigal that ably translates the haunting vocal line into pianistic form. Liszt then makes his first appearance on the album with a mighty transcription of Handel's first opera Almira (written when he was eighteen) and specifically a Romantic re-imagining of two instrumental dances from the work. Liszt, who created the arrangement in 1879 for a student of his to perform at a Handel festival in England, introduces the ten-minute “Sarabande” with grandiose chords before segueing into a gentler episode and alternating fluidly between the poles thereafter. Rozsa penetrates deeply into the material with an emotionally intense and dynamic performance; so powerful is the transcription, in fact, that anyone hearing it will quickly forget that it's based on other material and experience it in its pure piano form. That it grows ever more lyrical as it advances towards its tranquil close merely adds to its appeal. Without pause, the shorter “Chaconne” appears to inject the performance with energy and high spirits before reaching its own titanic end.

The album leaps ahead to Prokofiev's sober transcription of Buxtehude's Prelude and Fugue in D minor, published in 1923 and refracting material associated with the Baroque tradition through a twentieth-century Russian lens. The focus then shifts to Bach for Busoni's Transcriptions of two pieces from “Ten Chorale Preludes of Johann Sebastian Bach,” the “Prelude” gracefully chorale-like and contrapuntally intricate, the longer “Fuga” dignified and funereal.

As memorable as the first four selections are, they're overshadowed by the Fantasy and Fugue on the Chorale “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam,” which appears here in a reworking by Busoni of Liszt material, itself a transcription of a chorale from Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Le Prophète. Comprising half of the album's running-time, the three-part treatment begins with the Herculean “Fantasia: Moderato (un poco maestoso),” which assumes a rather sonata-like design in following a choral theme with a series of towering variations. Rozsa's technical command is called upon repeatedly as the movement ventures into increasingly tumultuous territory until its storm gradually recedes with the arrival of the rhapsodic “Fantasia: Adagio.” Serene and contemplative, the material feels as if it's ascended to a quasi-celestial sphere for sixteen minutes; the mood diametrically shifts when the mighty “Fuga: Allegretto con moto” takes over to methodically bring the work to a blazing and triumphant finish.

November 2024