Konstantin Shamray: Idle Hands: Piano Music of Luke Altmann
de la Catessen Records

Idle Hands, which presents fifty-two minutes of Luke Altmann's piano music performed by Konstantin Shamray, makes for a natural complement to the Benaud Trio's mid-2020 release of Altmann material, Holy Fools. Each helps bring the Port Adelaide composer's music into ever sharper focus whilst also offering an abundance of listening rewards. Shamray's recording reveals a simpatico connection between performer and composer, with the former sensitively rendering the latter's always intriguing material into being.

Four works are performed, three of them multi-part, making for twelve tracks in total. Some of them do call upon Shamray's virtuosity, such as “Distilled and Light Hearted,” the chiming middle movement of Leunig Fragments, but Idle Hands is hardly designed to be a non-stop showcase for his technical ability. In addition to playful episodes (e.g., the buoyant third of the Three Little Pieces), there are also moments where the writing is rather Schubertian, with a kindred lyricism marking Altmann's writing.

The word minimalism comes to mind as one listens to the material, not in any Glass- or Reich-related sense but in terms of the music's austerity. Hushed passages appear where single notes linger and pauses abound, a move that in turn imbues the recording with an appealing suspended quality, as if it's floating contentedly (see, for example, “The Right Environment” and “Berceuse,” the central and closing movements of the titular work's wide-ranging five, and the stark second of the Three Little Pieces).

Establishing a ponderous, semi-mysterious mood at the outset, A Sort of Introduction demonstrates how attuned the pianist is to the composer's reflective side. Shamray's touch is delicate yet not lacking in contrast: some passages assume a heavy dramatic quality, whereas others exhibit restraint. Consonance is often favoured, but dissonance isn't absent either.

Shamray's sensitivity is never better illustrated than during “Idyll,” the opening movement of Idle Hands, when the pianist softly voices its folk-tinged material with the utmost care. The second part, “Crosscurrents,” does, in fact, suggest a tie in its patterns to minimalism of the Glass-related kind, though filtered through the prism of Altmann's melodic sensibility, of course.

Shamray's issued recordings of Russian masterpieces on ABC Classics and Naxos and is therefore inhabiting a slightly different realm on Idle Hands, yet he sounds right at home. He's no stranger to Australian soil, either, the pianist having won the 2008 Sydney International Piano Competition and these days a regular concert soloist with the country's major orchestras.

December 2020