Brighton Year-Round 2024

Neil Crossland Piano Recital, Unitarian Church, New Road Brighton

Neil Crossland

Genre: Contemporary, Live Music, Music

Venue: Unitarian Church, New Road Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

This is a special return concert. Neil Crossland’s piano recital at the Unitarian Church, New Road Brighton is again on another level. Again a rare classical-period Sonata, but expressed as a duel. This time Muzio Clementi’s Op 24/2 with Crossland’s own cadenza. Two late Chopin Nocturnes and Crossland’s own Piano Suite No. 2.

Known as a composer – many compositions are listed in the programme – Crossland’s also a prolific recording artist. Four CDs of his Beethoven Sonata cycle and Liszt were on sale.  This time we were able to hear one.

Crossland is world class: he really does rage music as the Evening Standard once said. His transcriptions and completions are the work of a master-musician whose spirit hails back to the great Lisztian traditions of transcribing, adapting and paraphrasing, as well as composing. There’s very few contemporary pianists or composers of who that might be said.

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) Piano Sonata  in B flat major Op 24/2

Beethoven was a great admirer of Clementi’s Sonatas and learned more from them than Mozart’s. Later settling in London and a tutor of John Field, Clementi ended up writing symphonies too. This was the sonata Clementi wielded in the competition arranged for Mozart and himself by royalty.

There’s been a lot of interest in Clementi. Vladimir Horowitz led the way, and apart from modern champions like Peter Katin and Nicolai Demidenko, Howard Shelley produced 7 volumes (and 14 CDs) for Hyperion.

The brilliance of B flat is set against the rippling classical containment, itself trammelled by restless expansiveness in te Allegro con brio, bursting from the cerements of Haydn into a more expansive domain. The very notion of a cadenza at the end of the first movement suggests a concerto-like form, and it’s not too far from that in spirit.

The development and recapitulation, crisply articulated by Crossland springs this cadenza-like surprise, where suddenly Crossland slyly suggests a Beethovenian expansiveness – Beethoven repaying his debt as it were. It’s a glittering, thrilling but wholly Clementi-like riff on Clementi’s work. One wonders at this point hat Clementi managed faced with Mozart. A slick gift for thirds, Mozart complained to his father.

The brief Andante quasi Allegretto continues almost on the same pulse, song-like and quite lyrically elsewhere rising to the top of the keyboard and falling in slow cascades of scales, it’s a bit like a slow processional with a whiff of Scarlatti. It’s succeeded by a brisk Rondo in Assai Allegro mode. In other words the pulse of this work is deliberately lacking extremes of contrast and the vivid resolve of the Rondo sweeps grandly but not hectically to the finish-line. The result? A draw.

Chopin Nocturnes No. 13 in c minor Op 48/1 and F minor No. 15 Op 55/1

Chopin’s later Nocturnes are more tragic, far removed from the wistful early Op 9 inflected by John Field’s example, and still often played, as are the Op 15.

Indeed in Crossland’s hands ad no other that I know of, the Op 48/1 C minor tonality underpins a reading oof volcanic, even overwhelming intensity, rising like a clangourous storm  with terraced grief on grief in this interpretation. There’s no repose in his Nocturne, it’s granitic and inordinate, the crescendo searing and inconsolable. Each paragraph adds to the inching accelerando that’s almost indiscernible but which does climax and come to a swift end.

The F minor Op 55/1 is something else again More delicate it’s also more oblique, with traceries of tonality and a more experimental palate. It’s more a true Nocturne as we understand it, but again the restlessness comes here more in the remoteness of key, a favourite one of mourning and death in the baroque like Froberger: and with Haydn, classical era.

Neil Crossland Piano Suite No 2 Op 65

Though Crossland’s recorded some of this before, it’s the world premiere. How describe this coruscating, melodic, thrilling piece? Crosland’s clearly influenced – particularly in the second movement – by the Prokofiev of Visions Fugitives, the early brattishly lyrical Prokofiev of the First World War years. And obliquely by Janacek. There’s elements too of boogie-woogie and indeed Nicolai Kapustin (1937-2020) the Soviet-Russian composer who was deeply influenced by jazz piano.

The opening Moderato sounds more compelling than that might suggest, and edges are both rhythmically unstable with patches of calm, then eruptive. The Prestissimo also has a middle section of some calm but this is where the Prokofiev and Janaeck elements really score in this whirlwind piece. The following Largo is haunted, compelling, with off-key notes recalling the strange remoteness of Britten in some of his piano accompaniments to songs. It’s a world though of Crossland’s own and one only signposts this a an approximation of sounds.

The final Moderato is a Movement Perpetual and wisps away rather like Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 finale which lasts barely a minute. This is a bit linger but it performs the same function and Crossland is nodding to it as he takes his powerful vision of distraction and power to a region of uneasy peace.

His encore was a Rachmaninov song of a Fairy-tale, transcribed for piano solo: a gentler quieter balm to sign off with.

The piano survived too. It’s a small Grand and ideally Crossland needs a large beast but he made it sound superb, and it’s clearly well-tuned too.

All in all an outstanding recital. And Crossland luckily will be back soon.

Published April 12, 2024April 12, 2024 by Simon Jenner