David Earl piano
SOMMCD 0728
David Earl was born in Stellenbosch, Cape Province, South Africa in 1951. In 1971 he moved to London and was a piano pupil of Jacob Kaletsky and studied with Richard Arnell for composition. This release celebrates the composer’s 75th birthday and consists of the composer playing two of his substantial cycles for piano.
The first, Oxymorons – 24 Preludes, dates from 1993. The composer explains his choice of title in these terms: “Like the literary oxymoron, in which contradictory ideas are meaningfully associated, the Preludes, written in early 1990s, were oxymorons in relation to much of what, in ‘serious music’ terms, was considered acceptable then and in the preceding decades. In recent time however, the pendulum has swung back again, and tonal music is no longer thought of, academically, as outmoded or passé. Schoenberg’s dictum – ‘a great deal of music remains to be written in the key of C major’ – still stands.“
The order of the Preludes follows that adopted by Chopin, Scriabin, Shostakovich and others with the first beginning in C major and each major prelude being succeeded by one in its relative minor, moving by intervals of a fifth through all the keys until F major and D minor are reached.
Earl manages the not inconsiderable task of writing fresh, engaging tonal music without any overt recollection of past styles, which, in the case of piano music, are legion. The formal resemblance to previous sets of preludes is as close as he comes to suggesting the influence of a model.
Combined with a conservative approach to tonality is an extraordinary degree of keyboard virtuosity. There is a great deal to enjoy here, not the least of which is hearing a player who is celebrating his three quarters of a century whom the years appear to have left untouched. This playing would be distinguished regardless of the age of the player.
The shorter companion cycle of pieces suggests Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen with finely wrought vignettes of the composer’s childhood, rather like viewing an old photograph album, a mixture of evocations of place and incident. I would most warmly recommend this disc to those who yearn for contemporary tonal music that is not reminiscent and to those enthusiasts of the piano who fear that the age of the composer-virtuoso has passed.
I for one will be seeking out more music by David Earl who richly deserves to be much better known.
Review by Martyn Strachan