Page 216 - Alison Balsom Quiet City FULL BOOK

It only takes a few moments of Liszt’s Liebestraum No 3 for the pianist’s structural grip and

subtleties of phrasing and touch to create magic; also evident in the final track (more Liszt) and

the prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the germ from which this panorama springs.

As usual, Levit’s devotion to pursuing particular experiences and states of mind leads him to

unusual, if not intransigent, repertoire. Almost 50 minutes are consumed by Tristan, an early

1970s grab bag from Hans Werner Henze featuring fragile piano solos, orchestral frenzy and

electronic interpolations, mixed with a squirt of Marxist fury. Like much of Henze’s “trendier”

output, it has not aged well, and even if we admire Levit’s fingering and the dedication of the
conductor Franz-Welser Möst and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, that doesn’t make their

resuscitation worthwhile.

Heaven returns with the rising agony and passion of Wagner’s Tristan prelude, heard in a

brilliant piano arrangement, only to be crushed by the adagio torso from Mahler’s unfinished
Symphony No 10, heard in a bald and bad one.

Dark thoughts are then banished by Levit’s progress through Liszt’s Harmonies du soir, the last

spin of an uneven album more hard-going than even its subject matter indicated.

Since trumpets usually dispel gloom, I looked forward to Alison Balsom’s album with Britten

Sinfonia, Quiet City, and relished her colours in the Copland title track and the beauty of

Ives’s The Unanswered Question.

A trumpet-led arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue proves a bearable novelty, though

her version of Miles Davis’s bluesy smooching in Rodrigo’s Conceirto de Aranjuez seems rather
studious. (Sony Classical; Warner Classics)