Melvyn Tan - Master & Pupil, Beethoven, Czerny, Liszt album review

Master & Pupil, Beethoven, Czerny, Liszt
    
Artist: Melvyn Tan (piano)
Genre: Classical
Label: Onyx 4156

The lineage is clear. Beethoven taught Czerny and Czerny taught Liszt. Czerny also performed Beethoven, made many arrangements of his works, wrote about the interpretation of his piano music, and composed a funeral march on his death.

Beethoven also went to a concert by the 11-year-old Liszt and is said to have lifted him up and kissed him. Melvyn Tan traces the connections through Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126, Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109, Czerny’s Variations on a theme of Rode and Funeral March and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.

The playing is lucid and cool, not quite generating the necessary sweep in the Liszt, but interesting in its distanced perspective in the Bagatelles.

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor