Amy Marcy Beach (1867-1944)
Out of the Depths, op. 130
Variations sur des thèmes balkaniques, op. 60
Dreaming, op. 15 n° 3
Sérénade "Ständchen" d'après Richard Strauss
Prélude et Fugue, op. 81
Canoeing, op. 119 n° 3
Honeysuckle, op. 97 n° 5
A Hermit Thrush at Eve, op. 92 n° 1
Nocturne, op. 107
Trois Pièces, op. 128

Martina Frezzotti, piano

La pianiste italienne Martina Frezzotti propose un choix d’œuvres mettant particulièrement en valeur les diverses facettes du talent d’Amy Beach ainsi que sa propre musicalité et sa virtuosité d’interprète. Les sombres accords qui ouvrent "Out of the depths" op. 130 (1932) donnent la mesure de la profondeur avec laquelle la compositrice traite le Psaume 130 : « Du fond de l'abîme je t'invoque, ô Éternel ! ». L'œuvre la plus importante de l'album sont les "Variations sur des thèmes balkaniques", datant de 1904, et d’une durée de plus de 25 minutes. Les quatre thèmes retenus y sont traités sous forme de barcarolle, de valse de salon, de marche funèbre, et de friska hongroise dans un vigoureux style post-Lisztien. Bien avant Messiaen, ce sont ces talents qu’elle a exploités pour noter de manière précise les chants d’oiseaux qu’elle écoutait à Peterborough ; en témoigne l’étonnante "Hermit-Thrush at Eve", de 1922. Le "Prelude and Fugue" op. 81 de 1914 est l’occasion pour elle de jouer des initiales A-B-E-A-C-H dans une sorte d’hommage au Liszt de la Fantaisie et Fugue sur le thème B-A-C-H de 1871. Cet exceptionnel enregistrement, doté d’un notable livret informatif de Mark Viner, doit absolument être salué car il permet de mieux connaître l’œuvre d’une compositrice dont les talents étaient déjà partiellement reconnus bien avant les assauts contemporains du féminisme en musique. (Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gerand)

A wide-ranging introduction to the distinctive compositional voice of Amy Beach through her solo piano music, featuring both well-known and unfamiliar pieces. While Amy Beach is now among the best-known female composers of classical music history, her story becomes more remarkable as details of it are disseminated. The pianist Mark Viner introduces her life and music in a detailed but approachable essay to accompany this new recording of her piano music on Piano Classics. She was essentially self-taught, and a prodigy to match any previous celebrated male examples, at least in technical terms. She translated Berlioz’s treatise on orchestration in order to use it herself. She became a formidably accomplished pianist in her own right, but was then prevented from giving more than two recitals a year by her husband. Beach continued to compose, however, and steadly so through the last decade of the 19th century and well into the 20th. The earliest piece on Martina Frezzotti’s recital is also one of her most familiar, the nocturne Dreaming from 1892, in which she emulates a Chopin model with piano writing that’s deceptively simple on the page but uniquely haunting on the ear. The album’s most substantial work is the 25-minute Variations on Balkan Themes, from 1904. The four themes in question were passed on to her by a missionary to the region, and the piece amounts to a proud cry for Serbian nationalism in the post-Lisztian style. Through its course, Beach writes in the style of a barcarolle, a parlour waltz, a funeral march, a Hungarian dance and much more, weaving together her material with a sure hand. Beach’s own skill as a pianist surely contributes to the soft tonal shades she conjures in her transcription of Richard Strauss’s song Ständchen. She also explored the possibilities of making accurate musical transcriptions of birdsong decades before Olivier Messiaen did so, and her most celebrated work in this vein is the achingly beautiful Hermit-Thrush at Eve from 1922.