“Tanaka’s readings are very convincing in the way she captures every aspect of superb music that deserves to be known by every lover of Romantic piano works.”
Fanfare Magazine reviews Debut Album Misuzu Tanaka in Concert. Music of Janáček and Bach
Huntley Dent I Fanfare Magazine I 2016
In a live 2014 recital from Wigmore Hall in London, Jonathan Biss wove together two sets of miniatures, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke op. 12 and selections from the first book of Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path. The two voices blended so smoothly that an unaware listener might not realize they weren’t the same. In my review I noted, “Janáček’s little sketches are Schumanneaque in their introversion, free-form musing, and sadness.” In this admirable debut disc, the London-born Japanese pianist Misuzu Tanaka plays both books of Janáček’s beautiful suites, which contain music that is pastoral and often meditative, as you’d except from a walk in the woods, but suddenly agitated and emotional—the overgrown path has become the path of a turbulent life.
The title comes from a Moravian wedding song in which the bride laments that "the path to my mother's has become overgrown with clover," a sort of you-can’t-go-home-again lament. After composing five pieces for harmonium in 1900, Janáček finished Book I as ten piano pieces in 1908, only then giving each number a descriptive title, for example, 2. “A Blown-Away Leaf,” 3. “Come With Us!” 4. “The Madonna of Frýdek,” 5. “They Chattered Like Swallows”, and 6. “Words Fail!” That these were private references becomes clear in a letter where Janáček said that the pieces “contain distant reminiscences. Those reminiscences are so dear to me that I do not think they will ever vanish.”
Tanaka has devoted herself from early on to Janáček’s piano music, including studies with Miroslav Brejcha and the late Ivan Moravec in the Czech Republic. She has mastered the chemistry of a piece like No. 1 “Our Evening,” where a simple, repeated folk-like melody is merged with warmth of feeling, a relaxed walking pace, and cross-currents of syncopation that rise and fall. Tanaka’s playing is as poised as if these pieces were Chopin Nocturnes one moment and Mazurkas the next. She knows how to obey the music’s quick mood changes, which tend to be like a stab of recollection, as in “The Madonna of Frýdek.”
In 1903 Janáček’s life was overturned by the grief of his daughter Olga dying from typhoid fever at twenty-one. The titles of the last three pieces, “Unutterable Anguish,” “In Tears,” and “The Barn Owl Has not Flown Away!” are connected with this tragedy but in a way, musically, that can be unexpected. “Unutterable Anguish” is constructed out of terse, staccato mottoes reminiscent of birds. “In Tears” is more conventional, but what starts out as a sad, bereft melody becomes more inward and private, while the baleful cry of the barn owl (sýček) in the last piece of Book I is close to being a Debussy Prelude in its free-form impressionism alternating with an insistent tolling melody. All three pieces feel like condensed masterpieces, and Tanaka interprets them with sensitive understanding.
Book II consists of five pieces that conform to the same template of simple melodies and dances that deepen in mood, often seeming to imitate the rise and fall of speech. (Janáček once commented, “When anyone speaks to me, I listen more to the tonal modulations in his voice than to what he is actually saying.”) Book II waited until 1942 to be published and has no poetic titles. One can assume, however, that the pieces are also autobiographical, based on personal experiences. To me, they expand more quickly into fantasy, more advanced technical challenges, and strong outbursts of feeling than most of Book I. As before, Tanaka’s readings are very convincing in the way she captures every aspect of superb music that deserves to be known by every lover of Romantic piano works.
In a far-removed world Bach composed the keyboard Partita No. 6 in E Minor from 1731. Since the seven-movement suite was originally intended for harpsichord, pianists must decide how much of the character of a modern concert grand to impart. I’m pleased that Tanaka employs a full, warm tone, the rise and fall of dynamic shading, and discreet rubato in a reading that purists will find too Romantic, perhaps, but which conveys the wonderful range of imagination in a piece like the opening Toccata. Strictly speaking Bach took his cue from dances, but his invention is so prodigious that I hear this as music to be personally interpreted, which is what Tanaka does with assurance and direct communication of emotion. She never minces in her phrasing, never turns fugal passages the least bit mechanical. (This music was the first to be published by Bach himself and contains two numbers from previous works, the Corrente for solo harpsichord, the Tempo di Gavotta as a violin-harpsichord duo.)
The Sarabande seemed to inspire Bach to be inward, reflective, and improvisatory, giving the impression that we are eavesdropping as he composes. Tanaka perfectly balances this sense of spontaneity with a steady rhythmic pulse. She points the rhythms of the Gavotte and Gigue incisively and imparts to both a lively, vivacious air. Yet what most impresses me is her ability to hold the listener’s attention by developing a strong through-line based on feeling more than technique.
So, a lovely recital of disparate works that leave a strong, positive impression of Tanaka as an artist whose communication skills and sympathy for mood and atmosphere carry the day. These studio sessions date from 2010 and 2011; the recorded sound captures the full range of the piano. Music samples are available at the label’s website (concertantclassics.com) and videos on YouTube. Slimline cardboard packaging.
Huntley Dent