Here is a major repertory hole filler: a decent cross-section of the piano music of Polish-born composer Alexandre Tansman on a single Chandos disc, featuring pianist
Margaret Fingerhut. Tansman was himself a pianist of better than fair ability and produced much keyboard music for his own use; his piano music provides a snapshot glimpse of the various stages of development that Tansman went through. Although the Recueil de Mazurkas (1915-1928) were recorded in their complete form by pianist
Diane Andersen for the Talent label back in the 1990s -- this is only Vol. 1 of the cycle, and one does not discover this until deep in the liner notes -- and the Trois Préludes en forme de Blues have also been recorded a couple of times in the digital era, the rest of the material on Chandos' Tansman: Piano Works is new to CD and some of it new to recordings altogether.
Tansman considered the Recueil de Mazurkas so fundamental to his early endeavors that he recorded some of these pieces himself for HMV in the 1920s. While they are certainly tasty -- and are early indeed, with certain pieces going back into the teens -- some show an uncertainty about how to combine modern style with the mazurka, a traditional dance that served as part of Tansman's heritage as a Pole; these are almost more clangorous than they need to be. The Sonata rustica (1924), dedicated to
Ravel, shows successful assimilation of neo-classical ideas minus absolute mastery of it. By the time of the Troisième Sonatine (1933), however, Tansman has achieved just the right balance of polish and inspiration; he has arrived. What follows is mastery indeed; the Trois Préludes en forme de Blues (1937) is so populist in nature yet extraordinarily expressive one wonders why it isn't programmed very often. In the Nocturnes (1952), dedicated to
Stravinsky, Tansman reinvents the language of
Chopin through the prism of
Stravinsky's style and produces a concise result that may contain some measure of reflection on the destruction of Europe; these are certainly very moving pieces. In the very late Album d'amis (1980), Tansman provides a set of portraits of friends and associates, and in some places here, Tansman allows himself some additional flexibility to his tonal resources, sometimes approaching atonality, but overall expressed in a manner similar to Scriabin, bringing Tansman full circle. Mixed in, however, are the languorous blues and clattering mazurkas that characterized different parts of Tansman's long journey.
With pieces like the Trois Préludes en forme de Blues one cannot imagine how any pianist cannot be captured by their charms, but conversely pianist
Margaret Fingerhut is not in love with this music. She concentrates on technically solid performances, and in situations like the Rondo (perpetuum mobile) from the Troisième Sonatine, this approach is not only impressive, it's dazzling. However, one would like a little more emotional investment in this music, and for the most part
Fingerhut isn't willing to go there. Nevertheless, pianists aren't falling over each other to record Tansman, and this gets the music out there in performances that are both serviceable and accurate. The sound, while quiet, is rich and present.