Review by Simon Jenner, February 5th 2025
John Bruzon’s pianism has long been an open secret of the south east.
He begins classically with the baroque with three Scarlatti Sonatas, in the tradition of Soviet and Russian pianists.
The first in B minor K87 is surprisingly for an opening trio of Scarlatti, one of his most inward. The baroque key of B minor is often that of a tombeau if you’re French, a memorial, or indeed German. Bruzon’s leading voices cross over each other gently: it may convey strong feelings but these are somehow decorous, restrained. It’s the same mood as Mozart’s plaintive Adagio in B minor K540, nursing a private grief.
It leads not to a contrast but in one sense more of the same: to the plaintive shades of the F minor K466 renowned for its sharp tenebrous Spanish shadows. Sadness here is more assertive. The German baroque composer Froberger used this key for grieving too. There’s a melancholy that never yields quite what it’s minor is about, in winding arabesques. Finally the cascading C major of K159 emerging in Brighton corusacates its way through carnival, like a miniature call to trumpets; crisp and articulate fire. Bruzon handles its dotted rhythms like small struts in a promenade.
Photo Credit Luca Luciano
Mozart’s Fantasie in D minor K397 is a powerful and still slightly underplayed piece compared to similar works (K511 and 540). This is because it seems initially unfinished. A D major conclusion has long been appended and it’s used here.
It moves from tragic D minor the key of Piano Concerto No 20 K466 and Don Juan. So the bushy-tailed finale can just jar in some hands: but overall does seem a satisfying resolution, rather than the circular melancholy of those other two solo works. Bruzon as ever moves seamlessly between minor and major.
A bleeding chunk is unusual. Beethoven’s relatively early Op 26 A flat major Piano Sonata No. 12 dates from around 1800-1801 and soon to include the two Op 27 including the Moonlight and Op 28 ‘Pastoral’. Nicknames often help a piece. The Op 26. This opening movement, an Andante con variazioni is a glowing and for Beethoven almost easeful set of variations.
That is till we hit the minor and something of the two sets of variations that followed (one in C minor unaccountably never given an opus number, but in fact the best) are all foreshadowed briefly here. No surprise though. Who’d predict the third movement is a memorial to a fallen hero. A Marcia Funebre in A flat minor? Bruzon takes the tranquility of the major at face value, but shades in the portents. Indeed he articulates a crisp answer to Beethoven’s craggy and sly questions. His pianism enjoys a truth but also warm communication that never draws attention to itself.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Two of Frederico Mompou’s miniatures follow.
El Secreto from Impresiones intimas, is early (1911-1914, when Mompou was 20, and revised in 1959) amorous and clandestine. Its main theme is one of Mompou’s most striking. Against Debussyian harmonies (he like other Spanish composers was much influenced by France) it sets out love that strikes almost a lament. Bruzon references Satie’s first Gymnopedie as a work it echoes. His playing on both here is exquisite, the highlight.
Indeed lament suffuses Pajrro Triste also from Impresiones intimas. It might seem in its title the reverse of love’s coinage. But the two can hardly be told apart. What is unique here is the discreet modernism if chiming chords and a ritual almost one of grieving.
Three Chopin Waltzes conclude. The late B minor Op 69/2 is suffused with a kind of joy recollected with a hint of impending death, indeed Op 69 was published posthumous in 1855 six years after Chopin died. But it was written in 1829! It’s the melancholy of a late teenager – of genius! Bruzon mentions Victor Borge the musical comedian who could both guy a piece and play it brilliantly. But this is a B major-keyed consolation with rippling arpeggios and insouciant languor vigorously conveyed.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Op 64/2 in C sharp minor, written in 1847 is one of Chopin’s very last works is shadowed too: but now in earnest, under the shadow of tuberculosis. It’s very slightly riffed with a delicate portent in the B section but really the amorousness takes over, with the glissandi a small erotic thrill towards the end.
Finally the posthumous opus Waltz in E minor hovers over teen mortality and dates from the same period – around 1829 – as Op 64/2, before Chopin left Poland. This refuses the consolations of the two previous waltzes. The central B section with its soft cascades tell it all, even when reversing to the top of the keyboard. Bruzon again is crystalline, as he was in the Mompou.
Then another unprogrammed Waltz! Like a built-in encore kicks in straight after. This turbulent work is hardly a Waltz at all, so emphatic isn’t it. Only in the calmer yet still brisk B middle section is order perilously restored. But was it ever there? One for Anna Karenina. Magnificent stormy playing from Bruzon here recalling the Ballade No 1 in G minor Op 23.
A Bach Prelude in B minor (from the WF Bach book of 12 Little Preludes) arranged by the Russian pianist Siloti restores amends to the interpreted world with a neat inversion. Like a balm though in B minor, that remote baroque key again, this passes in its late 19th century gloss, a kind of prayer. Its middle section rises to a plea for that consolation, which comes sadly enough. Bruzon’s and Siloti’s is a romantic reading of a work foreshadowing the ‘sentimental’ world of Bach’s great son C.P.E. Bach. It seems too to foreshadow the fate of Janus-faced W.F. Bach himself: eldest son always in his father’s shadow. A greatly gifted improvisor and who unlike C.P.E. Bach, let alone his father, never realised his gifts.
A superb performance, and recital.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Photo Credit Simon Jenner