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Liszt: Schubert Songs
This is different from similar recitals. Schoenhals has chosen to record all 14 of Liszt’s Schwanengesang transcriptions along with six songs from Die Schöne Müllerin. The pianist has been praised already by this reviewer for his performance of Bartók’s For Children and continues to display a perfect marriage between intellect and musicality. Musicality in this case means a willingness to interpret rather than attempting to play everything exactly as it appears on the printed page.
The first selection, “Das Wandern,” for example, is very free with rubato and ritardando. While this can spell disaster in the hands of a lesser artist, Schoenhals manages to bring it off. The other songs are handled in a similar manner, and many are quite thrilling in their display of virtuosity.
Seek this one out and find one of the greatest releases of the year. Now if someone would only help me to close my jaw, hung open by the second track. Only then can I return to mundane existence.
American Record Guide
In his recording of twenty Liszt transcriptions of Schubert songs, Schoenhals cultivates a beautiful, well-placed tone that is always easy on the ear. His sense of flow in the interpretation of these pieces enhances the idea of narratives without words that Liszt aimed to achieve. (Liszt's sensitivity to the original Schubert songs was such that he insisted the words be printed above the score, and once took a publisher to task for failing to do so.) Schoenhals follows Liszt's “melody in the thumbs” technique, allowing the fingers to roam freely and create a feeling of spaciousness in these tiny masterpieces, which amount to self-contained stories in tone.
Some of Schubert's best-known songs are among these transcriptions, including six Wilhelm Müller songs and all fourteen from Schwanengesang (Swan Song). Schoenhals is sensitive to the varying moods and the emotional density of all these pieces, which include cheerful songs such as “Das Wandern” (The Wanderer) and “Abschied” (Departure) as well as songs of love and longing like “Ihr Bild” (Her Picture) and “Frühlingssehnsucht” (Longing for Spring). They also include songs of painful reflection (“Der Stadt,” [The City]) and dire foreboding (“Kriegers Ahnung” [The Soldier's Premonition]). In pieces such as “Ständchen” (Serenade), perhaps Schuber'ts best-loved song, he is at pains to select the most lyrical and most intimate of several available versions. Most of all, Schoenhals helps us realize that the transcription of a familiar lyric can be a wonderful musical experience in its own right.
Classik Reviews
Joel Schoenhals pours forth a cornucopia of Liszt-winged Schubertian melody with an engaging ardor just where Leslie Howard’s traversal of this fare (Müllerlieder, Schwanengesang, Hyperion CDA 66954/6, Fanfare 19:1, Schwanengesang alternative versions, Hyperion CDA 66957/9, Fanfare 19:2) begins to sag under the documentary weight of dutifully including every variant with a workmanlike punctilio in which, as Peter J. Rabinowitz noted, “even the ‘Ständchen’ from Schwanengesang—an almost guaranteed success—begins to droop.” Schubert-Liszt collections are not lacking, though they rarely give us complete cycles, as Schoenhals has, while Howard’s looms with the putative authority of his invaluable annotations, completeness, and prestige as the inevitable comparison.
And by comparison, Howard is muted where Schoenhals is mercurial, mournful where Schoenhals is passionate, plodding where he is impetuous, dull where he’s radiant, and so on. Howard’s passage work may be occasionally more deft—or blasé—but Schoenhals awakens Schubert’s exuberance, lifts it from piercing melancholy to ecstatic flights, and touches the throbbing heart of Liszt’s recreations in a way that persuades us the piano is indeed a viable, if not preeminent, medium for so much vocally conceived music. As Rabinowitz slyly noted, “It may be a heresy to suggest that the Schubert-Liszt songs are superior to the Schubert originals—but it’s a heresy that I suspect is widely shared, if not widely confessed.” No need to confess, but there’s abundant pleasure to be found here. Fleur de Son’s immediate, detailed, glowing sound—in marked contrast to Hyperion’s veiled capture for Howard—lends a fillip to general éclat. Enthusiastically recommended.
Fanfare
Béla Bartók: For Children
It would be difficult to imagine a better rendition of Béla Bartók's well-known suites “For Children,” Parts I and II, than this beguiling recording by pianist Joel Schoenhals, a member of the music faculty at Eastern Michigan University. Inspired by the Hungarian composer's field trips to collect folk songs in rural Hungary and Slovakia in 1906, the 85
brief pieces embody the gypsy-like spirit, both melancholy and unquenchable, of the Eastern European peasantry and, particularly, of their offspring at work and at play.
Schoenhals fits his mood and technique to the demands of the little works, which are often singsong in nature, lullaby-like or powerfully dance-like. Though essentially simple in composition and intention, these pieces radiate purity and luminosity made all the more evident by the performer's understanding of and devotion to the material. The gaiety, the sadness sometimes feel unutterable.
I listened to this album over and over with increasing pleasure.
Memphis Commerical Appeal
Stravinsky: Petrouchka and Le Sacre
Although both these works exist in the composer’s own one-piano, four-hand arrangements, they are performed here using two pianos. The pianists justify this as enabling them to achieve more sonorities and pedaling possibilities. The results are most impressive and attest to the musicianship and technical skills of these artists.
Schoenhals has been very favorably reviewed before in these pages (Mar/Apr 2004, Sept/Oct 2005), and Boyd, Professor of Piano at University of Toledo, contributes his own splendid credentials to these performances. The colorful drawing, “Stravinsky rehearsing The Rite of Spring” by Jean Cocteau, is emblazoned with a kaleidoscope of colors that reflect the sound and spirit of the playing. Neither of these pianists makes an effort to push their tonal palate beyond the possibilities of the piano, and neither are they bangers, intent on pounding you into submissions. By all means, get the orchestral versions first, but save your money for these revealingly effective two-piano editions as well.
American Record Guide
A new C.D., Igor Strainvksy, features pianists Joel Schoenhals and Michael Boyd performing Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring, two of the composer’s most familiar works, which he arranged for one piano, four hands. Schoenhals and Boyd play their parts on separate pianos, which enable them to explore the qualities of each instrument, include more pedaling, and perform with greater sonority. The duo also adds touches of color to Petrouchka with triangle and tambourine.
Both pianists earned doctorate degrees at the Eastman School of Music and are now professors of piano at Eastern Michigan University and Toledo Universities, respectively. Their performances emphasize rhythmic grace, a welcome quality because both works were written for ballet, as well as color and clarity.
While there is an academic tendency to dismiss piano transcriptions, these pieces should not be because of the simple reason they were written by Stravinsky himself. Furthermore, it is possible in well-written and well-played transcriptions, as these are, to hear interesting clarificationsof the score that may emerge. While Stravinsky’s orchestral textures are at times thick, the four-hand arrangements provide listeners with details and nuances usually not present in a symphonic performance.
Schoenhals and Boyd negotiate these complex scores beautifully, creating rhythmic drive and excitement without becoming bombastic or over pedaled. This duo reminds us that these popular scores are filled with charm, color, and imagination (Fleur de Son #57976) -Jeffrey Wagner
Clavier
