Breaking down each CD in Kirsten Johnson’s 3-disc Arthur Foote: Complete Piano Music recording (Click here for Disc One):
CD 2 begins with firm evidence of Foote the piano pedagogue: his Nine Studies, Op. 27 – while they may lack the consistent flashes of genius found in Chopin’s 27 Etudes – still demonstrate the composer’s concern for making technical keyboard exercises palatable to players. I won’t dwell on the individual pieces; suffice it to say that they encompass many of the knuckle-busting problems of technique that any budding would-be pianist (as I once was) has had to struggle with: they include exercises in thirds (and other intervals), runs of all kinds, arpeggios, trills, octaves, etc. You will no doubt agree with me that there are some small gems among these. We hear further hints of Foote the teacher later in the CD, in his Three Pieces for the Left Hand, Op. 37. The first of them is a daunting ‘Prelude-etude,’ followed by a subdued ‘Polka’ (actually a parody of one) and a lovely ‘Romanze’ in a Brahms-like style. Master these for a rock-solid left hand!
Both of the two remaining cycles on CD2 may well strike the listener as being among his finest piano creations. The Five Bagatelles, Op. 34 are especially delightful miniatures. The first two, ‘Pierrot’ and ‘Pierette,’ convey the sense of innocent whimsy associated with this pair of beloved Commedia dell’arte characters. The third is the lovely and delicate ‘Without Haste, Without Rest’ – a technical tour-de-force (subtitled ‘Etude Mignonne’). The cycle comes to a pleasant close with a celestial-sounding ‘Idyll’ and a waltz of particular charm.
The Five Poems after Omar Khayyam, Op. 41, are probably Foote’s best-known piano works – at least judging from the fact that they have been recorded several times. These are all semi-programmatic “songs without words” of sorts: selected individual stanzas of Khayyam’s poetry are printed at the bottom of each number’s score. I was particularly taken with the stirring martial pomp and drama of No. 3, ‘Think, in this Battered Caravanserai’ – as well as the sweetly pastoral romance of No. 4: the famous ‘A Book of Verses, Underneath the Bough.’
Three more tracks bring CD2 to its close. The Two Pieces, Op. 42 offer a sprightly ‘Scherzino’ and the very beautiful ‘Etude Arabesque’ – both are quite challenging technically, and they sound as if they may well have been used as Salon pieces. The final ‘Little Etude in A Minor’ entails a legato right hand over a staccato lefthand accompaniment.
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