ERNÖ DOHNÁNYI : The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol. 4 (Martin Roscoe) (2018) FLAC (tracks), lossless

British pianist Martin Roscoe's survey of Ernö Dohnányi's solo piano music has ranged from worthwhile to revelatory and has helped to place the composer firmly among those unfairly neglected by the modernist nomenklatura. This final installment consists of a variety of pieces held together, in the words of annotator and Dohnányi specialist James A. Grymes, by the idea of demonstrating "Dohnányi's lifelong efforts to solidify his place in the great lineage of composer-pianists by writing in genres in which his predecessors excelled...." Thus you get etudes, character pieces, a passacaglia, and other experiments in Baroque dance forms. There aren't quite the unknown masterpieces here that there are on some of the other albums, but those whose interest has been piqued will enjoy the album. The Six Pieces, Op. 41, were written after the end of World War II in a small town in Austria where Dohnányi had taken refuge; sample Cloches, which deploys the sound of church bells to represent the composer's feelings upon learning that his son had died in a Russian prison camp. The Six Concert Études are in the Chopin tradition but are full of the harmonic surprises and angular rhythms that are characteristic of Dohnányi's style: he never goes quite in the directions that Bartók went, but he is unmistakably Hungarian. The Passacaglia in E flat minor of 1899 derives from the finale of the Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98; it was partially improvised by Dohnányi at its premiere, and Roscoe's performance gives an idea of what must have been the composer's considerable charisma at the keyboard. The Suite in the Olden Style of 1913, a time when the neoclassic movement was just gathering steam, is paradoxically perhaps the most "progressive" piece on the album. Beautifully recorded, and recommended for anyone interested in Hungarian music. by James Manheim