ROSEMARY TUCK & RICHARD BONYNGE
William Vincent Wallace, Celtic Fantasies (Naxos)
This piano CD qualifies as a classical-music ode to St. Patrick’s Day (with several nods to St. Andrew), a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Irish composer William Vincent Wallace (on March 11) — and a guilty pleasure.
From the opening notes of “The Yellow Hair’d Laddie,” Australian pianist Rosemary Tuck sounds like she’s having the time of her life rollicking through 20 of Wallace’s four-dozen Celtic Fantasies, written between 1848 and the composer’s death in 1865.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
The demand for sheet music exploded in the mid-19th century, as the piano became the must-have home-entertainment unit for any respectable family. Wallace, a piano and violin showman and a pioneer musical globetrotter (sometimes to earn money, sometimes to run away from debts), could improvise on a tune as well as Franz Liszt. He parlayed his flair on the concert stage into a steady supply of popularly-tuned music with which the talented amateur pianist could show off his or her chops.
The Fantasies collected here are decorated with every conceivable bit of pianistic filigree imaginable, from long, cascading runs to avalanches of arpeggios and marches of chords — but the underlying folksongs are so charming, so effortlessly rendered by Tuck, that, rather than inducing sugar shock, they are rays of sunshine on a fine, spring day.
You can even forgive Wallace for blatantly pilfering the styles of others. There’s even a blatant riff on Frédéric Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude in the opening to a Fantasy on “The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls” and “Fly Not Yet.”
Fellow Australian, retired opera conductor Richard Bonynge (who turns 82 this year), takes over the piano from Tuck on one track, for a nice rendering of Scots favourite, “Ye Banks and Braes.”
This is not serious listening; it’s a romp, in the best possible sense. My one objection is the overly reverberant acoustic at Forde Abbey, in Somerset, where this disc was recorded.
For full details on the disc, click here.
For a few more details on Wallace, check out the entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here.
Here are Tuck (at the piano) and Bonynge (on the podium) for a non-Celtic creation of Wallace’s last fall (with orchestra, the music sounds pretty cheap, unfortunately):
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
