Resuming his ongoing Medtner cycle for Chandos with Volume 8, Geoffrey Tozer for the most part upholds his standing as one of the composer’s more assured and musically insightful advocates. This is particularly so regarding the Romantic Sketches for the Young Op. 54. Only the music’s subtext is aimed toward a youthful sensibility, for the technical demands require mature fingers at the very least! I believe Tozer is the first to have recorded this cycle intact, and his sensitive, gorgeously nuanced phrasing fuses sophistication and simplicity. To cite several instances, Tozer’s articulation of the E minor Scherzo’s cross-rhythms and offbeat accents creates a multi-layered soundscape that picks up where Boris Berezovsky’s blunter Teldec recording leaves off. Tozer intensifies the Organ Grinder’s ragtime-ish, undulating line with sharper dynamic contrasts and tempo fluctuations than in his earlier recording (included on Chandos 9050). Tozer’s colorful pointing of Bird’s Tale’s repeated notes and wispy flourishes also delight the ear.
The deceptively-titled Second Improvisation is an ambitious, harmonically complex variation set whose sections depict birds, elves, gnomes, a wood sprite, and sundry water images. The softer variations elicit marvelous delicacy from Tozer’s fingers, while the thicker, busier textures bear the kind of slashing astringency you might associate with Horowitz’s Rachmaninov. It’s a different and equally valid alternative to the more rounded and relaxed Earl Wild (Chesky) and Hamish Milne (CRD) recordings (I’ve not yet heard Vladimir Tropp’s performance on a hard-to-find Denon CD).
Several selections find Tozer falling short of his discographical colleagues. Next to Marc-André Hamelin’s suave and fluid pair of Op. 8 Fairy Tales (Hyperion), Tozer’s treatment of the second piece’s syncopated motto rhythm is choppy and wooden. Furthermore, Tozer’s overly literal and static rendition of Op. 7’s second Arabesque can’t hold a candle to the fleetness and flexibility of Medtner’s own pianism in a 1947 recording (Testament). Yet these reservations do not detract from Tozer’s formidable virtues elsewhere, and serious Medtner acolytes certainly will want to add this disc to their collections, complete with Tozer’s enthusiastic, excellently written booklet notes.
