Hans Gál Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22, K. 482

Album review

The Austrian Jewish composer Hans Gál fled Vienna in 1938 for England and then Scotland, then learned that both his aunt and his sister had committed suicide to avoid being sent to Auschwitz. He himself spent time in a British internment camp for enemy aliens. Through these events he maintained a consistent personal style that tended toward optimism, and his Piano Concerto, Op. 57, recorded here for the first time, is a fine example. It is Mozartian without being neoclassic, putting essentially Romantic melodies together in clean, distinct units and adding a bit of chromatic harmony. It's as if Carl Maria von Weber had written his piano music at the beginning of the 20th century instead of the beginning of the 19th. Sample the last movement (track 3), where a very Mozartian mixture of high spirits and melancholy reigns. The Royal Northern Sinfonia under Kenneth Woods and pianist Sarah Beth Briggs are quietly sensitive in the complex ensemble work. The Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat major, K. 482, fills out the program in an unusually satisfying way, and Avie gets exactly the right lucid sound, working in Sage Gateshead's Hall One in North East England. Marvelous music by a composer who is benefiting from a well-deserved revival.

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