Tedd Joselson, piano; Arthur Fagen, conductor; Royal Philharmonic (Grieg); Philharmonia Orchestra (Rachmaninoff)
GRIEG: Piano Concerto
RACHMANINOFF: Piano Concerto No. 2
Recorded: November 25 and 26, 2019
Duration: 65:34
Label: Signum 675
Released: September 2021
Gil French | 4 OCT 2021
Pianist Tedd Joselson, who was born October 4, 1954, won the only competition he ever entered at 17, debuted with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1974, and had an exclusive contract with RCA two years later. In 1999 he retired from the concert stage and has lived in Singapore ever since, where he instructs aspiring pianists. He has recorded a few albums since then, the last in 2016.
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His tone is very pastel. He has almost no capacity for dramatic tension. And it sounds like his dexterity now moves at a slower pace.
Of the two concertos here, the Grieg is the one that fits his temperament. In the first movement, after Arthur Fagen’s prosaic introduction, Joselson sets the brighter pace. His degree of expression and musicality inspire the conductor, who becomes his hand-in-glove partner. Both piano and orchestra are nicely nuanced. However, this is not thunderous, knock-your-eye-out pianism but tender, gracious playing enhanced by harmonic and instrumental details that I’ve not paid attention to until now.
Fagen doesn’t wring any emotional depth from the Royal Philharmonic in the introduction to the second movement, but he is at his best with Joselson, who uses the pedal to make his notes ring. Together they know how to let the movement languish poignantly.
Arthur Fagen
In the final movement, the chickens come home to roost. Joselson is in his element in the tender, lyrical moments (Fagen is not as atmospheric), but the pianist no longer has the aggressive, quickened style evident in his 1974 recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Ormandy. He can’t get beyond his basic muted tone colors and rise to the largesse of Grieg’s finale.
Neither Joselson nor Fagen succeeds in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a work that’s difficult to articulate. The piano has either lengthy runs of arpeggios in one hand or duple rhythm in one hand and triplets in the other. In the “twos against threes,” Joselson doesn’t have the gift of projecting two opposites at once, let alone making them effective. His arpeggios are mostly blurred smudges that have no coloristic or rhythmic effect. His timbre is far too pale for this concerto’s drama. And he breaks the rhythmic flow of lines with rubatos and little retards throughout the concerto.
Fagen has much less luck with the Philharmonia Orchestra. It lags behind the piano as the first movement’s development section begins. Details are smudged, important woodwinds are frequently buried under the rest of the orchestra, and the trumpets enter late on the big downbeat that starts the final coda. In brief, the orchestra sounds sloppy too much of the time. Perhaps rehearsal or recording time was cut short, but all that counts is the final product. Also, both recordings were made a day apart at Abbey Road Studios, but the sound for the Philharmonia Orchestra in the Rachmaninoff has a muffled quality as if the overtones are deadened. ■
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