The main attraction is proclaimed on the cover of this 2025 release on the
Danacord
label; the pianist,
Daniel Grimwood
, plays on an 1856 Erard piano. The instrument was made in London, is now owned by the University of York, and has been recently restored, but there is more to it than that.
Grimwood
offers an essentially personal interpretation of
Schumann
's
Carnaval, Op. 9
,
Liszt
Piano Sonata in B minor
, and a few other works by
Robert Schumann
and
Clara Wieck
(the latter is less common but works well here).
serves as his own producer and sound engineer, working in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall at the University of York; this venue, with about 350 seats, is ideal, and the inner contrapuntal lines in the
(sample the famed "Eusebius" and "Florestan" pair) are effectively brought out, and it gets only more unusual from there. The piano is not tuned to equal temperament, adding spice to its ascent into the higher ranges.
, like a few other pianists, adds some improvised preludes and interludes, and, he writes, he has listened to recordings from the early 20th century, some of them piano rolls, and "[t]his has involved re-setting my defaults to some extent on matters of asynchronicity, arpeggiation, and pedaling." This re-setting is most apparent in the
sonata, where one hears arpeggiated chords, split octaves, and the like, not notated in the text.
is a researcher who has delved into performance practices of the middle 19th century, and his contributions here should certainly be taken seriously. However, it might have been nice to hear more about these decisions, especially in view of the fact that there are pianists around today whose line of tuition goes back to
and who do not play this way. In general, the booklet is slender, considering the surprises contained in the material, but the album nevertheless offers nothing less than a new way of hearing some
classics. ~ James Manheim