Gerard Schurmann: Chamber and Instrumental Music and Songs, Volume Four
This fourth Toccata Classics album of the chamber music of Gerard Schurmann – born in the former Dutch East Indies in 1924, naturalised Briton and now a resident of Los Angeles – adds two major song-cycles (one of them written for Britten and Pears) and works for flute and piano to the mix, in a distinctly personal language derived from influences ranging from Javanese gamelan to Bartók and Britten. Schurmann’s music somehow manages to blend elegant intensity and touching lyricism, with a result balanced between strength and sensitivity.
Randall Bills, tenor; Tracks 1-7, 16-21
Maxim Rubtsov, flute
Mark Robson, piano; Tracks 1-7, 9-12, 13-21
Mikhail Korzhev, piano; Track 13
Listen To This Recording:
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Chuench’i: Song-Cycle from the Chinese (1966)*
- I New Corn
- II Plucking the Rushes
- III Shang Ya!
- IV Flowers and Moonlight on the Spring River
- V Look at that Little Bay of the Chi
- VI Self-abandonment
- VII At the End of Spring
- Moonbird for solo flute
- No. 1 Bellac
- No. 2 Grotto
- No. 3 Rivulets
- No. 4 Solitude
- Sostenuto – Allegro vivace – Lento – Variations 1-5 – Allegro vivace – Sostenuto
- No. 1 Hukvaldy
- No. 2 Brno
- No. 1 Augury
- No. 2 Ah, Sun-flower
- No. 3 I Laid Me Down Upon a Bank
- No. 4 Eternity
- No. 5 The Sick Rose
- No. 6 To the Evening Star
Moonbird for solo flute (1998)*
Four Pastoral Preludes for Piano (2012)*
Sonatina for Flute and Piano (1968)*
Two Ballads for Piano: Homage to Janáçek (1981-83)
Six Songs of William Blake (1956. rev. 1997 and 2018)
ALL EXCEPT* FIRST RECORDINGS
Classical Music Daily :
‘His deep knowledge of (especially) twentieth century classical music trends shines through his own very substantial output of ‘serious’ music. His musical argument is always compelling, and he is a contrapuntist of stature, with an astonishing range of dynamic and pacing. He is endowed with a rich, fertile imagination. He is a master of structure. His works, pretty much without exception, are of the very top rank. […]
Paul Conway’s expertly researched, lucidly expressed and very extensive sleeve notes – nine whole pages of enriching insights – offer us the whole gamut of Schurmann’s achievement: his chamber music, of which this is the fourth Toccata disc, his wider output, and his endless technical achievement. […]
Could a musical treatment of such intimate poems [in Chuench’i] be outdone? Does it actually enhance what each poem depicts? The answer is ‘yes’: he has succeeded in bringing a charm, an untainted intricacy, a delicate subtlety and fragility one cannot imagine being bettered. The whole work is a masterpiece, supplied by a master craftsman. […]
His own versing in, insight into, the music of five or perhaps six centuries is profound; his wide grasp of earlier material, and ability at back-referring or transforming it into something new, is one of the many most satisfying aspects of Schurmann’s compositions. […]
It’s in [Blake Songs] No 5: ‘O Rose thou art sick!’ that Schurmann seems to find his true self. Mesmerising, exquisitely conceived, a miniature in every sense, just as Chuench’i is a series of polished gems. This belongs in the same category, paced, the piano part restricted to the very minimum. It was bold of Schurmannn – Britten’s haunting Blake setting (‘Elegy’) had equally surfaced (Movement 4, song 3) in his Serenade written for Pears over a decade ago (1943), and might easily have been daunting to any other young composer who dared consider setting it. But Schurmann has produced something – can one say? – every bit as good. All the more fascinating as Britten, capitalising on Pears’ (later Robert Tear’s) dramatic gifts, takes four and a half minutes to garnish the two stanzas; Schurmann polishes it all off in one and a half. […]
Anyone attracted by Chuench’i or Moonbird should make straight for Toccata’s other recordings of Schurmann Chamber Music – all of which, incidentally, feature the distinctive pianist here, Mikhail Korzhev.’
—Roderic Dunnett, Classical Music Daily
BBC Music Magazine :
‘Sophisticated works from a creative and sensitive composer…the flute pieces glow, the song-cycles resonate’
—BBC Music Magazine
Fanfare :
‘Everything on this disc is music that repays repeated hearing, and the performances are unfailingly excellent. Well-balanced recorded sound with a natural perspective rounds out the picture.’
—Fanfare