Sasha, still growing, still getting better every year

Geoffrey Peter Bede Hawkshaw Tozer was born to Australian parents in India on November 5, 1954. Eight years later, he composed his first opera.

When he died, at age 54, in Melbourne, former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, spoke at his memorial service for forty-five minutes. According to Keating, the loss of Tozer was the kind of loss the Germans felt after losing Dresden to British and American bombs. According to Tozer’s Wikipedia page (no citation given for this, alas), he knew music so well that he was able to imitate the styles of Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner, Bartók, Piazzolla, Cage, Satie, Gershwin, Brahms and others, a trick he often performed as an encore at one of his concerts.

Until yesterday, I had never heard of Geoffrey Tozer. Yesterday, I listened to him all day long. Have a look at the technical proficiency (and the sang-froid) of a performance of his of Liszt in 2009.

Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was born on Christmas Eve in 1879, in Moscow. Until yesterday, I had never heard of him either. He is a prolific composer and Wikipedia (again, without a citation!) tells us he is now, twenty-five years after his death, gradually becoming recognized as one of Russia’s greatest composers. No small praise, that, given the status of Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and so many many others.

But to love Rachmaninoff is not necessarily to love Medtner. Geoffrey Tozer, known for calling attention to Medtner by playing nearly all of his nearly impossible-to-play piano pieces (some say “and nearly impossible to listen to,” as well, evidently did, and I suspect, if you don’t know him, you’ll agree with me that he’s an acquired taste. Where Rachmaninoff (his second Piano Concerto, for example) writes for the heart, Medtner writes for the intellect.

Rather than talk about this notion, have a listen to Tozer playing Medtner, and I think you’ll see what I mean. Here’s a score of Medtner’s Sonata Minacciosa for you to follow, if you like doing that sort of thing (I love it, and it’s all I can do to keep up). “Minacciosa” is Italian for “menacing.” When’s the last time you heard of a “menacing” piece of poetry or other work of art?  Like I said - for the intellect, not the heart. 

Hope you can get through the whole thing. It’s almost eighteen minutes long, but it’s an amazing experience - at least I found it so. And physically exhausting.

If you’re not into getting tired, you can skip ahead to the reason I got into Tozer and Medtner in the first place. Alexander Malofeev, whom I have watched grow as an artist and as an extremely appealing human being, has recorded what I think is one of Medtner’s easiest-to-relate-to pieces, the Sonata Reminiscenza in A minor. Harsh, even angry in places, and demanding. But not threatening. Passionate. Consuming.

And, unlike Tozer, whose face seems to show little emotion, Alex - Sasha - Sashenka - love how affectionate the Russians can get with their nicknames - lets you see what he’s going through as he plays, emotions shifting from moment to moment. Sometimes you get the impression he’s in a bubble, playing just for himself, waking up when he’s done, but recognizing that he can always count on an adoring audience.

And a word about the audience here. Russian audiences are quite sophisticated. They can mess up. Some jerk forgot to silence their phone, which goes off at about minute 4 - and Alex is distracted momentarily, thus putting the lie to my assumption he is unaware of his audience. And I have heard performances where people applauded between movements, a breach of concert etiquette. But here, at this performance, watch how they sit and wait for Alex to come out of his trance at the end of the piece. Only when he relaxes his muscles do they know the piece is over. They give him that last moment of being completely carried away by what he’s playing.

Love the Russians. Just love’em.

Photo of Alexander Malofeev, from a source unrelated to the above text: credit