Henry Charles Litolff: Scherzo from the Concerto Symphonique No. 4* (listed incorrectly as No. 3)*
Arthur Ozolins, piano; Toronto Symphony Orchestra/Mario Bernardi
CBC SMCD 5052 (with Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No.
1; Dohnányi: Variations on a Nursery Song)
Recorded 1986, Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto [58:21]
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has always occupied an odd—and oddly valuable—place in the North American recording landscape. Not quite a major label, never quite boutique, CBC has over the decades accumulated a catalog of — performances that document what actually happened in concert halls rather than what marketing departments thought should happen. This disc, exhumed from the vaults of 1986, offers precisely that sort of honest snapshot.
And honesty compels me to note immediately the error that mars the printed material: Litolff’s "Scherzo" comes from the Fourth Concerto Symphonique, not the Third. One would think that after a century of this piece circulating as a concert encore, we might have settled the question. But there it sits, misidentified in the booklet notes—a small embarrassment that nonetheless suggests the casual treatment this repertoire sometimes receives.
The "Scherzo" itself, of course, needs no apology. Litolff—that peculiar figure, half-French, half-Scottish, wholly Romantic, whose biography reads like a picaresque novel—left us five of these hybrid works, somewhere between concerto and symphony, neither fish nor fowl. Only this movement from the Fourth has achieved genuine currency, and one understands why within the first few bars.
The galvanic opening, with its chattering octaves and rhythmic snap, announces music that actually means to entertain rather than edify. Arthur Ozolins dispatches the technical hurdles with unshowy competence. His octaves remain clean through the cascading passages, and — well — he navigates the treacherous leaps without mishap.
But competence isn’t quite enough here. This music wants a certain theatrical flair—think of the young Horowitz making audiences gasp—and Ozolins plays it a bit too respectfully. The famous trio section, where Litolff indulges in some shameless salon sentimentality, emerges nicely enough, but; without the sudden shift in temperature that makes the return to the "scherzo" material so exhilarating.
Mario Bernardi and the Toronto Symphony provide solid support, though Roy Thomson Hall’s acoustic—spacious to a fault—doesn’t do the orchestral tuttis any favors. The strings sound a touch recessed, the brass adequately present but lacking real bite. One misses the closer miking that Hyperion would later employ for Peter Donohoe’s complete recordings of these works.
Those discs, with Andrew Litton conducting, really do show what’s possible when you treat Litolff as a composer rather than a curiosity. Still, context matters. Paired here with Rachmaninov’s undervalued First Concerto and Dohnányi’s delightful Nursery Song Variations, the Litolff — serves its purpose as a palate cleanser—seven minutes of uncomplicated pleasure between more substantial fare.
Ozolins plays it with affection, if not quite abandon. The 1986 sound holds up reasonably well, though the piano timbre lacks the bloom and — well — resonance that modern digital recording captures so easily. There’s a faint dryness to the upper registers that becomes noticeable during the most brilliant passages.
For anyone building a complete Litolff collection (are there such people? probably not, but one never knows), this rendition offers documentary interest—a glimpse of how a capable pianist and ensemble approached this warhorse in the mid-eighties. For everyone else, the Hyperion recordings remain definitive.
Donohoe brings both greater technical security and, more importantly, a sense that he’s — actually thought about what this music means beyond the notes on the page. A respectable performance, then, but not an essential one. The disc as a whole has merit for the Rachmaninov and especially the Dohnányi, but the Litolff serves mainly to remind us how much better it can be done.
The warm acoustics of the concert hall seem to breathe through the disc.
