plus transcriptions of works by Wagner, Svendsen, Hubay, Schubert
Martin Rummel (violincello), Mari Kato (piano)
Paladino Music PMR0128
139:01 mins (2 discs)
The music and artistry of Bohemian cellist and composer David Popper (1843-1913) appeared so often in late- 19th-century concerts that Bernard Shaw once referred to him as the ‘inevitable Popper’. Musical fashions changed; his fame faded. If resurrection now occurs, it will be largely due to the gifted Austrian cellist Martin Rummel, who has already filled five discs with Popper’s music and who now offers two more, devoted to transcriptions of pieces ranging from a Purcell air to a large-scale Concertstück by Popper’s Hungarian contemporary Jenő Hubay. Popper even transcribed Wagner, though only in miniature form – a piano Romanze, not Tristan und Isolde.
The central exhibit is Perles Musicales, a collection of 28 short pieces issued by the publishing firm Johann André, all used in Popper’s recitals and transcribed from Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and others in a permanently Romantic style that persists even when the composer is Handel. The singing throb of Popper’s manner supplies a distinctively period feature, but the manner is plied with elegant skill and sensitivity, and splendidly matched with Rummel’s own powers of musical persuasion.
The piano accompanist Mari Kato trots neatly alongside, though by design it is always the cello solo line that counts.
Composer omissions, as Rummel notes, are interesting: there is no Beethoven, or Brahms, or Mozart. But the listener has no time to lament when Popper and Rummel present such varied delights, from a graceful piece of nothing by the forgotten Adolf Jensen, through lovely morsels of Schubert and Schumann, to Chopin and Anton Rubinstein warhorses garnished with new twiddly bits. Popper might not be inevitable anymore, but his output is solidly crafted, fascinating and fun.