Oleg Marshev - Emil von Sauer: Piano Sonata No.1 & Other Piano Works (2000)

Oleg Marshev’s well-recorded, stylish playing brings out the best in Sauer’s picture-postcard miniatures.
Emil von Sauer (1862-1942) was a Liszt pupil who achieved an enduring celebrity status as a pianist. Alas, with few exceptions, his compositions are mostly undistinguished, apt to chatter on long after they have run their course. At the same time one is grateful to Oleg Marshev’s stylish and eloquent advocacy, though even he cannot make you believe that the sonatas’ derivative material deserves such a strenuous workout.
Miniatures were better suited to Sauer’s slender gifts, and lovers of a gentle picture-postcard charm will delight in Propos de bal, with its Spanish salon flavour, and in the Konzert-Polka, where Marshev whirls his partner across the floor, so to speak, like a professional ballroom dancer. Approche du printemps is charming, with its final flurry of spring blossom, and so is the Valse impromptu, with its perhaps too obvious memory of Liszt’s waltz of the same name. Then there are the Courante et Trio and Gavotte et Musette, pleasant examples of pastiche, while the elegantly tripping Serenade francaise and luxuriant Barcarolle are, arguably, more adventurous.
But if the musical demands are slight, the technical know-how required is considerable, and Oleg Marshev, a pianist with a rapidly expanding discography (he has recorded such substantial fare as the complete Prokofiev piano music) is as persuasive as humanly possible. He is excellently recorded and, although one is grateful for such an unusual offering, I would now like to hear him again in music more worthy of his outstanding gifts. -- Bryce Morrison