Marx: Piano Works

Australian pianist Tonya Lemoh has been the recipient of numerous international prizes and awards including first prize in the International Competition of Young Performers, Denmark 2003, and a Diplom d’Honneur at the 2002 International Grieg Piano Competition, Norway. She has been described as “a pianist of virtuosity and sensitivity” (Danish Music Journal) and Classical Music on the Web wrote of her commercial debut, “Lemoh is totally in command, and the music flows with great natural force. Very impressive.” She makes her debut on Chandos with the solo piano works of Austrian composer Joseph Marx.

Joseph Marx can be described as a ‘romantic impressionist’, and the compositions performed here clearly demonstrate this late romantic style, reminiscent of Richard Strauss, Korngold and Reger. A formidable figure in Austrian classical music, Marx influenced the development of Austrian music through his compositions, teaching and musical criticism. He enjoyed great success throughout his life, but has since been unjustly neglected in part due to the radical compositional style of his peers, Webern and Berg.

Of the works performed here, four of the pieces (Herbst-Legende, Carneval, Canzone and Die Flur der Engel) have never before been published or commercially recorded. Of the other six pieces, to date only one recording has been made, and is no longer commercially available, thus making the disc quite a rarity.

Those not familiar with this super-Romantic composer should rush out and get the new Chandos release in which Tonya Lemoh devotes an hour to this master of keyboard writing

The Pianist

Tonya Lemoh plays all the music with poetic sensitivity, and those who appreciate the rhapsodic piano works of Ireland and Bax will find much to savour here.

BBC Music Magazine

It will only take the listener the first few bars of Marx’s six-minute ‘Rhapsodie’, the opening work in Six Pieces for Piano (1916) in this new release from Chandos, to understand why it appealed so immediately to the composer’s relatively conservative audience… Tonya Lemoh’s heartfelt playing on this disc is to be warmly welcomed, for she consistently captures Marx’s instinct for high chromaticism, as well as his penchant for detail.

International Record Review

Chandos has wisely put photographs of the drop-dead gorgeous Lemoh (half-Australian and half-Sierra Leonean, and now living in Denmark) on both front and back covers; luckily she has the pianism to deliver the goods as well

International Piano

The performances of this very demanding programme by Tonya Lemoh are as powerful and eloquent as you could wish and she has been admirably recorded.

Gramophone

*****

N Lacey

*****

J Dansereau

Marx: Piano Works

Tonya Lemoh

Concert Hall, Royal Academy of Music (Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium), Aarhus, Denmark

Clemens Johansen

Clemens Johansen

Piano

JOSEPH MARX

Six Pieces for Piano (1916)

Herbst-Legende (Adagio)

Carneval (Nachtstück)

Canzone

Die Flur der Engel