Review

Svend Erik Tarp: Piano Works

David Denton

Svend Erik Tarp avoided going down that road of atonality being offered by the Second Viennese School, and chose to compose music that would please the ear. Born 1908, he began his studies in his homeland before enhancing them in Germany, Austria and Holland. It was a cosmopolitan backdrop heard in his music that embraced so many genres. Maybe his work as a teacher, musical administrator, and advisor to the Danish radio, rather deflected attention from his music, yet he was still active late in life, completing his tenth symphony when he was eighty-four. His output for piano was sizeable, and in later years showed influences of Bartók and Prokofiev, the whole disc of such a pleasing and immediately attractive experience. Only briefly do we hear music with an aggressive impact in the opening outburst of the short three-movement Sonata, but we soon move back to a musical comfort zone in the second movement. By contrast the four-movement Suite has an element of salon music, while the Three Sonatinas are each created from little cameos. The performer, Tonya Lemoh, was born in Australia, but later moved to study in Europe and the USA, eventually coming to Denmark's Aarhus's Royal Academy of Music. Competition successes in Denmark have forged a lasting link with Danish music, and you feel throughout the disc a performer who is so engrossed and enjoying the music she is playing. Technically outstanding, she has that ‘touch' that can bring magical moments to quiet passages. The sound engineering offers a realistic concert hall perspective of a very fine piano.