Harp Column Blogs: Alexander RiderArchive

 I have been away for so long! I hope to post more regularly, if you still want to hear what I have to talk about. When did I last write? May? Ah yes, on the eve of my concerto debut!

With a great deal of preparation, confidence and bravery, a concerto can be amongst the most rewarding arts in solo performance. What a tremendous variety of tonal and rhtyhmic statements a soloist can achieve, with the colours of the orchestra as the backdrop.  Yet as harpists, how often are we afforded the oppurtunity to hear real treasures of this genre, featuring our own instrument? With the exception of the myriad recordings of Mozart, concert programmers and recording companies will have little to do with the harp concertos by Rodrigo, Wagenseil or even Debussy. Yet, are things changing?

Few are doing as much as the record company Naxos to navigate the great ream of negelcted and often unrecorded harp concertos, languishing in the repertoire of the very few. Since 2004, Naxos have released all of the Bax chamber music for harp,with English harpist Alison Nicholls and her ensemble 'Mobius', Alwyn's shining 'Lyra Angelica' with another English star, Suzanne Willison and the Royal Philharmonic orchestra, and more recently, this summer, Reinecke's concerto for harp in E-minor.

Featuring (the frankly splendid) Fabrice Pierre as soloist, his ravishing tone, quality and breadth of sound, dynamic range and the sheer excitement of his sonic presence, mark this amongst the finest harp playing I have ever heard. What is still more exciting is that Pierre is conducting from the harp(!). Having achieved top honours in his studies in conducting as well as in harp, Fabrice Pierre was named by Pierre Boulez as his conducting assistant at the ensemble intercontemporain de Paris, and now from his current base in Lyon, he directs another contemporary group, L'Atelier XXeme siecle. This recording allows us to really see how a harpist is capable of manipulating the music as both as concerto soloist and conductor. Quite right too.

I treasure this recording, as I do all of my Naxos recordings of harp repertory. As a student, Naxos has allowed me to cover much core (and less core) symphonic, opera, and instrumental repertoire, as they retail at between ??4.99 and ??5.99. So, harpists! You can ill afford to miss the oppurtunity to own these secrets of the harp for so small a price.

These exemplary recordings of rarely programmed harp masterpieces, with a roster of real harp artists, will help to prove once and for all that harpists are in possession of  rigourous and ferocious musical intellect and capability. So, thankyou to Naxos. How about Salzedo's concerto for harp and seven winds? Or perhaps the preambule et jeux?  The Spohr concertante for harp and violin, the petite suite concertante for harp, piano and harpsichord by Frank Martin? Or perhaps one of the vast numer of works for harp by composers of the former Soviet republics? After all they were inspired by such great harpists as Vera Dulova and Tatyana Tauer. There is much to explore.