“these are accounts to challenge the competition; his musicality and technical mastery held us with complete attention easily … Recommended.”
MusicalPointers.co.uk
“He obviously loves the big-boned majesty of Busoni’s transcription of Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C BWV 564, and brings a wildly emotional, personal insight into both Beethoven’s Sonata No 30 in E opus 10-9 and Bach’s Partita No 6 in E minor BWV 830 … fresh, vital and undeniably exciting.”
The Observer
“… an innovative and imaginative musician of real talent … his best playing here is the Bach Partita, outstanding in every way - lightly pedalled, lucidly voiced, with a lithe, rhythmic buoyancy and deeply expressive Sarabande.”
The Gramophone
MusicalPointers.co.uk, March 2010
Listening first, without having remembered the media furore about this pianist's appearance at Round House and his first CD, first impressions (belying the cover photo) were just of a sensitive, well equipped musician.
Of special interest was the bringing together (uniquely?) of two takes on JS Bach, a massive Busoni transcription of a major organ work together with a fastidious account on modern piano of the grandest and most challenging of the keyboard partitas. Rhodes finds a convincing Steinway voice for both of them, and these are accounts to challenge the competition; his musicality and technical mastery held us with complete attention easily.
He does not shy away from masterworks and his Beethoven op. 109 will not topple your favourites, but it is a serious interpretation and is favoured by sympathetic recording ambience (Mike Hatch at Potton Hall). Extras, spoken statements of his credo and a couple of Chopin pieces on a bonus disc, fill in the background; definitely a bonus to hear him talk good sense about his late-start career so lucidly. Whereas composer Giacinto Scelsi brought himself back to sanity by playing a single note endlessly on a clinic piano*, Rhodes did so by teaching himself Bach's Adagio from the score in a locked psychiatric ward without access to a piano - "two pages of musical notes that offered more comfort, peace and hope than any of the medication they shoved in me"... (You can see him playing this on one of several YouTube videos.) So, look at that cover photo again; the whitened face in the photo begins to make good sense...
Recommended; I look forward to catching up with Rhodes' first CD and to his future recordings.
Peter Grahame Woolf
The Observer, April 2010
“Caution – strong language” is not a note you would expect to find on a piano recital CD, but this is James Rhodes, the radical pianist who, in his drive to communicate beyond the music, explains his approach to Bach and Beethoven in a series of short interviews. He obviously loves the big-boned majesty of Busoni’s transcription of Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C BWV 564, and brings a wildly emotional, personal insight into both Beethoven’s Sonata No 30 in E opus 10-9 and Bach’s Partita No 6 in E minor BWV 830. The playing is edgy, raw and uneven – a tre reflection of Rhodes’s troubled life – but also fresh, vital and undeniably exciting.
Stephen Pritchard
The Gramophone, July 2010
James Rhodes's unusual approach to presentation doesn't disguise his talent
"It's not an attention- seeking thing. Let's get the judgements out the way, let's get the shrinks out the way...and just focus on the music. That's the important thing." So says James Rhodes in his interview on the bonus CD to which I say "Yes - so let's practise what we preach: start by ditching the clown costumes". Moreover, I love the idea of a CD that has the artist talking about the music he has chosen to record; but leaving in expletives comes across as mere cynical marketing ("Hey, guys, see how cool a classical musician can be?").
Behind all this redundant rock-image nonsense is an innovative and imaginative musician of real talent. The CD's subtitle is a quote from Rhodes's hero Glenn Gould and his best playing here is the Bach Partita, outstanding in every way - lightly pedalled, lucidly voiced, with a lithe, rhythmic buoyancy and deeply expressive Sarabande. Beethoven's Op 109 is hardly less successful. Rhodes is as adept at suggesting improvisation in the adagio espressivo passages of the first movement as he is at articulating the fugal writing in the variations. The mistake he makes with the theme and first variation, and more especially with the Bach-Busoni and Marcello-Bach Adagios, is to spell out too emphatically the beauty of this music by taking tempi nearer to largo di molto, resulting in unsustainable musical lines. Listen to Bachauer or Rubinstein in the Bach-Busoni and Fischer in the Marcello-Bach for an ease and simplicity that make the music profoundly affecting. Vividly recorded (Mike Hatch at Potton Hall), with a more intimate sound picture for the Bach than the other items.
Jeremy Nicholas
BBC Music Magazine, July 2010 Performance ***, Recording ***
Having been one of the doubters when James Rhodes made his public debut two years ago, I am now happy to eat my words. Then, he seemed destined for a career in which moderately good pianism would provide the excuse for a self-indulgent wallow in the emotional wreckage of his past, but though he still trades on that wreckage – drugs, depression, time spent in psychiatric hospitals – it's now harnessed in the service of music.
His pianism has dramatically improved, most notably in Bach, whose Partita he delivers here with exuberant grace. He may not possess his hero Glenn Gould's laser-like accuracy, but the control and transparency of his playing at speed is impressive, and he finds grave beauty in the Sarabande. His account oft he Beethoven sonata is nicely thought through, but it needed more space to breathe; the Bach-Busoni has fitting sonorousness. None of this may be earth-shattering, but since the street-smart Rhodes may attract a new audience for classical music, good luck to him.
Michael Church
Justlistentoit (music blog), http://justlistentoit.com , 18th June 2010
I love Beethoven’s music. I have done since I was a teenager and my one real regret in life is that I never learned to play the piano properly. The first time I heard discs of Barenboim and Brendel and Lipatti I wanted to be able to play like them.
Frustrated by my lack of ability, I spent hours closeted away in my room listening to their recordings and using them as fuel for my fantasies like some musical freeloader. The piano sonatas have always been my favourites because of their intimacy; they express the composer’s struggles, anguish and genius like no other form, so when I find a pianist whose playing seems to reflect those qualities I sit up and take note.
The cover of James Rhodes’s latest CD is something of an enigma. It could bemistaken for a new release by some wannabe pop star or a concept album by a prog-rock band. It even has a title; I mean a proper title, not just the composer’s name and the title of the work. There are no landscape paintings by Claude Lorraine or smug portraits of the artiste. Rhodes is pictured on the cover but with make-up smeared across his face and wearing a clown- like costume. A desperate attempt to appeal to a younger audience or some kind of narcissistic self-promotion? Neither, I think. This is Rhodes’s own kind of self- effacement, and perhaps a little snub to those archetypally stuffy concert-going uber- farts that keep the image of classical music in the dark ages.
Whatever you think about the album cover or Rhodes’s dress code or anything else, it’s the playing that matters. And god, can this boy play! I wonder if he might be Beethoven reincarnated because there’s a real sense of a struggle with the music. And by that I don’t mean a technical struggle, but an inner one. When I listen to Rhodes play Beethoven I get a real sense that he’s someone who understands the composer in a way that many pianists don’t. Listening to him is like a baptism. One of those born-again, full-immersion things. His playing is exciting in a seat-of-the-pants way. If Beethoven himself was to sit down at the piano and play his own work I think he would play a lot like Rhodes. Brendel and Barenboim, great though they are, seem much more considered and contemplative in comparison. Less thrilling. Less of an odyssey. Less... well, just less. If you don’t know James Rhodes’s playing, do something about it soon. You’re missing out.
Musicweb International, January 2012
I would ignore the rock star title of this disc and hunker down with the music. Or, if you prefer, assimilate the title as part of James Rhodes’s life story, and still hunker down with the music. The performances reveal the inner man, and these performances are seldom less than impressive in their own way.
His Bach/Busoni Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major builds to its climax with inexorable logic, and considerable digital control. Rhodes’s appreciation and understanding of Bach is a constant as is his, I suspect, more selective reverence for Beethoven, whose music he also plays with genuine insights, sometimes taken to a personalised degree, or length. This is the case in Op.109, where expression is correlated to time spent. But the cumulative weight does build, once again, and this time to the special revelation of the disturbingly intense end to the sonata’s first movement. His Prestissimo second movement is vitalising and excellent, and if I find parts of the finale a touch italicised, just a little point-making in places, his articulation remains outstanding.
Unhyphenated Bach comes in the shape of the Sixth Partita, in E minor. Once more the approach is rapt, personal, articulate and convincing in breadth. He takes the Sarabande at a daringly slow tempo, and this a noticeable feature of all the performances of the suites and partitas that I have heard him give – the need to give time and horizontal space to such slow movements. The quicker ones are not necessarily correspondingly quicker, as if to compensate, but unfold at their own natural pace, albeit still subject to occasional quirks of emphasis or rhythm or articulation. He finishes the first disc with a warmly textured Bach/Marcello Adagio, although he can’t shake my allegiance to Earl Wild here.
The second disc is short, only 27 minutes. There are only two works, both by Chopin and both adeptly performed, but they only occupy five or so minutes. The remainder is taken up by interviews with Rhodes, in which he talks and occasionally plays to illustrate a point. The disc cover carries a Warning – described as ‘Moderate impact course language and/or themes.’ That must be like The Art of Course Fishing, then. Fans of fonts, misspellings and associated matters might like to note that the qualifier ‘moderate’ is in capitals and bold font which paradoxically makes it seem as if it’s worse than a couple of F words. Rhodes is disarmingly sincere – full of humility and humanity. This disc also has a brief video component - a performance of the Bach/Marcello live at the Roundhouse, which requires Quicktime 7 or later to view.
Rhodes’ own biography makes for compelling reading but it’s his musicianship, partly informed by those vicissitudes, that makes him so interesting a musician.
