James Rhodes is the latest enfant terrible of British music, originally with a punk look and attitude that got him signed to a rock label. Now he's on his own label, called Instrumental, and a somewhat toned-down look. But he still has a desire for direct communication with audiences, manifested among other things by his composition of his own booklet notes. He should hire an editor for these; Beethoven's Piano Sonata in D major, Op. 28 ("Pastoral"), was written in 1801, not 1821. The irony in this and other Rhodes releases ...
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James Rhodes is the latest enfant terrible of British music, originally with a punk look and attitude that got him signed to a rock label. Now he's on his own label, called Instrumental, and a somewhat toned-down look. But he still has a desire for direct communication with audiences, manifested among other things by his composition of his own booklet notes. He should hire an editor for these; Beethoven's Piano Sonata in D major, Op. 28 ("Pastoral"), was written in 1801, not 1821. The irony in this and other Rhodes releases is that, for all his unconventional airs, his recital programs are old-fashioned in the extreme. Several begin with very heavily pedaled Bach; this one proceeds through Beethoven and Chopin, to end with transcriptions of Gluck and Schumann (the latter by Liszt) that would have been much more often heard on a recital of a century ago than today. There is nothing wrong with this as long as performers have the chops for it, which Rhodes assuredly does. The ultra-Romantic Bach Partita...
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