Here is buried treasure. Jesus Maria Sanroma, as his name declares, was a Spanish pianist who after his early years as a protégéamc decamped to Puerto Rico where he lived for the rest of his life. His career was starred, including lessons with Schnabel and Cortot. He gave the first American performance of Ravel's G major Concerto, was a notable champion of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and his reading of MacDowell's Second Concerto was amusingly described as full of 'vigour,thrust and manliness.'
And here on APR's invaluable two-disc album is a feast of uninhibited playing, with a hell for leather bravura that scorns inhibition or propriety. In the Mendelssohn G minor Concerto(feebly described in that august publication, 'The Record Guide' as requiring 'litte save dexterity and an even touch,') he revels in its scintillating charms even when there is a hint of impatience in the central 'Andante's'touching Victoria poetry. In the finale he reminds you of the composer's delight in his own first performance when, as he put it, 'the whole thing went like mad' and had to be repeated.
Sanroma is in his element in Liszt's 'Totentanz,' in a whirl of malignant events and a finer work than either of the Concertos. His accentuation is brilliant and includes glissandi ripped off like so much torn paper. There is even greater success in the MacDowell Concerto, composed at a time when American musical taste was dominated by European ideals, long before it found its own voice, notably in Gershwin and Copland. Here, Sanroman takes everything to the very edge, a dazzling alternative to Van Cliburn's memorable but more freely rhapsodic reading. In Paderewski he tells you of a great pianist who was a weak composer but, again, Sanroma, in common with Earl Wild in his recording, gives it his all. His Gershwin brilliantly conjures America's ;jazz age' a time not only of the composer but also of Scott Fitzgerald, an era memorably captured by Thomas Parke D'Villiers, 'Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;/ If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,/ Till she cry, 'Lover, gold-hatted high bouncing lover/I must have you.'
Finally, there are Jesus Morel Campus's Puerto Rican Dances, picture post card crowd pleasers that could hardly be played with greater verve or affection.
The lengthy sleeve note, if criticallly numb, is full of useful facts and figures including a typically British, sniffy response to the Gershwin suggesting 'if you like that sort of thing, you like that sort of thing.'(Muriel Spark).
Bryce Morrison