After the delights of Stephen Coombs’s Vols. 1 and 2 (7/96), wonders unfold still further in the third disc of the series. Devoted to Glazunov’s six essays in the form of the prelude and fugue, it begins and ends with intricately wrought homages to Bach – the first, of 1899, darker and much more chromatic than the last, a wholesome specimen revealing none of the problems of the composer’s declining years. The Op. 101 set is both freer and more fantastical in its fugal treatments. Taken as a whole, it seems to me Glazunov’s towering achievement in any field, working its way from the restless A minor No. 1, with its hyper-Elgarian sequences, and the capricious No. 2, to the C minor Prelude and Fugue – swooning Tchaikovskian romanticism within the perspectives of Bach and Chopin – and on to a thoroughly diatonic C major celebration – hard-earned victory indeed. Coombs meets the challenge as unflinchingly as he did the toughest pages encountered in his first two volumes; there’s a little too much use of the sustaining pedal for my taste in the earlier chromatic welters, but the later stages are appropriately lucid and bright.
Indeed, it’s a pity Glazunov lacked the daring, or the desire, to go the whole Bachian hog – anticipating his pupil Shostakovich – and leave us a set of 24. The fugue at the heart of the Second Sonata’s finale does give us an extra taste of his contrapuntal genius, and it’s all the more welcome in a sea of romantic rodomontade. That, though, is clearly what Glazunov felt the piano sonata was all about – the B flat minor Sonata in Vol. 1 tells a similarly overwrought tale – and he does it with style: the E major transformation of the scherzo theme towards the end of this exhaustingly busy Second Sonata is a fine stroke. As for the scherzo itself, its quicksilver, almost incessant semiquaver patter, surely quoting the laughter of Wagner’s Gotterdammerung Rhinemaidens at one transitional point, deserves the transcendental technique of Kissin or Pletnev – which is not to deny that Coombs handles its demands very well indeed.
The rest of Vol. 4 either ties up loose ends, following Glazunov along the road of whimsical, radiant Chopin stylization, or throws in some enjoyable novelties. Coombs’s orchestral thunder comes in useful for the weighty transcription of a Triumphal March for the Chicago Columbian Exposition; when the Holst Singers enter with their “Slava, Columbus”s, it’s probably just as well that the recording presents them as a solid backdrop to the busy piano part, not a wall in front of it. Glazunov’s handling of John Brown’s Body here shows a surprising wit and spirit, and the serious transcription of the Song of the Volga Boatmen that follows, with its shades of Mussorgsky’s “Bydlo”, makes a surprising contrast – one of many in a series that will surely raise this composer’s status immeasurably.'