Tobias Borsboom’s recording of the Java Suite coincides with the centenary of its publication. This is, I think, only the fourth recording of the complete work. The first, as recently as 1999, was made by Esther Budiardjo, the next in 2002 by Michael Schäfer, the third by Konstantin Scherbakov as Volume 8 of his survey of the complete Godowsky. That was 20 years ago. Pianists are not exactly queuing up to offer their accounts of Godowsky’s Javanese evocations.

The Suite formed the first volume of an intended series entitled Phonoramas – Tonal Journeys for the Pianoforte. Godowsky never got round to writing any more. The 12 short compositions, published in four books of three pieces each, evoke the sound of a Gamelan orchestra and the various locations, events and landmarks that he experienced during his tour of the Far East between October 1922 and May 1923, beginning in Hong Kong and finishing in Honolulu (a journey not to be undertaken lightly in those days). The music was written over the following year in New York and Chicago, calling on what one might term Godowsky’s ‘phonoramic’ memory.

The problem with the Java Suite – and I say this as Godowsky’s biographer – is that it is so uneven. It needs cherry-picking. ‘Gamelan’, ‘Chattering Monkeys’ and ‘The Gardens of Buitenzorg’ are the best-known for good reasons. Too much of it is over-written, its complex texture and meandering themes leaving little room for the music to breathe. Sadly, this latest offering only emphasises these characteristics, for Borsboom’s playing fails to lift the music off the pages from which (forgive me if I am mistaken) he is reading. He observes Godowsky’s obsessively detailed instructions and dynamics to the letter but these have confined his imagination, and I’m afraid my attention wandered somewhat. His tempos are uniformly on the slow side. In Schäfer’s hands ‘In the Kraton’ lasts 5'45"; Borsboom extends it to 8'50". ‘Gamelan’, the playful opening of Book 1, is 3'30" from Budiardjo; Borsboom makes it an enervating 4'41". And surely the rather lovely private recording of ‘The Gardens of Buitenzorg’ made by Godowsky himself in about 1935 (APR, 4/89 – nla) should have provided for him a clear enough illustration of the composer’s intention regarding tempo and voicing?

The piano is closely recorded in a pleasant acoustic. There is a discursive booklet about Godowsky which, however, makes no mention of the artist whatsoever.