Michael Tsalka and Diana Weston
Reviewed by Paul Cooke
Michael Tsalka and Diana Weston are both pianists and early keyboard performers: the subtitle of this album, Classical and contemporary music for square piano and harpsichord, indicates the focus of their attention. Roughly two-thirds of the program is devoted to music of the classical era and highlights the virtues of intimacy and clarity. Joseph Baptist Vanhal is represented by keyboard music that seems designed for the drawing rooms of the burgeoning middle classes, as does Beethoven’s setting for soprano and piano duet from Goethe’s Ich denke dein with six variations, written for two of his young pupils.
Both these compositions, together with focus primarily on melody: there is no sense of virtuosic display. By pleasing contrast, the second part of the recital, comprising compositions by Australians Ann Carr-Boyd and Diana Blom, is much more concerned with the colourful and programmatic. In Carr-Boyd’s Moonrise over Lake Argyle, twittering birds are represented by the harpsichord, the lake waters by the square piano.