It never fails…the radio announcer finds himself or herself just a couple of minutes short at the top of the hour and needs to fill the gap. Back in the day, Elvis Costello was always a good bet, with songs clocking in at two minutes or less. But what’s a classical announcer to do? Consolations by Maya Magub is a great solution. It’s a CD filled with short, beloved pieces played by violinist Magub and pianist Hsin-I Huang.
But this is more than a collection of pretty fillers. It is an album of music to console and uplift, something we have all needed, especially throughout the pandemic. The centerpiece is Liszt’s six Consolations. Magub, a longtime member of the London Mozart Players, fell in love with violinist Nathan Millstein’s transcription of number three, so she transcribed the other five as well, and put them together as a set for this CD. She dug through her father’s sheet music and recordings and surrounded Liszt’s pieces with transcriptions that have long given us joy and peace: the Bach/Gounod “Ave Maria,” Massenet’s “Meditation” from Thais, Handel’s “Largo” from Xerxes, “Vocalise” by Rachmaninov, and more.
Producing a CD in a pandemic created another challenge. Magub and Huang recorded their parts separately, with plenty of discussion in advance and during the process, which Magub describes as “incredibly democratic and creative.” And, in the end, they created an album that offers a refuge in turbulent times. After all, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Music is the best consolation for a despaired man.”
