After
45 minutes of mostly barnstorming virtuosity many another pianist
would have added fifteen and gone home, but no, this is just
the first half of Ginzburg’s last recital in the Grand Hall
of the Moscow Conservatoire. The second half, with works by
Prokofiev, Scriabin, Gershwin, Liszt and Chopin, has also been
issued and I shall comment on it in due course.
I
recently wrote about a recording of Bach organ works transcribed
by Liszt and played by Joyce Hatto; I noted the essentially
non-interventionist transcriptions and the pianist’s evident
feeling for Bach, who emerged as the real protagonist. Here,
for better or worse, is the romantic way, with flurries of notes,
cascading octaves and massive textures. Ginzburg treats these
works as if they are real romantic works, as opposed to romantic
transcriptions of baroque works, with generous surges of emotion
and a rhapsodic freedom. Best, perhaps, are the two gentle pieces
– the Siciliano and the Chorale-Prelude – which benefit from
the singing beauty of Ginzburg’s tone and that art of colouring
an inner texture which was so characteristic of the golden age
of pianism. There is a great deal of rubato (the Chorale-Prelude
all but stops round about the middle) but these pieces can just
about survive being treated as Chopin Nocturnes. No transcriber
is named for the D major Prelude and Fugue which is perhaps
the most bloated of all – Ginzburg’s own arrangement perhaps?
As
for the others, obviously our appreciation is hampered by the
limited (but serviceable) recording of what sounds like a poor
piano badly in need of tuning. Some of the bigger textures emerge
messily and I do wonder if Ginzburg’s technique was very slightly
declining since the remarkable 1949 performances of the Liszt
Concertos that I also commented on in this series. But it is
a comparison with Busoni’s pupil Egon Petri in the Chaconne
(available from Naxos on a compilation of Busoni and his pupils)
which shows the real trouble with these interpretations. Petri’s
conception is altogether tauter, and he makes each new variation
emerge from the previous one while Ginzburg’s more wayward performance
becomes a series of episodes. The Toccata and Fugue works surprisingly
well, on the other hand.
Serious
collectors of great pianists will need to get everything by
Ginzburg that is made available; for others, I would say that
the best of Ginzburg is elsewhere, and I repeat my high opinion
of the disc containing the Liszt Concertos.
Christopher
Howell
Grigory Ginzburg (piano)
