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Liszt,  Années de Pèlerinage Books 1 and 2: Daniel Grimwood (piano). Wigmore Hall, London. 18.12.2008 (ED)


Daniel Grimwood’s near sell-out recital at Wigmore Hall is sure to remain an unforgettable experience for anyone who was there.  Coinciding with the release of Grimwood’s recording of the complete Années de Pèlerinage, an urgent case was made for the critical reassessment of Liszt’s originality, not least in Grimwood’s own erudite programme note which highlighted the narrow portion of Liszt’s works regularly heard in concert. He pointed also to the long history of critical attacks on Liszt by his contemporaries and the derision that the ‘virtuoso glamour’ of his writing also attracted as being factors for Liszt remaining, even today, an often misunderstood figure.

In concert, it is most common for the first two books of the Années de Pèlerinage to be performed together. They make a good pair, as the first book, Suisse, deals largely with nature and natural imagery and the second book, Italie, with art and literature. The third book is somewhat removed in stylistic terms and overall theme, being a meditation on the nature of mortality.

Grimwood’s grasp of the music was complete; the hours of work one imagines he put into creating the right nuance for each of the individual miniatures in both books, whilst contributing to a coherent and satisfying whole, was evidentially well spent.  No small factor in this was the fine 1851 Erard instrument he employed, on loan from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham. Grimwood’s notes sanguinely made clear that no one knows for sure exactly how Liszt’s own Erards sounded, but that his was a safe approximation with “every key having its own unique taste”. His playing eloquently bore this out through a rich bass register, a mellow middle and a crisp almost bell-like brilliance in evidence throughout the top octaves. Orage (Storm) from book one found the instrument stretched to its limit sonically – though this was due more to Liszt’s dense writing than any fault with Grimwood’s immaculate fingering or carefully judged pedalling.

Much was made of the overall contrast in tonal colour between the books: the first being rather darker and more emotional than the second, reflecting something of the raw power of nature and the refined elegance of Renaissance Italian thought as appropriate.  Suisse was carried off within a broad palette of almost religious feeling and devotion, particularly evident in the opening movement, Chapelle de Guillaume Tell, which evokes a craggy mountain landscape. Barely pausing between movements, lightness of touch caught perfectly the shimmering water the Lac de Wallenstadt, before delightfully lilting readings of the Pastorale and Au Bord d’une Source.  After Orage, Vallée d’Obermann – in every sense the emotional and musical heart of book one – found Grimwood plumbing its emotional depths with an interpretation that was spacious and reflective yet never dragging in tempo. Eclogue carried a limpid naturalness of phrasing; whilst Le Mal du Pays (Homesickness) was overwrought with feeling and passionate inner turmoils. Les cloches de Genève: Nocturne was truly reminiscent of a carillon through the sustained ringing tone of the instrument, which at its height approached the near-symphonic in scale.

Book two built inexorably towards Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia Quasi Sonata, but rather than being treated as a jewel set apart from its preludes, it found a role in complementing their various qualities. Bold brushstrokes painted Raphael’s picture of the Madonna, whilst Michelangelo’s Thinker was roughly chiselled in the music’s angular rhythms, something the forward tone of the instrument emphasised to useful effect. The Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa was thoroughly genial in outward appearance. Petrarch’s three sonnets were by turns brilliantly lit, yet clouded by an indistinct anxiety. Dante, not unlike Liszt himself, remained a colossus in his context yet one endowed with humanity. The elemental ascent Grimwood made of the music’s craggy rock face at once seemed to bring the evening full circle and create links with the opening of book one, the pianist visibly delighting in exposing the many layers of texture the music contains. In summation though Grimwood’s greatest achievement was to place the genius of Liszt above his own, considerable though his is as a true master of the keyboard.

Evan Dickerson


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