I listened to this inside out (Haydn, Schubert, Liszt)
since it seemed the logical order, but I had to admit the disc’s planners
had a point. Though the live recording from Edinburgh is not faultless
(whether it is the instrument, the acoustic or the recording equipment,
it comes out a little middle-heavy; the fault is unlikely to have been
Curzon’s) you quickly get used to it, and the pianist’s wonderfully
luminous softer touches are well caught. The performances are absolutely
terrific. Unlike Horowitz’s grand passion and Lipatti’s poetry, Curzon
takes a riskier line with the Petrarch Sonnet, with surging emotion
and withdrawn musing placed side by side rather than aiming for a straight-through
approach; and his fingers seem to probe deeply into the keyboard in
search of Liszt’s harmonic subtleties. Curzon’s own nervous tension
is palpable, but, while in the recording studios this could cause him
to freeze, in front of a public it transforms itself into an almost
desperate urge to communicate. After a magically lucid Berceuse and
an often impish Valse Oubliée, the Sonata can only be called
phenomenal. Much of it is inspired cliff-hanging, as though Liszt’s
own more demonic aspects had taken such possession of Curzon as to lead
him again and again to the brink beyond which all hell would have been
let loose. You sense that the pianist is taking unforeseen and unsuspected
paths on the spur of the moment. Rarely has a performance revealed more
fully Liszt’s creative schizophrenia, for the softer, more lyrical moments
are frequently heart-rending.
Performing did not come easily to Curzon; nerves and
insecurity often made concerts an ordeal for him. Those born without
the artistic urge might well ask why he insisted on going through with
it when he could have sat quietly at home reading the newspaper. Few
performances show better than this one why an artist just has
to go on and play.
Things are calmer in the BBC Studios. Unfortunately
the close recording robs us of some of the Curzon magic. Not so much
in the Haydn, which finds a wealth of colour and expression in a piece
which, though reputed to be among its composer’s best, can sound anything
but that in the average college student’s hands. The Schubert seems
to find Curzon in a strangely aggressive mood with a composer he very
much loved – though more distance and bloom to the sound might have
created a different impression. As it is, Curzon’s Schubert is best
appreciated elsewhere.
Still, the Liszt’s the thing. It enters the select
Panthéon of the very greatest recorded performances of this composer
and no lover of great pianism should miss it.
Christopher Howell
Sir Clifford Curzon (pianoforte)