It is an almost invariable
rule that performances of the first
movement of Schumann’s Piano Concerto
go at two different tempi, one for the
loud bits and another, rather slower,
for the soft parts. Without claiming
to have heard all the many versions
that have been made, I can remember
only one that adhered to something like
a single tempo throughout. This was
by the American pianist Malcolm Frager
and the Swiss conductor Marc Andreae
on a long-forgotten BASF LP. Now we
have another which aims to avoid rhapsodical
excesses. Moreover, while Frager and
Andreae, taking a relatively swift tempo
and apparently insisting on it regardless
of the results, sounded merely hum-drum,
de Larrocha and Colin Davis, at a broader
pace, still find plenty of time to mould
the music caringly.
De Larrocha favours
a brighter, more luminous, sound than
the deeper one we are used to in this
work from, say, Richter; Davis, too,
aims for clarity with no muddying of
the lower textures. Both have an infectious
sense of rhythm which avoids their slow
tempi in the forte passages becoming
laboured, while Davis has learnt over
the years to extract from an entire
orchestra that subtlety of nuance we
more often associate with a single instrumentalist,
with the result that the two are very
much eye-to-eye in the gentler, poetic
moments.
I personally have always
been uncomfortable with the swift, almost
dancing way the Intermezzo is often
played, so de Larrocha’s and Davis’s
expansive version was much to my taste,
and again the conductor draws some beautiful
phrasing from the cellos. The finale
goes at a fairly comfortable pace, but
once again there is the artists’ lively
rhythmic sense to prevent it getting
bogged down.
In the last resort
this performance doesn’t seem to intend
to scale the heights; it gives us Schumann
enjoying domestic bliss rather than
the lone seer. I’m not sure that certain
famous performances, Richter’s for a
start, don’t make a more important statement,
but I very much recommend anybody who
has one of the more excitable interpretations
to take this for comparison and, if
the idea of a version where Eusebius
wins the day over Florestan appeals
to you, this might find this your favourite
recording of all. It certainly represents
one kind of ideal.
In the Quintet we find
a quite different sort of situation.
In the concerto, de Larrocha was working
with a master conductor who is also
a master collaborator. Whether or not
Davis would, of his own initiative,
have interpreted the concerto in this
way, he sees to it that pianist and
orchestra are seemingly of one accord.
The Tokyo String Quartet are shown in
the booklet photograph to be a group
of Bright Young Things; they intend
to give a brilliant, upfront interpretation
and neither hell nor high water nor
Alicia de Larrocha are going to stop
them. The result is a return to a fast-slow
rather than single-tempo manner; not
so much fast when it’s loud and slow
when it’s soft as fast when they’re
all together and slow when the piano
is on its own. I found this particularly
unsettling in the first movement where
de Larroccha’s solo moments, beautifully
played in themselves, sound as if they
were dubbed in from a completely different
performance. The other movements offer
less scope for this sort of thing but
the pianist nevertheless interposes
a few slowings-down in the finale particularly.
More than a loss of tempo, one notes
a loss of tension when she is on her
own, and one can sense the Bright Young
Things, their bows at the ready, raring
to pitch in and get things swinging
again.
Piano quintets sometimes
sound like piano concertos manqué,
and string quartets will tell you that
pianists used to playing solo tend to
play as if they are precisely that.
This performance is an interesting demonstration
of how far the strings can impose themselves
if they are so-minded. Whether this
makes for a satisfactory version of
the piece is another matter, but perhaps
I’ve got it all wrong and other listeners
will find a convincing interpretative
agenda behind the apparent divergences.
But if you are convinced by this, you
are likely to find the concerto strait-laced;
though recorded within months of each
other, these performances are so different
that they are hardly likely to appeal
to the same audience. If you decide
to investigate you can be assured of
a very fine-sounding recording.
Christopher Howell
Alicia de Larrocha (piano) 
