Cut and paste, recycle,
collate, reissue, revamp, money for
old rope. Yes, that’s just my review.
As for this box set ... well, something
similar as well. In my position as grubbing
hack I’ve encountered and reviewed a
number of these performances in the
last few years and here they are again,
dished up into a six CD box set labouring
under the no-holds-barred moniker of
The Great Piano Concertos. Stone the
crows, what have we got? Well since
I can’t be expected to rephrase my original
reviews I’ve helpfully reprised them
for you under the rubric Warmed Up
Old Critical Commonplaces
and the Best of British to you. In case
you can’t face wading through the text
– can’t say I blame you, my style is
a cross between The King James and the
Sunday Mirror - let me tell you in advance
that the Firkušny is a classic, the
Gilels/Beethoven is valuable but not
essential, Lugansky is worth hearing
in Rach 3, Würtz less so in Rach
2 but more so in Schumann, that the
Kissin/Chopin is not what it says it
is, but the Kissin/Tchaikovsky is (more’s
the pity), that the Grimaud/Ravel is
only so-so and finally that Freire’s
Liszt is something of an unknown quantity,
at least over here but worth getting
to know.
The least valuable
disc is that which gives us a gestural
and external Tchaikovsky No 1 with Gergiev
at his least interesting and Kissin
at his most superficial. The second
Kissin disc continues with recordings
of what Discover purports to be the
famous 27 March 1984 Chopin Concertos
concert with Kitaenko conducting the
Moscow Philharmonic. It sounded wrong
to me, horn fluffs, muffled sound, a
distinctly different opening tempo for
the Allegro maestoso of the E minor
etc. I then listened to this disc side
by side with the RCA recording and my
doubts were confirmed. It is a live
concert, true, but it’s not the one
as advertised.
With regard to the
Gilels/Beethoven the Third has a rather
aggressive Gilels cadenza and some over
smooth accents from Masur (the dropped
notes from the pianist are a corollary
of his commitment and convinced advocacy).
The recording tends to highlight the
booming timpani as well and all in all
this clearly won’t stand above Cluytens
and Szell – the commercial EMI not the
two other live recordings (though other
survivals include Kondrashin, Gauk,
Sanderling – twice - and Karajan). As
for the Fifth we have some finely flexible
phrasing from Masur and a grave slow
movement though the "timing"
to the finale isn’t as well executed
as Kempff/Leitner, but then whose is?
His best performances of it remain those
with Ludwig and Sanderling.
The textual
problems surrounding the Dvořák
Piano Concerto, whilst not as complex
as matters Brucknerian, are still fairly
murky. Wilem Kurz’s edition is published
in the complete Dvořák edition
and Firkušny studied with Kurz. This
was the pianist’s third recording
of the Concerto and he had moved steadily
away from simple Kurz to more a melange
of Dvořák-Kurz but with the former
predominant. Much admired by Horowitz,
Firkušny was the ideal champion of this
under-appreciated work. His triumphant
and limpid passagework animates
the first movement’s Brahmsian moments
effortlessly mitigating some of the
more discursive passages at a tempo
rather quicker than that of Sviatoslav
Richter who recorded the concerto, with
Carlos Kleiber in the original edition,
at around the same time as Firkušny.
There is a sheen on the violin tone
and a quick responsiveness to their
soloist by the St Louis orchestra that
is admirable. There is some really memorable
and blistering passagework in the central
section of the first movement from Firkušny
and listen at 10.50 to the strutting
and braying trumpets (good dynamics
too) as they blaze the orchestral material
onwards. Firkušný’s phrasing
meanwhile is the perfect mixture of
affectionate lyricism and aristocratic
control – the restatement of the opening
theme is superbly passionate in his
hands and magnificently delineated leading
to a cadenza of seemingly limitless
finesse, with lines brought out, architectural
integrity maintained and a virtuoso
technique put to the service of musical
argument. In the slow movement I defy
you not to find his treble lines of
such limpid beauty that you will despair
of hearing them played as well again.
Yet the underlying momentum is always
there, the impulse to linger firmly
controlled and Firkušný’s variance
of repeated material on the highest
level of musical understanding. In the
finale the often-criticised passagework
comes alive in the soloist’s hands.
Reflective, imitative, fascinating –
it is extraordinary to listen to Firkušny
extracting such a rich vein of meaning
from a score so frequently derided.
Susskind meanwhile, ever alert and ever
superb, restrains the burgeoning con
fuoco, vesting it with the chirping
woodwind properly brought out and now
leading, now following the piano’s line.
Closely related thematically to the
second of the three op 45 Slavonic Rhapsodies
this is a real Czech dance, sprightly
and confident, and leads to a tremendously
effective conclusion sustained with
heroic brio to the very end by Firkušny
and Susskind.
Grimaud turns in an
adequate recording of the Ravel, a work
she has re-recorded (Baltimore/Zinman,
Erato) but one that could set critical
teeth on edge. She favours a distinct
lack of synchronisation between hands
in the slow movement to a considerable
degree. It doesn’t even strike me as
an attempt at historically informed
performance style so much as eccentricity.
Left before right hand playing was certainly
a feature of a number of Golden Age
pianists but Grimaud’s fitful playing
is hardly reposeful or, ultimately,
compelling. There are some fine orchestral
contributions, granted, in the finale
(trombone, principal trumpet, winds
generally, though also a tad crude)
but not enough for a real recommendation.
Lugansky has recorded
Rachmaninov Three with the CBSO and
Oramo (Warner). Here, in an all-Russian
recording, his playing is pliant and
smooth, not barnstorming and charged.
The horns are characteristically wide
but Lugansky remains lucid and controlled,
taking good tempi and evincing good
depth of tone without any loss of virtuosity.
He never forces his tone and whilst
it’s not the most Horowitzian heaven
storming performance it has considerable
reserves of musicality and digital command.
The Second Rachmaninov comes from Klára
Würtz who has a CD to herself.
Her introduction is slow, measured,
but there’s an unfortunate clangourous
quality to her piano – especially in
the octave below middle C and some of
her playing here is erratic. The horns
tend to boom and in the finale counter
themes are too prominent, and there’s
a lack of string mass; as a performance
it sounds unemotionally dutiful. Her
Schumann is much better; fine solo contributions
from the woodwind choirs and excellent
shaping of the inner string voices.
Würtz fuses animation with reflectiveness
and contributes a good first movement
cadenza and if there isn’t optimum colour
from her elsewhere it’s a sympathetic
and idiomatic performance. Freire’s
Liszt is generally good though certainly
not outstanding. The recordings are
not flattering in that they tend to
be somewhat bass heavy and maybe Totentanz
lacks the fiendish drama that other
more incisive and daemonic players bring
to it. But the slow movements have an
attractive quality and Freire has a
clear command of the ebb and flow of
the occasionally discursive material
of the Second.
A mixed bag, to say
the least. The booklet has potted biographies
of the pianists, nothing about the music,
which is probably as it should be.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Göran
Forsling
BRILLIANT CLASSICS 92293 [6 CD set 64.39
+70.38 + 63.05 +72.39 + 63.36 +52.47] 
