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The mischievous Cherkassky
left behind numerous live performances
– and the memory of a good many more.
This recital, given at Davies Symphony
Hall in San Francisco, was recorded
in 1982 when he was seventy-one and
includes examples of his large and quixotic
repertoire, though ones which will resonate
for many as essential Cherkassky fare
(I’d clearly exclude the unexpected
Lully). It was clearly a memorable evening
and we can share it in Ivory Classics’
well-produced disc.
Cherkassky and Lully
don’t seem especially promising disc
fellows but he makes something delicate
out of the Air tendre and in the Courante,
albeit with left hand strongly subordinate
to right, one feels that its romantic
tracery is strongly to the pianist’s
liking. The Sarabande has a veiled touch
in which he sees it through a Romantic
prism – it hardly needs saying that
this performance is rooted strongly
in romanticised procedures of beauty
of touch and sound.
Cherkassky’s Grand
Sonata can be profitably compared with
that of a fellow Russian contemporary
such as Richter. Cherkassky catches
the moments of grotesque and quixotic
writing as well as the drive of the
opening movement. There are also moments
of sheer lyrical gorgeousness, special
to Cherkassky, though he never replicates
Richter’s commanding drive and sense
of linear intensity. There really couldn’t
be more of a contrast between Cherkassky’s
insinuating coquettishness in the slow
movement and Richter’s powerful depth.
The former’s pecking articulation and
smooth emotional largesse will infuriate
those who value Richter’s imperturbable
incision but in the context of his performance
Cherkassky covers a great deal of emotive
ground. He certainly uses plenty of
pedal in the bustly Scherzo and the
two Russians diverge again in the finale
– Richter is all incandescence and drive
(but what clarity of passagework) whereas
Cherkassky is more measured with somewhat
italicised phrasing. Perhaps my more
Puritanical side inclines me to Richter
but there’s no gainsaying Cherkassky’s
humanity in this Sonata.
He was certainly heading
toward caricature in the Polonaise Fantasie
in which the phrasing and voicings are
more Cherkassky than Chopin – a pity
because as his early 1940s recordings,
also on Ivory Classics, quite clearly
show he wasn’t always this feline and
capricious when it came to Chopin. He
plays his teacher Hofmann’s Kaleidoskop
with real gusto however and ends the
recital with more Chopin, this time
the A flat major Waltz. Once again the
pointing is naughty and the playing
almost entirely externalised but one
can forgive him these moments of whimsy
for the pleasure he brings elsewhere.
I don’t think this
is quite the recital that some have
made it out to be. There are so many
touches of eccentricity and indulgence
that one has to reserve absolute critical
judgement. But Cherkassky was incapable
of being dull and he was ever mercurial
and this concert certainly captures
these and the other puckish characteristics
of this unpredictable lion of the piano.
Jonathan Woolf
Shura Cherkassky (piano) 
