This is simply wonderful. Wonderful
to hear every dynamic gradation – from
pianissimo to piano, from forte to fortissimo
– perfectly realized, wonderful to hear
every accent precisely placed, and wonderful
to hear all these things done, not with
pedantic precision but with a full awareness
of their place in Schubert’s scheme,
of their meaning. Wonderful, too, to
hear such warm yet limpid tone, always
singing, never heavy.
In the first of the
D.899 set, Schubert’s journey is charted
spaciously yet with that essential sense
of perpetual movement, poised between
remembered bliss and present pain. In
the second Schubert’s brook chatters
over the pebbles, again mirroring pain
as well as happiness in its waters,
while the despairing central section
protests with a Schubertian grace that
is never allowed to become Beethovenian
rage. The third has a sublime serenity
that nonetheless allows darker currents
to come to the surface. And so I could
go on, racking my brain for new adjectives
to describe each piece. Just take it
that this is one of the most beautiful
piano records ever made.
With so many "great
interpreters" one has to put the
score on one side to appreciate what
they have to tell us, and it really
does often seem that a living musical
experience and scrupulous observance
of the score are incompatible. Perahia
shows that this need not be so. You
may have complete confidence that you
will hear nothing that Schubert did
not write, played by an interpreter
totally aware of, and totally able to
communicate, the meaning of what
Schubert wrote. And to think that these
performances have been around for over
twenty years without my knowing about
them! Never mind, in the meantime I
have been enjoying performances by such
as Fischer, Schnabel, Curzon and Brendel,
and of course I am not going to suggest
that these are now unseated. Just that
Perahia is up there with the greatest
of them.
As an extra we have
more recently recorded performances
of three of Liszt’s transcriptions of
Schubert’s songs. The "Erlkönig"
is a "straight" transcription,
simply making the music available to
the pianist – if he is good enough.
The others start that way, but having
worked through the verses of the song,
Liszt then lets his own imagination
take over, with canonic imitation in
"Ständchen" and a really
rather outrageous no-holds-barred inflation
of Schubert’s gentle original in "Auf
dem Wasser zu singen". Perahia
shows great skill in bringing out the
different voices from the texture, but
above all in starting each one in echt-Schubertian
vein and then letting Liszt gradually
take over.
Don’t miss this.
Christopher Howell
Murray Perahia (piano) 
