Mindru Katz (1925-78) is a musician I much admired and no company
has done more to perpetuate his name than Cembal d’Amour. They
have had access to a number of concert tapes, via Zoara Katz,
as well as to the more conventional studio recordings, and each
release has been beneficial, revealing and valuable. This is
no less the case with this all-Schumann recital, revealing of
Katz’s priorities and precepts in such central repertoire, and
reflective of his august standards of music-making. If only
he had lived to a ripe age.
It’s important for a critic to attempt to appreciate quite why
a musician takes the path he does. Katz’s Kinderszenen
is quite measured, indeed often slow, and to some it will seem
too static and undernourished. Yet what I sense in his approach
is one of gradation, deft harmonic pointing, left hand accenting,
and a concern not with speed but with texture and with a sense
of narrative – both the individual narrative of each movement
and the greater arching narrative of the work as a whole. Thus,
whilst the opening may seem laboured, his little dripping left
hand accenting and the application of significant rubato shows
another side of the story. His Kuriose Geschichten is
rather unsettled emotively, whilst Glückes genug is elegant
and deftly pointed. Wichtige Begenheit is a bold march
but doesn’t over-balance other adjacent movements. Träumerei
is very slow indeed, sensitively spun, but sometimes in
danger of spilling over. Am Kamin seems reluctant to
break the spell but the music springs back into life for Ritter
vom Steckenpferd. Katz really does pile on the earnestness
in Fast zu Ernst, taking the direction quite literally,
and by Kind im Einschlummern he shows the kind of tempo
flexibility that had earlier been rather lacking. The final
tableau is gentle and delightful, albeit protracted.
Don’t be disturbed by the timings for the Fantasie as
there’s a rare typo, here claiming Katz drives through the opening
in four minutes. It’s fourteen. Once again he makes a perfect
Schumann sound and has a virtuosic technique, and sure expressive
instincts. From time to time one might be aware of a loss of
the kind of flowing excitement that others have generated, and
again I do find that Katz’s delayed sense of impetus can impede
the natural direction of the music, certainly in the opening.
Maybe too there are one or two discursive accents. But against
that there is that variegated and noble tone, and plenty to
mull over.
The in-concert performances were taped perfectly acceptably
without obviously being in the freshest of contemporary sound.
There is more Katz to come from this source, and one awaits
it impatiently.
Jonathan Woolf
Masterwork Index: Kinderszenen
Mindru Katz (piano) 
