Norma Fisher at the BBC - Volume 1
Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Variations on an Original Theme, Op.21 No.1 (1857) [20:52]
Variations on a Hungarian Song, Op.21 No.2 (1853) [7:30]
Alexander SCRIABIN (1871-1915)
Eight Études, Op.42 (1903)
No.1 in D flat major [1:54]
No.4 in F sharp major [2:31]
No.5 in C sharp minor [3:00]
No.8 in E flat major [1:58]
Piano Sonata No.1 in F minor, Op.6 (1892) [25:52]
Norma Fisher (piano)
rec. 1972 (Scriabin) and 1979 (Brahms), BBC studios
Stereo tapes
SONETTO CLASSICS SONCLA003 [63:43]
Piano fanciers on the trail of Norma Fisher will welcome the dedicated two volumes issued by Sonetto Classics. She was undeservedly sidelined by the record companies, so there’s no commercial discography for us to savour and celebrate her fine artistry. We can only be thankful that the BBC had the foresight to record her on many occasions, both in the studio and several times at the Henry Wood Promenade concerts.
The Brahms items date from 2 February 1979 when BBC Radio 3 made a broadcast titled ‘Brahms and Debussy’, including the two sets of variations. The Scriabin works predate that recital by seven years. In 1972, Fisher joined five other pianists, including John Ogdon, to record Scriabin’s piano works, a BBC tribute to celebrate the composer’s centenary. The recording of the Piano Sonata No. 1 is sourced from the master tape. The four Études derive from a reel-to-reel recording of the broadcast, housed in the pianist’s own personal sound archive.
Norma Fisher was born in London in 1940 and studied under Sidney Harrison, Ilona Kabos and Jacques Février. In 1961, she took Second Prize in the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition, and two years later shared the Piano Prize with Vladimir Ashkenazy at the 1963 Harriet Cohen International Piano Awards. Her career was launched. Sadly, in the 1990s, she began to suffer from focal dystonia in her right arm, a terrible condition that fellow pianist Leon Fleisher was similarly afflicted with. This put an end to her performing career, so she subsequently turned her attentions to teaching, and has since become a revered and sought-after pedagogue.
The two sets of Op. 21 Variations work well when performed together. The more outgoing and shorter No. 2 “Hungarian Song” is the perfect complement to the more spacious, expansive and inward-looking No. 1 “On an Original Theme”. I’ve always been a fan of the latter, which attests to Brahms love of the variation form. After all, he composed a number of stand-alone variations. No. 1 brims over with lyricism, and Fisher’s approach addresses the music’s poetic sentiments, inner voices and textural diversity with sensitivity and refinement. It’s a beautiful performance which compares favourably with that of Julius Katchen. The Variations on a Hungarian Song, Op 21 No 2, couldn’t provide more of a contrast. It’s an earlier work than No. 1, composed in 1853 and published eight years later. Fisher gets fully to grips with the rugged eight-bar theme, stylistically characterizing each of the thirteen variations and highlighting the music’s asymmetry and rhythmic hesitations.
Her authoritative reading of Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 6 fully buys into the grief and melancholy that permeates the work. The Sonata, completed in 1892, was penned after the composer had damaged his right hand through excessive piano playing. Scriabin drafted it with Lisztian proportions. This BBC performance captures the various moods the work passes through. The first movement is dark, passionate and turbulent, with the second, doleful and weighted down with sorrow. A rhythmically buoyant and agitated Presto follows, again with an unsmiling mein. The final movement is titled Funèbre, and speaks of unrelieved gloom.
The pianist chose four of the composer’s Eight Études Op 42. Nos. 1 and 8 are both restless and intricate in their finger work, and Fisher is particularly effective in the latter, making the figurations airy and weightless. No 4 is a love song, ardent and idyllic. No. 5 is breathless and perturbed.
In the absence of a commercial discography, these BBC broadcasts fill a conspicuous lacuna. Though the sound quality is very good, Sonetto Classics issues a caveat in their notes referring to some electromagnetic noise and audio dropout, a defect of the original tapes, present in the Brahms pieces and Scriabin Études. I didn’t find these particularly troublesome. Bryce Morrison and the recording’s producer Tomoyuki Sawado have contributed the informative liner, which is printed in English and Japanese.
Stephen Greenbank
Previous review: Jonathan Woolf
