These performances are without doubt true classics,
and their reappearance one day in the ‘Originals’ series was, frankly,
inevitable. Music journalists the world over greeted these discs (they
were originally spread across two LPs, with the Andante spianato
et Grand Polonaise brillante as fill-up to the F minor) with rapturous
praise, some even daring to suggest they were the greatest performances
of these pieces in the history of recorded music to date. The sublime
partnership of the still-young Zimerman (he was 19 when he won the 1975
Warsaw International Competition, so still in his middle-twenties when
they were taped) with the ever-suave and aristocratic Giulini on the
rostrum really was a perfect recipe.
We now have a very interesting situation, in that Zimerman
has since re-recorded these concertos. That was in 1999, to mark the
150th anniversary of the composer’s death. He directed the hand-picked
Polish Festival Orchestra from the keyboard on DG 459 684-2 and offered
a completely fresh insight into both concertos. These later performances
divided his critics as much as the earlier ones (those under consideration
here) united them! The new version was spectacularly indulgent in matters
of dynamic range, rubato and attention to detail (not least in the orchestra,
whose role in these concertos is usually dismissed as nominal) and,
incredible to relate, added five minutes to the run-time of each concerto,
rendering the pair too long to fit onto a single CD! A majority of opinion
takes the view that the expressive freedom and exaggeration of the later
recording is completely over the top, unwarranted, eccentric and mannered.
A minority (and I happen to reside in that camp) finds the 1999 performances
almost completely convincing, and profoundly musical, albeit so
intimately personal that they could not ever be regarded as definitive
or wholly authentic.
Now that the original performances with Giulini are
back in circulation, we are able to compare Zimerman’s first and second
thoughts. My own view is that the two recordings are literally incomparable,
and that having both versions on our shelves illuminates this wonderful
music as few others can. If pressed to voice an opinion on this earlier
version – as I am obliged to do for the sake of this review – I have
to say that I, personally, find the young man’s view uncomfortably plain
and very nearly rigid compared to his rethinking of 19 or 20 years later.
They are of course still the beautifully moulded, elegant and glittering
performances they always were, and the incredible clarity of Zimerman’s
fingerwork is as much in evidence (and every bit as impressive) as in
his later version. But dare I suggest that Zimerman’s later view is
so utterly new and so completely thought-provoking, that the world has
yet to take note and follow?
Whatever your view of the first or the second Zimerman
recordings, this re-release of the 1979/80 tapes offers us truly inspired
performances of this masterful music. The only question (the answer
to which we will never agree) is whether Zimerman subsequently bettered
them.
Peter J Lawson
Krystian Zimerman (piano)