Petri was in his youth something of a multi-instrumentalist.
We remember him as Busoni’s greatest pupil and a Lisztian of coruscating
brilliance but he was also a violinist – not surprising as his
father, Henri, was an internationally renowned performer and teacher
– but also, less predictably, as a French horn player good enough
to take a place in the Dresden Symphony. Petri was a musician
of the utmost clarity, distinction and directness with a technique
remarkable even into old age and whose conception of space and
tonal value gave him a persuasive insight into music of intellect
and weight. As a Beethovenian he was distinguished - as a Chopin
player he maybe reflected something of his teacher Busoni’s own
professed ambiguity and duality of response. Petri’s pre-War Columbias
have been collated on APR and demonstrate his strengths in abundance.
Music and Arts has here brought together his concerts and broadcasts
from the period covering 1954 to 1962, the year of his death.
His reluctance to travel, his physical lack of flamboyance, indeed
his active distaste of extravagance and extraneous gesture and
detail, meant that audiences didn’t much clamour to hear him.
Their loss is evident from this uneven but nevertheless exceptionally
significant series of survivals.
There’s a caveat to be made about the actual
piano sound on some of these off-air and private recordings; it
can be rather harsh but it’s not at all unlistenable. There are
also some imperfections to be expected – some wow and distortion
(minimal and fleeting) some dropouts (ditto) as well as pitch
distortion. These are all honestly noted in Music and Arts documentation
and I should mention them here; they didn’t unduly trouble me.
The repertoire is very much Petri’s canonical one – the last Beethoven
sonatas, Busoni, Chopin as well as Bach-Busoni and Bach-Petri.
He was always a charming exponent of Gluck, a more unexpected
one here of Medtner. Of Liszt there’s but a fleeting glimpse –
Venezia e Napoli, taped in the last year of his life.
We start with his Chopin Preludes Op. 28. Well,
best to get this over with I suppose. I find his Chopin rather
disappointing. His rubati in the Agitato opener are well judged
if unexceptionable (he was known to scorn the emotive exaggerations
of some of his colleagues) but he is very, very cool in No. 4,
the Largo in E. There’s a dispassionate control in No. 6, a Lento
from which, however, he seems to wish to expunge feeling. He is
fine though in another Largo, No. 9 in E – his truly noble sound
is affecting – but there isn’t enough distinction between the
hands in No. 11, where he fails to differentiate the melody line
in the right hand. There’s even a distribution between hands –
something that seems to me afflicts No. 13 in F sharp as well.
The Sostenuto in D flat (No. 15) is very dry playing indeed –
Petri adamantine in his refusal to indulge colouristic potential;
in addition his left hand covers the right at some crucial moments.
He improves considerably for the B flat Presto and the power contained
within as he does for the virility and energy of the Allegro appassionato
conclusion (he omits Nos. 21 and 22 for some reason). Throughout
I felt him most comfortable with the athletic, technical side
of the Preludes and rather less indulgent towards the lyrical
side that Busoni himself felt most ambivalent about. Of his Busoni
indeed I could hardly say anything other than that it is magnificent.
The Song of Victory from the Indian Diary is 1.16 of powerfully
sustained pianism of an exalted level whilst the eloquence of
the Bluebird Song shows that what he failed to do so glaringly
in Chopin he could manifestly do in Busoni. The final dance shows
off Petri’s superb rhythmic control, his colour and his sheer
depth of tone (never overdone). He was seventy-seven when he was
taped in Busoni’s All’Italia – sheer virtuosic panache. The disc
finishes with twenty-five minutes of Petri with the eminent pianist
Carlo Bussotti in a stratospherically impressive Fantasia Contrappuntistica;
the two men seemingly joined at the musical hip so intense and
marshalled their decisive vision.
The second disc is rather more bits and pieces
– but what bits what pieces. The Medtner is very
impressive playing indeed if not quite in the Moiseiwitsch or
Medtner class. The Danza Festiva is rather heavier than the composer’s
own recording but the Op. 20/2 Fairy Tale in B has some seismic
attacks. The Schumann Fantasiestücke are in somewhat splintery
sound but he plays them with rather more overt affection than
he did the Chopin; the Allegro con fuoco second is sonorous, the
third is affecting, without affectation, and the Vivacissimo,
Dream Visions is full of filigree drive, albeit one accompanied
by a degree of tape distortion. His own Bach Chorale arrangements
are justly famous as are his recordings of them. Sheep may safely
graze is nourishingly intimate and beautifully adept with its
sudden pianissimi, whilst I step before Thy Throne grows in authority
and grandeur. There’s little real difference between Petri’s 1930s
recording of the Minuet (from the W.F. Bach Notebook) and this
one, made in 1958. His Schubert-Liszt is duly frolicsome and the
Nocturne in D flat has quite a lot more vivacity and colour than
he lavished on the Préludes, albeit his rhythm is rather
heavy.
The third disc gives us his trademark Gluck-Sgambati
Melodie – and this time he must cede to his earlier self; he’s
heavier, more emphatic, less treble oriented preferring to concentrate
instead on the middle voicings. The captivating beauty of that
earlier recording has been replaced by a philosophic depth that
does seem rather alien to it. His Beethoven Op. 90 Sonata is characteristically
plain speaking and strong; the second of the two movements is
especially buoyant and decisive. The Chopin examples here, the
Sonata in B and the Nocturne in F sharp, are vitiated by choppy
rhythm. Petri was seventy-eight when these performances were taped
so maybe that has something to do with it but whilst there are
tonally delightful glints in the opening Allegro of the Sonata
it sounds as if, like a mathematician, Petri were actively breaking
the movement – and indeed the work as a whole – into units. The
algebraic-philosophic-contrapuntalist approach here renders much
of this very disappointing. I liked the lento much more though
and whilst the presto finale again suffers from rhythmic insistence
there are still compensatory features of colour and vivacity.
The final disc is in many ways the most consistently
elevated in musical terms, principally because it finds Petri
addressing Beethoven. There are some technical frailties in the
opening of Op. 109, it’s true, but more important by far is the
sense of powerful direction. Again the tiny Prestissimo second
movement taxes him for a moment but we should concentrate on the
Andante finale. Here Petri is very direct, almost casual, but
as the movement advances and his architectural priorities become
clearer we are aware of a mind of illuminating integrity at work.
By the later variations he develops a degree of metrical flexibility
that one would not have earlier suspected. There is no undue sentiment
and I would certainly understand those who hold this to be a logician’s
Beethoven. My own instincts are for something more overtly expressive
but I can but admire the tremendous concentration of his approach.
The A flat Sonata, Op. 110, again taped in 1954, certainly lacks
to my ears the molto espressivo in the first movement requested
of the performer. But Petri is careful to reserve the weight of
his intelligence and tonal resources for the first, Adagio section
of the finale. He keeps this moving with an almost Arietta delicacy,
though he certainly employs weight and shading. The Fuga is strong
and determined. In Op. 111 his Maestoso is fast, strong, with
no great tonal beauty to it. I have to say I found it inflexible,
on one level and rather superficial. It’s a performance that seeks
to divide and fracture still further, rather than reconcile, the
character of both movements. With a pianist such as Solomon the
seemingly disparate and oppositional movements take on congruence
and a retrospective sense of rightness. With Petri the implacably
oppositional nature of the Sonata is starkly delineated. In that
Arietta finale Petri is flexible without coming to a stop; his
syncopated passages are driving, even a little peremptory, but
he never seeks to extract huge weight of left hand tone or to
indulge abstraction. This is intelligent, lean, technically adept
and impressive playing, whatever ones view of its ability to move,
which I happen to find relatively limited.
Documentation consists in the main of an interview
between annotator Frederick Maroth and Petri’s English pupil,
Claire James who had attended the famous Busoni-Petri two-piano
London recital of 1921. They deal with the central features of
Petri’s pianism with acumen, as one would expect, with some quietly
revealing information disclosed along the way. This is a set of
some real importance in capturing Petri’s art at a time when he
was given considerably less than his due. Even at his most phlegmatic
his brand of musical stoicism added an imperishable page to the
annals of pianism on record in the twentieth century.
Jonathan Woolf
Egon Petri (piano) with