At the end of some gruelling sessions for Nixa, in which he
had essayed concertos by Prokofiev and Khachaturian, Mindru
Katz quietly began playing a Prelude and Fugue from Book II
of the Well Tempered Clavier. The conductor, Adrian Boult,
shushed the departing players and together they listened as
Katz moved quietly and nobly, seemingly oblivious, to the end
of the Fugue. Remembering the event afterwards, Boult recalled
that ‘I had no idea he had that kind of thing in him’.
Indeed he did. Katz has been typecast as a virtuoso concerto
performer, as I have noted before in my reviews of his discs
put out by Cembal d’amour. He was far from that, or – to put
it differently – he commanded a wide repertoire, one that embraced
flourish but also reflection and intimacy, all predicated on
a cast-iron technique and a warm, rounded pearl-toned sense
of projection.
Mindru Katz enjoyed some successful collaborations on disc with
at least two eminent British Knights of the Realm. Boult was
one and Barbirolli was another. It’s the latter who lends his
support in this recording of the Emperor Concerto made
in 1958. It’s been transferred before, by Dutton [CDSJB 1013].
The recording is balanced somewhat in favour of the piano as
was too often customary – it still is in some places – but this
doesn’t seriously impede listening. The wind lines and their
counter-themes, and the exchanges between them and the piano
are almost always audible. There is refinement as well as fire
in Katz’s playing. As one would expect of this conductor, Barbirolli
ensures that there is considerable rapport and ensemble surety,
and also that there is a strong wash of string tone. There is
a measured legato freshness to Katz’s playing of the central
movement. Firm, even, rounded trills, subtle rubati and excellent
left hand harmonic pointing are components of the playing that
ensure admiration. In the finale too Barbirolli ensures a degree
of élan and Katz plays with a splendid range of colour, mixing
the adamantine and the filigree to advantage.
The rest of the programme is contemporaneous with the Beethoven
recording. There is an introspective, brooding and powerful
Shostakovich Prelude in E flat minor and an elegant, unaffected,
and non-showy Chopin Polonaise in A flat major. In between comes
an impressive traversal of Enescu’s Suite for Piano No. 2 in
D major. Katz deals justly with the incipient grandeur of the
Toccata; so too in the diaphanous warmth and carillon elements
(very romantic) of the Sarabande. The wistful Debussian heritage
is apparent in the Pavane whilst the vitality of the music,
as full of energy in its way as John Foulds’ April-England,
becomes overwhelmingly audible in the ebullient Bourée finale.
This mixed programme usefully documents Katz’s highly persuasive
musicianship on the grandest and most intimate of scales. The
transfers are very sympathetic, the whole enterprise worthy
of Katz’s elevated musicianship.
Jonathan Woolf
Mindru Katz (piano)
