I didn’t know him at all personally, but Rian de Waal
is still greatly missed as a colleague at my place of work at
The Hague’s Royal Conservatoire. He passed away on 25
May 2011 and I signed the memorial book, but am now rather pleased
to be able to pay a slightly more substantial tribute by way
of reviewing his last recording, which also happens to be of
Schubert’s final great piano sonata D.960.
When you open the gatefold of this nicely and simply presented
CD you are met by De Waal’s bold statement, Take your
time with Schubert. The Sonata No. 21 in B flat major
D.960 is certainly a work to which this proclamation is
applicable, with that vast first movement which De Waal brings
in at twenty minutes almost to the second, and the timeless
Andante sostenuto, in which the world can seem to stop
spinning on its axis, or at the very least slow down for a better
look at how things are. Valery Afanassiev is slower and gazes
closer to infinity in his recording on the ECM label, but his
view for that live Lockenhaus performance is an extreme which
I will accept goes beyond what many might find acceptable. De
Waal keeps hold of the singing line, and holds that balance
between turning the accompaniment figures into repetitive features
which end up disturbing a meditation, and making those rhythms
into more of a funeral march than they should be. It could have
been a tad slower for me, but that’s personal taste; the
proportions between the opening and close and the more animated
central section seems perfect.
This animated character relates directly to the Scherzo
in this interpretation, something I hadn’t picked up on
so much in the past. Balance, poise, call it what you will but
this is tremendously well considered playing, with accents and
harmonic nuances placed to perfection. The final Allegro
ma non troppo forms a unifying and consolatory movement
in this interpretation, until the minor turbulence kicks in
at 2:23 and the rug is pulled out from under our feet. This
may not be the wildest of performances but packs a punch at
all of the significant points, building to passages of symphonic
stature in the fourth minute. The penultimate bars before the
final coda are played with genuine poignancy, a really regretful
departure.
Rian de Waal’s own booklet notes tell of how, when Schubert
was all but forgotten, it was Franz Liszt’s performances
of song transcriptions in Vienna which revived interest in his
work. You can hear why this would have been the case with these
performances, which bring out both Schubert’s disarming
and deceptively simple melodic lines as well as the easy technical
grace with which Liszt supplemented the originals to create
satisfyingly stand-alone pianistic works.
Daan van Aalst’s excellent SACD recording made at Rian
de Waal’s own recording location, a converted farm in
Valthermond, deserves a mention here. Another colleague in The
Hague, he is also responsible for some crack engineering on
releases with Rachel
Podger and others, and his work here creates a warmly expressive
piano sound - colourful and responsive, and with a good impression
of the scale of the location. Amongst the finest legacies a
musician can hope to leave are recordings which will stand as
a testament for the future, and this Schubert, Schubert/Liszt
programme is one of the finest piano performances I’ve
come across for many a year. This has nothing to do with sentimental
association or the awareness that people I know are likely to
read my review - I’ll stand by my comments in any arena.
I will also stand by my opinion that the perfect recording of
Schubert’s last sonata has yet to be made, and probably
never will be. If I have any reservations about this particular
recording it is the sense of neatness, of things being put right,
or being placed in their correct places and order in the world.
This does wonders for the structure of the work as a whole,
and reinforces the value of the final two movements against
the sheer unfathomable genius of the first two. I realise I
haven’t mentioned the opening Molto moderato a
great deal, and the reason is that there is very little to fault
in Rian de Waal’s interpretation or performance. He is
two minutes shorter than Afanassiev, but around two minutes
longer than Radu Lupu in his Decca
recording, which is not a particular favourite but which
does point out a sense of real and present danger which can
be expressed in this music. What I miss here is Schubert’s
human fallibility and his voice of bloody-minded defiance. You
may or may not accept visionary qualities in this work, but
these can be as much in the ear of the beholder as that of the
performer. This marvellous performance is of Schubert the controlled
master craftsman, rather than Franz the uncertain genius and
secret hell-raiser.
Dominy Clements
Rian de Waal (piano)
VALTHERMOND RECORDINGS
[59:45] 