Despite the prestigious position he had carved out
for himself in England, not to mention the recordings he made with Boult
and Barbirolli, Mindru Katz moved definitively to Israel where he was
to spend the remainder of his tragically short life. He died at the
age of 52 during a recital in Istanbul. I’ve written extensively
on Katz during the course of my reviews of previous releases in this
increasingly eventful series, many of which tapes have been provided
by the pianist’s widow. In that respect this latest disc is no
different; Zoara Katz has once again released the tapes for commercial
production via Cembal d’Amour.
Both concerto performances come from live performances given with the
Israel Broadcast Authority Orchestra. The Schumann is directed by Mendi
Rodan in 1963 and the Grieg by Sergiu Comissiona the previous year.
I’m not sure what state the tapes were in before they reached
Cembal d’Amour’s Mordecai Shehori but they don’t sound
at all bad. Certainly there are places, rather more in the Schumann,
where the piano spectrum is set rather back in the balance, or rather
further back than would be ideal, but there are no obvious glitches
or any degradation that one can hear. This is either a tribute to their
state of preservation or to Shehori’s restoration, or perhaps
to both.
Katz was a very natural sounding musician. He never drew attention to
himself, and never drew the ear away from the musical argument. He certainly
did not lack for bravura in his playing, as a listen to his Khachaturian
will attest, but he didn’t lack for depth of utterance either,
as one can hear in his Bach recordings. In the central concerto repertoire
he proves a laudable exponent. His Grieg is dispatched with ardour and
control, his rubati being pronounced without becoming too stretched,
and his little caesuri hinting at the playfulness embedded in the music.
The central movement is quite slow, but not solemn, warmly textured
too, whilst the finale is strongly characterised. There is one very
brief moment of smudged passagework, and the piano sounds a tiny bit
clangy. Otherwise, even though there are some passages where the orchestra
sounds a bit blunt, this is a fine souvenir of Katz caught on the wing.
So too is the Schumann, which receives a stylish and stylistically apt
reading. He takes the slow movement at a gracious tempo, not unlike
that of, say, Myra Hess, and doesn’t press on too hotly in the
finale. His reading as a whole is sympathetically scaled, and abjures
obvious extroversion.
Altogether then this is another worthy addition to the discography of
a musician too easily overlooked during his lifetime. It’s good
that amends of a sort can be made in releases such as this.
Jonathan Woolf
Masterwork Index:
Grieg concerto
~~
Schumann concerto
