In all likelihood, looking back at the 21
st century in a
hundred years time, people will be able to say how many outstanding pianists
there were. This is something we often say about the 20
th century
and with good reason. From Solomon (1902-88) and moving on via Rudolf
Serkin, Claudio Arrau, Vladimir Horowitz, Dinu Lipatti, Geza Anda, Jorge
Bolet, Shura Cherkassky, Clifford Curzon, Gyorgy Cziffra, Emil Gilels,
Sviatoslav Richter, Glenn Gould, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Martha Argerich the
twentieth century was chock full of great pianists as was the
19
th century. What is also certain is that anyone’s list will be
challenged by many as to who should be replaced by whom and why others were
left out so I’d better stop right now.
In a 200 CD box set entitled
Great Pianists of the 20th
Century issued by Phillips in 1999 and sponsored by Steinway,
all the above were included; 3 CDs were devoted to Gilels and Richter.
Vladimir Sofronitsky - the subject of this 2 CD set, issued as part of
Melodiya’s 50
th anniversary celebrations – also had his place
there. In the opinion of Richter Sofronitsky was a god on whose death Gilels
was said to have remarked: "The greatest pianist in the world has
died".
Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky was virtually born with the century on
8 May 1901 in St. Petersburg to a cultured family. He studied at the
Petrograd Conservatory where his fellow students included Shostakovich,
Maria Yudina and Scriabin’s daughter Elena whom he married in 1920. Somewhat
unusually his repertoire was vast ranging from Buxtehude, Handel, Bach and
Scarlatti to Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Kabalevsky though his main
interests lay with Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Scriabin. Hypercritical of
his own recordings, he once said “My recordings are my dead bodies” so when
he declared himself to be happy with any one you can be sure it was
something extra special. On this set several that he approved can be found
including Liszt’s arrangement of Schubert’s
Litanei and Liszt’s
Sposalizio and all Scriabin here.
However, it is with the music of Chopin that the majority of the first
disc’s offerings are concerned, all recorded in 1960. They demonstrate a
brilliant technique as well as scrupulous attention to detail. These result
in an elegance that is particularly attractive and which is an absolute
pre-requisite when playing Chopin’s radiant pieces. It is also
understandable as to why the Liszt piece and his Schubert arrangement were
favourite recordings for Sofronitsky: they are beautifully played, though
that is also true of everything else on these discs.
CD 1 ends with the first piece by Scriabin, the longest of his pieces
presented here, though it is only the first movement of an eleven minute
work that took him five years to write and about which he wrote "The
first section represents the quiet of a southern night on the seashore; the
development is the dark agitation of the deep, deep sea. The E major middle
section shows caressing moonlight coming up after the first darkness of
night”. Sofronitsky felt especially drawn to Scriabin’s music well before he
met Elena and made his works the particular focus of his career along with
Chopin’s. While at first it might seem that these two composers have little
in common what binds them are the deepest feelings of emotion. They both
wrote, right from the heart and, in Scriabin’s case like Chopin, apart from
five orchestral works and his piano concerto, he wrote exclusively for the
piano.
Scriabin, as is well known, had some decidedly strange ideas as well as a
massive ego once writing that “only my music expressed the inexpressible”.
He considered himself a messianic figure buoyed perhaps by the fact that he
was born on 25 December according to Russia’s then Julian calendar. Some
even attempted to enhance that claim by erroneously attributing his death on
14 April to having being on Easter Sunday though that year it came early, on
29 March.
Sofronitsky adored the music of Scriabin of whom he said “From my young
years, through my life and until the end, I will gladly carry my love for him, a living, unfailing and
unshakeable one. Life, light, struggle, will, this is the true greatness of
Scriabin”. The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia said of Scriabin "No composer
has had more scorn heaped upon them or greater love bestowed ...". His
biographer wrote that "No one was more famous during their lifetime,
and few were more quickly ignored after death." Fortunately, these
days, that is no longer true and there are some outstanding recordings of
his piano music.
It is interesting that much of his music gives predominance to the left
hand which was because he damaged his right hand at an early age, some say
while practising Balakirev’s fiendishly difficult
Islamey, others
Liszt’s
Don Juan Fantasy. On this set the recordings of preludes
that take up tracks 15-40 are especially affecting.
The sound generally is much better than one might expect considering that
Soviet recordings were always criticised heavily for their rough sound.
However true that may have been in the case of the original masters the
re-mastering by E. Barykina has rendered them more than satisfyingly
listenable. While it is perfectly true to say that there are modern versions
that are crisper and clearer it is also unreasonable to judge recordings
made between 54 and 75 years ago by the same standards.
We should be primarily concerned with the interpretations and on that
score Sofronitsky cannot be faulted. The demonic ninth sonata — given the
title
Black Mass, though not by him — for example, is a towering
achievement. These discs are part of recorded legacy that should be
cherished.
Steve Arloff
