AVAILABILITY
www.bis.se
Though remembered as
a great pianist Feinberg is coming into
his own at last as a composer on disc.
This is the second and final BIS issue
that presents the twelve piano sonatas
– perhaps someone will give us his Op.46
Violin Sonata (and his colleague and
friend Miaskovsky’s as well, while we’re
about it) or the big Third Piano Concerto.
Feinberg’s exceptionally well received
German tours in the 1920s, which led
to radio broadcasts and recordings (see
Arbiter’s Feinberg release for those),
were followed by a return to a politically
changed Soviet Union. The sonatas recorded
in this volume are not as pyrotechnic
or externalised as the first six, of
which I suppose the Sixth has garnered
some of the greatest publicity and renown.
But make no mistake; this later compositional
move was no retreat into generic simplicity.
These are tough, sinewy, problematic
and difficult pieces and they take some
playing.
Nos 7-9 are receiving
premiere recordings which makes one
all the more grateful to this pioneering
record label for uncovering them and
having the guts to issue them in such
well realised performances by two young
and staunchly dedicated pianists – BIS’s
Skalkottas series shows their commitment
at its most acute and this series isn’t
so far behind. Though Feinberg did perform
the Seventh in the 1920s he gradually
dropped it, fearing its advanced writing
would cause conflict with the Soviet
authorities. Cast in three movements
its weighty concentration is graced
with bell tolls and a highly polyphonic,
tense and dramatic outline. Repeated
washes and waves of drama (anger?) animate
the end of the opening Allegro moderato.
There’s a rapt Scriabinesque stillness
in the second movement and a powerful
conclusion even though the sonata actually
ends with a certain gentle resolution.
Formally it’s rather oddly constructed
with the long first movement followed
by ones of rapidly decreasing length.
The Eighth is a more concise work, once
again in three movements and lasting
a quarter of an hour. Less frantic but
still animated, its most distinguished
feature is a barcarolle-like central
Andante – romantic, optimistic, nostalgic
– which leads on to a driving finale
with moments of deliberate chaos embedded
into the music.
No.9 in one movement
dates from 1939. I like the excellent
sleeve-note writer’s phrase about its
being "combative, menacing and
evanescent" – quite so. The initial
optimism is chilled, corralled and fractured,
all animated by virtuoso peals and runs.
The wartime Tenth was composed over
a period of just under five years, a
period he spent in evacuation alongside
Miaskovsky and Prokofiev. This tough,
sinewy and craggy work is certainly
informed by the latter – and its hints
and glints of the folk tale (sardonic,
not Medtner-like) are also full of barely
concealed menace. There are rattling
machine gun attacks, with strongly assertive
melodies trying to emerge from the thicket
of the writing. Over all, the funereal
hangs heavy. The Eleventh, the penultimate
Sonata, is alternately galvanic and
sombre. A driving Chorale-like figure
appears to banish and absolve all doubt
– though the notes are honest in noting
formal weaknesses in the writing. I
still find the moment of Bachian transfiguration
moving, notwithstanding some deficiencies
in the writing – Feinberg was one of
the most lucid and convincing of Russian
Bachians (his final 1962 recordings,
made within weeks of his death and in
the full knowledge of his cancer, are
some of the most moving performances
I know). The last Sonata is light and
fluent and marks a return to the three-movement
structure he’d last used in 1933-34,
nearly thirty years before. Its opening
is really rather beautiful but those
characteristic Feinbergian flashes are
still there; his early post-Schoenbergian
position now subsumed into something
less doctrinaire – and there’s plenty
of delicacy in the final Improvisation.
The performances, as
I hinted earlier, are vibrantly committed.
It was no easy task to get these works
under the fingers, not least because
the chances of playing them in sonata
recitals will be very limited. There
are, however tough and combative, rewarding
and enlivening things here; touching,
too.
Jonathan Woolf
Volume
1
RECORDING OF THE MONTH Samuil
Evgenievitch FEINBERG (1890-1962)
The
Twelve Piano Sonatas: Nos. 1-6:
No. 1, Op. 1a (1915) [6’51];
No. 2, Op. 2b (1915-16) [9’01];
No. 3, Op. 3b (1916) [23’24];
No. 4, Op. 6a (1918) [8’33];
No. 5, Op. 10a (1920-21)
[8’05]; No. 6, Op. 13c (1923)
[14’20]. 
aNikolaos Samaltanos, bcChristophe
Sirodeau (pianos). Rec. Eglise Evangélique
Saint-Marcel, Paris, in abSpring
2002 and cDec 1993. DDD
BIS CD-1413 [70’13] [CC]
Revelatory.
The music of Feinberg is hypnotic in
the extreme, close to Scriabin in mystical
mode. Enjoy the voyage of discovery
