The name of Maria Bergmann
(1918-2002) was new to me, but after
reading the note by Rainer Peters I
realise that if any of my readers hail
from Germany, in particular from the
South-Western part of Germany, and cut
their listening teeth any time between
1st October 1946 and the mid-Seventies
(Peters doesn’t tell us exactly when
she retired), then hers will be as much
of a household breed as those of the
newsreaders and presenters of the day.
For Maria Bergmann belonged to that
extinct breed (I’m not sure that it
ever existed in England) called a Radio
Pianist. That is, a permanent employee
of the Südwestfunk who had to play
just whatever came up. Let Mr. Peters
take up the tale:
"Maria Bergmann
was always available. Since, for obvious
reasons, there were hardly any sound-recording
media in those days, she worked at the
microphone nearly every day, accompanied
musicians passing through, had set programmes
to do, and spontaneously played intermezzi
between programs. She turned up at the
studio in the evenings to fill gaps
between spoken programs, and frequently
had to play accompaniments for auditions.
Believe it or not, in her very first
month of work she had fifteen days of
full-scale live programs to play, including
songs, piano and chamber music – from
Scarlatti to Debussy, from Liszt to
Bernstein. And so it went on, day after
day, month after month, year after year.
The computer in the SWR archive returns
an incredible 2,700 hits when the name
of Maria Bergmann is entered".
Mr. Peters mentions,
among the 160-odd instrumentalists and
singers whom she accompanied, Accardo,
Grumiaux, Szerying, Starker, Fournier,
Navarra, Christa Ludwig, Edith Mathis,
Souzay and Tear. Furthermore, contemporary
music held no terrors for her; she played
the Schoenberg Piano Concerto and the
Stravinsky Capriccio (under the baton
of the delighted composer), and later
Henze, Boulez and Stockhausen.
There is a danger that,
faced with an artist who was practically
able to do everything, we will
mutter "Jack of all trades, master
of none". The picture which comes
into our minds is that of the enormously
talented sight-reader who can make a
decent shot at anything but has none
of those special insights cultivated
by pianists who limit their repertoire
to a small range of composers and works
for whom they feel a particular affinity.
I’m afraid that the present disc doesn’t
entirely dispel that impression. We
must also wonder how her career would
have developed if she had followed the
career path of a "normal"
concert pianist. But I think she must
have been a workaholic by nature or
she could never have stuck it out all
those years.
It is a pity we are
not told the dates of the individual
recordings. My ears tell me there are
three sessions involved here. The group
of very early sonatas has a closely
recorded piano, brilliant but not aggressive,
sounding a little like a fortepiano
(was it a Bösendorfer, maybe?).
Bergmann brings a bright, vivacious
touch to these works with a minimum
of pedalling and a nice sense of phrasing.
She certainly brings them out of the
schoolroom and these performances will
make useful models for aspiring youngsters
(Sample 1: Track 1 from beginning).
Of the later sonatas,
the first three (E minor, D major and
G minor) are recorded with a much more
distant microphone placing in what sounds
to be a largish empty studio with a
fair amount of reverberation. The sound
has more bloom to it, but also quite
a degree of wooliness. Maybe this affected
my perception of the performances, but
they seem a lot less insightful, even
laboured, as in the relentless D minor
slow movement of the D major and the
joyless finale of the same sonata (far
from Presto ma non troppo) (Sample 2:
Track 21 from beginning). She usually
gives us first movement repeats; the
omission in the first movement of the
G minor sounds like a candid admission
that the music sounds boring at this
tempo. All in all, it sounds as if preparation
time was at a premium.
The recording of the
A flat major sonata is somewhere in
between; it has bloom but also presence.
The performance is better, too. Bergmann
takes her time over the Allegro moderato
first movement but finds vivacity as
well as serenity in it. She finds the
right depth for the impressive Adagio
(Sample 3: Track 25 from beginning)
and the Presto finale bubbles with spirit.
I should point out, though, that divergences
between what she plays and the Henle
Edition, of minor import in the other
sonatas, are striking here. Henle Urtext
editions are generally unimpeachable
(their Haydn was published since Bergmann’s
day) but I suppose there may be alternative
sources for this sonata.
I don’t quite know
what sort of a recommendation this adds
up to. The evidence is that the Bergmann
legacy would be worth investigation,
but with a little more caution than
has been applied here. Does that Stravinsky
performance survive, for instance? And
how about her collaborations with the
great names listed above? As a taste
of Haydn sonatas, the problem is that
three out of the four mature works are
unremarkably done so I can only really
recommend it if you are particularly
looking for a good performance of the
A flat major or the early pieces.
Christopher Howell
Maria Bergmann (piano) 