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www.symposiumrecords.co.uk
With exceptionally
detailed documentation and good, honest
transfers this disc makes for riveting
listening. Though remembered perhaps
more as a composer now, for many years
d’Albert was considered one of Liszt’s
very finest piano students – indeed
Liszt called the young man the most
dazzling contemporary talent he had
heard. From his beginnings in Glasgow,
to studies with Max Pauer in London
– along the way he so astonished Arthur
Sullivan with his compositions that
Sullivan sent for John Stainer so they
could listen to d’Albert together –
to his London debut, at 17, playing
his own First Concerto with Hans Richter
conducting, d’Albert was the Midas of
pianists. He did nothing by halves;
precocity, virtuosity, acerbity, controversy,
women, d’Albert did it all. It was only
fitting that he should die on tour,
in Riga, in 1932 because he had little
left to prove. He’d played both Brahms
Concertos – under the composer’s baton
of course – and taught a generation
of astounding talents after succeeding
Joachim (who else?) as director of the
Berlin Hochschule für Musik; Backhaus,
Dohnányi, Rehberg, Howard-Jones,
Risler and so on.
D’Albert made his first
recordings in 1910. Symposium have collated
a sequence that includes his Odeons
and some of his slightly later DG recordings
as well as a fantastically rare live
first movement of the Emperor Concerto
recorded in 1930 and preserved in some
semi-miraculous fashion. With a bank
of documentary support from such as
Ronald Smith – acute on technical and
musical concerns – with a minute bar
by bar analysis of the surviving Emperor
by Santiago Mantas and more excellent
articles by Geoffrey Howard and Eliot
Levin this issue comes formidably equipped
before one even listens to the disc.
If one starts with
the Emperor recorded two years before
d’Albert’s death one can hear his hugely
personalised response – massive ritardandi,
gloriously romanticised phrasing yet
also with some portentously italicised
moments, impulsive accelerandi and vast
contrastive material, constant slowing
down for the orchestral returns. Throughout
there is a sense of constant fluctuation;
finger slips galore, powerful bass sonorities
and a sense of titanic involvement.
The cadenza is storm tossed and note
dropping, with an almost insane sense
of commitment. It’s one of the more
astonishing and exhausting performances
ever captured for posterity – the sound
is not ideal but that’s a small consideration
for so perplexing and dramatic a reading.
Not that the rest of
the recital is in any way anti-climactic.
His Brahms may be rather heavy but his
Chopin, though idiosyncratic, is persuasive
and eloquent. Elsewhere repeats are
shorn and some of the pieces are, as
was necessary, truncated. His Liszt
is exciting and glittering, his Schubert
rather frantic – though time considerations
may have had something to do with it.
He is joined by violinist Andreas Weissgerber
in a couple of things – movements from
Mozart and Beethoven Sonatas. Weissgerber
is very, very backwardly placed, and
contributes as a result a sort of obbligato
effect, not aided by a sometimes witheringly
slow vibrato. But it’s especially valuable
to hear d’Albert’s own pieces, full
of portamento ease and slim orchestral
tone.
It’s been something
of a voyage of discovery to encounter
d’Albert in the round. I can’t imagine
any pianophile willingly renouncing
the chance to make the acquaintance
of so various, so remarkable a musician.
Jonathan Woolf
Eugen d’Albert (piano) with 